February often opens with a season of cold gray days when stratus
clouds, dark and unrelenting as iron, hang across the sky and bitter
winds from the northwest blow down the Iowa valleys and over the
frost-cracked ridges. In the city the wheels crunch on the scanty
snow, and every window is made opaque by the frost. Trains are many
hours late, and dense clouds of steam from locomotive funnels condense
into vivid whiteness in the wintry air. Nuthatches, woodpeckers, and
chickadees join the English sparrows in begging crumbs and scraps
around the kitchen door. In the timber the wind rustles shiveringly
through the leaves which still cling to some of the oaks. The music of
the woods is reduced to a minimum. Life is a serious business for
everyone who has to work in order that he may eat; there is little
time or spirit for song. In the late forenoon and again in the middle
of the afternoon the rattle of bills may be heard on the branches; at
other times the woods are almost silent, save for the cracking of the
earth as it heaves under the frost, and the boom of the ever
thickening ice on the river.
* * * * *
Then the south wind steals across King Winter's borderland, and the
iron clouds begin to relax. But at first there seems little
improvement. "The south end of a north wind," say the experienced, and
shiver. But wait. Every hour the wind grows warmer and the clouds
softer. They come closer to the earth, hanging like a thick curtain
across the sky. On the prairie the diameter of the circling horizon
seems scarcely three miles long. The clouds hug the far sides of the
nearest ridges and shut you in, above and around. It must have been
such a day as this when Fitzgerald made that line of the Rubaiyat
read: "And this inverted bowl they call the sky." Today the bowl seems
very small and dreary.
* * * * *
By and by a snowflake falls, then a few others, soft as the spray of
the thistle in the early days of October. Gently as the fairy balloons
of the dandelion they float through the air and rest upon the withered
leaves of the white oaks. Soon they come faster, and now the
forest-crowned ridge half a mile away which was in plain sight a
minute ago is screened from view by the fast falling white curtain.
"He giveth snow like wool." Very beautiful is this snow as it softens
the rugged, corky limbs of the mossy cup oaks. It is not like the
hard, granular snow which stung your face like sand when you were out
in the storm a month ago, when the trumpets of the sky were doing a
fanfare, the wind raged from the northwest, the top of a tall black
cherry snapped like a shipmast and crashed through the forest rigging
to the white deck below, while the gnarled limbs of the big elms
looked like the muscles of giants wrestling with the storm king. This
storm to-day is not "announced by all the trumpets of the sky." It
comes softly as the breath of morning on a May meadow. It silences
every sound and curtains you into a rare studio where you may admire
its own exceeding beauty. There have not been so many beautiful snow
crystals in any storm of the winter. You may see half a dozen
different varieties on your coat sleeve with the naked eye, and you
pull out a strong lens the better to observe the exceeding beauty of
these six pointed stars. They are among Nature's most exquisite
forms, and they are shown in bewildering variety. The molecules of
snow arrange themselves in crystals of the hexagonal system, every
angle exactly sixty degrees. The white color of the snow is caused by
a combination of the prismatic colors of these snow crystals. Some of
them are regular hexagons, with six straight sides; others are like a
wheel with six spokes, with jewels clinging to each spoke. Many men
have spent a lifetime in the study of these fairy forms. W. A.
Bentley, of the United States weather bureau, after twenty years of
faithful work, has more than a thousand photographs of these crystals,
no two alike. Every storm yields him a new set of pictures.
* * * * *
For a little while the snow grows damp and the flakes grow larger,
making downy blankets for the babes in the woods--the hepaticas, the
mosses, the ferns. The catkins of the hazelbrush are edged with white.
The slender stems of the meadow-sweet begin to droop beneath the
weight of the snow. The delicate yellow pointed buds of the wild
gooseberry look like topaz gems in a setting of white pearl. The snow
falls faster and the wood becomes a ghost world. The dull red torches
of the smooth sumac are extinguished. The fine, delicate spray of the
hop hornbeam is a fairy net whose every mesh is fringed with
immaculate beauty. The little clusters of fine twigs here and there in
the hackberry grow into spheres of fleecy fruit. The snow sticks to
the tree trunks and makes a compass out of every one, a more accurate
compass than the big radical leaves of the rosin weed in the early
fall.
