Before the sugar pine came up in the meadow of Bright Water it had swung
a summer long in the burnished cone of the parent tree, until the wind
lifted it softly to the earth where it swelled with the snow water and
the sun, and began to grow into a tree. But it knew nothing whatever of
itself except that it was alive and growing; and in its first season was
hardly so tall as the Little Grass of Parnassus that crowded the sod at
the Bright Water. In fact, it was a number of years before it began to
overtop the meadowsweet, the fireweed, the tall lilies, the monkshood,
and columbine, and under these circumstances it could not be expected to
have much of an opinion of itself.
During those years the young pine suffered a secret mortification
because it had no flowers. It stood stiff and trimly in its plain dark
green, every needle like every other one, and no honey-gatherer visited
it. When all the meadow ran over with rosy and purple bloom, the pine
tree trembled and beads of clear resin oozed out upon its bark like
tears; and the trouble really seemed worse than it was because everybody
made so much of it. Even the hummingbirds as they came hurtling through
the air would draw back conspicuously when they came to the pine, and
though they said politely, "I beg your pardon, I took you for a flower,"
the seedling felt it would have been better had they said nothing at
all.
"Well, why don't you grow flowers?" said the meadowsweet; "it is easy
enough. Just do as I do," and she spread her drift of blossoms like a
fragrant snow. But the sugar pine found it impossible to be anything but
stiff and plainly green, though every year in the stir and tingle of new
sap he felt a promise of better things.
"I suppose," he said one day, "I must be in some way different from the
rest of you."
"Ah, that is the way with you solemn people," said the fireweed, "always
imagining yourself better than those about you to excuse your
disagreeableness. Any one can see by the way you hold yourself that you
have too much of an opinion of yourself."
The little pine tree sighed; he had not said "better," only "different,"
and he began to realize year by year that this was so.
"You should try to be natural," said the meadowsweet; "do not be so
stiff, and then every one will love you though you are so plain."
Then the sugar pine reached out and tried to mingle with the flowers,
but the sharp needles tore their frills and the stiff branches did not
suit with their graceful swaying, so he was obliged to give it up. It
seemed, in fact, the more he tried to be like the others the worse he
grew.
"If only you were not so odd," said all the flowers. None of the young
growing things in the meadow understood that it is natural for a pine
tree to be stiff.
The sugar pine was not always unhappy. There were days when he caught
golden glints of the stream that ran smoothly about the meadow, in a bed
of leopard-colored stones, and, reflecting all the light that fell into
the hollow of the hills, gave the place its name; days when the air was
warm and the sky was purely blue, and the resinous smell of the pines on
the meadow border came to the seedling like a sweet savor in a dream,
for as yet he did not understand what he was to be. He was pleased just
to be looking at the summer riot of the flowering things, and loved the
cool softness of the snow when he was tucked into comfortable darkness
to dream of the spring odor of the pines. Then, when it seemed that the
meadow had forgotten him, the little tree would fall to thinking the
thoughts proper to his kind, and found the time pass pleasantly.
"I suppose," he thought, "it is not good for me to flower as the other
plants. If I began like them I should probably end like them, and I feel
that I could not be satisfied with that. After all, one should not try
to be so much like others, but to be the very best of one's own sort."
Very early the young tree had noticed that he was the only one of all
that company that kept green and growing the winter through. He would
have been secretly very proud of it, but the flowers took good care to
let him know their opinion of such airs.
"It is simply that you wish to be considered peculiar," said the
columbine; "one sees that you like nothing so much as to be in other
people's mouths, but let me tell you, you will not get yourself any
better liked by such behavior." After that the little tree wished
nothing so much as that he might be the commonest summer-flowering weed.
"But I am not," he said; "no, I am not, and I would do very well as I am
if they would let me be happy in my own way."
That summer the seedling grew as tall as the meadowsweet, and could look
across the open space to the parent pine poised on her noble shaft, her
spreading crown gathering sunshine from the draughts of upper air. She
seemed to rock a little as if she dozed upon her feet, and the great
sweep of limbs with pendulous golden cones made a gentle sighing. Then
the despised little seedling felt a thrill go through him, and felt a
shaking in all his slender twigs. He bowed himself among the lilies, and
was both glad and ashamed, for though he could not well believe it, he
knew himself akin to the great sugar pines. After that he gave up trying
to be one of the flowers. Once he even ventured to speak of it to the
meadowsweet.
"Well, if it is any satisfaction to you to think so; but do not let any
one else hear you say that. You are likely to get yourself
misunderstood. I tell you this because I am your friend," said the
meadowsweet, but really she had misunderstood him herself.
Then a rumor arose in the neighborhood that the sombre, stubborn shrub
conceited himself to be a pine, and the rumor ran with laughter and
nodding the length of the meadow until it reached the old alder on the
edge of Bright Water. The alder had stood with his feet in the stream
for longer than the meadowsweet could remember, and saw everything that
went on by reflection.
"Do not laugh too soon," said the alder tree, "I have seen stranger
things than that happen in this meadow," for he was indeed very old.
"We have known him a good many seasons," said the fireweed, "and he has
not done anything worth mentioning yet."
All this was very hard for the young pine to bear, but there was better
coming. That summer the forest ranger came riding in Bright Water and a
learned man rode with him, praising the flowers and counting the numbers
and varieties of bloom. How they prinked and flaunted in their pride!
"That is all very pretty, as you say," answered the ranger as they came
by the place of the pine, "and I suppose they perform a sort of service
in keeping the soil covered, but the trees are the real strength of the
mountain. Ah, here is a seedling of the right sort! I must give that
fellow a chance," and he began pulling up great handfuls of the
blossoming things around the tree.
"What is it?" asked his companion.
"A sugar pine," he said; "probably a seedling of that splendid specimen
yonder," and he went on clearing the ground to let in sun and air.
"But you must admit," said his friend, "that a seedling pine cuts rather
a poor figure among all this flare of bloom."
"Oh, you wait fifty or sixty years," said the ranger, "and then you will
see what sort of a figure it makes. It really takes a pine of this sort
a couple of hundred years to reach its prime," and they rode talking up
the trail.
Word of what had happened was carried all about the meadow and made a
great stir. When it came to the alder tree he wagged his old head. "Ah,
well," he said, "I told you so."
"I will not believe it until I see it," said the fireweed.
"They might have known it before," sighed the young pine, "and they
ought to be proud to think I grew up in the same meadow with them."
But they were not; they went on flaunting their blossoms as if nothing
had occurred, and the young tree grew up as he was meant to be, and the
pines on the meadow border sent him greeting on the wind. He still kept
his trim spire-shaped habit, but he could very well put up with that for
the time being. He felt within himself the promise of what he was to be.
After fifty or sixty years, as the ranger had said, he began to put out
strong cone-bearing boughs that shaped themselves by the storms and the
wind in sweeping, graceful lines, and spread out to shelter the horde of
flowering things below. Squirrels ran up the trunk and whistled cheerily
in his windy top.
"He grew here in our neighborhood," said the tall lilies; "we knew him
when he was a seedling sprig, and now he is the tallest of the pines."
"Suppose he is," said the fireweed. "What is the good of a pine tree
anyway?"
But the sugar pine did not hear. He had grown far above the small folk
of the meadow, and went on growing for a hundred years. He gathered the
sun in his high branches and rocked upon his shaft. He talked gently in
his own fashion with his own kind.
[Illustration: AN OLD MINE
From photograph by A. A. Forbes]