Every pilgrim to the mystic land of spring knows hallowed places in
sunny valleys where the tender goddess first reveals herself at
Nature's living altars. Yet he can scarcely tell at which shrine she
will first appear. She delights in surprising her votaries. Thoreau
was right in saying that no man was ever alert enough to behold the
first manifestation of spring. Sometimes as we walk toward the mossy
bank in the glen where the fresh green leaves of the haircap mosses
were last year's first signs of vernal verdure, the bluebird calls to
us from the torch-like top of the smooth sumac and shyly tells us
that, if we please, spring is here. Sometimes we thrill with the
"honk, honk" of the Canada goose and think the A-shaped band of
migrants is surely this year's messenger, crying in the wilderness to
prepare the way of the goddess and make her paths straight; but a
little later we pass through a shadowy ravine where the white oaks
have held their leaves all winter, and find that the great horned owl
has already appropriated a last year's hawk's nest and deposited
therein her two white eggs. At the foot of the sunny hill where the
spring has freely flowed all winter long, we tramp around the swamp in
the vain hope of finding the purplish monk's-hood of the skunk's
cabbage; but look up to see, instead, the many "mouse ears," shining
like bits of silvery fur, along the slender stems of the pussy willow.
Or we tramp through a hazel thicket, where the squirrels have been
festive among the nuts all winter, in the hope of finding, among the
myriads of short, stiff catkins, one which has lengthened and softened
until it is ready to pour its golden pollen into our palms. We find
neither this nor the crimson stars of the fertile flowers, but the
chirp of a white-throated sparrow directs our eyes to a young aspen
tree from whose every flower-bud spring is peeping.
Nature's first flowers are those of the amentaceous trees, and the
earliest of these are the pussy willow, the quaking asp, and the
hazel. All of them are quick to respond to the kindly influences of a
vase of water and a sunny window and we may have all three of these
first blossoms in a spring bouquet at home by the first of March.
Towards the last of February the catkins of the pussy willows and the
aspens are creeping from beneath their budscales to meet the goddess
of spring half way, and every warm day in March coaxes them a little
farther. Meanwhile the staminate catkins of the hazel are lengthening
and the pistillate buds are swelling, as the sun presses farther
northward at the dawn and the dusk of each day, pushing back the gray
walls of the cañon of night, that the river of day may flow full and
free.
* * * * *
This year some of the aspens heralded the spring. They grew at the
head of a little creek which traversed a long, sunny, sheltered swamp.
Their gray green trunks were in the foreground of the Master Planter's
color design, the darker and taller background being a mixture of wild
cherry, red oak, linden, and white ash. The high notes were given by
the rose purple of the raspberry, the dark maroon of the blackberry,
and the orange varnished budscales of the aspens themselves,--Nature
never forgets her color accents. In the earliest warm days of February
the catkins of the aspens were peeping from their imprisoning scales,
and by the first of March they were half out, their white silken
fringes and tiny clusters of rose-pink stamens glistening in the
sunlight as if spring's pink cheeks were sheltered by soft, gray fur.
We look up at these fleecy clusters, freed from the brownish
budscales, with a far background of bluest sky, and think that it must
have been such a grove as this to which the Princess Nausicca sent
Ulysses to wait for her, described by Homer as "a beautiful grove of
aspen poplars, a fountain and a meadow."
Only an aspen tree in an Iowa slough! Yes, but more than that. This is
the first sign of the resurrection which we call spring. When the
pilgrims to the Eleusinian mysteries were ridiculed because of the
commonplace nature of their symbols, they rightly replied that more
than that which met the eye existed in the sacred things; that
whosoever entered the temple of Lindus, to do honor to Demeter, the
productive and nourishing power of the earth, must be pure in heart if
he would gain reward. The square, the flag, the cross, the swelling
bud of spring, what are they all but symbols of the realities?