As the day darkens the ghost-like effect of the storm in the woods is
all the more marked. The trees stand like silent specters, and at
every turn in the path you come upon strange shadow shapes of shrub
and bush. The snow is piling high under the hazelbrush and the sumac,
stumps of trees become soft white mounds, and the little brook has
curving banks of beauty.
There is a thrill and an exaltation in such a storm. The depressing
influences of the earlier day are no more. As you resolutely walk
homeward through the storm and the deep snow, you feel the heart grow
strong as it pumps the blood to every fiber of your being. You know
why the men of the north, Iowa men, have virile brain and sovereign
will. The snow is deep and the way is long, but yet you smile--a
reverent smile--as you think of Hawthorne writing of a snow storm by
taking occasional peeps from the study windows of his old manse.
* * * * *
Next morning the world seems to have been re-created. It is as fresh
and pure and full of light and beauty as if it had just come from the
Creator's hand with not one single stain or shame or pain. It is one
of the few rare mornings that come in all seasons of the year when
Nature's every aspect is so beautiful that even the most
unappreciative are charmed into admiration; a great white sparkling
world below, and a limitless azure world above. The clouds have all
been blown away and you rejoice in the loftiness of the big blue dome.
It is so very high that there seems to be no dome. You are looking
straight through into the boundless blue of interstellar space, the
best object lesson of infinity which earth has to offer. The ocean
that washes the shores of continents has its bounds which it may not
pass, and mariners have well-known ways across it. The ocean of human
thought is vaster, but it, also, has finite bounds and man shall
hardly make great voyages upon it without crossing, perhaps following,
the track of some earlier Columbus. But this limitless ocean which we
call the sky has no finite bounds, no tracks, no charts, no Cabots. It
is measureless and all-embracing as Divine love. You and Polaris are
enwrapped by both. The farthest star is but a beacon light on some
shore island of this sublime sea of space; and it beckons upward and
outward to the unknown beyond.
* * * * *
Yesterday's three-mile diameter of the horizon has been multiplied by
ten. There is a far sweep of the landscape which makes the soul
thrill. This is the supreme pleasure of the prairies. The Iowa man who
goes to the Rockies is at first awed and charmed by the mountain
grandeur, but soon he pines like a caged bird. The high peaks shut him
in as a prison. He sighs for a sight of the plains, for the feeling of
room and liberty that belongs to the wider sky-reach. On the prairies
the love of truth and liberty grows as easily as the morning light.
The sun rose clear and golden and now is almost white, so clear is the
atmosphere. The snow crystals break the white light into all the
prismatic colors,--rubies and garnets, emeralds and sapphires, topaz
and amethyst, all sparkle in the brilliant light. The shadow of the
solitary elm's trunk, here on the prairie, has very clear cut edges
and is tinted with blue. The finely reticulated shadows of the
graceful twigs are sharply shadowed on the snow beneath,--a winter
picture worthy of a master hand.
In the enjoyment of such beauty as this is the only real wealth. Money
cannot buy it. Hirelings cannot take it from the lowly and give it to
the proud. No trust can corner it. No canvas can screen it from the
eye of him who has not silver to give the cathedral care-taker.
February, like June, may be had by the poorest comer. But it is like
Ruskin's Faubourg St. Germain. Before you may enjoy it you shall be
worthy of it.
