WINTER has thrown a veil of lace over the islands, a wet, clinging snow
that covers every tree-trunk, rock, and stump, and turns the cedars to
mounds of fluffy whiteness. The paths lie under archways of bending,
snow-laden branches, and all the underbrush is hidden. The island wears
many jewels, for every ice-incrusted twig flashes a cluster of diamonds,
the orange berries of the bittersweet, each encased in clear ice, are
like topaz, and the small frozen pools between the stones reflect the sky
and shine like sapphires.
There have been snows since the first week in November, but this is the
first that has remained, and how it shows the midnight activities of all
the wild folk! The porch floor is a white page on which they have left
their signatures. Here, by the storeroom door, are innumerable little
stitch-like strokes. They were made by the deer mouse’s wee paws. There
are the prints of the squirrel’s little hands and a long swathe, where
his brush swept the snow. The chickadees and nuthatches came very early.
Their three-fingered prints are all over the woodpile, and on the paths
are the blurred, ragged tracks left by the grouse’s snowshoes. Over the
hill runs a row of deep, round holes, showing that a fox has passed that
way, and the rabbit’s tracks are everywhere.
Every day the water freezes farther and farther out from the shores, and
it is increasingly difficult to force a channel through it to the open
lake. The bay in front of the Blake’s house is frozen straight across,
and I land far away on the point and scramble through the bushes to the
house when I must go over for the mail. Frozen cascades hang down over
the rocks, pale-blue, jade and softest cream color. The rocks themselves
are capped with frozen spray and the driftwood wears long beards of ice.
Walking along the beach to-day I heard a great chirping and twittering,
like the sound made by innumerable very small birds. Could a late flock
of migrants be stopping in the treetops? I wondered. But when I
searched for the birds there were none. The chirping noises came from
the thin shore ice, whose crystals, rubbed together by the gently moving
water, were making the birdlike sounds. Now and then would come a sudden
“ping” like the stroke on the wire string of a banjo, and sometimes a
clear, sustained tone, like the note of a violin.
As the ice grew thicker these sounds all stopped and over all the land
broods a profound silence. The winds are still, no bird voices come out
of the woods; even the waves seem hardly to rise and fall against the
shores. It is as though all nature were holding her breath to wait the
coming of the ice.
“When the lake freezes over, when the ice holds,” we have a habit of
saying, and, looking across the uncertainties of the shut-in time, when I
shall not be able to use the boat and when no one can cross over to me, I
too am longing for the ice.
The boat can no longer be left in the water. Any cold morning would find
it frozen in until spring. It must also be turned every evening, lest it
fill with snow in the night, so I haul that heavy skiff out on the sand;
and, sure enough, the accident, so confidently predicted by my friends,
came to pass, for in the turning the boat slipped, and down it came, full
weight across my foot.
I am somewhat a judge of pain. I know quite a good deal about suffering
of one kind and another, but this hurt was something special in the way
of an agony. It turned me sick and dizzy, and for several minutes I
could only stand and gasp, while the trees turned round and round against
the sky. When their whirling had slowed down a bit, and I had caught my
breath, I hobbled down to the edge of the lake, kicked a hole in the thin
ice with my good foot, and thrust the hurt one into the icy water. Then
I spoke aloud! I did not in the least mean to say the words that came to
my lips, no one could have been more surprised than I when I heard them,
but with my horrified face turned up to the evening sky, and the
consciousness that there was no way in the world of getting help if I
were badly hurt, I said, “Great God Almighty!”
Thinking it over, I am inclined to believe that the ejaculation was,
after all, a prayer.
Knowing that I should probably not be able to walk for days, I then
hobbled to and fro from the house to the lake, filling every pail and
tub. Then I carried in as much wood as I could, and at last took off my
shoe.
It was a wicked-looking injury, a foot swollen, bruised, and crushed. I
blessed my little medicine chest, with its bichloride and morphia
tablets, its cotton and gauze, that made the long hours of that night
endurable. For more than a week I did my housework with a knee on the
seat of a chair that I pushed along before me round the cabin and the
porch. No one came to the island, nor could I get far enough from the
house to call a passing boat.
One afternoon there was a great sound of chopping in the narrows between
this island and Blake’s Point. I called, but no one answered. Later I
learned that Henry Blake had left a herring net there and that it had
frozen in. But at that time I felt only the faintest interest in
whatever was going forward. They might have chopped a way through to
China and I would not have cared.
The long days dragged on, while my hurt foot slowly healed. I may say
here that it was never fully healed until the following spring. I had
always to keep it bandaged even after it had ceased to pain and it was
not until May that I could forget that it had been injured.
On the eighth the calm weather broke in a day of wild winds and flying
clouds, when the waves rolled in on the shores, and the driftwood pounded
on the beaches. At evening, when the storm had lulled, the lake looked
like a wide expanse of crinkled lead foil.
Next morning I waked to a bright blue day and dazzling sunshine. At
first I feared that I had been suddenly deafened, the stillness so
stopped my ears. Then I realized what had happened. There was no sound
of the moving water. The ice had come!
The lake was a silver mirror that reflected every tree, every bowlder,
every floating cloud. The islands hung between two skies, were lighted
by two suns. An eagle, soaring over the lake, saw his double far below,
even to his white back, that flashed in the sunlight when he wheeled.
In the glancing beauty of that morning my heart flung open all her doors,
my breath came quickly, and my spirit sang. For the first time in my
life I understood how frost and cold, how ice and snow, can praise and
magnify the Lord.
That evening the snow came, turning the lake into a vast white plain
“white as no fuller on earth could white it,” that lay without spot or
wrinkle under the Indian’s Moon of the Snowshoes.
This was the ninth of the month. Then followed long, silent days, when I
read and sewed and dreamed, and forgot what day of the week it was, or
what time of the day, and wondered how long it would be before someone
could come over from the mainland to tell me that the ice was safe to
walk on.
Each afternoon I hobbled to the beach and paraded there, according to
agreement with Mary Blake, to let her see that I was still alive. The
rabbit came in and sat by the fire—a queer, silent little companion. The
red squirrel scampered all over the outside of the house, peeping at me
through the windows, and whisking in at the open door to steal a potato
or a nut, when he thought my back was turned. Funny little Rufus! He
spent a long, hard-working day, stealing the contents of a basket of
frozen potatoes put out for his amusement. For months afterward I found
those potatoes, hard as bullets, stuck in the crotches of the cedars all
over the island.
From the ninth to the nineteenth I saw no one and heard no voice. Then I
descried two men walking across the lake. They carried long poles, with
which they struck the ice ahead to test its thickness. Each stroke ran
along the ice to the shore, with the sound of iron ringing against stone.
I saw the stick fall some seconds before I heard the noise.
I had never seen men walking across a lake before. I had never realized
that this lake would become a solid floor on which men could walk. I
shall never forget the excitement with which I watched them do it.
[Picture: The House]
Half an hour later Jimmie Dodd burst in, with red cheeks and shining
eyes, to tell me that the ice would hold.
The way to the farm being once more open, I made my Christmas cake,
mixing it here in the cabin and carrying it three quarters of a mile
across to the Blakes’ big oven. The finished loaf came back over the
ice, an excellent cake, as all my Christmas visitors testified.
For let no one assume that because the inhabitants of this island are few
there has been no Christmas here. On the contrary, the feast began on
Christmas Eve and lasted for a week. The tree, a young white pine, was
cut on the island, the trimmings came from Toronto, and great was the
anxiety lest the ice should not be strong enough to bear the wagon that
brought them over from Loon Lake Station. But the final freeze came just
in time, and we, the rabbit and I, spent happy days tying on all the
glittering trifles that go to the making of that prettiest thing in the
world—a Christmas tree. There was a big gold star on the topmost twig.
There were oranges and boxes of candy for all invited and uninvited
children round the lake, and when all was finished, our first visitor was
a storm-driven chickadee, that wandered in and stayed with us, perched on
a glittering branch.
On Christmas Eve the Blakes came and had cake and coffee and viewed the
tree. On Christmas day, came the little Beaulacs, from Loon Bay, some
walking, some in arms, some dragged in a big wooden box over the ice, and
were refreshed with tea and bread and butter and cake, after which they
sat round the tree, regarding it with great eyes of wonder. Next day the
Forets came to help me eat the Christmas duck and tinned plum pudding,
and after them the Big John Beaulacs, from far back of Sark.
So it went, with a party every day, while the brave little tree stood
glowing and twinkling at us all. It was interesting to note how many
errands the men found to bring them to the island while the Christmas
tree was standing, and how their heavy faces lightened at sight of it.
Surely it fulfilled its purpose, sending out messages of good will and
friendliness and the love of God from the feather tip of each tiniest
twig.
At midnight on Christmas Eve I went out on the porch and walked to and
fro there in the biting cold. The rabbit, that had been sleeping, a
bunch of snow-white fur, on the woodpile, hopped down and followed at my
heels. The lake was a shield of frosted silver. The moon shone bright
as day. One great star blazed over the shoulder of the opposite
island—it might have been the very star of Bethlehem. So diamond clear
was the air, so near leaned the sky, that I might almost have reached and
touched that star. The night was so white, so still that I fancied I
could almost hear the angels’ song, and in the rainbow glory of the
moonlight could catch swift glimpses of the flashing of their wings.
We walked there, the rabbit and I, until the cold drove me in, to sleep
beside the tree and dream of a procession of little Beaulacs, creeping
over the ice, each one with a star in his hand.