confessions that begin to seem like thin ice), and by and by came to
the wood-path leading to it. How perfectly I remembered the place:
this speedy, uphill curve to the left, rounding the hill; this dense
bunch of low-branched evergreens a little farther on, under which,
with our pails full (or half full--we could not work miracles, though
we lived under the Mosaic economy), we used to creep for rest and
shade while trudging homeward on blazing summer noons. But the path
was surprisingly overgrown. At short intervals thorny smilax vines
(cat-briers) were sprawling over the very middle of it, and had to
be edged through cautiously. The appearance of things grew less and
less familiar. I must be on the right track, but surely I had gone far
enough. The broad clearing should be close at hand. I went on and on.
Yes, here was the old stone wall between Harvey White’s pasture and
Pine-tree pasture. But the pastures themselves? They were not here.
Then it came over me, with all the force and suddenness of a direct
revelation, that forty years is a long time. In less time than that a
pasture may become a forest. I pushed about a little, in one direction
and another, and finding nothing but woods, returned to the path and
retraced my steps. I might as well try to find my own lost youth as
those well-remembered huckleberry patches.
Even in that far-away time--so the recollection comes to me now--the
place was not strictly a pasture. It had been such, no doubt, and
Harvey White, whoever he was, had owned it. Probably his cattle had
once been pastured there. Now he owned no land, being nothing but a
clod himself, and this broad clearing would not have kept a single cow
from starvation. The wilderness was claiming its own again. Instead of
the grass had come up the huckleberry bushes, the New England heather.
These, with a sprinkling of blackberry vines, barberry bushes, and
savins, filled the place from end to end. We knew them all. In the
season we gathered huckleberries, blackberries, and barberries (the
last made what some gastronomic cobbler called felicitously “shoe-peg
sauce”), while the young cone-shaped cedars were of use as landmarks.
We could leave a pail or basket in the shelter of one, and with good
luck have no great difficulty in finding it again.
That was forty years ago. Now, the huckleberry bushes have followed
the grass. Massachusetts land belongs to the woods. Clear it never
so thoroughly, and with half a chance the trees will have it back
again. If you will climb any Massachusetts hill, not directly upon
the seashore,--and I am not certain that even that exception need be
made,--you will see the truth of this at once. Something like it, I
remember, was the first thing I thought of when I stood first on Mount
Wachusett. There lay the whole State, so to speak, outspread below; and
it was all a forest.
In this very Old Colony town many acres that were once excellent
pasturage are now so perfectly reconverted to woodland that no ordinary
walker over them would suspect that they had ever been anything else.
If this has happened within twenty miles of Boston, within half the
lifetime of a man, there seems to be no great danger that the State
will ever be deforested; and those of us who love wild things, and look
upon civilization as a mixed good, may be cheered accordingly.
For to-day, however, I had something else in my eye; and once back in
the road I started for the entrance to what we children knew familiarly
as “Millstone”--that is to say, Millstone Pasture; a large, irregular
clearing, or half clearing, distinguished by the presence of two broad
flat boulders, lying one upon the other. This was among the best of
our foraging grounds; a boy’s wild orchard--orchard and garden in
one. Here we gathered all the berries before named, and besides them
checkerberries (boxberries), dangleberries, and grapes.
The path leading into it was still open, but there was no need to go
far to discover that here, as in Harvey White’s, the wood had got
the upper hand of everything else. “I should starve here,” I said
to myself, “at the very height of the berry season.” Nothing looked
natural--nothing but the superimposed boulders. They had suffered no
change, or none except an inevitable “subjective” dwindling. As for
the old apple orchard near them (in which I shot my last bird upwards
of twenty years ago), it was more like a cedar grove, although by
searching for them one could still discover a few stumps and ruins of
what had once been apple trees. “Perish your civilization!” Mother
Nature seemed to be saying. “Give me a few years, and I will undo the
whole of it.” I was half glad to hear her. The planter of the orchard
was dead long ago, and his work had followed him.
But the holly trees! They are Nature’s own children. I would have a
look at them, remembering perfectly, I thought, the exact spot where
a pretty bunch used to grow. And I found them, after a protracted
search--but no longer a pretty clump. One tree was perhaps fifteen
feet high--a beanpole, which still put forth at the very top a few
branchlets, one or two feet in length, just to prove itself alive. The
rest of the bunch had been cut down to the ground. All that remained
was a few suckers, each with a spray of green leaves. The sight was
pitiful. Poor trees! They were surrounded by a dense wood, instead
of standing in the open, as they had done in my day. And between
the competition of the pines and the knives and axes of collectors
of Christmas greenery, they were nigh to extermination. By and by,
however, before many years, the pines will fall under the axe. Then, I
dare say, the old holly roots will have their turn again. Then, too,
the checkerberry vines will enjoy a few years of fruitfulness. So the
wheel of fortune goes round, all the world over, in the wood no less
than in the city. There is no scotching it. As well try to scotch the
earth itself. All things are at seesaw.
“They say the lion and the lizard keep
The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;
And Bahrám, that great hunter--the wild ass
Stamps o’er his head, but cannot break his sleep.”
If such things have happened, if Nineveh and Babylon flourished and
came to naught, why wonder at the decline and fall of Old Colony berry
pastures?
SQUIRRELS, FOXES, AND OTHERS
“Do you know where there are any flying squirrels?” I asked a friend,
two or three weeks ago. My friend, I should mention, is a farmer,
living a mile or two away from the village, and, being much out-of-doors
with his eyes open, has sometimes good things to show me. With
all the rest, he has more than once taken me to a flying squirrel’s
tree and given me a chance to see the creature “fly.”
This peculiar member of the squirrel family, as all readers may be
presumed to know, is nocturnal in its habits, and for that reason is
seldom seen by ordinary strollers. Once my friend, who was just then at
work in the woods, found a hollow tree in which one was living, and we
visited the spot together. I posted myself conveniently, and he went up
to the tree and hammered upon it with his axe. Out peeped the squirrel
at a height of perhaps twenty feet, and as the blows continued it
“took wing” and came to the ground safely, and more or less gracefully,
alighting at the foot of another tree some distance away. At all
other times I have seen the flight from outside nests, as they may be
called--bulky aggregations of leaves and twigs placed in the bare tops
of moderately tall, slender trees, preferably gray-birches, and mostly
in swampy woods.
On the present occasion my friend told me that he knew of no nests now
in use, but that if I would come to his house the next morning he would
go with me in search of some. I called for him at the hour appointed.
Squirrels or no squirrels, it is always worth while to take a walk in
good company.
He led me along the highway for a quarter of a mile, and then struck
into a wood-road, which presently brought us into a swampy forest, with
here and there a bit of pond, which we must go out of our way to cross
on the ice (a light snow had covered it within twenty-four hours),
on the lookout for fox tracks and what not. We were headed for the
“city-house lot,” he told me.
“The city-house lot,” said I; “what is that?”
“Why, there used to be two or three houses over in this direction.
The largest of them, the one that stood the longest, was known as the
city-house. More than fifty years ago, before my father came here to
live, it was moved to a place on the main road. You must remember it.
It was pulled down, or fell to pieces, within six or eight years.”
I did remember it, but had never known its name or its history. The
surprising thing about the story was the fact that there was no
indication of a road hereabout, nor any sign that there had ever been
one; and all the while we were plunging deeper and deeper into the
woods, now following a foot-path, now leaving it for a short cut among
the trees. By and by we came to a drier spot, and an old cellar-hole.
This was not the city-house cellar, however, but that of some smaller
house. About it were evidences of a former clearing, though a casual
observer would scarcely have noticed them. Tufts of beard-grass stood
above the snow,--“Indian grass,” my guide called it,--and the remains
of an ancient stone wall still marked the line, if one might guess,
where the grazing-land had been divided from the tillage. It was a farm
in ruins.
Soon we came to a larger cellar-hole, of which, as of the smaller one,
bushes and trees had long ago taken possession. Here had stood the city
house, a “frame” structure (whence its name, probably), a famous affair
in its day, the pride of its owner’s heart. It was one of five or six
houses, if I understood my informant correctly, that had once been
scattered over this part of the town of Weston (or what is at present
the town of Weston) within a radius of a mile or so. Of them all not a
trace remains now but so many half-filled cellars.
I thought of something I had been saying lately about the manner in
which the forest reclaims Massachusetts land as soon as its human
possessors let go their hold upon it. Now it was suggested to me
that if a man is ambitious to do something that will last, he had
better not set up a house or a monument, but dig a hole in the ground.
Humility helps to permanence. The lower you get, the less danger of
falling. Nature is slower to fill up than to pull down, though she will
do either with all thoroughness, give her time enough. To her a man’s
life is but a clock’s tick, and all his constructions are but child’s
play in the sand. A trite bit of moralizing? Well, perhaps it is; but
it sounded anything but trite, as the old cellar-hole spoke it to me. A
word is like a bullet: its force is in the power behind it.
Not far beyond this point we found ourselves in a gray-birch swamp.
Here, if anywhere, should be the nests we were in search of. And soon
we began to see them, one here, another there. We followed the same
course with them all; my companion shook or jarred the tree, while I
stood off and watched for the squirrels. And the result was alike in
all cases. Every nest was empty. We tried at least a score, and had
our labor for our pains. “There _are_ no flying squirrels this year,”
my companion kept saying. Perhaps they had migrated. With one or two
exceptions, indeed, the nests could be set down in advance--from their
color and evident dilapidation--as being at least a year old.
Once we started a rabbit, and here and there a few chickadees accosted
us. Once, I think, we heard the voice of a golden-crowned kinglet. For
the rest, the woods seemed to be deserted, and at the end of our long
détour we came back to the road half a mile above the point at which we
had left it.
And still the world is not depopulated, even in winter, nor are all the
pretty wild animals asleep. The snakes are, to be sure, and the frogs
(though hylas were peeping late in December), and the chipmunks and the
woodchucks; but there is abundant life stirring, nevertheless.
Yesterday I called on my friend again, and together we walked up the
road--a back-country thoroughfare. This time, also, a light snow had
just fallen, and my companion, better informed than I in such matters,
began to discuss footprints with me.
“You know this one?” he asked.
“Oh, yes; a rabbit.”
“And this one?”
“A fox,” said I, doubtfully.
“Yes, indeed. See the shape and size of the foot. Yes, that’s a fox.”
“And this one?”
“Oh, that’s a kitty.” (A cat, he meant to say.) “Strange how many cats
are prowling about this country at night,” he continued. “I have caught
two this season, and C---- has caught two.”
“Do you skin them?”
“Yes,” with a laugh.
Here were red-squirrel tracks, and here a big dog’s, and here again a
fox’s. At another point a bevy of quail had crossed the road. “One,
two, three,” my farmer began to count. “Yes; there were twelve.” I had
remarked, just before, that I hadn’t seen a quail for I didn’t know
how long. “And look here,” he said, as we approached the farm on our
return. He led the way to a diminutive chicken-coop sitting by itself
in the orchard. A single hen, which had been ailing, was confined in
it, he said. A fox had gone round and round it in the night, and once
had stopped to scratch at the back side of it.
“He knew what was in there,” said I. The farmer laughed.
“Oh, he is an old fellow,” he answered. “I have a trap set for him just
where he used to pass. Now he crosses the field, but he goes round that
spot! I see his tracks. They say it is easy to trap foxes. Perhaps it
is; but it isn’t for me.”
Yet he has shown me--not this year--more than one handsome skin.
Once, too, he showed me the fox himself. Hounds were baying in the
distance as I came to the house on my Sunday morning walk, and we spoke
of their probable course. He thought it likely that they would cross a
certain field, and taking a by-road that would carry us within sight of
it, we kept our eyes out till the dogs seemed to have diverged in the
wrong direction. Then I was walking carelessly along, talking as usual
(a bad habit of mine), when my companion seized me by both shoulders
and swung me sharply about. “Look at that!” he said. And there stood
the fox, five or ten rods away, facing us squarely. He had come up
a little rise of ground, and had stopped as he saw us. But for my
friend’s muscular assistance, I should have missed him, near as he was,
for in one second he was gone; and though we scaled the wall instantly
and ran up the slope, we got no further sight of him.
Yes, if you are a discouraged, winter-killed nature lover, who has
begun to think that Massachusetts woods--woods within sight of the
State House dome--are pretty much devoid of wild life, go out after
a light snowfall and read the natural history record of a single
night. We shall not be without woods, nor will the woods be without
inhabitants, for a good while yet.
WINTER AS IT WAS
With the wind howling from the northwest, and the mercury crouching
below the zero mark, it seems a good time to sit in the house and think
of winter as it used to be. What is the advantage of growing old, if
one cannot find an hour now and then for the pleasures of memory?
The year’s end is for the young. Such is the order of the world,
the universal paradox. Opposite seeks opposite. And _we_ were young
once,--a good while ago,--and for us, also, winter was a bright
and busy season, its days all too short and too few. I speak of
“week-days,” be it understood. As for winter Sundays, in an unwarmed
meeting-house (though the sermon might be like the breath of
Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace), we should have been paragons of early piety,
beings too good to live, if we had wished the hours longer. Let their
miseries be forgotten.
On week-days, once out of school, we wasted no time. We knew where we
were going, and we went on the run. We were boys, not men. Some of
us, at least, were not yet infected with the idea that we ever should
be men. We aspired neither to men’s work nor to men’s pleasures. We
aimed not at self-improvement. We thought not of getting rich. We
might recite “Excelsior” in the schoolroom, but it did us no harm;
our innocence was incorruptible. Two things we did: we skated, and
we slid down-hill. There was always either snow or ice. The present
demoralization of the seasons had not yet begun. Winter was winter.
Snowdrifts were over your head, and ice was three feet thick. And
zero--for boys who slept in attics to which no particle of artificial
heat ever penetrated, zero was something like summer. Young America was
tough in those days.
I recall at this moment the bitterly cold day when one of our
number skated into an airhole on Whitman’s Pond. It was during the
noon recess. His home was a mile or more east of the pond, and the
schoolhouse was at least a mile west of the pond. He sank into the
water up to his chin, and saved himself with difficulty, the airhole
luckily being small and the ice firm about the edges. What would a
twentieth-century boy do under such circumstances? I can only guess.
But I know what Charles H. did. He came back to the schoolhouse first,
to make his apologies to the master; I can see him now, as he came in
smiling, looking just a little foolish; then he ran home--three miles,
perhaps--to change his clothing. And he is living still. Oh, yes, we
were tough,--or we died young.
That was while we were in the high school, when I was perhaps eleven
or twelve years old. But my liveliest recollections of winter antedate
that period by several years. Then sliding down-hill was our dearest
excitement. Ours was “no great of a hill,” to use a form of speech
common among us; I smile now as I go past it; but it could not have
suited us better if it had been made on purpose; and no half holiday
or moonlight evening was long enough to exhaust our enjoyment of the
exercise--walking up and sliding down, walking up and sliding down.
“Monotonous,” do I hear some one say? It was monotony such as would
have ended too soon though it had lasted forever. If I had a thousand
dollars to spend in an afternoon’s sport now, I should not know how
to get half as much exhilaration out of it as two hours on that
snow-covered slope afforded. There is something in a boy’s spirits that
a man’s money can never buy, nor a man’s will bring back to him.
As years passed, we ventured farther from home to a steeper and longer
declivity. Glorious hours we spent there, every boy riding his own
sled after his own fashion. Boys who _were_ boys rode “side-saddle” or
“belly-bump;” but here and there a timid soul, or one who considered
the toes of his boots, condescended to an upright position, feet
foremost, like a girl--in the language of the polite people, _sur son
séant_.
Later still came the day of the double-runner, when we slid down-hill
gregariously, as it were, or, if you will, in chorus (the word is
justified), every boy’s arms clinging to the boy in front of him. Older
fellows now took a hand with us, and we resorted to the highway. With
the icy track at its smoothest, we went the longer half of a mile, and
had a mile and a half to walk back, the “going” being slippery enough
to double the return distance.
At this time it was that there came a passing rage (such as communities
are suddenly taken with, now and then, for a certain amusement--golf,
croquet, or what not) for coasting in a huge pung. Grown people, men
and women, filled it, while one man sat on a hand-sled between the
thills and guided its course. Near the foot of the hill the road took
a pretty sharp turn, with a stone wall on the awkward side of the way;
but the excitement more than paid for the risk, and by sheer good luck
a thaw intervened before anybody was killed.
There was quiet amusement in the neighborhood, I remember, because Mrs.
C., who was distressingly timid about riding behind a horse (she could
never be induced to get into a carriage unless the animal were “old
as Time and slow as cold molasses”), saw no danger in this automobile
on runners, which traveled at the rate of a mile a minute, more or
less, with nothing between its occupants and sudden death except the
strength and skill of the amateur steersman, who must keep his own seat
and steer the heavy load behind him. So it is. A man goes into battle
with a cheer, but turns pale at finding himself number thirteen at the
dinner-table.
Sliding down-hill was such sport as no language can begin to describe;
but skating was unspeakably better. Those first skates! I wish I had
them still, though I would show them with caution, lest the irreverent
should laugh. They would be a spectacle. How voluminously the irons
curled up in front! And how gracefully as well! A piece of true
artistry. And how comfortably they were cut off short behind, so that
you could stop “in short metre,” no matter what speed you had on, by
digging your heels into the ice. And what a complicated harness of
straps was required to keep them in place. Those straps had much to
answer for in the way of cold feet, to say nothing of the passion we
were thrown into when one of them broke; and we a mile or two from
home, with the ice perfection--“a perfect glare”--and the fun at its
height. This was before the day of “rockers,” of which I had a pair
later,--and a proud boy I was. Pretty treacherous we found them to
start with, or rather to stop with; but for better or worse we got the
hang of their peculiarities before our skulls were irreparably broken.
Skating then was like whist-playing now,--an endless study. You thought
you were fairly good at it till a new boy came along and showed you
tricks such as you had never dreamed of; just as you thought, perhaps,
that you could play whist till you sat opposite a man who asked, in
a tone between bewilderment and asperity, why on earth you led him a
heart at a certain critical stage, or why in the name of common sense
you didn’t know that the ten of clubs was on your left. Art is long.
It was true then, as it is now. But what matter? We skated for fun,
as we did everything else (out of school), except to shovel paths and
saw wood. Those things were work. And work was longer even than art.
Work was never done. So it seemed. And how bleak and comfortless the
weather was while we were doing it! A cruel world, and no mistake. But
half an hour afterward, on the hillside or the pond, the breeze was
just balmy, and life--there was no time to think how good we found it.
No doubt it is true, as the poet said,--
“There’s something in a flying horse,
There’s something in a huge balloon;”
but there’s more, a thousand times over, in being a boy.
“DOWN AT THE STORE”
I talked, a week ago, as if, in my time as a boy, we lived out-of-doors
every day, and all day long, regardless of everything that winter
could do to hinder us. That was an exaggeration. Now and then there
came a time when the weather shook itself loose, as it were, and bore
down upon us with banners flying. Then the strong man bowed himself,
and even the playful boy took to his burrow. The pond might be smooth
as glass, but he did not skate; the hill-track might be in prime
condition, but he did not slide. He sang low, and waited for a change.
Not that he stayed at home from school. Let no degenerate reader, the
enfeebled victim of modern ideas, think that. The day of coddling had
not yet dawned upon New England. There was no bell then to announce
a full holiday, or “one session,” because of rain or snow. And as
truly as “school kept,” so truly the boy was expected to be there. No
alternative was so much as considered. But on such a morning as we now
have in mind he went at full speed, looking neither to right nor left,
and he thanked his stars when he came in sight of the village store.
That, whether going or coming, he hailed as a refuge. Possibly he had a
cent in his pocket, a real “copper,” and felt it in danger of burning
through; but cent or no cent, he went in to warm his fingers and his
ears, and incidentally to listen to the talk of the assembled loafers.