_"Such beauty, varying in the light,
Of living nature, cannot be portrayed
By words, nor by the pencil's silent skill;
But is the property of him alone
Who hath beheld it, noted it with care,
And in his mind recorded it with love."_
Leave the prairie and enter the forest which crowns the neighboring
ridge. Here are more of those blue shadows on the snow. The delicate
blue sky is faintly reflected on the snow in the full sunlight, but it
is more obvious in the shadow; in some places its hue is almost
indigo. This sky reflection is one of the most beautiful of Nature's
winter exhibitions. Towards sundown the snow-capped ridges will
sometimes be tinged with pink. And in a red sunset the winter trees
will sometimes throw shadows of green, the complementary color, on the
snow.
* * * * *
You are early in the woods. Nature's children are not yet astir. The
silence is profound; but it is a fruitful, uplifting silence. There
are no sounds to strike the most delicate strings in that wondrous
harp of your inner ear. But if your spiritual ear is attentive you
should catch those forest voices that fall softer than silence and
speak of peace and purity, truth and beauty.
Soon the silence is broken. Curiously, the first sound you hear comes
from advanced civilization, the rumble of a train fifteen miles away.
On a still morning like this one can hardly stand five full minutes on
any spot in the whole state of Iowa without hearing the sound of a
train. There are no more trackless prairies, no more terrors of
blizzards. Pioneer days have passed away. The railroads have brought
security, comfort, prosperity, intelligence, and the best of the
world's work, physical and mental, fresh at the door every morning.
Whirr! There goes a ruffed grouse from the snow, scarce a rod ahead.
In a moment, up goes another. Too bad to rout them from their bed
under the roots of a fallen tree. Farther on a rabbit scurries from
another log. There is his "form" fresh in the snow.
The river, away down below, begins to boom and crack. The ice is like
the tight head of a big bass drum, but the drummer is inside and the
sound comes muffled. The frost is the peg which tightens all the
strings of earth and makes them vibrant. The tinkle of sleigh bells on
the wagon road fully a mile away comes with peculiar clearness.
When the sun is more than half way from the horizon to the meridian,
Nature begins to wake up. A chickadee emerges from his hole in the
decaying trunk of a red oak and cheeps softly as he flies to the
branch of a slippery elm. His merry "chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee" brings
others of his race, and away they all go down to the red birches on
the river bottom. The metallic quanks of a pair of nuthatches call
attention to the upper branches of a big white oak. A chickadee and
one of the nuthatches see a tempting morsel at the same time. A
spiteful peck from nuthatch leaves him master of the morsel and the
field. But the chickadee does not care. He flies down and spies a
stalk of golden-rod above the snow on which there is a round object
looking like a small onion. Chickadee doesn't know that this is the
spherical gall of the _trypeta solidaginis_, but he does know that it
contains a fat white grub. He knows, too, that there is a beveled
passage leading to a cell in the center and that the outer end of this
passage is protected by a membrane window. After some balancing and
pirouetting he smashes the window with his bill, runs his long tongue
down the passageway, gulps the grub and away he flies to join his
comrades down in the birches, chirping gaily as he goes.
Downy woodpecker "pleeks" his happiness as he excavates the twig of a
silver maple. Probably he has found the larvæ which the wood wasp left
there in the fall. The big hairy woodpecker flies across the clearing
with a strident scream. Next to the crow and the jay he is the
noisiest fellow in the winter woods. He hammers away at a decaying
basswood and the chips which fall are an inch and a half long. His
hammering is almost as loud as the bark of a squirrel in the trees
across the river. The blood-red spot on the back of his head has an
exquisite glow in the sunshine, and you get a fine look at it, for he
is busily working little more than a rod from where you stand. He does
wonderful work with that strong bill. One decaying basswood found
recently was eighteen inches in diameter and the woodpeckers had
drilled big holes clear through it. The pile of their chips at the
base would have filled a bushel basket.
