WE are at the very heart of winter now. It is “_le grand frête_,” that I
have been secretly dreading, and all my ideas of it are changing as the
quiet days go on. Winter in the woods has always seemed to me the dead
time—the season of darkness and loneliness and loss. I find it only the
pause before the birth of a new year. If I break off a twig, it is green
at the heart, when I brush away the snow, the moss springs green beneath
it. Close against the breast of the meadow lie the steadfast, evergreen
rosettes of the plantain, sorrel, moth mullen, and evening primrose,
waiting in patience for the melting of the snow. I never dip a pail into
the hole in the ice without bringing up a long trailer of green
waterweed, or a darting, flitting little whirligig beetle—the
gyrinus—somewhat less lively than in summer, to be sure, but still active
and alert. There is a big, fresh-water clam lying at the bottom of the
waterhole. He breathes and palpitates, lolling out a soft pink body from
the lips of a half-open shell.
Yes, winter here is only a slumber, and everything is stirring in its
sleep. They all proclaim again the old, old covenant, made with the
perpetual generations, that promise of the sure return of seedtime and
harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night, that shall
not cease while the earth remains.
The colors of winter are slate-blue and gray, laid on a background of
black and white. The chickadees and nuthatches wear them—black velvet
caps, gray coats, white waistcoats. In the mornings long, slate-blue
shadows stretch away from the points of all the islands, and every
smallest standing weed casts its tiny blue shadow across the snow. The
ice is darkly iridescent, like the blue pigeon’s neck and head.
The dawns come late, the sunsets early, and in the twilight the mice
steal out from the woods and climb up and down on the window screens,
little misty, gray blurs moving swiftly against the soft, gray dusk.
Through the long evenings, when supper is over, the curtains drawn and
the long sides of the big box stove glowing red, I read and think and
dream. All the while the timbers of the house crack and snap with the
cold, the trees twist and creak in the wind, and the ice groans and
mutters. Now and again it gives a long sigh, as though some heavy animal
were imprisoned under it and were struggling to escape. I imagine him
heaving at it with a great shoulder, grunting as he pushes, and sinking
back to rest before pushing again. Late in the night comes a long roar,
as though the beast had broken forth and were calling to his mate.
[Picture: A point of one of the Islands]
Most people undress to go to bed. Here I undress and dress again,
putting on heaviest woolen underwear, long knit stockings, flannel gown
and sweater over all. I creep into bed and lie between flannel sheets
and under piled blankets, and throw a fur coat across the foot, in
preparation for that first hurried dash across the room at dawn.
There is only one anguished moment in the twenty-four hours. It is when
the fire has burned out, and the cold wakes me. My movements then are
reduced to the least possible number. Almost with one motion I spring
out of bed, fling the window shut, tear back the whole top of the stove,
throw in fresh logs, put on the coffeepot, then skurry back to bed to
doze until the cabin is warm.
There is not the least trouble about keeping my stores cool. The problem
is to prevent their freezing. The potatoes and eggs freeze in the very
room with me, a pot of soup, set in the outer vestibule, is a hard block
from which I crack a piece with the ax when I wish a hot supper. The
condensed milk is hard frozen, the canned plum puddings rattle about in
their tins like so many paving stones, and it takes all day to heat them.
Early in December, I laid a jagged bit of ice on the corner of the porch,
and there it lies, its shape quite unchanged through weeks of bitter
weather.
There is an inch or two of ice over the waterhole every morning. When I
go to fill the pails, I take the little ax along to chop my cistern open,
but gradually the walls of ice close in and about once a week someone
must cut me a fresh waterhole in another spot on the lake.
The drying of the weekly wash is a most perplexing thing. Clothes hung
outside the house freeze immediately of course. If they are hung inside,
the room is filled with their steam. My only plan is to heat the cabin
red-hot, hang them indoors, bank the fire for safety and take to the lake
or go a-visiting, for a certain number of clean clothes one must have, if
only to keep up one’s self-respect.
This morning I woke so stiff with cold that I was almost afraid to move
in bed, lest a frozen finger or toe should drop off. There was no more
sleep, so, cowering over the stove, I watched the sunrise, more augustly
beautiful than I have ever seen it. The bright crescent of last month’s
moon hung, point downward, on a sky of mouse-gray velvet. Over it stood
the morning star. Along the eastern horizon lay a line of soft
brightness, that glowed through a veil of gray gauze. Very slowly this
bright line widened while the snow field grew slate-blue, then purple,
and the jagged tree line of the forest stood out in silhouette, black
pines, cedars, and hemlocks against a yellow sky. Trees and bushes near
at hand stole out from the shadows, patterns of black lace against the
white ground, and sharply visible. The horizon line was now tinged with
red, the sky was changing to a tender yellow-gray, shading to pale green
as it neared the zenith. The paling moon hung now against a background
of rose and saffron. The star still blazed above it like a lamp, until,
suddenly, a fiery streak appeared on the horizon, and star and moon faded
away before the red disk of the sun.
Toward noon the cold was less intense, and I ventured out to get some
long-delayed mail at the farm. Not a bird was abroad, not a rabbit track
lay on the paths. In fur coat, fur hood, and high rubber boots I plowed
a way across the lake, where the level snow, knee-high, drifted in over
the tops of the boots and formed an icy crust around my stockinged feet.
At the farm I learned that the thermometer at Loon Lake Station had
registered thirty-five degrees below zero at seven o’clock that morning.
Even then, in the sun, on the Blakes’ south porch it stood at twenty
below.
At home in the afternoon all my little pensioners were out to greet me.
The white-breasted nuthatch was clinging, head down, on a birch pillar,
his head, twisted back at a neck-dislocating angle, showed his black cap
perched over one eye, and gave him an indescribably rakish, disreputable
appearance.
“Yank, yank,” he observed, irritably, as though to chide me for keeping
him waiting so long for food. The air was full of the plaintive winter
notes of the chickadees. Peter, the rabbit, was sitting hunched against
the kitchen door, a forlorn little figure.
The feeding of my live stock has become quite a large part of the duty of
each day. The rabbit waits at the door for his slice of bread, and, if
that door is left ajar, he is quite apt to hop inside and help himself to
anything he finds standing on the hearth. The squirrel has his toast and
cold potato on the woodpile, the birds their crumbs. The bushes present
a very odd appearance, hung with bits of bacon rind for the chickadees.
The other night there came another little boarder, in the person of a
very small deer mouse, that slipped into the cabin and fell down between
the wire screen and the lower casement of the north window. Between the
netting and the window frame there is space enough to make a very
satisfactory runway for a very tiny mouse, and there he cowered, peering
at me, with terrified, bright eyes. The window panes open in on hinges,
like a French casement, so my first impulse was to shut the upper half
and keep him prisoner, knowing that if he once ran at large in the house
I could never catch him, and that he would make havoc among the stores.
He looked so hungry, trembling there, with his tiny, pink hands clasped
on his breast, that I dropped him down a bit of bacon. Then he shivered
so piteously that I dropped also a fluff of absorbent cotton, which he
seized and instantly made into a little Esquimeau hut. This he placed in
the corner best sheltered from the wind, turned its door in toward the
glass, and retired, closing that opening with a bit of cotton, and I saw
him no more by day.
A deer mouse is the prettiest little beast imaginable, somewhat smaller
than the house mouse, and with very large eyes. His fur is dark brown,
very soft and thick and with a darker streak along the spine. His breast
is white, his legs white too, ending in tiny pink paws with wee
fingernails, the exact size of the eye of a number five needle. His ears
are long and fringed with black, his head very much like the head of a
doe. He is nocturnal in habit, staying up in the morning until after his
breakfast and mine, then retiring for the day, to come out at twilight
and run up and down the window screen for exercise. So long as I keep
this window closed he can’t get out, and I can study him through the
glass at my leisure.
Who ever sees a deer mouse at home? Walking through the stubble field
one sometimes starts one, and away he goes like a flash. Here I have
this little wild thing living in my house, apparently quite content. He
shall stay as long as he seems well and happy. When I think he is pining
he shall go free, but he is quite as well off in his little hut as he
would be in the cast-off vireo’s nest that is, in all probability, his
winter home. Snow drifts in and covers it, to be sure, but he seems snug
and warm and is growing sleek and fat on a diet of bacon and apple.
Since the coming of the ice I find that I must keep more cooked stores on
hand, not only for myself and for the birds and beasts, but for the
frequent visitors that come driving up the lake to the door. They race
along the ice in sleighs and buggies and stop at the island. When they
come they stay to the next meal, so there must be materials for a party
always ready. It is only fair to state that the rule works quite as well
the other way round, for I am always welcome to drop in at any house near
which I happen to be at meal time. Any passing guest may draw his chair
to the table and partake of what is set thereon. No apologies are
offered for the food. It may be only a pot of tea and a biscuit, but
whatever it is you are welcome, and that, by your leave, is hospitality.
Oh, Many Islands, place of the good neighbors! I close my eyes to see
picture after picture passing across the screen of memory. There is
Henry Blake giving his time and labor that my house may be warm and
weather proof; there is Mary Blake with daily gifts of good things to eat
and counsel for my inexperience. I see the little fishing boats bobbing
against the rocks as the men stop at the island to throw me off a bass
and some silver herring as they pass with the day’s catch. There are
John Beaulac’s two little girls scrambling through the bushes to bring me
some venison when father has killed a deer, and I see Anna Jackson
putting a big jug of maple syrup in the sleigh that brings me home on a
Sunday.
I see too Granny Drapeau’s earnest old face, as I hear her say:
“Eh, but I was feared for you last night, when the wind blowed so strong.
I couldn’t sleep fer thinkin’ of you, all alone on that island. Come
daylight I says to Andy, ‘Look over an’ tell if you kin see her smoke.’
For if ever that smoke is not a’risin’ I’ll send one of the men over to
see what’s wrong.”
Daily kindnesses, daily acts of friendliness for the stranger woman, who
came from nowhere, to stay awhile and will go away, they know not where.