IN PRAISE OF COUNTRY WINTER
Those who know the country only in summer, know it scarcely at all.
From the first November snowstorm to the last drift melting before
the winds of late March on the northern side of a pasture wall, the
winter season is a perpetual revelation of subtle colour harmonies,
of exquisite compositions, of dramas on the trodden snow, of sweet,
close-companioned hours before wood fires that crackle, shut into "a
tumultuous privacy of storm."
Our first winter began one bleak November day when the lone pine in the
potato field was outlined black against a gray sky, and over the long
mountain wall to the northwest came suddenly a puff of white vapour,
like the beginning of artillery fire, and then the shrapnel of the
snow descended upon us. Wrapped against it, we ran about the farm,
marvelling at the transformations it wrought. First it filled up the
furrows on the ploughed land, making our field like a zebra's back.
Then it whitened the sundial lawn, reminding us to take the wooden
dial post in for the winter. Then it whitened the brown earth around
the pool, where our July-sown grass had failed to make a catch, and
presently the pool was a black mirror on a field of white.
Then, as a crowning touch, it powdered the pines, and we ran among them.
Under their thick shelter the wind was not felt. We could hear the flakes
hissing against the needles overhead. All about us the white powder was
sifting down. A peep into the outside world showed all distances blotted
out by the storm. By evening the grove was a powdered Christmas card,
the naked farm fields mantles of white laid upon the earth, the lamps in
our house beacons of warmth gleaming behind us.
That snow melted, but others followed it, and by Christmas we were, as
Mike put it, snowed in for the winter. In the barn was the warm smell
of cattle. The motors had disappeared from our roads, and we went to
the village in a pung, meeting other pungs on the way. It was as if
we had slipped back a whole generation in time. Curiously enough, too,
life became more leisurely, more familiar. The great summer estates were
boarded up, the hotels closed. Only the real village people sat in
church or waited at the post-office. We who in summer had known but few
of our townsfolk now became acquainted with them all. We, too, left
our pung in the horse sheds every Sabbath morning, listened to the
nasal drone of the village choir, and joined in the social quarter-hour
which followed the service. It was an altogether different world we live
in from the summer world, and we liked it even better.
What walks we had! Either with stout boots along the roads or with
snowshoes into the deep woods, we took our exercise almost daily by
tramping, and to us the countryside was a perpetual revelation. Almost
the first thing which impressed us was the colourful quality of the
winter landscape. Even on our own thirty acres that was apparent. At
sunset of a still, peaceful day we could look forth from our south
windows across the white lawn to the dark green pines and beyond them the
exquisite iron-rust tamaracks, soft and feathery. The eastern sky
would be mother of pearl at that hour, the southern sky blue, the
western sky warm salmon, green, and gold, and the encircling hills a
soft gray. Then, as the sun sank lower, a veil of amethyst would steal
mysteriously into the feathery tamaracks and over the gray hills,
all the upper air would blush to rose, and for a brief ecstatic ten
minutes nature would sound a colour chord like a Mozartian andante.
Out on the roads we were charmed by the tawny tiger colour of the
willow shoots and the delicate lavender of the blackberry vines rising
from the snow beside a gray roadside wall. On the edge of the woods a
white birch trunk, naked of leaves, would tell like a lightning stab
against the wall of pines, while in the woods themselves, where the
sunlight flickered through, the brook would wander black as jet beneath
beautifully curved banks of snow, and a laurel bush or fern would stand
out a vivid green in a shaft of sunlight; or even a spot of brown
leaves, where a pheasant or partridge had scratched, would disclose
in its centre the vivid red of a partridge berry, a tiny woodland
colour note that we loved.
And how close our wild neighbours came in the winter! We kept out a
constant supply of suet and sunflower seeds on two or three downstair
window ledges, and while we were dining, or reading in the south room,
we could look up at any time and see chickadees or juncos or nuthatches
just beyond the pane. The pheasants, too, came to our very doors in
winter, leaving their unmistakable tracks, for they are walking birds
and set their feet in a single line.