We shall forget these first humble flowers of spring by-and-by when
we find a brilliant cardinal flower, or a showy lady's slipper, just
as we forget the timid, tender tones of the bluebird when the grand
song of the grosbeak floods the evening air, or the exquisite melody
of the hermit thrush spiritualizes the leafy woods; just as many a man
forgets the ministrations of his humbler friends in early life when he
has climbed into the society of those whom earth calls great. But the
aspens will neither grieve nor murmur. They will continue to make
delightful color contrasts with their smooth white trunks at the
gateways of the dark woods in winter and whisper to every lightest
breeze with their delicate leaves in summer. The aspen, like the
grass, hastens to cover every wound and burn on the face of nature. It
follows the willow in reclaiming the sandy river bottoms and replaces
the pines which fire has swept from the Rocky Mountain slopes. It has
a record in the rocks and a richer story in literature. Its trembling
leaves have caught the attention of all the poets from Homer until
now. The Scottish legend says they tremble because the cross of
Calvary was made from an aspen tree. The German legend says the
trembling is a punishment because the aspen refused to bow when the
Lord of Life walked in the forest. But the Hebrew chronicler says that
the Lord once made his presence upon the earth heard in the movement
of the aspen leaves. "And it shall be, when thou shalt hear a sound of
going in the tops of the aspen [wrongly translated mulberry] trees,
that then thou shalt go forth to battle; for God is gone before thee
to smite the host of the Philistines." What a fine conception of the
nearness of the Omnipresent and the gentleness of the Almighty! No
sound or sign from the larger trees! Only the whisper of the lightest
leaves in the aspen tops when the Maker of the world went by!
The aspen was made the chief tree in the groves of Proserpine. And
Homer, in describing the Cyclops' country, speaks of it as a land of
soft marshy meadows, good rich crumbling plow land, and beautiful
clear springs, with aspens all around them. How much that sounds like
a description of Iowa!
* * * * *
The willow is equally distinguished. The roots of its "family tree"
are in the cretaceous rocks and its branches spread through the waters
of Babylon, the Latin eclogues, the wondrous fire in the Knightes'
Tale, Shakespeare's plays, the love songs of Herrick and Moore, and
across the ocean to the New World, adorning the sermons of Cotton
Mather, the humor of Hosea Bigelow, and the nature poems of Whittier.
_"For ages, on our river borders,
These tassels in their tawny bloom
And willowy studs of downy silver
Have prophesied of spring to come.
"Thanks, Mary, for this wildwood token
Of Freya's footsteps drawing near;
Almost, as in the rune of Asgard,
The growing of the grass I hear."_
Nor must the hazel in this earliest spring bouquet be forgotten. The
crimson stars of its fertile flowers, ten or a dozen little rays at
the ends of the scaly buds on the bare stems, are the most richly
colored flowers of the earliest spring. Some years they are formed as
early as the twentieth of March. When you find them then look for the
re-appearance of the mud-turtles down in the valleys and listen for
the first feeble croaks of the frogs. The old Greeks watched the tiny
inner scales of these fertile flowers grow into the husk of the nut,
fancied its resemblance to a helmet, and called the bush _corys_;
whence its botanic name _corylus_. Its English name comes from the
Saxon _haesle_, a cap. The growing hazel nuts gladdened the children
of most of the early civilized world. One of the shepherds in Vergil's
fifth eclogue invites the other to "sit beneath the grateful shade,
which hazels interlaced with elms have made;" but this hazel of which
Menelaus spoke was a tree. The Romans regarded the hazel as an emblem
of peace and a means of reconciling those who had been estranged. When
the gods made Mercury their messenger they gave him a hazel rod to be
used in restoring harmony among the human race. Later he added the
twisted serpents at the top of this caduceus. The caduceus also had
the power of producing sleep, hence Milton calls it "the opiate rod."
When the crimson threads appear in the scaly buds the staminate
catkins are lengthening, and soon the high wind shakes the golden
pollen over all the copse. These flowers which appear before the
leaves all depend upon the wind for their fertilization. That is why
they come before the leaves. And there is always wind enough to meet
all their needs.
March is a masculine month. It was named after the war god and it
always lives up to its traditions. It has had scant courtesy from the
literary men.
