Humanity has always turned to nature for relief from toil and strife.
This was true of the old world; it is much more true of the new,
especially in recent years. There is a growing interest in wild things
and wild places. The benedicite of the Druid woods, always appreciated
by the few, like Lowell, is coming to be understood by the many. There
is an increasing desire to get away from the roar and rattle of the
streets, away from even the prim formality of suburban avenues and
artificial bits of landscape gardening into the panorama of woodland,
field, and stream. Men with means are disposing of their palatial
residences in the cities and moving to real homes in the country,
where they can see the sunrise and the death of day, hear the rhythm
of the rain and the murmur of the wind, and watch the unfolding of the
first flowers of spring. Cities are purchasing large parks where the
beauties of nature are merely accentuated, not marred. States and the
nation are setting aside big tracts of wilderness where rock and rill,
waterfall and cañon, mountain and marsh, shell-strewn beach and
starry-blossomed brae, flowerful islets and wondrous wooded hills
welcome the populace, soothe tired nerves and mend the mind and the
morals. These are encouraging signs of the times. At last we are
beginning to understand, with Emerson, that he who knows what sweets
and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens,
and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man. It
is as if some new prophet had arisen in the land, crying, "Ho, every
one that is worn and weary, come ye to the woodlands; and he that hath
no money let him feast upon those things which are really rich and
abiding." While we are making New Year resolves let us resolve to
spend less time with shams, more with realities; less with dogma, more
with sermons in stones; less with erotic novels and baneful journals,
more with the books in the running brooks; listening less readily to
gossip and malice, more willingly to the tongues in trees; spending
more pleasureful hours with the music of bird and breeze, rippling
rivers, and laughing leaves; less time with cues and cards and colored
comics, more with cloud and star, fish and field, and forest. "The
cares that infest the day" shall fall like the burden from Christian's
back as we watch the fleecy clouds or the silver stars mirrored in the
waveless waters. We shall call the constellations by their names and
become on speaking terms with the luring voices of the forest
fairyland. We shall "thrill with the resurrection called spring," and
steep our senses in the fragrance of its flowers; glory in the gushing
life of summer, sigh at the sweet sorrows of autumn, and wax virile in
winter's strength of storm and snow.
* * * * *
We shall begin our pilgrimages lacking in Nature's lore, many of us,
as were four men who recently walked down a city street and looked at
the trees which lined the way. One confessed ignorance as to their
identity; another thought he knew but couldn't remember; a third said
they looked like maples; and a fourth thought that silence, like
honesty, as the copybooks used to tell us, was the best policy. And
yet the name linden was writ large on those trees,--on the beautiful
gray bark, the alternate method of twig arrangement, the fat red
winter buds, which shone in the sunshine like rubies, and especially
on the little cymes of pendulous, pea-like fruit, each cyme attached
to its membranaceous bract or wing. Of course, if the pedestrians had
been in the midst of rich woods and there found a trunk of great girth
and rough bark, surrounded by several handsome young stems with
close-fitting coats, the group looking for all the world like a
comfortable old mother with a family of fresh-faced, willowy,
marriageable daughters, every member of the quartet would have
chorused, bass-wood.
But no one need be ashamed to confess an ignorance of botany.
Botanical ignorance is more common than poverty. It has always been
prevalent. And the cause of it may be traced back to the author of all
our short-comings, old Adam. We read that every beast of the field and
every fowl of the air were brought to Adam to see what he would call
them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the
name thereof. But why, oh why, didn't he name the trees? If he had
known enough of the science to partake of the fruit of the tree of
life he might have lived long enough to write a systematic botany,
satisfactory alike to the Harvard school of standpat systematists and
their manual-ripping rivals in nomenclature. But he didn't; and no one
else may ever hope to do it.
Eve had never read a book on how to know the wild fruits, and her
first field work in botany had a disastrous termination; it
complicated the subject by the punishment of thorns and thistles.
Cain's conduct brought both botany and agriculture into disrepute.
Little more is heard until Pharaoh's daughter went botanizing and
found Moses in the bulrushes. Oshea and Jehoshua showed some
advancement by bringing back grapes and figs and pomegranates from the
brook Eschol as the proudest products of the promised land. But
Solomon was the only man in the olden times who ever knew botany
thoroughly. We are told that he was wiser than all men. "Prove it,"
says some doubting reader, moving for a more specific statement. So
the biographer adds: "He spake of trees, from the cedar that is in
Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall."
Four centuries later, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
anticipated Emerson's advice about eating bread and pulse at rich
men's tables. The historian tells us that they were men skilful in all
wisdom, cunning in knowledge, and understanding science. Possessing
such wisdom, Daniel knew it would be easy to mix up the wicked elders
who plotted against the virtue of the fair Susanna by asking them a
question of botany. One said he saw her under a mastick tree and the
other under a holm tree. This gave Shakespeare that fine line in _The
Merchant of Venice_, "A Daniel come to judgment; yea, a Daniel." But
in these latter days we rarely read the story of Susanna, and
Shakespeare's line is not understood by one play-goer in fifty.
When the diminutive Zaccheus climbed into a shade tree which graced a
town lot in Jericho he gave the translators for "the Most High and
Mighty Prince James" another puzzle, for they put him on record as
going up into a sycamore tree. We had always supposed that this was
because the sycamore's habit of shedding its bark made smooth climbing
for Zaccheus. But scientific commentators tell us now that it was not
a sycamore tree, but a hybridized fig-mulberry!
* * * * *
But all this is digression. The best time to begin keeping that New
Year's nature resolution is now, when the oaks are seen in all their
rugged majesty, when the elms display their lofty, graceful, vase-like
forms, and when every other tree of the forest exhibits its peculiar
beauty of trunk, and branch, and twig. Often January is a most
propitious month for the tenderfoot nature-lover. Such was the year
which has just passed. During the first part of the month the weather
was almost springlike; so bright and balmy that a robin was seen in an
apple-tree, and the brilliant plumage of the cardinal was observed in
this latitude. Green leaves, such as wild geranium, strawberry and
speedwell, were to be found in abundance beneath their covering of
fallen forest leaves. Scouring rushes vied with evergreen ferns in
arresting the attention of the rambler. In one sheltered spot a clump
of catnip was found, fresh, green, and aromatic, as if it were July
instead of January.
Sunday, the sixth, was a day of rare beauty and enticement. Well might
the recording angel forgive the nature lover who forgot the promises
made for him by his sponsors that he should "hear sermons," and who
fared forth into the woods instead, first reciting "The groves were
God's first temples," and then softly singing, "When God invites, how
blest the day!"
* * * * *
They err who think the winter woods void of life and color. Pause for
a moment on the broad open flood-plain of the river, the winter fields
and meadows stretching away in gentle slopes on either side. There are
but few trees, but they have had room for full development and are
noble specimens. All is gaiety. A blue-jay screams from a broad-topped
white ash which is so full of winged seeds that it looks like a mass
of foliage. The sable-robed king of the winter woods, the American
crow, in the full vigor of his three-score years, maybe, (he lives to
be a hundred) caws lustily from the bare white branches of a big
sycamore, that queer anomaly of the forest which disrobes itself for
the winter. The merry chickadees divide their time between the
rustling, ragged bark of the red birches and the withered heads of
heath-aster and blue vervain below. In the one they get the meat
portion of their midday meal, and in the other the cereal foods. No
wonder they are sleek and joyous.
A few steps farther and we leave this broad alluvial bottom to enter
the cañon through which the river, ages ago, began to cut its course.
These ridges of limestone, loess and drift rise a hundred feet or more
above the level of the plain from which the river suddenly turns
aside. They are thickly covered with timber. There is no angel with a
flaming sword to keep you from passing into this winter paradise! The
river bank is lined with pussy willows; they gleam in the sunshine
like copper. Farther back there are different varieties of dogwood,
some with delicate green twigs and some a cherry red. The wild rose
and the raspberry vines add their glossy purplish and cherry red stems
to the color combination, and a contrast is afforded by the silvery
gray bark of stray aspens. A still softer and more beautiful shade of
silver gray is seen in the big hornet's nest of last year which still
hangs suspended from a low sugar maple. On all of these the sunlight
plays and makes a wondrous color symphony. "Truly the light is sweet
and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." To be
sure, this colorful arrangement of the stems and twigs is not
brilliant, like the flaming vermilion blossoms of the _Lobelia
cardinalis_ in August, the orange yellow of the rudbeckias in
September, or the wondrous blue of the fringed gentian in early
October. It is more like the delicate tints and shadings of an arts
and crafts exhibition, stained leather, hammered copper and brass, art
canvas, and ancient illuminated initials in monks' missals. The
tempered winter sunlight is further softened by the trees; as it
illuminates the soft red rags of the happy old birch it seems
sublimated, almost sanctified and spiritual, like that which filters
through rich windows in cathedrals, and makes a real halo around the
heads of sweet-faced saints.
* * * * *
There are strange sounds for January. All the winter birds are doing
their share in the chorus and orchestra; crows, jays, woodpeckers,
nut-hatches, juncos, tree-sparrows. But suddenly a woodpecker begins a
new sound,--his vernal drumming! Not the mere tap, tap, tap, in quest
of insects, but the love-call drumming of the nidification season,
nearly three months ahead of time.
Swollen by recent rains, the river is two feet higher than usual.
There is a sheet of ice on either shore, but the water swiftly flows
down the narrow channel in the middle with a sound halfway between a
gurgle and a roar, mingled anon with the sound of grinding cakes of
ice. Suddenly away up at the bend of the river there is a sharp crack,
like the discharge of a volley of musketry. Swiftly it comes down the
ice, passes your feet with a distinct tremor, and your eyes follow the
sound down the river until the two walls of the cañon meet in the
perspective. In a small way you know how it would feel to hear the
rumble of an approaching seismic shock. Only there was no terror in
this. It was the laughter of the sunbeam fairies as they loosened the
architecture of "the elfin builders of the frost."
The recent rains have vivified the mosses clinging to the gray rocks
which jut out, halfway up the slope. Very tender and beautiful is
their vivid shade of green. Winter and summer, the mosses are always
with us. When the last late aster has faded, the last blue blossom of
the gentian changed to brown, the green mosses still remain. And the
more they are studied, the more fascinating they become. Take some
home and examine them with a hand lens, then with a microscope. You
will be charmed with the exquisite finish of their most minute parts.
Nature glories in the artistic excellence of infinitesimal
workmanship. The most beautiful part of her handiwork is that which is
seen through a microscope. There is beauty, beauty everywhere; the
crystals of the snow, the cell structure of the leaf, the scales of
the butterfly's wing, the pedicels, capsules and cilia of these
mosses. No wonder that many distinguished men have been led to give
their whole lives to the study of mosses and have felt well repaid.
* * * * *
Here are Nature's only two elementary forms of growth, the cell and
the crystal, wrestling for the mastery over each other in a life and
death struggle. The moss is built up of cell, the rock of crystal
forms. Below this Devonian limestone, its crystals sparkling in the
sunshine, with its coral fossils, its fragments of crinoids, and its
broken shells of brachiopods, down through the Devonian, the Silurian,
the Ordovician, and the Cambrian rocks, down to the original crust
formed when first the earth began to cool, if any there be remaining;
all these miles of rocks are inorganic, built up of crystals. But here
on the surface, the tender green mosses and the bright lichens have
begun the struggle of the cellular system for supremacy. These humble
little rock-breakers will not rest until they have pulverized the
rocks into soil sufficient to sustain higher forms of vegetable life.
Once before, many millions of years ago, the cell life had won a
partial victory over the crystal. In the great sub-tropical sea which
once covered this spot, corals lived and flourished as they do now in
similar seas. Myriads of brachiopods lived, moved, and had their
being. Gigantic fish sported in the waters. Meanwhile older rocks were
being denuded and disintegrated. Millions of tons of sediment were
brought by the rivers and streams to the shores of the Devonian sea.
Upheaval, change, transformation followed, and the tide of battle
turned. Cell life was powerless before the vanquishing crystals of the
infiltrating calcite. Only the inorganic part of that vast world of
organic life here remains in these fossils to tell the story--the
walls of the corals, the shells of the brachiopods, the teeth of the
monster fishes. Then came succeeding ages, and finally the great
glaciers which brought down the drift, rounded the sharp ridges,
filled up the deep valleys and gorges, and gave to Iowa her fertile
and inexhaustible soil. The earth was prepared to receive her king.
The glaciers receded. Man came.
Now here, on this bit of limestone rock, the struggle is on again. The
mosses and the lichens have proceeded far enough in their work of
disintegration to provide substance for the slender red stem of
dogwood, which is growing out of the soil they have made. The fallen
leaves of the surrounding trees follow the pioneer work of the mosses.
The rain and the cracking frosts are other agencies. By and by the
organic will triumph over the inorganic, the cell over the crystal,
the plant over the rock, and where now the fossils lie beautiful
flowers will bloom.
The short winter day draws rapidly to a close and there is time for
only a brief survey of the beauty of the upland trees. The fairy-like
delicacy of the hop hornbeam, with its hop clusters and pointing
catkins; the slender gracefulness of the chestnut oak; the Etruscan
vase-like form of the white elm; the flaky bark and pungent, aromatic
twigs of the black cherry; the massive, noble, silver-gray trunk of
the white-oak; the lofty stateliness, filagree bark, and berry-like
fruit of the hackberry; the black twigs of the black oaks, ashes,
hickories and walnuts etched against the sky,--all these arrest your
attention and retard your steps until the sun is near the horizon and
you look over the tangled undergrowth of hazel, sumac, and briers, far
through the trunks of the trees to the western sky which is bathed in
flame color, as if from a forest fire.
You are alone and yet not alone. A rabbit scurries across your
pathway. A faint little squeak voices the fright of a mouse. There is
a swoop of wings which you neither distinctly hear nor clearly see,
yet you are aware, in a less marked degree than was the mouse, that an
owl was near. You feel certain that the downy woodpecker is asleep in
that neat little round hole on the southwest side of a tree trunk,
just a little higher than you can reach. In the early afternoon you
saw a red squirrel go gaily up a tall red oak and climb into his nest
of leaves. You fancy he is snugly coiled there now. This recent hill
of fresh dirt--strange sight in January--was surely made by a mole,
and you know that they are all somewhere beneath your feet: moles,
pocket gophers, and the pretty striped gopher which used to sit up on
his hind legs, fold his front paws, and look at you in the summer
time, then give a low whistle and duck; meadow mice in their cozy
tunnels through which the water will be pouring when the spring
freshets come; the woodchuck in his long, long sleep, and the chipmunk
with his winter store of food. And so watching, listening, and musing
you come at length to the western edge of the woodland and look across
the prairie, far as the eye can reach, to where the red ball of the
sun hangs scarce a yard above the horizon. You look upon a scene which
is peculiar to this part of Iowa alone. It is not found in any other
state or nation on earth. "These are the gardens of the desert, for
which the speech of England has no name--the Prairies."
_"Lo they stretch
In airy undulations, far away,
As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell
Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,
And motionless, forever."_
The "rounded billows fixed" are the paha ridges which the glaciers
made. They are not high enough to obstruct the view, nor to mar its
ocean-like effect. In the middle distance you may see a farm windmill
from sail to platform, but away across the snow-plain sea you catch
only the uppermost part of the white sails. The rest is concealed from
view by the illusory rise of the foreground toward the horizon--for
this twenty-mile stretch of prairie has an illusory curve similar to
that seen from all ocean shores. But now the sun has disappeared and
the windmills, houses, groves, and fences which looked like black
etchings against the flame-colored sky slowly vanish, first far away
toward the bluffs on the yon shore of the prairie sea, then nearer,
nearer, comes the gloom until the fence across the first field is
scarcely discernible. The bright vermilion fades at length to misty
gray and lights appear in the windows of the farm homes.
* * * * *
This sunset and twilight scene, peculiar to Iowa, is succeeded by the
pageant of the stars. These are not peculiar, in neighboring
latitudes, to any clime or time. They are the same stars which sang
together when the foundations of the earth were fastened; the same
calm stars upon which Adam gazed in remorse, the night he was driven
from the garden of Eden. The Chinese, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians,
the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans counted the hours of the night by
the revolutions of the Greater and the Lesser Bear around Polaris, and
guided their crafts and caravans by that sure star's light:
_"And therefore bards of old,
Sages and hermits of the solemn wood,
Did in thy beams behold
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray
The voyager of time should shape his needful way."_