It was not long before we began to find tracks of four-footed wild
things, a mink by the brook, a deer in the pasture, and finally a
fox which, unlike Buster, tracked with one footprint in the other,
leaving apparently but two marks. We followed him a long way on our
snowshoes--up through our pasture and across Bert's to Bert's chicken
house, and then out across the fields and into the woods. Stella had
never tracked before, and she was as keen on the scent as a Boy Scout,
reconstructing the animal's actions in her imagination as she went
along. We lost the trail finally where it crossed a road, but we picked
up deer tracks instead, and found a spot where they had eaten from the
sumach bushes, and another where they had pawed up the snow for frozen
apples in an old abandoned orchard.
"Oh, if they'd only come into _our_ orchard!" cried Stella.
It was not long afterward, one moonlight night, that I chanced to be
sitting up late, and before retiring I glanced from the window. There
was something--there were two somethings--moving about amid the
apple trees. I looked closer and ran to awake Stella. Wrapped in a
dressing-gown, she came with me to the window and peered out. There, in
the full moonlight which flooded the white world with a misty silver
radiance, were two deer pawing for apples in our orchard. Buster, by
some sixth sense, suddenly scented them, and we heard him set up an alarm
in the kitchen. The buck shot up his head and listened, a beautiful
sight which made Stella gasp for breath. We heard the horse stamp in
the stable, and Buster continued his yelps. But the buck was evidently
satisfied of his safety, for he lowered his muzzle into the snow again.
However, as we watched, there came a different sound to his ears, though
not to ours, for suddenly he gave a leap, and with the doe after him
took the stone wall at a bound, the wall across the road at another,
and vanished up our pasture. A moment later we, too, heard the sound; it
was the jingle of approaching sleigh-bells.
Stella sighed happily as she went back to bed. "All my dreams are coming
true!" she whispered.
I wonder if any pleasure in this world is quite comparable with that of
coming back to your own snug dwelling after a long tramp through the
snowy woods, returning when the green sunset is fading in the west and
the amethyst shadows are creeping up the hills and the cold night
stillness is abroad, and seeing from afar the red window-squares of home
gleaming over the snow? Our favourite method of return was to climb the
stone wall by the frozen tamarack swamp and enter the pines, where
the ice-covered brook crept like a flowing black ribbon through the
white, with the snow on the banks curled over it in the most exquisite
and fantastic of tiny cornices. We could see our south windows through
the branches, just before the path emerged, and Mrs. Pillig had orders to
light the lamps before our return so that they might glow a welcome.
We always stood a moment, hand in hand, regarding them, before we
climbed the slope and entered the door.
Ah, the warmth that greeted us when we stepped inside! The good smell of
burning apple wood on the twin hearths! The cheerful bark of Buster, if
he had not gone to walk with us! The prophetic rattle of dishes and
the kettle song from the kitchen! We had a kettle of our own, too, now,
in the long room. It hung on a crane in the west fireplace, and was
delightfully black, and often made the tea taste smoky, like camp tea.
Quickly we left our wraps in the hall, quickly Stella brought out cups
and tea caddy to a little tabouret before the western fireplace, and
sitting on our settle in the chimney nook, with the last wan light of
sunset competing with the evening lamps, we warmed our hands before
the blaze, and drank our tea, and felt that delicious drowse steal over
us which comes only after brisk exercise in the mountain air of winter.
And then the evenings, the long winter evenings by the twin fires,
when we were supposed by our friends in town to be pining for the
opera or the theatre, and were in reality blissfully unaware of either!
Stella's first duty after supper was to hear Peter's lessons, while
Buster lay on the hearth and I sprawled in a Morris chair with my
cigar, and read the morning paper. That is another delightful feature
of country life. You never have time to read the morning paper till
evening, and then you read it comfortably all through, if you like.
Peter was going far ahead of his class as a result of this individual
instruction, and had actually begun to develop a real interest in the
acquisition of knowledge--a thing that did not exist as a rule in the
pupils of Bentford, which, perhaps, was not the pupils' fault. So far
as I have observed, it is not characteristic of most of our public
schools in America. Perhaps that is a penalty of democracy; certainly
it is a penalty of too large classes and too low salaries paid for
teaching. We make the profession of teacher a stop-gap for girls between
the normal school and matrimony.
When Peter's lesson was over, and we were left alone, we had the best
books in the world, the best music in the world, to choose from. We
could have a play if we liked, the kind too seldom seen on Broadway. We
could have Mozart, or so much of him as Stella could render. We had
letters to write, also, a task always left till evening. Sometimes I
had tag ends of my morning labours to finish up. Any writing of my own
I brought forth in the evening for Stella to read, and to criticise as
mercilessly as she chose--which was sometimes very mercilessly; and we
thrashed it over together. Sometimes, even, I agreed with her!
Once a week we gathered in several high school pupils who lived near
by--Mike's Nora, a boy, and three other girls--and read Shakespeare.
It took them two months to read one play in school, but we read a
play in two or three evenings, each of us taking a part. I showed them
pictures of the ancient playhouses, and explained as best I could the
conditions of stage productions in various periods. Stella supplied the
necessary philology. We had a real course in Shakespeare, and yet one
which interested the children, for they were reading the plays aloud, and
visualizing them. One evening we dressed up in costume, so far as we
could, amid much laughter, and acted a scene from "As You Like It,"
with Nora as Rosalind (she wore my knickerbockers and a long cape of
Stella's, and blushed adorably), and Mrs. Pillig and Peter called in
as audience.
Before the winter was over, two or three other children from the village
had begged to come to the class, and made the long, cold trip out to the
farm on foot every week. We had cake and chocolate when the lessons were
over. As Stella and I stood in the door listening to the young voices die
away down the road, we used to look at one another happily.
"Oh," she once cried, "how much you can do for folks in the country!
In town we'd pay $4 to see Shakespeare, played by professionals, and
then go selfishly home. Here we can help give him to these children, with
all that means. And some of them so need it! Why, look at Joe Bostwick!
When he first began to come he had the manners of a bear, and read like
a seven-year-old child. I don't believe he'd _ever_ read out loud, or
been of an evening among nice people. Now he's getting to know how
to behave in company, poor fellow, and he reads almost intelligently!"
"You don't want to go back to the city, then?" I smiled.
"Oh, John, I never want to go back to the city," she answered. "I want
to live here forever. I want to do more and more for these people. I
want to do more and more for Twin Fires. I want to know more and more
what I've never known--the sense of being rooted to the land, of having
a home. Our grandfathers used to know that, but in our modern cities
we have forgotten. I want to die in the house I've always lived in."
"It's a little soon to plan for that," said I, as we entered the south
room again, but I knew what she meant.
The hour was late for us in the country--almost eleven. We put away
the cups and plates, and went through our nightly ceremony of locking
up. First, we peeped out of the window at the thermometer, which
registered two degrees above zero, and I set it down in my diary, for
the temperature and the weather are important items to record when
you are a farmer. Then we locked all the doors, giving Buster a pat as
he lay on his old quilt in a corner of the kitchen. The kitchen lamp
was out, and the room was lighted only by the moon, but the kettle was
singing softly. Then we returned to the south room and banked the fires
carefully, so that the fresh logs would catch in the morning, on top of
the noble piles of ashes. Finally we blew out the lamps. Cold moonlight
stole in across the floor from the glass door and windows, and met midway
the warm red glow from the fires. The world was very still. The great
room, so homelike, so friendly, so full of beautiful things and yet so
simple, seemed sleeping. We tiptoed from it with a last loving glance and
climbed the stairs. In our dressing-room, which was an extra chamber,
an open fire burned, but in our chamber there was no heat. The shades
were up and the moonlight showed the fairy frost patterns on the
panes. We took a last look out across the silvery world before we
retired, a last deep breath of the stinging cold air as the windows
were opened, and jumped beneath the covering, with heavy blankets
beneath us as well as above.
"It is a very nice old world," said Stella sleepily. "Winter or
summer, it is lovely. I think New York is but a dream--and I hope it
won't be mine!"
I heard her breathing steadily a few minutes later, and from far off
somewhere in the outer world the mournful whistle of a screech owl came
to my ears, the andante of the winter night. It seemed to intensify
the freezing silence. I thought how at college I used to hear from my
chamber the screech of trolley cars rounding a curve and biting my
nerves. I thought of that lonely chamber, of all my life there, of
Stella's life in the triple turmoil of New York. And I put out my hand
and took hers into it, while she stirred in her sleep, her fingers
unconsciously closing over mine. So we awoke in the morning, with the
sunshine smiting the snow into diamonds and a chickadee piping for
breakfast.