In New England Fields and Woods Part 11

Unlike the beaver's slowly maturing crops, his food supply is constantly provided in the annual growth of the marshes. Here in banks contiguous to endless store of succulent sedge and lily roots and sh.e.l.l-cased tidbits of mussels, he tunnels his stable water-portaled home, and out there, by the channel's edge, builds his sedge-thatched hut before the earliest frost falls upon the marshes. In its height, some find prophecy of high or low water, and in the thickness of its walls the forecast of a mild or severe winter, but the prophet himself is sometimes flooded out of his house, sometimes starved and frozen in it.

In the still, sunny days between the nights of its unseen building, the blue spikes of the pickerel-weed and the white trinities of the arrow-head yet bloom beside it. Then in the golden and scarlet brightness of autumn the departing wood drake rests on the roof to preen his plumage, and later the dusky duck swims on its watery lawn. Above it the wild geese harrow the low, cold arch of the sky, the last fleet of sere leaves drifts past it in the bleak wind, and then ice and snow draw the veil of the long winter twilight over the muskrat's homes and haunts.

These may be gloomy days he spends groping in the dark chambers of his hut and burrow, or gathering food in the dimly lighted icy water, with never a sight of the upper world nor ever a sunbeam to warm him.

But there are more woful days when the sun and the sky are again opened to him, and he breathes the warm air of spring, hears the blackbirds sing and the bittern boom. For, amid all the gladness of nature's reawakened life, danger lurks in all his paths; the cruel, hungry trap gapes for him on every jutting log, on every feeding-bed, even in the doorway of his burrow and by the side of his house.

The trapper's skiff invades all his pleasant waters; on every hand he hears the splash of its paddles, the clank of its setting pole, and he can scarcely show his head above water but a deadly shower of lead bursts upon it. He hears the simulated call of his beloved, and voyaging hot-hearted to the cheating tryst meets only death.

At last comes the summer truce and happy days of peace in the tangled jungle of the marsh, with the wild duck and bittern nesting beside his watery path, the marsh wren weaving her rushy bower above it.

So the days of his life go on, and the days of his race continue in the land of his unnumbered generations. Long may he endure to enliven the drear tameness of civilization with a memory of the world's old wildness.

XLII

NOVEMBER VOICES

With flowers and leaves, the bird songs have faded out, and the hum and chirp of insect life, the low and bleat of herds and flocks afield, and the busy sounds of husbandry have grown infrequent. There are lapses of such silence that the ear aches for some audible signal of life; and then to appease it there comes with the rising breeze the solemn murmur of the pines like the song of the sea on distant sh.o.r.es, the sibilant whisper of the dead herbage, the clatter of dry pods, and the fitful stir of fallen leaves, like a scurry of ghostly feet fleeing in affright at the sound of their own pa.s.sage.

The breeze puffs itself into a fury of wind, and the writhing branches shriek and moan and clash as if the lances of phantom armies were crossed in wild melee.

The woods are full of unlipped voices speaking one with another in pleading, in anger, in soft tones of endearment; and one hears his name called so distinctly that he answers and calls again, but no answer is vouchsafed him, only moans and shrieks and mocking laughter, till one has enough of wild voices and longs for a relapse of silence.

More softly it is broken when through the still air comes the cheery note of the chickadee and the little trumpet of his comrade the nuthatch and far away the m.u.f.fled beat of the grouse's drum, or from a distance the mellow baying of a hound and its answering echoes, swelling and dying on hilltop or glen, or mingling in melodious confusion.

From skyward comes the clangor of clarions, wild and musical, proclaiming the march of gray cohorts of geese advancing southward through the hills and dales of cloudland. There come, too, the quick whistling beat of wild ducks' pinions, the cry of a belated plover, and the creaking voice of a snipe. Then the bawling of a ploughman in a far-off field--and farther away the rumble and shriek of a railroad train--brings the listening ear to earth again and its plodding busy life.

XLIII

THANKSGIVING

Doubtless many a sportsman has bethought him that his Thanksgiving turkey will have a finer flavor if the feast is prefaced by a few hours in the woods, with dog and gun. Meaner fare than this day of bounty furnishes forth is made delicious by such an appetizer, and the Thanksgiving feast will be none the worse for it.

What can be sweeter than the wholesome fragrance of the fallen leaves?

What more invigorating than the breath of the two seasons that we catch: here in the northward shade of a wooded hill the nipping air of winter, there where the southern slope meets the sun the genial warmth of an October day. Here one's footsteps crunch sharply the frozen herbage and the ice-bearded border of a spring's overflow; there splash in thawed pools and rustle softly among the dead leaves.

The flowers are gone, but they were not brighter than the winter berries and bittersweet that glow around one. The deciduous leaves are fallen and withered, but they were not more beautiful than the delicate tracery of their forsaken branches, and the steadfast foliage of the evergreens was never brighter. The song-birds are singing in southern woods, but chickadee, nuthatch, and woodp.e.c.k.e.r are chatty and companionable and keep the woods in heart with a stir of life.

Then from overhead or underfoot a ruffed grouse booms away into the gray haze of branches, and one hears the whirr and crash of his headlong flight long after he is lost to sight, perchance long after the echo of a futile shot has died away. Far off one hears the intermittent discharge of rifles where the shooters are burning powder for their Thanksgiving turkey, and faintly from far away comes the melancholy music of a hound. Then nearer and clearer, then a rustle of velvet-clad feet, and lo, reynard himself, the wildest spirit of the woods, materializes out of the russet indistinctness and flashes past, with every sense alert. Then the hound goes by, and footstep, voice, and echo sink into silence. For silence it is, though the silver tinkle of the brook is in it, and the stir of the last leaf shivering forsaken on its bough.