By the time you have reached the spring the woods are full of life and
sound, and the spring itself adds to the winter music. The rocks where
it bubbles out are thickly covered with hoar frost. One of the big
blocks of limestone in its causeway is covered with ice, clear and
viscid as molten glass. The river is bridged over with ice twenty
inches thick, save only the little gulf stream into which the spring
pours its waters. From the surface of this stream thin smoky wreaths
of vapor rise and are changed into crystals by the frosty air. But the
waters of the spring gush forth as abundantly and musically now as
they did in the hot days of last July, and the clam-shell with which
you then drank is still in its place by the rock. The pure, melodious,
beautiful spring makes its own environment, regardless of
surroundings. Its sources are in the unfailing hills. It suggests the
lives of some men and women whose friendship you enjoy, and who are
ever ready to refresh you on life's way.
* * * * *
The wind of last night has carried much of the snow over the top of
the ridge and deposited it in this sheltered slope of the river cañon.
Here are wind-formed caves of sculptured snow, vaulted with a tender
blue. Turrets and towers sparkle in the splendid light. All angles are
softened, and everywhere the lines of the snow curves are smooth and
flowing. The drift sweeps down from the footpath way on the river bank
to the ice-bound bed of the river in graceful lines. Where the side of
the cañon is more precipitous there is equal beauty. Each shrub has
its own peculiar type amidst the broken drift. The red cedar, which is
Iowa's nearest approach to a pine, except in a few favored counties,
hangs from the top of the crag heavily festooned with feathery snow.
Those long creeping lines on which the crystals sparkle are only
brambles, and that big rosette of rusty red and fluffy white is the
New Jersey tea. Those spreading, pointed fingers of coral with a
background of dazzling white are the topmost twigs of the red osier
dogwood. The strip of shrubs with graceful spray, now bowed in beauty
by the river's brink, is a group of young red birches, and this bunch
of downy brown twigs, two feet above the snow, sparkling with frost
particles, is the downy viburnum. The great tangle of vine and lace
work mixed with snow is young hop hornbeam, supporting honeysuckle.
* * * * *
Viewed from the window of a railway train, the February fields and
woods seem dead and dreary. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Every twig is lined with living buds, carefully covered with scales.
Inside those scales are leaves and blossoms deftly packed, as only
Mother Nature could pack them. Split one down the middle and examine
it with your lens. You will see the little tender leaves, and often
the blossoms, ready to break out in beauty when the warm days come
and flood the world with color. Men try to photograph nature, but no
photograph could do justice to the clustered buds of the red maple or
the downy buds of the slippery elm. The long green gray buds of the
butternut, pistillate flowers in some, staminate flowers in others;
the saffron buds of the butternut hickory; the ruby buds of the bass
wood; the varnished bud scales of the sycamore and the poplar; the big
gummy scales which protect the pussy catkins of the aspen; the queer
little buds of the sumac and the rusty buds of the ash; every one of
these refutes the aspersions cast upon the winter woods by those who
never go out to see. In their noble beauty of massive and graceful
form, with their exquisite symmetry of outline, their varied
arrangement of branches and twigs, giving to every species an
individual expression, every twig studded with these gem-like buds,
how very beautiful are the winter trees! One might almost find it in
his heart to feel sorry that this rare mingling of sculpture and
fretwork and lace is soon to be draped with a mantle of green.
* * * * *
Why did Bryant dwell so often on the theme of death in Nature? The
reminders of death are very few compared with the signs of life.
Break off a twig from the aspen and taste the bark. The strong quinine
flavor is like a spring tonic. Cut a branch of the black cherry, peel
back the bark, and smell the pungent, bitter almond aroma, which of
itself is enough to identify this tree. Every sense tells of life; the
smell of the cherry, the taste of the aspen, the touch of the velvety
mosses and the gummy buds on the poplars, the color of the twigs and
buds, the music of the birds, all these say, "There is no death."
Every time you plant your feet upon the snow you press down thousands
of seeds, minute forms of life, each with its little store of starch
or albumen, carefully compounded in Nature's laboratory, sufficient to
sustain the embryonic life until the tiny plantlet learns to draw
nourishment from the breast of Mother Earth and to breathe health and
vigor from the sunshine and the air. By the wayside, in stony places,
among thorns and on good ground, Nature sows her seeds with lavish
hand. Every tree and shrub and herb, itself held fast to one place,
tries to give its offspring as great a start in the world as possible.
