Once, a half-century ago or more, a farmer and his men came down
from the pastures, and for purposes of their own cut a ditch
straight through the middle of the bog to the open water. The
hundreds of scrawny night-herons, sitting on pale blue eggs in
scraggly nests in the cedar swamp, must have heard the cedars
laugh as this went on. It was the swamp’s opportunity. Where the
farmer and his men with incredible labor cut and tore away the
marsh-grass roots the cedars planted their seeds, and called
upon the alders and the swamp-maples and the thoroughwort, the
Joe Pye weed, and a host of other good citizens of the swamp to
help them.
So vigorous was the sortie and so well did they hold their
ground, that you may trace the farmer’s wide ditch to-day only
as a causeway down which the swamp has come to build a great
wooden area in the midst of the bog, accomplishing in half a
century what it might not have done in five times had it not
been for human aid.--WINTHROP PACKARD, “Wild Pastures.”
(1321)
=Growth, Spiritual=--See SPIRITUAL PERTURBATION.
=Growth Through Struggle=--See STRUGGLE AND GROWTH.