_"Ah, passing few are they who speak,
Wild, stormy month, in praise of thee."_
'Twas a night in March when little Gavroche took his infant protegés
into the old elephant which stood in the Place de la Bastile to
shelter them from the cruel wind. It was in the twilight of a day in
March, when the wind howled dismally, that Boniface Willet, in
_Barnaby Rudge_, flattened his fat nose against the window pane and
made one of his famous predictions. It must have been a March freshet
when the Knight Huldebrand put Bertalda into Kuhleborn's wagon and the
gentle Undine saved them both. And we fancy that it was a cold night
in March when Peter stood by the fire and warmed himself.
But the winds of March deserve a word of praise, as everyone knows who
has filled his lungs with their vitalizing freshness and felt the
earth respond to their purifying influence. They are only boisterous,
not cruel. The specters of miasma and contagion flee before them like
the last leaves. Many of the oaks have held a wealth of withered
foliage all the winter but now the leaves fly almost as fast as they
did in late October, and make a dry, rustling carpet up to your shoe
tops. Now and again the wind gets down into this leaf-carpet and makes
merry sport.
Listen to the majestic roar of the winds in a grove of rugged oaks,
and then again, for contrast, where the timber on the river bottom is
all-yielding birch. It is like changing from the great _diapason_ to
the _dulciana_ stop. In the mixed woodlands, so common in Iowa, the
effect is even more delightful. The coarse, angular, unyielding twigs
of the oaks give deep tones like the vibrations of the thick strings
on the big double bass. The opposite, widespreading twigs of the ash
sing like the cello, and the tones of the alternate spray of the
lindens are finer, like the viola. The still smaller, opposite twigs
of the maples murmur like the tender tones of the altos and the fine,
yielding spray of the birches, the feathery elm and the hackberry make
music pure and sweet as the wailing of the first violins. When the
director of this _maestoso_ March movement signals _fortissimo_ the
effect is sublime and the fine ear shall not fail to detect the
overtones which come from the hop hornbeams and the hazel in the
undergrowth below.
In keeping with the majestic orchestra is the continuous noise of
grinding ice from the river. There is a sign at the edge of the birch
swamp which says: "Positively no trespassing allowed here"--but it is
not necessary now, for the river has overflowed the swamp and big
masses of ice lean up against the trunks of the birches. Out in the
main channel the river is swiftly flowing, packed with ice floes, from
the little clear fragments which shine like crystals, to the great
masses as big as the side of a house, bearing upon them the
accumulated dust and dirt and uncleanness of the winter. Pieces of
trees, trunks and roots, cornstalks from fields along the shore, all
are being carried seaward. In the middle of the river the prow of a
flat boat projects upward from between two huge ice floes which have
mashed it, like a miniature wreck in arctic seas. The best view of
this annual ice spectacle is to look up the river and see the big
field of broken, tumbling, crashing, grinding ice coming down.
Farther down, at the narrows of the river, where the heavy timber
shuts out the sunlight, the ice has not given way and here a gorge is
formed. Hundreds of tons of ice are washed swiftly up to it and stop
with a crash. The water backs up, flows over the banks and fills up
all the summer fish ponds along the shore. Some of it forces its way
through, foaming into a white spray. By-and-bye, under the combined
influence of the rushing water and the ever increasing weight of the
ice, the gorge gives way and the irresistible floes pass on with a
mighty crash to their dissolution in the summery waters away down the
Mississippi. After many months of shrouded death this new life of the
river is also a symbol of the resurrection.
* * * * *
There are other days in March so soft and beautiful that they might
well have a place in May.
_"And in thy reign of blast and storm,
Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day
When the changed winds are soft and warm,
And heaven puts on the blue of May."_
From the summit of a thinly-treed hill we look across a wide valley on
the right which gradually slopes up to a high ridge three miles away.
On the left there is a clear view for fully twenty miles, out to where
the lavender haze hangs softly on the forest-fringed horizon. The
plowed fields lie mellow and chocolate-hued in the sunlight and the
russet meadows are beginning to show a faint undertone of green. The
golden green of the willow fences which separate some of the fields
shines from afar in the abundant light and there is a quickening
crimson in the tops of the red maple groves around the homesteads. The
deep blue of the high-domed sky gives a glory to the landscape. The
few, far clouds, soft and white, float slowly in the azure sea and now
and then approach the throne of the king of day, sending dark shadows
chasing the sunlight over the smiling fields. When these shadows reach
the nearer woodlands across the valley on the right it is as if a
moving belt of dark pines was swiftly passing through the deciduous
forest. We think of Birnam wood removing to Dunsinane, but that was
trivial compared with this. The dark belt of shadow makes a strong and
beautiful contrast to the reddish brown and gray of the winter woods.
The river is more than bank full. Shut in on one side by the high
ridge upon which we are standing it has spread over half a mile of
bottom on the other side. Once more, after many months of waiting we
rejoice in the gleam of its waters. The broad valley, which has so
long been paved with white, is bottomed with amethyst now, the fainter
reflection of the azure sky above. The trees which have so long stood
comfortless again see their doubles in the waters below. The huge gray
trunks of the water elms and the silver maples, the red rags of the
birches and the delicate tracery of their spray, the ruby gold of the
willows, the shining white of the sycamores, the ashen green of the
poplars and the dark crimson of the wild rose and the red osier
dogwood,--all these are reflected as from a vast mirror.
There is not a ripple on the surface. But anon a belated ice floe
comes down the main channel and shows how swiftly the waters are
flowing now that they once more move "unvexed to the sea." There are
still some masses hugging the shore. One by one they slip into the
waters and float away,--just as a man's prejudices and delusions are
the last to leave him after the light of truth and the warmth of love
have set his soul free from the bondage of error and wrong.
The stillness is a marked contrast to the recent roar of the winds.
You may hear your watch ticking in your pocket. The leisurely tapping
of a downy woodpecker sounds like the ticking of a clock in a vast
ancestral hall. You may actually hear a squirrel running down a tree,
twenty rods away. He paws out an acorn and begins to eat. The noise of
your footstep seems like a profanation of holy ground. Also it
disturbs the squirrel who scurries up to the topmost twigs of an elm
nearly a hundred feet high. With a glass you may see his eyes shine as
he watches you. His long red tail hangs down still and straight and
there is not breeze enough, even up there, to stir it.
Gnats and moths flit in the soft sunlight and spiders run over tree
trunks while their single shining lines of silk are stretched among
the hazel.
Anon the bird chorus breaks out, full and strong. The winter birds
report all present but there are a number of new voices, especially
the warble of the robin, the tremulous, confiding "sol-si, sol-si" of
the bluebird and the clear call of the phoebe. The robins are thick
down in the birch swamps, on the islands among the last year's
knot-weed. You may tell them at a distance by their trim, military
manner of walking, and if you wish you may get close enough to them to
take their complete description. And, by the way, how many can
describe this common bird, the color of his head and bill, his back
and tail, and the exact shade of his breast. Is there any white on
him, and if so, where?
After the ice is out of the rivers the bird-lover is kept busy. In the
early sunny morning the duet of the robins and the meadow larks is
better than breakfast. March usually gives us the hermit thrush and
the ruby-and golden-crowned kinglets; the song, field, fox, white
throated, Savannah and Lincoln sparrows; the meadow lark, the bronzed
grackle and the cowbird; the red-winged, the yellow-head and the rusty
blackbirds; the wood pewee and the olive-sided flycatcher; the flicker
and the sap-sucker, the mourning dove and several of the water fowl.
Last week--the first week in March--a golden eagle paused in his
migration to sit awhile on a fence post at the side of a timber road.
Two men got near enough to see the color of his feathers and then one
of them, with a John Burroughs instinct, took a shot at him. He
missed; there was a spread of the great wings and the big bird
resumed his journey northward.
* * * * *
By the shallow creek which ripples over the many-hued gravel there is
much of interest. The frog sits on the bank as we approach and goes
into the water with a splash. In the quiet little bayous the minnows
are lively, and tracks upon the soft mud show that the mink has been
watching them. A pile of neatly cleaned clam shells is evidence that
the muskrat has had a feast. There is a huge clam, partly opened, at
arm's length from the shore. We fish it out and pry it open farther;
out comes the remains of the esculent clam, and we almost jump when it
is followed by a live and healthy crawfish.
It never pays to be a clam. It is very meet, right, and the bounden
duty of every quadruped, biped and decapod to prey upon the clam.
Farther down is a sandy hollow which was deep under water in the great
January freshet. That freshet deposited a new layer of sand and also
bushels of clam and snail shells of all sizes and species. They lie so
thick they may be taken up by the shovelful. Two or three dead fish
are also found. What a fine fossiliferous stratum will be found here
about a hundred million years from now!
In March the rains and the melting of the "robin snows" soften the
leathery lichens and their painted circles on the trees and rocks vary
from olive gray and green to bright red and yellow. They revel in the
moist gray days. And the mosses which draw a tapestry of tender velvet
around the splintered rocks in the timber quarries and strangely veil
the ruin of the fallen forest kings,--how much they add to the beauty
of the landscape in the interval between the going of the snow and the
coming of the grass! The rich dark green of the common hair-cap
clothes many a bank with beauty, the dense tufts of the broom moss
hide the ruin and assuage the grief where an exalted forest monarch
has been cast down by the storm. The silvery Bryum shows abundantly on
the sandy fields and the thick green velvet mats of the Anomodon creep
up the bases of the big water elms in the swamps. The delicate
branchlets of the beautiful fern moss are recompense for a day's
search, and the bright yellow-green Schreber's Hypnum, with its red
stems, is a rich rug for reluctant feet. The moist rocks down which
the water trickles into the ravine below are stained green and orange
by the glossy Entodon. These patient mosses cover wounds in the
landscape gently as tender thoughts soothe aching voids left by the
loss of those we love. They lead us into the most entrancing bits of
the woodland scenery--shaded rills, flowing springs, dashing cascades,
fairy glens, and among the castellated rocks of the dark ravines.
Their parts are so exquisitely perfect, almost they persuade the
nature-lover to degenerate into a mere naturalist, walking through the
woods seeing nothing but sporophytes through his lens, just as a rare
book sometimes causes the bibliophile to become a bibliomaniac,
reading nothing but catalogues. It is a credit to be a bibliomaniac
provided one is a bibliophile as well. And the best moss naturalists
are they whose hearts respond to the enthusiasm in Ruskin's closing
paragraphs of _Leaves Motionless_.
* * * * *
The yielding odorous soil is promiseful after its stubborn hardness of
winter months and we watch it eagerly for the first herbaceous growth.
Often this is one of the fern allies, the field horsetail. The
appearance of its warm, mushroom-colored, fertile stems is one of the
first signs of returning spring, and its earliest stems are found in
dry sandy places. The buds containing its fruiting cones have long
been all complete, waiting for the first warm day, and when the start
is finally made the tubered rootstocks, full of nutriment, send up the
slender stem at the rate of two inches a day.
During the last week in the month, when the dark maroon flowers of the
elm and the crimson blossom of the red maples are giving a ruddy glow
to the woods with the catkins of the cotton-woods, the aspens and the
red birches adding to the color harmony, we shall look for the fuzzy
scape of the hepatica, bringing up through the leaf carpet of the
woods its single blue, white or pinkish flower, closely wrapped in
warm gray furs. At the same time, perhaps a day or two earlier, the
white oblong petals of the dwarf trillium, or wake-robin, will gleam
in the rich woods. And some sunny day in the same period we shall see
a gleam of gold in a sheltered nook, the first flower of the
dandelion. A few days later and the light purple pasque-flower will
unfold and gem the flush of new life on the northern prairies. Even
should the last week of the month be unseasonably cold we shall not
have long to wait. Yet
_"----a little while
And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and
growth; a thousand forms shall rise
From these dead clods and chills, as from low burial graves,
Thine eyes, ears,--all thy best attributes,--all that takes
cognizance of natural beauty,
Shall wake and fill. Thou shalt perceive the simple shows,
the delicate miracles of earth
Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early scents and flowers;
With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs--the
flitting bluebird;
For such scenes the annual play brings on."_