Even in late February one may see some of Nature's airships, designed
to carry seeds. They are all built on the same principle, not to rise
in the air, but to fly as far away from the tree as possible when
falling from the branch. The basswood puts its seeds into little
hollow wooden balls, then makes a sail out of a leaf and sets it at
just the right angle to balance the seeds and catch the breeze. The
winged samaras of the ash and the box elder are other modifications of
the same principle. The round balls of the sycamore hang till the high
winds of March loosen their strong stalks and then they break open and
the club-shaped nutlets inside spread their bristly hairs to the
breeze. The hop-like strobiles of the hop hornbeam seem especially
made to blow over the surface of the frozen snow; they drop off the
queer little oblong bags as they go and thus the smooth small nuts
inside are planted. The oaks, hickories, walnuts, butternuts,
hazelnuts, trust their fruits to the feet of passersby and to the
squirrels and blue jays which fail to find many of their buried acorns
and nuts. The big three-valved balloons of the bladdernut can sail
either in the air, on the water, or over the frozen snow. The pretty
clusters of the wild yam, seen climbing over the hazelbrush in the
rich winter woods, have two ways of navigating in the wind; either
the three-sided, papery capsule floats as a whole, or it splits
through the winged angles and then the flat seeds with their
membranaceous wings have a chance to flutter a foot or two away where
haply they may find a square inch of unoccupied soil. The desmodium,
the bidens, the agrimony and the cocklebur, which stick to your
clothes even as late as February, are only using you as a Moses to
lead their children to their promised land. These herb stalks above
the snow, the corymbose heads of the yarrow, the spikes of the
self-heal, the crosiers of the golden-rod, the panicles of the asters,
the racemes of the Indian tobacco, the knotted threads of the blue
vervain and the plantain, the miniature mandarin temples of the
peppergrass--all these have shed, or are shedding, myriads of seeds to
be silently sepulchred under the snow until earth's easter April
mornings. The withered berries of the bittersweet, the cat-brier, and
the sumac, like the drupes of the early fall, are scattered far and
wide by the birds. All these speak not of death, but of an eager,
expectant life.
* * * * *
The snow is winter's great gift to states like Iowa. He is unwise who
complains of the tender, protecting, nourishing, fructifying mantle
of immaculate white. Where the snow lies deepest in winter, there
shall you find the greatest flush of new life in the spring. Down
under the snow Nature's chemical laboratory is at work. Take a stick
and dig under the thick white blanket into the black soil. Here are
bulbs and buds, corms and tubers, rootstalks and rhizomes, which were
pumped full of starch and albumen in the hot days of last August. So
far as modern science is able to tell, chemical changes are in
constant progress in all these forms of underground life, preparing
for the coming glory of the living green. Nature never dies. She
scarcely sleeps.
Tracks on the all-revealing snow tell of an equal abundance of animal
life. These rabbit tracks, scarcely two feet apart, tell how happily
bunny was going. But farther on a dog came across at an angle and gave
chase. The tracks are now farther apart, three feet, four feet, as up
bunny goes to his burrow under the shelving rock. One last bound,
nearly five feet, and he was safe. That was once when "heaven was
gained at a single bound."
Bunny was too far away from home that time. Here is his usual runway
from the burrow to the brook, and the nibbled barks of the saplings
tell of a tender breakfast before he went prospecting. Rabbits usually
run in beaten paths.
These narrow tracks where dainty feet printed a double line of
opposite dots across the snow were made by the whitefooted mouse, and
the little continuous line between them was made by his dragging tail.
The legend is like this, :-:-:-:-:-. Farther on are similar tracks,
but alternate instead of opposite, like this,',',','. They were made
by the short-tailed shrew. Still farther along a queer little ridge is
seen in the snow across the wood road. It is the tunnel of the meadow
mouse. Part of its fragile roof has fallen in and you may stoop and
look into the little round tunnel which ran from the burrow to some
granary under a log.
There goes a squirrel, angling away from you, his red bushy tail high
in the air as he runs through the deep snow down the side of the ridge
to a big, corky-barked oak, up which he goes to wait in his hollow up
there until you have passed by. He did not seem to be going very fast
but when you walk over to his tracks you find they are farther apart
than you can step. The groups of four are about as broad as your
hand, and they are deep where the snow lies thick. But on the firmer
snow at the crest of the ridge, before the squirrel became alarmed,
they did not break through the crust, and the marks of the dainty toes
are plainly seen. There are also the remains of a sweet acorn which
the squirrel dug out of the deep snow under a white oak. Back to the
river where the stream from the spring makes open water you find some
queer tracks on the fresh snow; there is a round spot as big as a
quarter in each one, faint radiating lines in front ending with the
marks of sharp toes; these were made by the soft-padded foot and
webbed toes of the mink.
* * * * *
Most of the insect life is snugly hidden, but much is in plain sight.
A clump of pussy willows bears many queer-shaped clusters which the
entomologist calls pine cone galls; in the center of each one a larva
dwells in his silken case. On the red oaks over head are other
galls,--the oak apples. The buttonbush has the ash-colored cocoon of
the giant silkworm, made out of a rolled leaf, the petiole of which is
fastened to the branch with silk. Many others are to be found for the
looking. All tell the story of Nature's abundant life,--even the
morning after a February snow storm. All speak
_"Of one maternal spirit bringing forth
And cherishing with ever constant love,
That tires not, nor betrays."_
But snowstorms will soon be over. The nature-lover's spring begins
near the end of the month, sometimes just before, sometimes just
after. The snow and the ice will be honeycombed by the sun and we
shall begin to look for the sap trickling from the maple, and to
strain our ears for the first note of the wild goose and the
blue-bird,
_"While winter, slumbering in the open air
Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring."_
The frequent rambler through the winter woods can scarcely fail to
become acquainted with all the winter birds. The different species are
not numerous, few of them are very shy, they are easily seen because
of the bare trees, and their habits tend to call attention to them;
especially is this true of the woodpeckers. It is true, of course,
that one may sometimes walk in the woods for hours, scarcely seeing a
single bird. But it is also true that if he starts out some sunny
morning, and seeks a tract of heavy timber near a river, he will be
very likely to see and hear nearly all of them.
Such a ramble was enjoyed during the halcyon days we had this year
(1907) in February. By 10 o'clock the woods were fairly ringing with
bird-calls. Over a meadow, near the entrance to the woods, a
red-tailed hawk was circling about twenty-five feet from the ground,
as if in search of meadow mice. The field glass showed the black band
on his breast and tail, which, with his bright red tail, sufficiently
established his identity.
The first bird seen in the woods was a white-breasted nuthatch,
working on the trunk of a red birch on the river bottom. Next to the
chickadee, he is the tamest bird of the woodlands. One may easily get
within six feet of him, as was done on this occasion, and admire his
beautiful ashy-blue coat, his white vest and white cheeks, with his
black cap and nape. He pulled a fat white grub from the birch with his
long, slender bill and ate it with evident relish. Then he uttered
his soft "quank, quank" and gently flew to another tree.
Sometimes these "quank, quanks" come in a loud and rapid series and
may easily be heard a quarter of a mile on a still day.
A flock of juncos were busy among the dead leaves and the snow. They
are sparrow-size, like the nuthatch, and their faint chirpings are
much like those of the chickadee. The slate gray of their head,
throat, back and breast is an interesting color, and is relieved from
somberness by the white under parts and the yellow bills. The white
outer tailfeathers show plainly as they fly. They frequent the road
through the timber and have some of the habits of the English sparrow.
The winter woods would miss them.
Chickadees were busy in the birches. Surely the chickadee is one of
the dearest little fellows that fly. He has four modes of expression: