In the old woods road a soft haze hung, too subtle to see save where
its delicate colorings were contrasted against the dark green leaves
of the oaks beyond the fence. Not the tangible, vapory haze of early
morning, but a tinted, ethereal haze, the visible effluence of the
summer, the nimbus of its power and glory. From tall cord grasses
arching over the side of the road, drawing water from the ditch in
which their feet were bathed and breathing it into the air with the
scent of their own greenness; from the transpiration of the trees,
shrubs and vines, flowers and mosses and ferns, from billions of pores
in acres of leaves it came streaming into the sunlight, vanishing
quickly, yet ever renewed, as surely as the little brook where the
grasses drank and the grackles fished for tadpoles and young frogs,
was replenished by the hidden spring. Mingled with it and floating in
it was another stream of life, the innumerable living organisms that
make up the dust of the sunshine. Pink and white, black and yellow
spores from the mushrooms over the fence in the pasture; pollen pushed
from the glumes of the red top grasses and the lilac spires of the
hedge nettle and germander by the roadside; shoals of spores from the
mosses and ferns by the trees and in the swamp; all these life
particles rose and floated in the haze, giving it tints and meanings
strangely sweet. When a farmer's buggy passed along the old road the
haze became a warm pink, like some western sky in the evening, slowly
clearing again to turquoise as the dust settled. Viewed in this way,
the haze became a mighty, broad-mouthed river of life, fed by billions
of tiny streams and moving ever toward the vast ocean of the sunlight.
Faintly visible to the discerning eye, it was also audible to the
attentive ear, listening as one listens at the edge of a field in the
night time to hear the growing of the corn. If all the millions of
leaves had ceased their transpiration, if this flow of life had been
shut off, as the organist pushes in the tremolo stop, the sound of the
summer would not have been the same. Something of the strength and
joy of the summer was in it. Drinking deeply of it the body was
invigorated and the heart grew glad. In it the faith of the winter's
buds and the hope of the spring's tender leaves found rich
fulfillment. Theirs was a life of hope and promise that the
resurrection should come; this was the glorious life after the
resurrection, faith lost in sight and patient hope crowned.
* * * * *
Slender white minarets of the Culver's root, rising from green towers
above the leafy architecture of the woodland undergrowth and reaching
toward the light of the sky, told the time of the year as plainly as
if a muezzin had appeared on one of its leafy balconies and proclaimed
a namaz for the middle of July. Beholding them from afar, honey bees
came on humming wings for the nectar lying deep in their tiny florets.
Eager stamens reached out far beyond the blossoms to brush the bees'
backs with precious freights of pollen to be transported to the
stigmas of older flowers. Playing each its part in the plan of the
universe, flower and insect added its mite to the life and the
loveliness of the summer. From the sunshine and the soil-water the
long leaves manufactured food for the growth of the plant. Prettily
notched, daintily tapering, and arranged in star-like whorls about the
stem, they enhanced the beauty of the flowers above them and attracted
the observer to the exquisite order governing their growth. When the
leaves were arranged in whorls of four, the floral spires were
quadruple, like the pinnacles on a church tower; if the green towers
were hexagonal, then six white minarets pointed to the sky. The
perfect order of the solar system and the majesty of the Mind which
planned it, was manifested in this single plant. So does beauty lead
the way to the mountain tops of truth. By the road of earthly beauty
we may always reach religion and truth is ever beckoning us to new and
nobler visions. That "thread of the all-sustaining beauty, which runs
through all and doth all unite" gently leads us from the things which
are tangible and temporal to the truths which are spiritual and
eternal; from the beauty of the concrete to the beauty of the
abstract, onward along the road of beauty and farther up the heights
of truth until our admiration for the beauty of the sunrise, the snow
crystal, the graceful spray of the trees in winter, the exquisite
order and harmony of the universe from the orbit of the largest planet
to the flow of life in the tiniest leaf, develops into a lasting love
for beauty in life and in character; and still farther up the heights
into an atmosphere of intelligent, rational, genuine love for the
Great First Cause of all beauty. As the heart opens to receive the
beauty of the world, as the mind and soul strive, like the plants, for
the highest development, so is the world redeemed from error and crime
and the perfection of the race is attained. If one soul finds this
truth more quickly and easily here amid the trees and flowers, for him
is the old road greater than religious dogmas or social systems.
* * * * *
Always beautiful and interesting, in these long days of mid-July the
old road is at its best. No length of day can measure its loveliness
or encompass its charm. Very early in the morning there is a faint
rustle of the leaves, a delicate flutter through the woods as if the
awakening birds are shaking out their wings. Shrubs and bushes and
trunks of trees have ghostly shapes in the few strange moments that
are neither the darkness nor the dawn. As the light steals through the
woods their forms grow less grotesque. In the half light a phoebe
begins her shrill song. A blue-jay screams. The quail sounds his first
"Bob White." Brown thrashers in the thicket--it is past their time of
singing--respond with a strange, sibilant sound, a mingled hiss and
whistle, far different from his ringing songs of May, now only
memories; different also from her scoldings when she was disturbed on
her nest and from her tender crooning calls to her babies during June.
As the light increases waves of delicate color appear in the sky to
the northeast, and by and by the sun's face appears over the tops of
the trees. He shoots arrows of pale flame through the woods. In the
clearing the trunks of the trees are like cathedral pillars, and the
sunlight comes down in slanting rays as if the openings among the
tree-tops were windows and the blue haze beneath the incense of the
morning mass. Black-capped precentor of the avian choir, the chickadee
sounds two sweet tones, clear and musical, like keynotes blown from a
silver pipe. The wood thrush sounds a few organ tones, resonant and
thrilling. It is almost his last summer service; soon, like the
thrashers, he will be drooping and silent. The chewink, the indigo
bird, the glad goldfinches, the plaintive pewees are the sopranos; the
blue-bird, the quail, with her long, sweet call, and the grosbeak,
with his mellow tones, are the altos; the nuthatch and the tanager
take up the tenor, while the red-headed woodpeckers, the crows and the
cuckoos bear down heavy on the bass. Growing with the light, the fugue
swells into crescendo. Lakes of sunshine and capes of shadow down the
old road are more sharply defined. Bushes of tall, white melilot,
clustered with myriads of tiny flowers, exhale a sweet fragrance into
the morning air. The clearing around the house is flooded with
sunlight. In the wooded pasture some trunks are bathed with a golden
glory, while others yet stand iron gray in the deep shadows. The
world is awake. The day's work begins. One late young redhead in a
hole high up in the decaying trunk of an aspen tree calls loudly for
his breakfast, redoubling his noise as his mother approaches with the
first course. Sitting clumsily on a big stump, a big baby cowbird,
well able to shift for himself, shamelessly takes food from his little
field sparrow foster-mother, scarcely more than half his size. Soon he
will leave her and join the flocks of his kindred in the oat-fields
and the swamps. Young chewinks are being fed down among the ripening
May-apples in the pasture. A catbird with soft "quoots" assembles her
family in the hazel and the wood-thrush sounds warning "quirts" as
fancied peril approaches her children beneath the ripening
blackberries. From the top of a tall white oak a red squirrel leaps to
the arching branches of an elm, continuing his foraging there. Sitting
straight up on a mossy log the chipmunk holds in his paws a bit of
bread thrown from somebody's basket, nibbles at it for a while and
then makes a dash for the thicket, carrying the bread in his mouth.
[Illustration: "EVERY TREE IS A PICTURE" (p. 22)]
Tiny rabbits venture out from the tall grasses and look on life with
timid eyes. Bees and butterflies are busy with the day's work. Life
with its beauty and its joy is everywhere abundant. Living things swim
in and upon the brook, insects run and leap among the grasses, winged
creatures are in the shrubs, the trees, the air, active, eager,
beautiful life is everywhere. The heart thrills with the beauty, the
joy, the zest, the abundance of it, expands to a capacity for the
amplitude of it. Human life grows sweeter, richer, more worth while.
There is so much to live for, so much to hope for; this is the meaning
and the glory of the summer.
* * * * *
Farther out, where the old road leaves the woods, the landscape is
like a vast park, more beautiful than many a park which the world
calls famous. From the crest of the ridge the fields roll away in
graceful curves, dotted with comfortable homes and groves and skirted
by heavy timber down in the valley where the sweet water of the river
moves quietly over the white sand. Still responding to the freshening
impulse of the June rains, fields and woods are all a-quiver with
growth. By master magic soil-water and sunshine are being changed into
color and form to delight the eye and food to do the world's work.
Every tree is a picture, each leaf is as fresh and clean as the
rain-washed air of the morning. From the low meadows the perfume of
the hay is brought up by the languid breeze. Amber oat-fields are
ripening in the sun and in the corn-fields there is a sense of the
gathering force of life as the sturdy plants lift themselves higher
and higher during
_"The long blue solemn hours, serenely flowing
Whence earth, we feel, gets steady help and good."_
Many a tourist comes home to a land like this, weary and penniless,
like Sir Launfal after his fruitless quest, to discover that the grail
of health and rest and beauty which he sought afar so strenuously is
most easily and readily found at home.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "CURVES WHICH ADD MUCH TO ITS WILD BEAUTY" (p. 23)]
Ceaselessly up and down the old road passes the pageant of the year,
never two days the same, especially at this season. In the middle of
the road is a dirt wagon-track, on either side of which is a broad
belt of grass, flowers, shrubs and small trees till you come to the
fence. Beyond one fence the thick woods has a heavy undergrowth; over
the other is a well-wooded pasture. On the south side, between the
road and the fence there is a little brook, sometimes with a high,
mossy and timbered bank, sometimes completely hidden by tall grasses.
