death; hence they live by their wits if they live at all. It has become
second nature to them to proceed indirectly, to break the scent and
double on their tracks whenever occasion offers. The fox knows few foes
besides men and dogs, but the rabbit must circumvent owls, weasels,
minks and foxes as well. Hence I bow to the rabbit as to a superior
intelligence: one deeply versed in the ancient lore of woodcraft and
possessing knowledge as yet unrevealed to us. Does he carry some charm
whereby the earth opens and receives him in need, some tarn hut in
which he becomes invisible, or does the fabled St.-John's-wort exercise
for his race a special protection? What shall fill the place of the
wild things when they are swept from the earth? Why not tolerate an
occasional fox if only to hear him yap, and to have the assurance that
there is still this much untamed?
In such a timid world, where fear of man is so large a factor, one is
struck by the least evidence of self-assurance. In view of this I
entertain a covert admiration for the skunk. Fear rests lightly on his
shoulders. Meet him in the woods, teetering along, and he is the less
concerned of the two. His imperturbability is his leading
characteristic. In this he is the very opposite of the coon. But he
knows how terrible is the weapon he carries, how vulnerable the nose of
man. The nose is the point of attack; he would slay you through your
olfactories. It is seldom any one says a good word for the skunk. He
must needs be a villain and a chicken thief who smells thus to heaven.
Yet in fact there are bolder thieves in town than he, with more
sinister designs on the hen-roost. It is impolite to mention him, as
though his name were as unsavory as his odor. Men deal more kindly with
his memory, for he is permitted to undergo a commercial
transfiguration, to rise triumphant from the vat, henceforth to be
taken to our bosoms as Alaska sable.
The skunk receives no credit for the countless beetles he grubs from
the earth. No more does the mole who suffers for the sins of the
meadow-mouse. They are victims of prejudice. When I see a mole emerge
from the earth, I feel I am looking upon an inhabitant of another
sphere--the underworld; one as strange to me as I am to him. What use
has he for the sun? He cares not for celestial light, but for
subterranean fires only.
In the pond above the glen is a colony of muskrats. It antedates the
memory of the oldest inhabitants, and the muskrats were in all
probability the first settlers themselves. The huts, which lie
scattered through the sedge and cattails, are some of them flat while
others are high and dome-shaped. Their number does not seem to vary
much from year to year, whereas muskrats are said to be very prolific.
What, then, becomes of all the young? I have never known of any one
trapping or killing them in this pond. It may be the old mink in the
glen, and many another, make this their hunting-ground and thus keep
down the number.
These queer neighbors pique our curiosity. What manner of life do they
lead indoors? They take some rude pleasure and have dull animal
thoughts perhaps. As you stamp upon the ice and slap your hands to keep
from freezing, the muskrat sits serenely below enjoying the comforts of
the pond, and quite unaware the mercury has dropped to zero. He has
built him a house and stocked his cellar, and what cares he. As snug as
a mouse in a cheese, he has taken the precaution to make his home of
his favorite dish. Let the world freeze, then, if it will, he nibbles
the walls of his room till it thaws again. Consider the interior of
that dwelling, what a murky house is there, its front door under water
and never a window.
Muskrats repair and enlarge their huts in the fall, and perhaps
subsequently gnaw out as much from the inside as they add to the
exterior. The walls are made of grass and sedge roots, together with
spatter-docks and bur-reeds. During the summer you might not suspect
the presence of one, hidden as they are in the cattails and rank growth
of sedge. As the vegetation dies down in autumn, the huts loom
proportionately, so that they come prominently into view by November;
and then, on some fine cold morning, in place of the reedy pond,
appears a sheet of ice with isolated domes rising here and there. From
these, the muskrat and his family travel to their feeding-grounds. They
have chosen their estate at the bottom of the pond--rich lands for
which none contend with them.
In fact our wild neighbors all live in a dim world of shadows, in which
they lurk like phantoms. They have retreated into the night, and for
days together you may not meet one. But the new fallen snow reveals
their presence.
