Winter scenery has met with a remarkable share of neglect both from
authors and painters. Poets have sung of winter festivals and holidays,
of Christmas festivities, of garlands of holly and trailing evergreens;
but they have said little in prose or verse of the beauty or the
sublimity of the season’s ordinary aspects. More effort has been made to
divert attention from winter, as entirely disagreeable, except within
doors, than to lure the mind to its attractions. Its features have been
described as only waste and desolate, and what is really admirable in
them has been set aside as hardly worthy of thought. It is true there is
not much variety in the countenance of winter. Its expressions are wild
and rude, and partake more of sublimity than beauty. It presents an
insufficient number of individual objects that can be brought to the aid
either of painting or poetry; so that the composition must be made up in
great degree by auxiliaries drawn from the imagination.
Winter scenery is plainly monotonous. Instead of the charming mosaic of
agriculture, displayed by summer and autumn in assemblages of fields,
varying in color with the native hue of their different crops, we see
either a dull universal waste of seared vegetation, or one broad expanse
of whiteness, relieved only by the dark slender lines of fences and the
broader stripes of roads and lanes winding over the face of the snow,
interspersed with buildings and occasional woods and thickets. It is
apparent, however, that snow increases the variety of the landscape,
when it is mapped out with groves and fragments of forest, resembling
wooded islets rising out of a white sea.
The charm of winter scenery is greatly heightened by the clearing of the
forest, which hides the surface of the snow and causes the scene to wear
less of the aspect of grandeur than of desolation. Grandeur
characterizes the view wherever an almost uninterrupted expanse of some
miles of surface is completely whitened with snow. The buoyancy we feel
when rambling over such a landscape resembles that produced by great
altitude. Our greater physical vigor in clear winter weather prepares us
to be agreeably affected by surrounding views, because our thoughts are
not diverted by any sense of uncomfortable exertion, as in the languid
heat of summer. Our constant transition from valley to open plain, from
plain to hill, and from hill to wood, keeps the mind constantly amused
with new views. We are also inspired by the grandeur of the whole scene,
and do not, as in summer, give ourselves up to voluptuous sensations,
but to enjoyments more purely intellectual.
Our attention is not so often directed to the beauty of trees in their
denuded state, as when they are dressed in foliage and adorned with
flowers and fruit. But when we consider that for six months of the year
all the deciduous trees, constituting the greater part of the woods, are
leafless, we cannot regard their appearance at this time as an
unimportant study. When trees are in leaf their primary qualities as
objects in landscape are apparent; but many secondary points of beauty
are almost entirely hidden under this mass of foliage. In winter, when
the whole frame of the tree is exposed to view, the delicate sculpture,
the forms, the angles, and the divergences of their branches, present to
sight an infinite variety of picturesque appearances.
There are certain trees, however, which are almost ugly in winter,
though very beautiful in their summer dress. We see nothing attractive
in the horse-chestnut, the sumach, the catalpa, and the ash, in their
denuded state, when the coarseness and deformity of their spray become
their salient points. Of these the horse-chestnut and the catalpa are
not surpassed in beauty when they are in flower, nor the sumach in its
autumnal dress, nor the ash either in summer or autumn. There is as
great a variety in the style of the frame and framework of different
trees as in the forms and colors of their leaves and flowers. Indeed, in
some respects, trees are a more interesting study in their denuded state
than when dressed in foliage. In this condition single trees become more
special objects of attention than assemblages. Yet it is in winter that
we perceive to the best advantage the characters of a forest vista. As
we pass under the interlacing branches of the trees, we observe that
peculiar arch formed by the meeting and contact of those on opposite
sides of an avenue. We see this appearance only in a wide avenue, where
the trees have grown since it was laid out. In the pathless wood, or in
a path made through the forest after the trees have attained maturity,
they have no well-formed lateral branches, and display above our heads
only a formless canopy.
We may observe in the spray of different trees an invariable
correspondence with some of their other characters. Nut-bearers, for
example, have a coarser spray than small seed-bearers; trees with large
or compound leaves, than those with small or simple foliage; and trees
with opposite, than those with alternate branches. Hence the oak and the
hickory have a coarser spray than the birch and the elm, and the
large-leaved poplar than the slender-leaved willow; the ash, with
compound leaves, than the maple with simple leaves, though both have
opposite branches. But if a tree bears a large nut, with leaves compound
and branches opposite, like the horse-chestnut, it has no spray at all.
The beech-tree, however, having a very small nut, has a fine and elegant
spray, not surpassed by any tree of the forest. The opposite character
of the smaller branches of certain trees is never continued in the
larger divisions. But the angularity of the boughs of the oak is
repeated in its angular spray, and the gracefulness of the principal
branches of the elm, the birch, and the lime is traced through all their
minute subdivisions.
All these phenomena are interesting subjects of observation in winter
wood-scenery. But the geometric beauty of the spray of trees is hardly
less remarkable than its different colors. A maple wood, for example, is
gray; a poplar wood is greenish olive; a wood consisting chiefly of
limes, black birches, and cherry-trees has a dark shade. These
differences of coloring, as seen in masses, when viewing the wood from
an elevated stand, often excite the surprise of spectators; for it is
only the most careful observers who have noticed this variety of shades.
In many assemblages of wood that consist of an evenly promiscuous
combination of species, we observe no such picturesque marks of
distinction. But in all unique assemblages, of which our land affords
very frequent examples, the differences between a maple, a poplar, a
willow, and a lime grove are respectively very striking. The study of
these shades is of considerable importance to the painter who should
wish to give a true representation of a winter landscape, with reference
chiefly to its wood.
Some of my most delightful wood rambles have been taken in the winter,
which has always seemed to me less a season of melancholy than autumn.
The sadness we feel while the leaves are falling around us and the light
of noon seems but an ominous twilight passes away after these changes
are completed; we resume our cheerfulness, and look forward in pleasant
anticipation of spring. I have never allowed the winter to interfere
with my rambling, save when the cold was intense, the weather wet or
stormy, or the snow too deep for pedestrian excursions. These
difficulties are seldom in the way for more than a fourth part of the
season. When the snow has been hardened by repeated freezing and thawing
so as to bear our footsteps, or when the ground is bare, a winter walk
affords positive pleasure. At such times I have often passed a day in
the woods, not only to enjoy the physical pleasure of air and exercise
and the sweet odors of the pines, but also to note the changes in the
face of nature, and the manners and habits of the few remaining birds
and quadrupeds.
One of the most noted circumstances attending a winter ramble in the
woods is their silence. But this silence is an aid to thought as well as
observation, and gives importance to every sound, as the white snow
gives prominence to visual objects. When the winter sun is bright and
the chilly atmosphere is calm, we may listen to the distant village hum
with a sensation of melody; and we catch the gurgling sounds of streams
under the glistening ice, and the voices of jubilant echoes, that send
back in the general stillness every sound that penetrates their secret
shell. The crumpling of the hardened snow under our feet produces a tone
that silence alone could turn to music; and the rustling of every zephyr
seems like a living note in this solitude. The occasional voices of
winter birds have a charm hardly less delightful than the melodies of
June, when every note is but the part of a general chorus. In winter we
listen to sounds because they are few. Even the lowing of herds is
musical, reminding us that our present solitude is encompassed by life
and civilization.
The wood is no longer a green recess, a temple of leafy beauty, a
sanctuary of shade, an orchestra of melodious voices. There is perhaps
less solemnity within it than when it is darkened by overarching
foliage. The sun shines into it and renders some little nooks more
cheerful than at any other season. I have often lingered in one of these
sunny retreats to watch the chickadees and woodpeckers, that never fail
to appear in sight, diligently exploring every branch of the neighboring
trees. It is pleasant to woo this solitude when thus enlivened by the
sun, to saunter along the turfy wood-paths, still green with clumps of
moss and lycopodium, to look up into the lofty trees which have parted
with their shade, observing the sculptured elegance of their limbs and
the intricate beauty of their spray; pondering on the rare carvings of
their bark, broken into many geometrical forms, and the curious devices
of nature displayed in the incrustations upon their surface.
Sometimes a solitary evergreen stands in our way, shedding upon the
hoary wood some of the greenness of summer. We should know but half of
what is open to observation if we never visited the forest in the
winter, and we should miss one of the most remarkable features of a
winter landscape if the coniferous evergreens were absent from it. Sad
and sombre as they appear when the deciduous trees are putting forth
their light green leaves, they are great heighteners of the beauty of a
winter scene, and are more valuable than any other woods as a protection
from wind and cold.