THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER
In late autumn the pasture is a place of ghosts, yet ghosts so
friendly withal that one walks among them unafraid. November is
the month of transition when many of the pasture folk pass on to
another, perhaps a better life. The blue-jays stop their harsh
teasing screams now and then to toll a clear, musical passing bell
for these, and the nuthatches are goblin gabriels blowing eerie
trumps of resurrection to which the spirits of the bee people
drone a second as they wing their way onward. The great white town
of the white-faced hornets is conspicuous on the blueberry bush
down in the far corner and within it are the husks of a few of its
once roaringly busy inhabitants. But it is very quiet and only a
few of the husks remain. The others are scattered the pasture over
and on them the shrubs drop red fruit and wreathed beauty or
autumn leaves, in memoriam. The bumblebees, the yellow-jackets and
many another variety of scintillant, fairy-winged wild bee are
with them. Their summer, like ours, is gone, and they with it,
though a few of the young queen mothers are safely tucked away in
warm crevices, to sleep secure until May wakes them for the
peopling of the place once more.
I had thought May with its tender pastels of young color and its
bubbling joy of spring song the most beautiful month in this
gentle world of out-of-doors, but that was in May. Now I am
convinced that November in its ethereal serenity is loveliest. May
held but the vivid joy of ecstatic expectation; November speaks
with the peace of fulfilment and the calm understanding of those
who look with clear eyes into another world.
Between midnight and dawn I fancy the pasture folk who are still
this side the pale get their farthest glimpse into the world which
lies beyond. The pasture on whose bosom they dwell sleeps deeply
then, its breathing not even faintly rustling the frost-browned
leaves of the white oaks, not even sighing those ancient,
druidical hymns through the pine tops. Sometimes as I stand with
them I try to feel this bosom rise and fall in the slow rhythm of
deep slumber, but even on such nights with the senses aquiver with
expectation of the unknown I fail. I dare say the fox that slips
along the winding paths at dawn and the little screech owl that
calls lonelily to his mate note without noticing these and many
other things in which our human perception fails. Man cultivates
his brains to the dulling of his senses and builds a wall of
useless possessions, attainments and entertainment about him till
he hears only a few things and sees but through tiny chinks like
the prisoner in a dungeon. Yet we are not altogether endungeoned.
We are beginning to know our danger and cry "back to the woods,"
which may yet be the slogan of our next emancipation. It is a long
path back for some of us and to cover it at a bound has its
dangers. The earthworm shrivels in the sudden sun and to leap from
the city block to the depths of the woods is to suffer from the
"growing pains" of awakening, atrophied senses. The half-way
ground is the pasture which once was the forest, which later was
man's, and where now nature and human-nature mingle in friendly
truce. In the depths of the woods the town draws me toward itself.
In the city I long for the woods, In the pasture is the smiling
truce of the two forces.
In the one I know best, as in most of our New England pastures,
the cattle have long ceased to browse and men came only because
nature draws them thither. The wild creatures seem to sense this
and to lose much of their woodland fear of me. Last night, in the
first promise of the gray of dawn a fox barked at my camp door,
scratching at the threshold as if he were the house dog, asking to
be let in out of the cold and lie at the fire. I heard the
barnyard roosters faintly crowing in the distance, but a little
screech owl called clearly on a limb just beyond the ridge-pole.
The roosters' cry had in it nothing but self-gratulatory bombast.
I know town-dwarfed men that talk like that. The owl's call was to
his mate, as was the roosters', but there was no bombast in its
plaint, just a mournfulness of endearment, a touch of tears at the
silence and delay. After a little the other came and all the
mournfulness went out of the tone. Instead there was cooing in its
quality as the two talked reassuringly a moment. The first call is of
six or eight notes that start high and tremulo down the owl's diatonic
scale to a low one that has a round, flute-like quality though the
whole sounds as if it were made somewhere else and were merely
echoing from the wood. The bird is as hard to locate by sound as
an echo would be and is usually much nearer than it seems when I
hear him. The second call is the last note of the first one, three
or four times repeated with such rapidity that it has a flute-like
reverberation that is almost like a round and very musical purr.
The cry of this bird has been called eerie and disquieting, but I
do not think it so, even in the loneliness of the question call.
The satisfied one is as gentle and cuddly as one can find among
birds.
[Illustration: The Fox that slips along the Winding Path at Dawn]
The pasture ghosts of still November nights are apt to be most
portentous between the hours of midnight and dawn. The giants of
eld stall noiselessly about them, figures of gray mist out of a
world of silence. Sometimes they rise like simulacrums of ancient
forest trees out of grassy spots that by day were cosey with
sunshine and enclosed by barberry bushes hung with coral fruit and
prim cedars, spots where no tree has stood these hundred years.
