SPRING IN THE SAVANNAS
Spring and autumn kissed yesterday in the savannas east of Lake
Okeechobee, and autumn died of it. Autumn was lucky thus to be raptured
out of existence, for he was but a weakling, lingering along inertly,
showing little of that brown tan in which, farther north, he glories. In
all the woodland hardly a fallen leaf rustled under his footstep and on
the open savanna only the dull olive wild grasses paid homage to him. On
the day he died I thought I saw tribute to him in the red of a swamp
maple’s passing leaves, but I was wrong. It was the blush of spring
blossoms instead, so little does the world of the twenty-seventh
parallel care for autumn, so potent is the aura of spring as the lusty
hussy sweeps in on the wings of the southeast trades. I suspect spring
of being born on the tropic edge of the Sargasso Sea whence these winds
blow, mothered by the cool brine of its vast depths, fathered by the
most vivid sun and bringing in her amorous heart the alchemic vigor of
both, whereby she
[Illustration: “Spring and autumn kissed yesterday in the savannas east
of Lake Okeechobee”]
transmutes all things into golden bloom. The long surges of this sea
following her, leap in adoration and desire. A dozen miles inland from
the Atlantic I yet hear the roar of their plunge on the beach, a roar
softened and made into a sleepy lullaby, an undertone droning in
soothing cadences when the breeze is hushed for a moment. They may not
follow her farther, these devoted waves, but they send the cooling scent
of the brine far beyond the sound of their voices, sometimes to the very
heart of the peninsula.
Yet it is not altogether the scent of the brine which gives the amorous
softness to the winds that brought spring, yesterday. The garments of
the goddess, trailing over the Bahamas, have caught the scent of all
wild flowers in their folds and there wooed and welded them into a fond
sweetness which no man may describe yet by which all must know when
spring comes, whether in the Everglades or the New England pastures. On
nights when the wind blew gently I have caught whiffs of these odors of
spring before, breaths to make one fill the lungs to their very depths
in long-drawn inspirations, to reach one’s arms towards the stars in
sudden joy of yearning, but now the air of day as well as night is full
of it.
The savannas are the pine barrens of the northern part of the State,
made, somehow, more open-hearted, lovable and kindly instead of lonely
and aloof. The pines are here still, but they no longer grow in
close-set ranks that shut off the view in the near distance with a
wooden wall of brown trunks. Instead they grow far apart and the glance
trots merrily along for miles among their trunks before it finds its way
barred. There are enough of the long-leaved variety to give stateliness
to the view, but in the main the pine of the savannas is a
shorter-leaved, less straight and dignified tree, smaller, though a
good-sized tree, and one that is enough like our Northern pitch pine to
be a friend at sight. These and the palmettos that sway in picturesque
groups along on their way, no one knows whither, are all the trees one
finds for miles on miles.
It is rather odd, this matter of the palmettos being on their way. It is
not so with the pines. They stand. But the palmettos stroll on. I do not
know what gives them this semblance of groups in motion, but they surely
have it. I fancy it is their erect trunks which are never quite erect.
They seem to lean forward just poised for a step. Under foot is the
scrub palmetto, brown grasses that fatten the range cattle, and the
gallberry bushes now black with fruit. At first glance this seems all
and you have to live with the savannas for a little before they give up
more. At rare intervals you may find a tiny streamlet that in
flood-time has dug its course down through the sand to a hard bottom
where its clear water slips gently along. This will be bordered by
myrtles a dozen feet tall, making a wall of foliage that you may see a
mile ahead of you barring your way beneath the pines. But this is only
an incident and does not affect the general tenor of the landscape.
But, though streams are rare, there is water in abundance in the
saucer-like pools which make the savanna so lovable. Just when your way
is becoming weary and the place the abode of monotony and loneliness,
one of them bars your path and fills you with sudden admiration of its
wild beauty. You may count them, little and big, by the score sometimes
within a mile, you may find a mile without one, or you may find a single
pool which takes up the mile. However long your walk in the level plain,
it can never be lonely because of the comradeship of these. Here is one
that is rimmed with prim, green rushes, standing close-set and bristly
pointed as if guarding the clear, unvexed surface. Here is another so
shallow that the wild grasses grow up through the water all about,
spiring in tender points that are olive brown with the touch of autumn.
Yesterday in such pools olive brown was the only color above the water
which reflected the blue of the sky. To-day, under the touch of this
amorous spring that swooped down upon them, these somber spires stand
guard over prickings of tender green that sprang up in a night to meet
the call of the passing goddess.
Here is another pool, deeper, this one, whose borders are halberded with
the leaves of the pickerel weed, already flying blue banners here and
there, starred with the white of the water plantain. In spots in these
clear, deeper pools the tape grass stripes the surface and the crow
blackbirds ride dry-footed on the round, floating leaves of the yellow
pond lily. Many of the smaller pools are fairer yet, their clear, black
water all rich with gold ornaments, curiously and beautifully carved and
shining yellow in the sunlight which seems tangled in embossings and
fret work. Not till I wade knee deep into the middle may I find out
whence comes this curious and delightful ornamentation. After all, it is
but the tangled blooms of _Utricularia vulgaris_, riding free and
floating on the bladder-bearing whorl of leaves till gentle winds push
them close and the spurred, bilabiate flowers tangle golden heads in
nugget-like masses. Nowhere in the world, I fancy, can you find
utricularias so large flowered and massed in such profusion as in the
little, quiet pools that star the savannas from the Indian River
westward to the northernmost beginnings of the Everglades.
The pools do not have a monopoly of the beautiful yellow blooms of the
utricularia. Along one tiny path or another which I follow along level
miles, made by the range cattle and kept open as highways for all the
wild creatures of the place, tiny motes of richest sunshine dance aside
for my passing feet. Scarce larger than a pinhead are these blooms of
_Utricularia subulata_, most elflike blooms, that seem to have no
connection with earth. If you try to pluck them they shake all over with
mirth which they cannot contain at your clumsiness. Leaves they have
none, and the stem which bears them up is of such a neutral tint and of
such gossamer fineness that it is almost impossible to see it. And that
is all there is to it; a stem like a spider’s thread, springing from
moist sand or mud in the path, bearing on its invisible support this
tiny scale of sunshine, making the most elusive and fairylike plant that
one might find on a continent. In Northern swamps and on the borders of
still lakes the utricularias have given me pleasure, but never have they
supplied such an amazement of delight as they spread before my feet in
these wild savannas of southern Florida.
Along with the path-haunting utricularias is another tiny plant whose
Northern prototype is familiar. This is the sundew. I take the one that
carpets portions of these moist, wild ways with rich red to be the
_Drosera brevifolia_ from its shorter, wedge-shaped leaves. The nap of
fine glands that clothes these holds diamond glints of infinitesimal
dewdrops that flash finely in the sun and catch my attention and hold
it, even as they do the tiny insects for whom the snare is spread. In
favored locations these round mats of the sundew half carpet the
gray-black soil along the path edges with a diamond-frosted, cerise
velvet and should pleasantly pad the footfall of all small, wild
creatures that pass that way.
The sundew grows only on the moist places. In the dryer spots, now that
spring has come wooing with warmth and with showers, troops of
sunbonneted beauties show up, these seeming to have sprung magically
forth in a night. It may be that there were golden yellow sunbonnets
nodding coquettishly in the wind all along the savannas ten days ago. I
can only say that I tramped them back and forth and did not see any. It
may be that the smaller, more modest blue sunbonnets were there too. I
can only say that I did not see them. There is a freemasonry of the wild
that keeps secrets from you till you are found worthy. Hence to know a
wood or a plain you must visit it often. Often in coming back along a
path which I have scanned in going I find flowers, nodding by the very
path brim, that I did not see in going out. It is not to be believed
that these opened in the interval; rather we must
[Illustration: “All must know when spring comes, whether in the
Everglades or the New England pastures”]
think that like children they lose their fear of strangers after a
little.
So with these butterwort girls that wear the yellow and blue sunbonnets.
I fancy there were a few of them along the path on my first day, but
they did not care to be seen. Now they have taken heart at the boldness
with which spring scatters love tokens all about and are trooping forth
on the level sands. _Pinguicula pumila_ I actually found first, though
she is the more modest. Her blue bonnet is smaller and she herself is
shorter of stature, nestling down among the wild grasses in a snugly
confiding way which makes them love her. They cling close and it is
difficult to pluck _Pinguicula pumila_ without getting a half handful of
defending grass stems with her.
_Pinguicula lutea_ is a bolder creature. In her yellow sunbonnet she is
a flaunting blonde and the gold of her flaring ribbons is visible far
under pine and palm. When the full warmth of the sun is on the savannas
she flips back the rim of this big, yellow bonnet till it flares in
salver form and shows her buxom face and the gold of her hair to all who
will look. I do not think it possible that _Pinguicula lutea_ let me go
down the path on the very first day without noticing her and I am
therefore confident that her season begins here in mid-January. She and
her shyer sister have given a sudden joy to the wide spaces that was
not there before and I welcome them as near relatives of the
utricularias.
Over them all on the day that spring came, over the sandy levels, the
round-eyed, flower-bedecked pools, rang the tinkling, joyous songs of I
do not know how many million meadow larks. A day or two before I had
seen but a scattering one or two and not one had sung for me. On that
day they appeared everywhere, not in flocks like the robins and
blackbirds, but singly and by twos and threes well distributed over all
the landscape. They sing from lowly stations, a short, dead stub in the
lonely reaches, a fence post near the farm, or the low ridgepole of the
farmer’s shack. Nothing could be more springlike than their music and
they are the first Northern birds that I have found singing freely so
far South. The robins and the redwings are songless, the bluebird carols
shyly as he flies but so gently that he is rarely heard. The crow
blackbird works hard but it is hardly a song that he produces, and so
the mellow tinkle of these myriads of meadow larks is a delight to the
Northern ear.
It is a joy also to see one of them after his song flutter forth from
his perch, spread his wings in mid-flight and sail sweetly down,
lighting in among the wild grasses as if he loved them. The meadow
lark’s breast wears a rich yellow that pretty nearly matches that of
the sunbonnet of Miss Pinguicula Lutea. I am wondering if there is
anything in it. That might account for her persistent strolling along
the sunny reaches of the interminable savannas. It might account for his
melodious outbursts from low observation points and the quivering set of
his wings as he soars down into the grass at her side. This spring that
came sailing up over the Bahamas brought many a yearning along with the
tropic odors in her train.
As out of the lark-filled air the spring has brought melodies, so out of
the yellow-flecked pools she has brought two sounds which are in vocal
adoration of her. One is a queer little rap of a sound that is like the
hitting of dry sticks together in a rub-a-dub-dub. If fairy frogs march
the borders of the pools to drumbeat, this is the drumbeat.
The other is a frog sound, too, the love call of the tree frog. The
hyla’s voice with us, North, is the first sure call of spring. When we
hear that we know that the ice is gone from the marshes and the tiny
fellows have come out of their winter’s sleep and are down in the open
water, piping, Panlike, their love songs among the reeds. Neither
amorous scent of stephanotis bloom borne from islands of the Southern
seas on the soft air, nor amorous tinkle of lark love songs could so
mark to my Northern trained ear the presence of spring. There is no
chorus as yet; just an occasional shrill peeping, such as I have heard
in April out of the moist ruck of last year’s grasses in a cold meadow,
while yet there is a touch of frost in the air and the low sun scarcely
gives color in his slanting beams. Here it comes in warmth as of June
out of pools where bewildered flowers bloom the year round, not knowing
of a certainty where one summer ends and another begins. Yet the sound
and its meaning are unmistakable, the final evidence whereby I know that
spring came to the savannas yesterday.