THE WINTER WOODS
The first snow-storm of the season never becomes an old story. It
retains its charm indefinitely, to all original minds at least, and to
such as have cherished any degree of simplicity. Here is a mimic
invasion of an elemental beauty which conquers us by reason of its very
gentleness. We are soothed and beguiled into submission. Tempestuous
winds call forth our resistance; we front them with set teeth. But who
can resist the silent snow descending as if to lay the world under a
soft enchantment? The woods are renewed and reclothed in virgin purity.
It is as if old scores were wiped out and the world were again a
spotless thing.
What can be more companionable than the falling snow? Its touch is so
caressing, its advent so silent in the open, its voice so pleasing as
it sifts through the pine-needles. The first solitary flakes approach
with the gentle effect of preparing one for the miracle to ensue. A
calm settles over all, as though these were indeed the messengers of
peace.
Recently there fell such a clinging and abundant snow as comes perhaps
only once in a season, and some years not at all. The woods were
literally buried and saplings everywhere bent to the ground beneath its
weight. It enveloped the pines until they became miniature Alps in the
landscape, while among the oaks were gleaming corridors and marble
halls. The open, barren aspect common to winter was gone, and the dense
walls had shut in again as in summer, but now crystalline and dazzling.
This is perhaps Nature's greatest transformation. In a single night
have been erected such palaces as were never seen in Persia. What a
bold, free hand wrought here! In the thousand domes and arches is a
massive architecture, relieved by the utmost delicacy, as though Nature
said, "Behold, I show you a miracle." A miracle indeed! Here have
wrought the genii of the air while mortals slept, and all that was to
be heard was the rustling of their wings. At such times the woods grow
suddenly strange and unfamiliar. They so lend themselves to the
enchantment we are lost in our own wood-lot. Familiar paths are
obliterated by pendulous boughs drooping to the earth, while in the
pasture tree-sparrows hop upon the snow among the protruding tops of
the tallest ragweeds.
Realize if you can in your walk, over how many sleepers you step all
unknown; how many woodchucks in their burrows, and frogs in the mud
under the ice; how many torpid snakes and dozing chipmunks. Here is an
enchanted household--underground. They are at peace and their timid
hearts know no fear. The dreaming toad has no terror of writhing
blacksnakes, and the snoozing woodchuck has forgotten the dog.
Presently they will awake to hunger and fear again. Woodchucks will be
up long before breakfast, to go shivering in the cold dawn of the year
waiting for the table to be spread. Snakes do not come out till the sun
is well up, to lie basking in the noonday heat, catching the first
unwary grasshoppers.
Every fresh snowfall makes some revelation of its own, recording
crepuscular journeys and prowlings in the night. The broad track of the
skunk meanders in and out among the bushes. That he had no definite
direction, took never a straight course, nor apparently did he hurry,
is in itself evidence of his phlegmatic temperament and leisurely
habit of mind. Footprints of the ruffed grouse show that he has on his
snow-shoes, inasmuch as they are feathered, broad and lobed rather than
angular. The squirrel leaves evidence of his impetuous ways, moving
always impulsively, and the snow makes plain record of the fact. Tracks
of deer seem to bespeak their innocence, as that of the fox might be
said to have a sinister purport, doubtless because the hoof prints have
a gentle suggestion and imply the herbivorous diet.
In the winter walk the eye finds relatively so little to hold it, that
it rivets itself upon minute details, dissecting that which might pass
unnoticed at other seasons. Form and outline come into prominence while
color is in abeyance. We must now perforce judge the trees by this
standard. Who shall describe the winter beauty of the beech as it
stands stripped and naked to the winds like an athlete, every muscle
and sinew in evidence, every outline expressive of reserve power and
self-assurance--a clean-limbed, stout-hearted tree, dauntless before
all gales? Its trunk is a superb torso, and with its roots it reaches
down to the heart of the earth, draws sustenance therefrom and derives
heat from that deep-lying warmth below all frost lines. No parasite
this, no surface weed, but the sturdy child of Earth herself, suckled
by a Spartan mother. Look upon an ancient beech, bared thus to the
storm, and the chest involuntarily expands, as though we too should
take firmer hold somewhere and stand more erect. The shellbark is as
shaggy, raw-boned and loose-jointed as the beech is trim and closely
knit. Its bare branches are not clean-cut against the sky but swollen
and distorted like knotted hands of toil--horny, crooked fingers
upraised to the heavens. What rude strength is their portion who stand
thus alone and derive from the earth as befits the stalwart--buffeting,
solitary and unyielding, the winter gales.
[Illustration: WINTER COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY RUDOLF EICKEMEYER]
As the trees are leafless, the bark is now more in evidence. Moosewood
looks slender and striped as a ribbon-snake, and limbs of the
hop-hornbeam have the appearance of sinews. Where a black and a white
oak stand near together, the difference in color is as evident as
between a negro and a white man. The white birch is to the winter woods
what the dogwood is in spring, the maple in autumn. How is it the
ancients did not metamorphose the fairest of all nymphs into this
tree, so distinctly feminine is its beauty? Portions of bark outlast
the wood, and are to be found standing erect and empty. The tree has
departed, bequeathing its fair skin in token of a vanished loveliness.
Now and then the yellow birch is seen in all its beauty, the golden
inner bark shining through a silver filigree. To look at this tree is
like looking at a picture or reading a poem: one feels somehow
refreshed. Nor is the black birch without charm; its bark has a dusky
beauty, and again shows fine wood colors and metallic tints similar to
the black cherry. This fine luster the birch has in an eminent degree
while most trees show it only on their small branches, if at all.
Club-mosses appear to be a lesser growth of pines, a pygmy folk
dwelling at the feet of the elder race. Here are miniature trunks and
branches bearing miniature cones, perfect little conifers no higher
than a chickadee. Ground-pine and trailing Christmas green thrive
together on the bank, the latter with stems a yard long, which, while
they grow at one end, die at the other. These little plants are crisp
and green and refresh the eye on winter days, as does the Christmas
fern, which affords a pleasant encounter at a time when one meets few
acquaintances. It has, moreover, a certain charm of its own which
doubtless lies in the crispness of the fronds and clear-cut outlines of
the pinnæ. The marginal shield-fern is another acquaintance to be
looked for on the winter walk, and everywhere the hardy polypody, which
is as much a child of winter as the little spiny cladonia that clusters
about its roots and clings to the same granite ledge.
Let there come a warm rain, the high blueberries redden their twigs and
the lichens renew their tints--quite as though Nature had softened her
heart. These lichens suddenly become conspicuous with a sort of gentle
prominence, and mildly compel attention; on the oaks the yellow
cetraria, on the white pines, olive, slate-colored and blue-green
parmelias. Had faun and satyr thus carved upon the forest trees the
name of some fair Rosalind among the nymphs, they could not have
wrought in more fitting and altogether sylvan characters.
A common necessity and hardship hold the birds together in closer bonds
so that they are impelled to consort in little roving
bands--chickadees, creepers, kinglets and nuthatches, with often a
single downy woodpecker accompanying them. If one chance to drop a
morsel he will descend to the ground in search of it. He will not waste
a spider's egg, so severe has been the lesson in economy. In zero
weather the jay forgets to be saucy, and if there is a glaze on the
snow, his native impertinence seems to ooze from him, and he becomes
meek enough. Taking a weazened acorn from the tree, he holds the nut
with one claw, and with vigorous taps of his bill tears it open. After
extracting the frozen kernel, he drops the shell with a trace of his
customary impertinence, as though feeling in somewhat better spirits
for even this poor repast. A bone nailed to a tree is inducement for
him to stay near the house, but not when he can get acorns readily.
The board may fairly creak with its weight of partridgeberries,
beechnuts and acorns, many of the latter crushed and available, and
then in a night this plentiful feast is put out of sight under a
six-inch layer of snow, to which the next day adds a glaze as if to
seal irrevocably the doom of all bob-whites. A fast has been declared
in effect, as peremptorily as by any medieval pope, to be broken only
with an occasional leaf bud or the poor seeds of the ragweed. But the
good sun is a trusty friend, and snow is only so much water. Presently
berries and acorns again come into view.
