hardly were their backs turned before the surgent vitality of spring
swept upward from the earth-sheltered roots and burgeoned from the gray
stumps in adventitious shoots that flushed purple with the excess of
young blood in them. Four feet they grew, these new shoots, that year,
and as much more the next, and now another forest of young oaks, black,
white, red, scarlet, and scrub romps where the elder forest stood in
majesty. Its leaves are fewer in number, but of enormous size and full
of the riot of young life, with all the vigor of the parent tree sent up
from the great deep roots.
Now their tide of sap is flowing back and the deep bronze-green is
turning to the richest crimson and lake. Through these the golden
radiance of the sun is drowned in a sea of bacchanal glory that makes
the eye drunk and bewildered with its wine of crimson fires. To look
toward it directly is to face a furnace of vivid liquid flames that
makes the whole world green with flying blots of complementary color as
you look away. Looking north or south to relieve the eye, you find that
the rich color is still caught cunningly in the curves and facets of the
leaves that glow like fire-rubies set in mosaics of chrysoprase,
almandite, garnet, and carnelian. Turn again so that your back is to the
sun and your eye rests among soft depths of umber lighted by rich reds
that do not dazzle and flanked by tans and beryl. It is a world of glow
and warmth and color that will long outlast the scarlets and yellows of
the other deciduous trees, and even in the dead of winter the sunset
fires will glow and flare in remembrances of these colors in the
still-clinging leaves.
THE DAY THAT SUMMER CAME BACK
The summer came back to-day, trailing gossamer garments over the pasture
and adding the romance of August to the glamour of the mid-October
woods. Where luminous purples hung deep in the shadows of the distance
it painted them with a soft gray-blue bloom like that upon the grape.
The undulating hills were as soft with it as if they were waves of the
sub-tropic reaches of the Gulf Stream, where a wonderful film of purple
efflorescence shimmers as far as eye may see.
The tan of hickories and the tawny yellow of chestnuts seem to break
through this haze as the floating gulf weed does off Turk’s Island or
among the Bahamas, and when birds lift from the tree tops and sail away,
it is as if a school of flying fishes were darting across your steamer’s
prow. The softly-breathing southern air is welling up from this
mid-ocean river of mysterious romance and floating films of dreams all
along our too clear-cut hills.
To-morrow the wind will be in the northwest again, the morning sun will
glint on fields that are hoar with frost, and in the afternoon the Blue
Hills will be blue no more, but brown with the rustling tannin of dead
scrub oak leaves seen too clearly,--gray with granite angles, and
sharply cut against a sky from which all dreams have fled. We had
thought the summer too long and too hot, we welcomed the crispness and
vigor of autumn, but to-day we walked abroad with joy in the warmth
that again thrills us as with a fine touch of youth come back, and as
little crinkles of heat shimmer upward from the brown fields we push
forward, eager to bathe in it all once more.
All the out-door world seems dreamy with the same delight. The blue jays
flutter back and forth on softer wing, and their usual strident clangor
is subdued to an almost caressing babble, in which you think you hear
the tones of spring love-making. They know the feel of nesting weather,
and though it is but for a day it soothes them to happy response. This
morning a robin, sure that spring had come again, sat up on the elm tree
outside my window and greeted it with full-throated song, just as he had
in June, and all day long there has been twittering of birds in the
pasture and the forest.
Only a few of our host of summer visitor song birds remain, and the
great wave of southward migration has passed us, yet to-day the pasture
was vocal with the twittering of late passing warblers, and some even
sang, _sotto voce_, to a sand-dance accompaniment of rustling leaves.
The myrtle warblers were busy among the blue-gray, waxy, aromatic
berries of the bayberry, which is their favorite food. The crop is good
this year, portions of the pasture being almost blue with the close-set
berries, and I think the myrtle warblers will linger long with us.
Indeed, they have been reported as staying all winter when the bayberry
supply is ample and sheltered from the worst of the north winds.
If they do the robins will stay with them, for the crop of cedar
berries is a good one also. Almost all the red cedars have some, and
some are so thick-set with them that their bronze-green, now yellowing a
little with the lessening sap, is all lightened up with an alluring
blue. I do not blame the robins for lingering long with the cedar
berries. I like them myself. They are a little dry, but very pleasantly
sweet; and after the sweetness is gone there lingers on the palate a
spicy aromatic flavor which is most enticing.
Some of our Norfolk County swamps are so thickly set with swamp white
cedars that it is almost impossible for a man to push his way through
their young growth. That north wind that can cut its way to the heart of
these must be keen indeed, and here, when the berries are plentiful, you
may find not only robins, but now and then a bluebird, and more
frequently partridge woodpeckers, all winter long.
We had a killing frost only a night or two ago, the thermometer in
sheltered positions marking twenty-five to twenty-eight degrees. It
withered the grape leaves and took all tender things of the gardens and
fields. Such a temperature for a long autumn night one would think would
be death to those frail creatures of summer,--the butterflies. Yet
to-day I saw a monarch soaring on strong red wings about the top of a
great pine tree, sixty feet in air, seemingly seeking food among the
resinous tips.
Across the fields a sulphur flitted his dainty way like a yellow fleck
of animated sunshine. A few grizzled goldenrod and frost-bitten asters
still bloom feebly for him, but in the swamp, undismayed, the
witch-hazel twists its soft, yellow petal-fingers and sends out dainty
perfume for his delectation. Over at the clubhouse a hunter’s butterfly
and two well-preserved specimens of the painted lady sunned themselves
in warm spots on the shingles.
In spite of the summerlike quality of the day these seemed anxious. Now
and then they fluttered eagerly about the building trying window
fastenings and poking their heads into cracks, seemingly trying
desperately to get in. They tried on the shady sides of the building as
well as on the sunny, and though I cannot prove that it was not mere
aimless wandering, it seemed to me to be done with a definite design. I
think the painted ladies were hunting shelter in expectation that the
day was a weather breeder. I think they knew that more cold weather was
sure to follow, and though they had found shelter in which they were
able to weather the first cold snap, they feared lest the next be too
much for them, and hoped to get inside in some crevice next to a stove
funnel.
Some butterflies, notably the _Antiopa vanessa_, which appears sometimes
on warm days in February, winter successfully. Probably the _vanessa_ is
particularly resistant to cold. Probably also he has a peculiar faculty
for finding shelter and safety, and I think the two hardy examples of
_Pyrameis cardui_ showed signs of some of the same instinct.
Later, in the full heat of the afternoon, when the thermometer stood at
eighty degrees, I stood by the side of a long, straight country road
leading north and south. One monarch butterfly after another was soaring
along this road, seemingly not in haste, but making, nevertheless, a
speed of six or seven miles an hour. And every one of them was heading
due south on the trail of the one ahead, as if in a game of
follow-your-leader. Was the leader a wise old butterfly who had made the
long southern road before, and were these others monarchs of this year’s
growth following him that they might reach the goal in safety?
Someone wiser than I may answer this, but if he does I shall ask him how
he knows.
The _Anosia plexippus_, which is another name for the monarch, has
fluttered about this road all summer long, never going outside his usual
round from one flower clump to another. The cold snap of three days
before may have wakened primal instincts in him and sent him on his
southern migration, just as these may have set the _Pyrameis_ to
fluttering about the clubhouse, where there might be sheltered spots in
which to try to pass the winter in safety. Or the compelling force may
have been something entirely different. Who can ever know?
All along the borders of the swamp the witch-hazel is working out its
peculiar and mysterious destiny. It is not this belated summer day,
however, that has brought out its fragrant yellow blossoms. They
unfolded just as cheerfully in the killing frost of three nights ago.
Witch-hazel nuts are ripe now, the witch-faced husks splitting open and
showing the glossy black kernels within, about as big as an apple seed,
shaped like the enticing black eyes of the witch herself.
All among these nuts grow the scrawny blooms, sending out a delicate
fragrance which is as soft and fragile as that of early spring
flowers,--a refined and pleasing scent that brings a thought of
far-away apple blossoms. Yet on this sunny day you may not catch this
odor unless you put your face close to the flowers, for the vigor of the
sun draws up the smell of tannin from all the dry leaves underfoot till
the whole world seems a tea factory. Should the rustle of these leaves
in the light autumn breeze be the silken swish of trailing Oriental
garments, and slant-eyed people appear under pyramid hats and begin to
gather them and pack them in chests marked with strange pencilings like
those on the end of a red-winged blackbird’s egg, I for one would not be
surprised.
The blackbird himself is an Oriental mystic in disguise, and he marks
the names of his children in Chinese characters round the big end of
each egg. The next time you look into a blackbird’s nest you notice if
this is not so.
If you wish the odor of the witch-hazel blooms you must go to the swamp
a morning after a showery night. Then the odor of the dead leaves will
have been all washed out of the air, and the faint, fine fragrance of
the latest flowers of the season flits daintily out to greet you as you
fare down the path.
Yet, though flowers are rare on the third week in October and the
pungency of dead leaves pervades the swamp, the upland pastures have a
fine fragrance of their own,--a perfume so dainty and alluring that you
look for its source in bewilderment, knowing that at this time of year
no flowering shrub, no slender-blossoming vine, remains to float it down
the wind.
It is not the pitchy aroma of the white pines. These have just carpeted
all the floors of their house anew with last year’s leaves. The new
ones are not pitchy, and that resinous smell which the midsummer sun
distills is hardly to be noticed in the wood. Nor are the pasture cedars
to be thanked. Their prim, close-wrapping branches give forth a woodsy
smell when bruised. It is not a perfume, and it comes only with turmoil.
The soft southern wind bears no particle of it to your wistful senses.
The hemlocks stand, beautiful but darkly morose, on the north side of
the hill, and give forth no scent.
I searched the pasture long before I found it. Coming out from under the
white pines into an open glade on the more barren soil, where the pitch
pines begin to climb the slope, it always seemed stronger than anywhere
else. It was as if rose-crowned Cytherea and all her attendant nymphs
had just passed from perfumed baths and gone upward through the wood.
If the soft moss had shown the heel marks of dainty sandals I should not
have looked further. It was as possible that the garments of passing
nymphs should have shed sweet odors on the glade as that these should
float serenely there when all the flowers were dead. I paused among the
pitch pines to consider the matter, and one of them thrust its branch
tip directly into my face.
Then I thought I knew. The same fragrance emanated from the pitch-pine
branch, stronger, indeed, somewhat more resinous, I thought, but
practically the same. Six clubs crown the tip of every pitch-pine
branch, one standing erect like a plume in the center, five arranged
about its base at equal distances, not unlike a five-pointed star. These
are the new shoots for next year, in rudimentary form to be sure, but
all modeled carefully on what is to be.
There is the vigorous stem and the leaves as green as they will ever be
again, indeed I think greener. The whole thing, which will be a perfect
shoot a foot long, is compacted into a solid club less than an inch in
length. Enclosing this is a fibrous husk which wraps it from all cold.
Howsoever bitter the weather the life warmth of the young shoots is most
carefully protected by this wrapping. But there is more than this. An
air-tight, waterproof coating of hardened pitch is outside of the whole,
completing an exceedingly neat, tasteful, and effective seal.
The pitch-pine mother trees have completed their preserving and now sit
back and radiate perfume in satisfaction and kindly good will toward the
whole world, for this slightly resinous sweetness does not come at all
from the pitch-covered buds on the branch tips as I first thought. It
seems to emanate from the whole tree. Cut a branch and take it home with
you. Strip leaves and buds from it if you will; then smell the wood. It
is there. But more than from anywhere else it seems to come from the
mature leaves,--those which have borne the burden and the heat of the
summer, and now are losing their rich green in a ripening which befits
maturity and work well done.
All the evergreens take on this slight tendency to a mellow yellow as
the autumn waxes. It is due, no doubt, to the lessening of the sap in
the leaves. All winter they will hold it, and when the joy of spring
sends his lifeblood bounding back again, it will fade and leave them
vigorously green once more.
Crossing the glade again on my homeward way I plucked branches of
juniper so thickly studded with blue berries that there seemed scarcely
room for the scaly-pointed leaves, and in so doing I stumbled upon the
real secret of the dainty odor left by the goddess and her train. For
the matured shoots and leaves of the juniper give off a fragrance that
is as much more dainty than that of the pitch pine as that is more
dainty than the strongly resinous odor of the white pine when cut or
bruised.
Cytherea must have smiled upon the humbler juniper as she passed, and
the dwarfed and stunted shrub must have caught the warmth of her eyes
full in the heart, for it sits snug as the days shorten and radiates a
happiness that is perfume, and sends the thought of the goddess to all
who pass that way. The stronger odor of the pitch pine carries it far
on the soft south wind across the glade and down the path through the
pasture, but this is only the vehicle. The dainty essence of perfume
which stops you as if a soft hand fell upon your arm floats from the
loving heart of the rough and lowly juniper.
The sun of this day on which summer came back set in a pale sky that
flushed with a tint of rose leaves, burning long before it died to
ashes,--the cool, gray ashes of autumn twilight. Against this the
slender tracery of birch twigs stood outlined delicately. Some leaves
still cling to the birches, and these were silhouetted against the
pale-rose glow in a soft haze that made a shadowy presentment of
springtime all along the western sky. The year in its second childhood
thus slips happily away from us in dreams of its youth. Through the
August midday of the pitch-pine grove we pass to the home path among the
birches, and though October dusk slips its cool hand into ours, it is
only to lead us toward a western horizon where springtime seems still to
wait for us wistfully.
WHEN AUTUMN PASSES
Last night the superstitious leaves, forced to part from the home branch
and begin a journey on Friday, knocked on wood as they went by, hoping
thus to make a change in their luck, for the omens were all bad. The
gibbous moon was peering over the eastern wood and they saw it over
their left shoulders. Hence in their fall they turned round three times,
still for luck!
They suspected also that they were being sent off in batches of thirteen
and shivered lonesomely all the way to earth, where they scrambled
together in groups and held their breaths, listening. Now and then one
of them saw a ghost, and rustled the fact to the others, who took up
the dreadful story with little spatting sounds of terror till all rose
like a flock of frightened birds and shuddered into scrambling heaps
behind tree trunks and in fence angles. They made the night eerie with
their outcry. As fresh platoons came down the wood-knocking had the
effect of xylophone solos, the dead march in Saul played by goblins in
the lonesome trees that tossed their bare arms to the sky in mute grief.
All the out-door people seemed sorrowing, and more than half a prey to
superstitious forebodings, for the passing of the hunter’s moon marks
the passing of autumn. November, it is true, is rated as an autumn month
in the almanac, but I have no doubt that The Old Farmer knew better. He
had to divide the year into four equal segments, and he did it very
well. If November must be classed with either autumn or winter it
belongs rather with autumn. But it simply ought to be classed with
neither.
November is a month by itself, just as March is, and neither has more
than the most casual connection with the season that has gone before.
The year might better be divided into two seasons,--the one of growth,
the other of rest, with November and March sort of dead centers, as they
say in mechanics, interstellar space as they say in astronomy--voids
between the two.
These wood-knocking leaves are the last from the elms. The native maples
and ash trees were bare long ago, and though some of the still birches
hold their yellow nimbus, many others are bare already. Only the oaks
stand up to be counted with their rich crowns of red transmitting the
sunlight till those at the right angle between you and the sun flash
like fire rubies.
Yet, when I say this it is true only of the native trees of the forest.
None of the foreigners hereabout seem to ripen up in glory or, indeed,
to understand what a winter is before them and duly prepare for it. The
purple lilacs of my garden hedge show a green that may be a little
grimmer than it was in midsummer, but there is no hint of a ripening
color in them nor have they lost a leaf. Their pith is trained to
continental winters still, and though they have faced a half-century of
New England cold, they still have the habit of the Persian uplands,
which are their birthplace.
The white lilacs haven’t even that dark green, but are a gentle
shade,--almost like that of early springtime, when the leaves are hardly
as yet half grown. The apple and pear trees have lost some leaves and
others are browned by the frosts we have had, but none of those
remaining show autumn coloring as we know it. They are simply darkened
and grizzled. The Norway maples are showing a bronzy-yellow now, but
holding their leaves bravely still, as if in the memory that, though the
winter night of their homeland is long and dark, its shores are bathed
by the Gulf Stream and the cold is late in coming. I think none of the
imported trees and shrubs of Europe show the gorgeous coloring of our
native ones, though they may have been here long enough to have been
trained to it by the climate, if that is the cause of it.
Englishmen know nothing of the glory of autumn foliage until they come
to America and see it. Then they are duly impressed, though you cannot
always make them acknowledge it. Search English literature if you will,
through prose and verse, and you will find no reference to any gorgeous
reds and yellows of autumn. They don’t have them. Thomson in his
“Seasons” speaks, referring to autumn, of
“ ... a crowded umbrage, dusk and dun,
Of every hue from wan, declining green to sooty dark.”
It is a pity Wordsworth could not have been born in Cumberland County,
Maine, instead of Cumberland County, England, and have tramped the hills
of, say, West Mansfield, instead of Westmoreland, that our rich autumn
ripening might have fruited in his verse. I wonder that the English do
not plant our maples and our red oaks in their parks. It would be an
interesting experiment to watch for fifty years or a hundred and see
whether the trees changed to the English habit and lost their gorgeous
hues, and whether, if they retained them, some English poet did not rise
to the occasion and make them immortal in splendid verse.
Perhaps it would all be a failure. Our American men and women,
transplanted, so soon lose their native characteristics and ripen,
over-ripen in fact, into English men and women that there lurks with us
an underlying fear that the trees might suffer from the insidious blight
also. Perhaps it has been tried with the trees; it would be interesting
to know.
I think the leaves were afraid to go home to earth in the dark last
night, because it is rarely the custom of leaves to part from the tree
in the night time. On still nights you may camp beneath a maple whose
leaves have long glowed red and seemingly been ready to fall, and not
hear a single spirit-rapping of falling leaf against limb. The frost
may be white upon them in the morning, but not until the rising sun
touches them will they loose their hold and fall to the waiting earth.
Then with the kindly light upon them you may hear, if you listen
intently, the little chirp of contentment with which they let go and
flutter quietly down to their winter’s rest. On a still frosty morning
when the sun has first touched the trees these faint clucks make an
infinitesimal chorus that is as sprightly as the morning light.
The xylophone ghost-march of last night was a far different thing. It
came with little puffs of south wind after a bright, still day,--puffs
that died out as soon as they had done the work, and left the night
white and still under the gibbous moon. On all the leaves that had not
scurried into shelter a white frost fell that filled them with
ice-needles until they were crisp, and then sprouted miniature
ghost-ferns all along their stems and upper sides.
Thus they lay stark until the white of the night gloomed into the gray
of a daybreak fog that seemed to scatter all life in a formless void.
After leaves have once been thoroughly frozen they dance about in the
breeze no more. The forming and melting of ice crystals breaks up their
cells and leaves them sodden and no longer elastic. They sag and sink
and the chemic forces of the earth soon begin to work on them and
resolve them into salts and humus that will go the rounds and form and
nourish new leaves for another year.
You may see the ghost of autumn go up, these last mornings of October,
in this dense white fog that often lingers late into the day. Last
night was breathless with frost, after the leaves had done their ghost
dancing, until the wan moon had begun to cushion down in the velvety
blackness of the west and the gray of false dawn had stopped the winking
of low-hung eastern stars.
The world was blank with silence. Until now, no matter how dark the
night or how still, you had but to listen outdoors to hear the pulse of
nature beat rhythmically, to hear the blood surging and singing through
all her arteries. In that last hour before dawn the pulse had ceased and
the blood stood stagnant. Then some outside presence held the mirror of
the universe down close to the lips of the earth to see if she breathed.
At first it was unclouded.