Anon they change to dim figures of preposterous beasts, called
back to earth for a brief hour while the old moon, worn and thin,
rises through them, a nebulous red crescent, and the stars fade,
yet show dimly through like the moon, proving that these are but
disembodied monsters. Sometimes they wait till dawn bids them
dematerialize before it. More often winter, which is most apt to
steal in upon us late at night in November, breaks their backs
with the weight of his cold and spreads them as hoar frost upon
all things below, showing us how thin and of little substance they
really are. Sometimes this breakage comes with the first gleams of
morning light and I feel the chill of their passing as they sink
slowly to the grass. They are beautiful in their eerie suggestions
as they flout my three o'clock in the morning courage, but
lovelier far when they sparkle on the grass and shrubs under the
sudden flare of the rising sun. I fancy that with clearer light
all our gorgons and chimeras dire will become but sparkling
fairies, for these certainly do. Twig and leaf and grass spear
bend with the clusters of them. I see the fluff of their ermine
garments, their tossing white plumes, and get the glint of their
jewels, breaking up the white light into multiple rainbows that
flash all the pasture world with a dainty glamour of romance. Just
as the touch of winter, slipping down from the far north tinder
cover of darkness, first raises these spectres, then lays them, so
the sun makes their cheery, frostwork beauty a marvel of delight
for a brief time, then sends it back to the earth whence it sprang
and wipes away all tears from the eyes of the shrubs and grasses
that weep at losing such delicate beauty.
In those crisp morning hours of early sunlight all the ghosts are
laid. The winter chill which made them has frozen them all out of
the air. The twigs and leaves that gave them refuge have wept and
kissed them good-bye at the shout of the oncoming sun and no
suggestion from the world beyond meets the eye. The ghost chill is
frozen out of the sky with the ghosts; the wine of the morning is
so poured through the dry air that you must drink it to the lees
whether you will or not. Such mornings as you have had in April
you may get in November, nor hardly can you tell without the
assistance of the almanac which season it is. The bare twigs have
the flush of expectancy on them, the blushing hope of new buds, as
soon as the leaves of the year are off them. It may not be so
bright and winning, but you will not note the difference, for it
is there, painted during the ripening of this year's leaves. If it
were not that some of these still cling the illusion might be
complete.
There too, to be sure, are the brown stems of the pasture
goldenrod standing stiffly as if to state with grim definiteness
that all rainbow hopes are folly and there will be no more
blossoming for them. Their leaves are dun and sere where they have
not already fallen and their tops that in early September were
such soft cumulus clouds of golden yellow are but scrawny clots of
brown, draggled by the tears in which the sudden sun has drowned
the pasture. Yet these least of all should be pessimistic in
November, for as the sun dries their tears another summer comes
back to them and to us, Indian summer, which is the finest season
of the year. The Indian winter of the dark hours before dawn
steals dawn with all spears pointed for the massacre of the summer
flowers that still linger unprotected, and the white magic of its
own cold changes the spears to delicate, tiny frost fronds and
blooms on all the outdoor world. Then, with the full day, comes
Indian summer, slipping along all the pasture paths and lingering
in the sheltered hollows among the evergreens. In her presence all
the sorrowing plants seem to lift their heads and a new blossom
time comes back to the brown, despondent goldenrod. A warmth glows
in its pith which is as dear as that of its prime yet has in it
some of the stir of autumn crispness. Under its power the draggled
clots that once were flowers lift, fluff out, bud and bloom as
does the magic plant under the potent spell of the sorcerer of the
Far East. You may see on such Indian summer mornings the florets
of these dead goldenrod stems lifting and spreading and before
your very eyes the plant bursts into bloom once more. These blooms
are the day-time ghosts with which the November pastures are full,
misty gray flowers that stand on the same receptacles that held
the yellow blooms of late summer, but are lovelier far than the
first blossoms were. Each dewy night, each rainy day, they shrivel
and seem to pass but the warmth of the sun and the drying wind
need but a brief hour in which to bring them all out again. After
Indian summer has gone for good and the December snows are deep
the stiff stems will still hold these renewing gray blooms above
the drifts and make all the pasture beautiful with the ghosts of
summer flowers. Nor, lovely as they are to my eye, will they be
less beautiful to the winter chippies, the goldfinches, juncos and
a host of other seed-eating birds who will find them bountifully
spread for their delectation all the winter through. On rainy days
I like to bring these brawn stems into camp and, setting them by
the glow of the open fire, see them bloom as they dry out. It is a
most magical flowering and to be one's own wizard is one of the
delightful, privileges of being a November sojourner in the
pasture.