There is no more touching note in nature than the bob-white's at this
season, as wandering together in the snow in search of their scanty
fare they utter from time to time those low but distinct calls in which
they seemingly express their solicitude. June itself has no sweeter
song than this note of the winter woods, albeit it is such a plaintive
one: mother-notes these, and child-voices of the hunted, full of a wild
pathos,--tender voices which to us have been but the inarticulate cries
of the dumb. The birds feed frequently on the crushed acorns lying in
the path, and the jay at times participates to the extent of taking an
acorn from the feast and eating it in the branches above, where he is a
good sentinel, though prone to imitate the quailing of the
red-shouldered hawk when the feast is at its height, to the general
discomfiture and alarm of the diners below.
Birds become less suspicious as the mercury falls, and they are hard
pressed for food. The snow around the ragweeds is thickly covered with
the tracks of bob-whites, like those of chickens, broad and firm, but
with hardly any hind toe mark at all, as though they walked about on
tiptoe. Very different from these are the long, triangular tracks of
the jays, showing where they have hopped upon the snow. It is thus
fairly tramped down and strewn with leaves and chaff where the
bob-whites have fed, leaving these husks in token of their frugal meal.
Such seed must be very small provender for these birds--much like a
diet of crumbs for a hungry man. Goldfinches, juncos and tree-sparrows
seek the same meager repast. The musical flocks of redpolls fare better
in the alders around the pond. These are not to be seen every day, any
more than the pine-siskins--perhaps not at all during several years.
But occasionally an enormous flock will arrive and settle in the alders
with all the chattering and commotion of a social and hungry company.
As the seeds are shaken down upon the ice, the birds soon leave the
bushes, and are under the table, so to speak.
Crossbills have the easier time, feeding as they do on the seeds of the
pine, for these are always available. No sound seems better to accord
with the spirit of a still cold winter day than this faint crackling of
opening cones, forced asunder by the shearing motion of the peculiar
bills of these birds. Surely here is an adaptation to definite ends.
Nature produces a cone that cannot readily be opened, and, as if
relenting, produces a bird to open it. The wings of the seeds come
zigzagging to the ground as the feast continues overhead--all that is
destined to be planted.
The lumbermen come into the woods with the crossbills, and everywhere
is heard the winter music of the ax. It is good music enough, but it
has a sinister purport, and the swish and boom of falling trees is a
sad refrain. Ancient pines are laid low, singing to the last their
brave and beautiful song, which seems to come, not directly from
overhead, but remotely from the empyrean, as though it issued from the
distant Court of the Winds. Of the pantheon of trees the village elm is
the last to hold our homage; we have dethroned our idols. As the sound
of the ax breaks the stillness, I find myself instinctively turning in
the opposite direction, to escape that which is soon to follow--the
swan-song of the forest primeval.
LAUGHING WATERS
There are days when the sea is austere and unapproachable, when its
mood is too lofty and severe. But the pond, fringed with alders and
button-bushes, smiles in the sunshine and is friendly and inviting. It
is more on the level of our every-day thought. Not always are we
consoled by the vast and sublime, and we crave even more the
companionable and social aspects of Nature. Grim though the
surroundings of granite ledge and somber pines, the nestling pond is
winsome, notwithstanding. Never forbidding, never altogether distant in
its mood, even though frozen, it is a cheerful and alluring personality
to which we are drawn from afar.
About a pond as about a mountain there is a kind of magnetism. A new
field of discovery, there is ever the hope that from a new scene we
shall gain a fresh impression. Every pond holds out this possibility
and invites exploration of its shores, as if _there_ were the promised
land. But over and above this is that element of personality, a charm
purely feminine, and eluding any attempt to hold it.
Peculiarly sensitive to light and air, a pond is susceptible of little
moods that do not come to the sea. It is the eye of the landscape.
Dawn, high noon and dusk are each reflected there. Its afternoon mood
is not like that of the morning any more than is our own. The more
passive it is, the more perfectly it reflects the heavens. At all time
it draws to itself light from the sky, and when the surrounding woods
are swallowed in the advancing darkness, still gleams with a faint
opalescence. These pale glimmers illumine the bogs, where a pool has
caught and retained the daylight, or rather the spectral light of dawn.
One appears to look through this serene and reflecting surface into the
heart of some other wood, darkly mysterious and impenetrable, which
vanishes when the wind blows, as if the curtain were drawn.
Gently as snowflakes, the leaves detach themselves and settle on the
ponds, to sail away like diminutive barks upon those friendly seas.
Numberless sails of scarlet and gold softly scud before the breeze,
threading the inlets between the button-bushes and crowding the
miniature bays; oriental craft these, of rich aspect; caciques and
royal barges upon some Golden Horn. Here and there, one more
venturesome steers boldly out into the open, carried by favoring winds,
and makes some foreign port among the lily-pads. You may become
enamored of a winsome pond on October days, a mystical beauty veiled in
autumn haze, only to find her mood changed for the reserve and
uncommunicativeness of winter.
When the pond freezes over we experience something of that feeling
which comes with the first snow, a delightful sense of novelty, briefly
entertained each season. The water has suddenly lost its mobility and
become passive and expressionless, as one in a hypnotic state. A great
calm has settled upon the earth; the winter sleep is in the air and the
ponds have succumbed with the woodchuck. Only the chickadees, scolding
and gossiping in the pitch-pines, seem to be awake and unaffected by
the change. A cold bluish light pervades the leafless woods, reflected
from the snow and appearing to emanate from the ground rather than the
sky. The earth is wrapped in silence, yet it is not austere nor
repellent. One _feels_ this stillness, which appeals to some sixth
sense, and is more acceptable at times than any music,--is itself the
most heavenly music.
Far across the valley the steam of a passing locomotive rises slowly,
and then, like the opening of a flower, unfolds in snow-white
voluptuous petals and remains as if carved in the still air. A shaft of
light reaches the eye from a distant pool of molten silver at the base
of purple hills. All around are little sparkling lights of icicles,
flashing their pure rays in the sun. It is the magic water, the protean
thing so full of light, laughter and music. Once it was laughter; now
in the silence it is light.
All at once the pond is alive with skaters, its solitary aspect
transformed by this merry invasion. Boys cutting figure eights suggest
whirligigs. Myriad black figures, clear cut in the pale light, move in
and out with undulating rhythm, as on a surface of polished steel. The
pond, now more companionable than ever, becomes a playground, and we
never so much as reflect upon the strangeness of it. Something there is
in this unbending on the part of Nature which puts us in a good humor,
for certainly people are never more good-natured than on the ice. Their
habitual stiffness melts away as readily as ice melts in the sun. They
experience a thaw and become democratic.
To skate over meadows and into inaccessible bogs gives one a taste for
exploration. It is a new freedom and perhaps the next thing to flying.
Seen through the clear "black" ice, familiar objects have an added
interest; the pebbles on the bottom, the spagnum, the lily-pads, all
give the impression of being severed from our world, though so plainly
in view. The skater glides in and out amongst cassandra and andromeda,
clethra and black alders--wintry jungles, enlivened only by red
winterberries--where in summer is the haunt of the rose pogonia and the
white-fringed orchis. Who would imagine now that the swamp was capable
of producing anything so exquisite, that it held beneath the ice the
seeds of such beauty?
The most friendly voice in Nature is the song of the brook. Not the
wind in the pines, not the voice of the sea, can compare with this for
true sociability. These are always somewhat remote, somewhat mystical
in our ears, but the song of the brook is cheerfulness itself. Its
_bonhomie_ is irresistible. It gradually prevails over any whim and
wins us to a sociable and contented mood. Though the world may seem
discordant enough, there is always this wholesome note.
No two brooks are alike. As the result of the character of the country
through which they flow, they impress one as having strongly defined
personalities. A creek flowing sluggishly through the alluvial
districts of the South is insipid compared to a mountain stream in New
England. Your mountain brook is a strong, salient personality which
dominates the landscape. It sweeps in bold curves about the base of
cliffs, and contracts into a mere mill race cut in the distorted schist
and gneiss. Its suggestion is wholly of savage strength, a rude,
forceful thing of the wilderness; its song a masterful strain, a
triumphant chant of power. Again, there are merry little streams
tinkling in the sunlight.