In such quietude one may hold heartfelt thanksgiving, feasting full upon a crust and a draught from the icy rivulet, and leave rich viands and costly wines for the thankless surfeiting of poorer men.

XLIV

DECEMBER DAYS

Fewer and more chill have become the hours of sunlight, and longer stretch the noontide shadows of the desolate trees athwart the tawny fields and the dead leaves that mat the floor of the woods.

The brook braids its shrunken strands of brown water with a hushed murmur over a bed of sodden leaves between borders of spiny ice crystals, or in the pools swirl in slow circles the imprisoned fleets of bubbles beneath a steadfast roof of gla.s.s. Dark and sullen the river sulks its cheerless way, enlivened but by the sheldrake that still courses his prey in the icy water, and the mink that like a fleet black shadow steals along the silent banks. Gaudy wood duck and swift-winged teal have long since departed and left stream and sh.o.r.e to these marauders and to the trapper, who now gathers here his latest harvest.

The marshes are silent and make no sign of life, though beneath the domes of many a sedge-built roof the unseen muskrats are astir, and under the icy cover of the channels fare to and fro on their affairs of life, undisturbed by any turmoil of the upper world.

When the winds are asleep the lake bears on its placid breast the moveless images of its quiet sh.o.r.es, deserted now by the latest pleasure seekers among whose tenantless camps the wild wood-folk wander as fearlessly as if the foot of man had never trodden here. From the still midwaters far away a loon halloos to the winds to come forth from their caves, and yells out his mad laughter in antic.i.p.ation of the coming storm. A herald breeze blackens the water with its advancing steps, and with a roar of its trumpets the angry wind sweeps down, driving the white-crested ranks of waves to a.s.sault the sh.o.r.es. Far up the long incline of pebbly beaches they rush, and leaping up the walls of rock hang fetters of ice upon the writhing trees. Out of the seething waters arise lofty columns of vapor, which like a host of gigantic phantoms stalk, silent and majestic, above the turmoil, till they fall in wind-tossed showers of frost flakes.

There are days when almost complete silence possesses the woods, yet listening intently one may hear the continual movement of myriads of snow fleas pattering on the fallen leaves like the soft purr of such showers as one might imagine would fall in Lilliput.

With footfall so light that he is seen close at hand sooner than heard, a hare limps past; too early clad in his white fur that shall make him inconspicuous amid the winter snow, his coming shines from afar through the gray underbrush and on the tawny leaves. Unseen amid his dun and gray environment, the ruffed grouse skulks unheard, till he bursts away in thunderous flight. Overhead, invisible in the lofty thicket of a hemlock's foliage, a squirrel drops a slow patter of cone chips, while undisturbed a nuthatch winds his spiral way down the smooth trunk. Faint and far away, yet clear, resound the axe strokes of a chopper, and at intervals the m.u.f.fled roar of a tree's downfall.

Silent and moveless cascades of ice veil the rocky steeps where in more genial days tiny rivulets dripped down the ledges and mingled their musical tinkle with the songs of birds and the flutter of green leaves.

Winter berries and bittersweet still give here and there a fleck of bright color to the universal gray and dun of the trees, and the carpet of cast-off leaves and the dull hue of the evergreens but scarcely relieve the sombreness of the woodland landscape.

Spanning forest and field with a low flat arch of even gray, hangs a sky as cold as the landscape it domes and whose mountain borders lie hidden in its hazy foundations. Through this canopy of suspended snow the low noontide sun shows but a blotch of yellowish gray, rayless and giving forth no warmth, and, as it slants toward its brief decline, grows yet dimmer till it is quite blotted out in the gloom of the half-spent afternoon.

The expectant hush that broods over the forlorn and naked earth is broken only by the twitter of a flock of snow buntings which, like a straight-blown flurry of flakes, drift across the fields, and, sounding solemnly from the depths of the woods, the hollow hoot of a great owl.

Then the first flakes come wavering down, then blurring all the landscape into vague unreality they fall faster, with a soft purr on frozen gra.s.s and leaves till it becomes unheard on the thickening noiseless mantle of snow. Deeper and deeper the snow infolds the earth, covering all its unsightliness of death and desolation.

Now white-furred hare and white-feathered bunting are at one with the white-clad world wherein they move, and we, so lately accustomed to the greenness of summer and the gorgeousness of autumn, wondering at the ease wherewith we accept this marvel of transformation, welcome these white December days and in them still find content.

XLV

WINTER VOICES

Out of her sleep nature yet gives forth voices betokening that life abides beneath the semblance of death, that her warm heart still beats under the white shroud that infolds her rigid breast.

A smothered tinkle as of m.u.f.fled bells comes up from the streams through their double roofing of snow and ice, and the frozen pulse of the trees complains of its thralldom with a resonant tw.a.n.g as of a strained cord snapped asunder.

Beneath their frozen plains, the lakes bewail their imprisonment with hollow moans awakening a wild and mournful chorus of echoes from sleeping sh.o.r.es that answer now no caress of ripples nor angry stroke of waves nor dip and splash of oar and paddle.

The breeze stirs leafless trees and s.h.a.ggy evergreens to a murmur that is sweet, if sadder than they gave it in the leafy days of summer, when it bore the perfume of flowers and the odor of green fields, and one may imagine the spirit of springtime and summer lingers among the naked boughs, voicing memory and hope.

Amid all the desolation of their woodland haunts the squirrels chatter their delight in windless days of sunshine, and scoff at biting cold and wintry blasts. The nuthatch winds his tiny trumpet, the t.i.tmouse pipes his cheery note, the jay tries the innumerable tricks of his unmusical voice, and from their rollicking flight athwart the wavering slant of snowflakes drifts the creaking twitter of buntings.