*****
For all the Indian winter which some nights ago brought us a
temperature of twenty degrees and left ice a half-inch thick on
shallow pools many of the pasture folk hold their summer attire
well. The wild apple trees have hardly made a change, holding
plentiful leaves whose green is dulled by a little, and otherwise
defies the season. The bayberry has leaves as glossy green and
unmarked by any sign of approaching winter as it held in August,
and though the taller wild cherry trees show autumnal tints the
younger ones are still in fresh green. This tendency of the young
sprouts to hold on and deny the winter I note on many young trees.
The birches are in the main bare but the young wood at the very
tops, and the tips of sprouts from the stumps of trees that have
been cut, still hold leaves whose pale yellow simulates flowers,
as if the trees, like the witch-hazel, had decided to bloom only
at the very last moment, preferring the Indian summer to that
which came to us in the full flush of June. So it is with the
blueberry shrubs. The pinky-red top twigs hold their foliage still
but they have sent some of their own flush up into these leaves
and they hang there like pasture poinsettias, waiting to be part
of the red of Christmas decorations. The meadow-sweet is in the
bloom again, but instead of pinky white racemes topping the
whorled green on its brown stalk the leaves themselves bloom in
pale yellow with pinky flushes that make it as truly a sweet thing
of the meadow as when it called the bees in July. The red alders
add the coral of their berries and the barberries give the deep
rich red of their fruit through which the sun shines with the ruby
effect of stained glass windows, The November pasture is less
profuse in its colors than it is in earlier autumn but one sees
farther in it, and clearer. There are times when the gray walls of
its maples and hickories stand illumined by the sunlight slanting
through the vivid colors of its remaining foliage till the place
glows with rich lights and seems a cathedral in which one ought to
be able to hear the roll of anthems and the chant of bowed
worshippers.
Such are its changing moods on November nights and days. The
constant features are the pines and cedars. Summer and winter
alike these stand unchanged, types of constancy and vigor. Yet,
though there is no change, one who loves them both can at a time
of year see a certain variation. This comes with the spire-like
cedars, that stand so erect and point ever heavenward in close-drawn
robes of priestly solemnity, in early May. Then for a few
brief days the glow of spring sunshine gets into their blood and
they gleam with hidden bloom through the olive green of their
gowns, lighting up like sombre faces that unexpectedly smile and
are flooded with sunlight. The pines, too, bloom in spring, but
conspicuously on their branch tips. The candles they light then
serve only to accentuate the sober, dark green of their gowns. But
in September, the pines shed their last year's leaves that have
grown a little dull and rusty with long service, and now stand
forth clean and more vividly green than at any other time of year.
The deciduous trees follow the fashions and change their suits for the
prevailing mode three or four times a year, yet it is true of them
that nature unadorned is adorned the most. There is a beauty in
the bare wood standing revealed in November that they never had in
the flush of June or the glory of early October. There is nothing
in flower or leaf that can match the exquisite harmony of the bark
tints, nor can the foliage in mass so please the eye as the
delicate tracery of twigs and the matchless contour of tapering
limbs. In the November birch or maple the dryad herself stands
revealed.
*****
It is not so with the pines. They change gowns so decorously and
the new one is so like the old in its simple lines and perfect
good taste that we are unaware of the transition. There is a
perfection of dignity and serenity about a free-grown pasture pine
that I find equalled in no other tree. These are druids of eld, if
you will, harpers hoar, plucking wild symphonies from the tense
wires of the storm wind's three-stringed harp. Yet the dryad
dwells within them as well, and on gentler days they show her in
many phases of queenly womanhood. They mother the romping shrubs,
the slender, maidenly birches, the maples, vainglorious in their
dainty spring colors, their voluminous summer robes, their
gorgeous autumn gowns, and they do it all with a kindly dignity
that endears, while they stand high above all these in their
perfection of simplicity. They can be tender without unbending,
and in their soothing shadow is balm for all wounds. Tonight the
sky is black with rain that tramps with its thousand feet on the
camp roof and marches endlessly on. The wind is from the east and
the pines sing its song of wild and lonely spaces. Yet one great
tree that was old with the wisdom of the world before I was born
stretches a limb to the camp window, and in the flicker of the
firelight I see it stroke it caressingly with soft leaf fingers
and twigs that bend back at the stroke. It is like the hand of a
child reaching to its mother's breast with wordless love and
tenderness inexpressible. The caress makes a lullaby of the weird
song above, and in it I hear no longer the lonely cry of ghostly
space, but only one more expression of the homely peace and mother
love that seems to dwell always in the sheltered nooks of the
pasture.