The road rises and falls in gentle grades, with alternating banks and
swales. At one high point there is a view down the long avenue of
trees across the open valley beyond, where the city lies snugly, and
then upward to the timber on the far heights across the river where
the hills are always softly blue, no matter what the season of the
year. Sometimes the old road sweeps around fine old trees in
unmathematical curves which add much to its wild beauty. The first man
who drove along it, a hundred years or more ago, followed a cow-path
and the road hasn't changed much since, though the fences which were
later threaded through the shrubs and trees on either side, run
straighter. Never was summer day long enough for me to see and to
study all that the old road had to show. Here, at the moist edge of
the road, the ditch stone-crop is opening its yellow-green flowers,
each one a study in perfect symmetry. With the showy, straw-colored
cyperus it flourishes under the friendly shade of the overhanging
cord-grasses whose flowering stalks already have shot up beyond the
reach of a man. Among them grows the tall blue vervain, its tapering
fingers adorned with circles of blue flowers, like sapphire rings
passing from the base to the tips of the fingers. You must part these
grasses and pass through them to see the thicket of golden-rod making
ready for the yellow festival later on. White cymes of spicy basil are
mingled with the purple loosestrife and back of these the fleabanes
lift daisy-like heads among the hazel overhanging the wire fence. Then
the elms and the oaks and in the openings the snowy, starry campion
whose fringed petals are beginning to close, marking the morning's
advance. In the moist places the Canada lily glows like a flaming
torch, its pendant bells slowly swinging in the breeze, ringing in
the annual climax and jubilee of the flowering season.
Across the road the monkey flower grins affably at the edge of the
grass and the water hemlock, with a hollow stem as big as a gun-barrel
and tall as a man, spreads its large umbels of tiny white flowers on
curving branches like a vase-shaped elm in miniature. Twice or thrice
pinnate leaves, toothed like a tenon saw, with conspicuous veins
ending in the notches, brand it as the beaver poison, otherwise known
as the musquash root and spotted cowbane. From its tuberous roots was
prepared the poison which Socrates drank without fear; why should he
fear death? Does he not still live among us? Does he not question us,
teach us? Yellow loose-strifes and rattle-box are in the swamp, and a
patch of swamp milkweed with brilliant fritillaries sipping nectar
from its purple blossoms. White wands of meadow-sweet, clusters of
sensitive fern, a big shrub of pussy willow with cool green leaves as
grateful now as the white and gold blossoms were in April; white
trunks and fluttering leaves of small aspens where the grosbeak has
just finished nesting; bushy willows and withes of young poplar;
nodding wool-grasses and various headed sedges; all these are between
the roadside and the fence. There the elder puts out blossoms of spicy
snow big as dinner-plates and the Maryland yellow-throat who has four
babies in the bulky nest at the foot of the black-berry bush sits and
sings his "witchity, witchity, witchity." The lark sparrow has her
nest at the foot of a thistle and her mate has perched so often on a
small elm near-by that he has worn several of the leaves from a
topmost twig. In the late afternoons and evenings he sits there and
vies with the indigo bunting who sits on the bare branches at the top
of a tall red oak, throwing back his little head and pouring out sweet
rills of melody. Near him is the dickcissel, incessantly singing from
the twig of a crab-apple; these three make a tireless trio, singing
each hour of the day. The bunting's nest is in a low elm bush close to
the fence where a wee brown bird sits listening to the strains of the
bright little bird above and the little dickcissels have just
hatched out in the nest at the base of a tussock not very far away.
Now the evening primrose at the side of the road has folded all its
yellow petals, marking the near approach of noon. Growing near it on
this rise of the road are lavender-flowered bergamot, blue and gold
spiderwort, milkweeds in a purple glory, black-eyed Susans basking in
the sun, cone-flowers with brown disks and purple petals, like gypsy
maidens with gaudy summer shawls. Closer to the fence are lemon-yellow
coreopsis with quaint, three-cleft leaves; thimble weeds with fruit
columns half a finger's length; orange-flowered milkweed, like the
color of an oriole's back, made doubly gay by brilliant butterflies
and beetles. On the sandy bank which makes the background for this
scene of splendor, the New Jersey tea, known better as the red-root,
lifts its feathery white plumes above restful, gray-green leaves. Just
at the fence the prairie willow has a beauty all its own, with a
wealth of leaves glossy dark green above and woolly white below.
There's a whine as if someone had suddenly struck a dog and a brownish
bird runs crouching through the grass while little gingery-brown
bodies scatter quickly for their hiding places. It was near here that
the quail had her nest in June and these are her babies. I reach down
and get one, a little bit of a chick scarcely bigger than the end of
my thumb. The mother circles around, quite near, with alarm and
distress until I back away and watch. Then she comes forward, softly
clucking, and soon gathers her chickens under her wings.
Similar behavior has the ruffed grouse which you may still find
occasionally in the deeper woods. Stepping over the fallen tree you
send the little yellow-brown babies scattering, like fluffy golf-balls
rolling for cover. Invariably the old bird utters a cry of pain and
distress, puts her head down low and skulks off through the grass and
ferns while the chicks hasten to hide themselves. Your natural
inclination is to follow the mother, and then she will take very short
flights, alternated with runs in the grass, until she has led you far
from her family. Then a whirr of strong wings and she is gone back to
the cover where she clucks them together. But if you first turn your
attention to the chicks the mother will turn on her trail, stretch out
her long, broad, banded tail into a beautiful fan, ruffle up the
feathers on either side of her neck and come straight towards you.
Often she will stretch her neck and hiss at you like a barn-yard
goose. There is a picture of the ruffed grouse worth while. You will
learn more about the ruffed grouse in an experience like this than you
can find in forty books. If you pause to admire this turkey-gobbler
attitude of the grouse she thinks she has succeeded in attracting your
attention. The tail fan closes and droops, the wings fall, the ruffs
smooth down. With her head close to the ground, she once more attempts
to lead you from her children. If you are heartless enough you may
again hunt for the chicks and back will come the old bird again,
almost to your feet, with feathers all outstretched.
* * * * *
Creamy clusters of the bunch-flower rise from the brink of the brook
and near-by there are the large leaves of the arrow-head, with its
interesting stalk, bearing homely flowers below and interesting
chalices of white and gold above. Shining up through the long grasses,
the five-pointed white stars of the little marsh bell-flower are no
more dismayed by the stately beauty of the tall blue bell-flower over
the fence, with its long strings of blossoms set on edge like dainty
Delft-blue saucers, than the Pleiades are shamed by the splendor of
Aldebaran and Betelguese on a bright night in November. Clover-like
heads of the milkwort decorate the bank, and among the mosses around
the bases of the trees the little shin-leaf lifts its pretty white
racemes.
Twisting and twining among the hazel, long stems of wild yam display
pretty leaves in graceful strings, each leaf set at the angle which
secures the greatest amount of light. On the wire fence the
bittersweet hangs and reaches from thence to the top of the low
hawthorne, seeking the strength of the sun for the ripening of its
pods, which slowly change from green to yellow as the month advances.
Thickly-prickled stems of green-brier, the wild smilax, rise to the
height of the choke-cherry shrubs and the branches lift themselves
by means of two tendrils on each leaf-stalk to the most favorable
positions for the sunlight. Under these broad leaves the catbird is
concealed. Elegant epicurean, he is sampling the ripening
choke-cherries. He complains querulously at being disturbed, flirts
his tail and flies. Stout branches of sumac, with bark colored and
textured much like brown egg-shell, sustain a canopy of wild grape,
the clusters of green fruit only partly hidden by the broad leaves.
Curiously beautiful are the sumac's leaves, showing long leaf-stalks
of pink purple and pretty leaflets strung regularly on either side.
The sumac's fruit, unlike the grape's, seeks no concealment; proudly
lifting its glowing torches above the leafy canopy, it lights the old
road for the passing of the pageant of summer. From greenish gold to
scarlet, swiftly changing to carmine, terra cotta, crimson and garnet,
so glows and deepens the color in the torches. When comes the final
garnet glow not even the cold snows of winter can quench it.
[Illustration: "THE SUMAC'S TORCHES LIGHT UP THE OLD ROAD" (p. 35)]
Around the fence-post, where the versi-colored fungus grows, the
moon-seed winds its stems, like strands of twine. Its broad leaves are
set like tilted mirrors to catch and reflect the light. Trailing among
the grass the pea-vine lifts itself so that its blossoms next month
shall attract the bees. The wild hop is reaching over the bushes for
the branches of the low-growing elm from which to hang its fruit
clusters. Circling up the trunk and the spreading branches of the elm,
the Virginia creeper likewise strives for better and greater light.
Flower and vine, shrub and tree, each with its own peculiar inherited
tendencies resulting from millions of years of development, strives
ever for perfection. Shall man, with the civilization of untold
centuries at his back to push him on, do less? Endowed with mind and
heart, with spiritual aspirations and a free will, shall he dare cease
to grow? Equipped so magnificently for the light, dare he deliberately
seek the darkness and allow his mental and spiritual fruits to wither?
These are questions to ponder as the afternoon shadows lengthen.
If you walk through the wooded pasture, close by the side of the
roadside fence, the hollow stumps hold rain-water, like huge tankards
for a feast. Sometimes a shaft of sunlight shoots into the water,
making it glow with color. Fungi in fantastic shapes are plentiful.
Growing from the side of a stump, the stem of the fawn-colored pluteus
bends upwards to the light. Golden clavarias cover fallen trunks with
coral masses and creamy ones are so delicately fragile that you almost
fear to touch them lest you mar their beauty. Brown brackets send out
new surfaces of creamy white on which the children may stencil their
names. That vivid yellow on a far stump is the sulphur-colored
polyporus. Green and red Russulas delight the eye. The lactaria sheds
hot, white milk when you cut it, and the inky coprinus sheds black
rain of its own accord. Puff-balls scatter their spores when you smite
them and the funnel-shaped clitocybe holds water as a wine-glass holds
Sauterne.
Springing from a log lying by the fence a dozen plants of the
glistening coprinus have reared themselves since morning, fresh from
the rain and flavored as sweet as a nut. Narrow furrows and sharp
ridges adorn their drooping caps; these in turn are decorated with
tiny shining scales. Nibbling at the nut-like flesh, I am touched with
the nicety, the universality of nature's appeal to the finer senses
and sentiments. Here is form and color and sparkle to please the eye,
flesh tender to the touch, aroma that tests the subtlest sense of
smell, taste that recalls stories of Epicurean feasts, millions of
life-germs among the purple-black gills, ready to float in the streams
of the atmosphere to distant realms and other cycles of life. No dead
log and toadstools are here, but dainty shapes with billions of
possibilities for new life, new beauties, new thoughts.
* * * * *
[Illustration: YOUNG BLUE-JAY TRYING TO CLIMB BACK TO ITS NEST
"THE WOOD THRUSH HAS A LATE NEST IN A YOUNG ELM" (p. 41)
"THE CHIPMUNK HOLDS IN HIS PAWS A BIT OF BREAD" (p. 20)]
Goldfinches ride on the billows of the air, now folding their pinions
and shooting silently downward into the trough of the sea, then
opening their wings and beating their way upwards, singing meanwhile.
Going over the woods they fly twenty to thirty feet above the tops of
the tallest trees, but when they reach the meadow lands they drop
to about the same height above the surface of the ground. Only a few
of them are nesting yet. The tall thistle by the roadside is nearly
ten feet high, but its heads have not fully opened. They like its down
for their nests and its seeds to feed the fledgelings. They fly in
pairs often and in the evenings they cling prettily to the catnip by
the pasture fence, digging into each calyx for its four sweet nutlets.
The woodthrush has a late nest in a young elm; her first family was
eaten by the blue-jays just after the hatching,--so were the young
grosbeaks in a nearby tree, but the cedar waxwings were slain and
eaten by the cannibalistic grackles. A blue-jay is just approaching
the wood pewee's nest in the burr oak, but the doughty husband does
battle with the fierceness of a kingbird and chases him away. Three
tiny birdlings, covered with hairs soft and white as the down of a
thistle, are in the nest, which is saddled snugly to the fork of a
horizontal tree. In another nest, near by, the three eggs have only
just been laid. The path which used to run under the over-hanging
trees is grown up with grasses. Here the slender rush grows best, and
makes a dark crease among the taller and lighter-green grasses,
showing where the path winds. Twenty feet overhead, on the slender
branch of a white oak, is a tiny knot, looking scarcely larger than
the cup of a mossy-cup acorn. It is the nest of the ruby-throated
hummingbird, so well concealed by the leaves and by the lichens
fastened to its exterior that it would not have been noticed at all
but for the whirling wings of the exquisite creature a month ago. Her
two tiny eggs have since been safely hatched and the young birds
reared; now the nest is empty, a prize to be taken and preserved for
future study and admiration.
At the foot of a figwort stalk in the pasture, shielded by a little
sprig of choke-cherry and a wisp of grasses, a new nest is being
builded. That is why the chewink sings so happily from dawn till dark.
His summer song is now heard more often than his spring song. Through
April, May and June he sings: