In New England Fields and Woods Part 4

XVI

THE BULLFROG

The flooded expanse of the marshes has shrunken perceptibly along its sh.o.r.eward boundaries, leaving a mat of dead weeds, bits of driftwood, and a water-worn selvage of bare earth to mark its widest limits. The green tips of the rushes are thrust above the amber shallows, whereon flotillas of water-shield lie anch.o.r.ed in the sun, while steel-blue devil's-needles sew the warm air with intangible threads of zigzag flight.

The meshed shadows of the water-maples are full of the reflections of the green and silver of young leaves. The naked tangle of b.u.t.ton-bushes has become a green island, populous with garrulous colonies of redwings.

The great flocks of wild ducks that came to the reopened waters have had their holiday rest, and journeyed onward to summer homes and cares in the further north. The few that remain are in scattered pairs and already in the silence and seclusion of nesting. You rarely see the voyaging muskrat or hear his plaintive love calls.

Your ear has long been accustomed to the watery clangor of the bittern, when a new yet familiar sound strikes it, the thin, vibrant ba.s.s of the first bullfrog's note. It may be lacking in musical quality, but it is attuned to its surroundings, and you are glad that the green-coated player has at last recovered his long-submerged banjo, and is tw.a.n.ging its water-soaked strings in prelude to the summer concert. He is a little out of practice, and his instrument is slightly out of tune, but a few days' use will restore both touch and resonance, when he and his hundred brethren shall awaken the marsh-haunting echoes and the sleeping birds with a grand twilight recital. It will reach your ears a mile away, and draw you back to the happy days of boyhood, when you listened for the bullfrogs to tell that fish would bite, and it was time for boys to go a-fishing.

In the first days of his return to the upper world of water, this old acquaintance may be shy, and neither permit nor offer any familiarity.

The fixed placidity of his countenance is not disturbed by your approach, but if you overstep by one pace what he considers the proper limit, down goes his head under cover of the flood. Marking his jerky course with an underwake and a shiver of the rushes, he reappears, to calmly observe you from a safer distance.

Custom outwears his diffidence, and the fervid sun warms him to more genial moods, when he will suffer you to come quietly quite close to him and tickle his sides with a bullrush, till in an ecstasy of pleasure he loses all caution, and bears with supreme contentment the t.i.tillation of your finger tips. His flabby sides swell with fullness of enjoyment, his blinking eyes grow dreamy and the corners of his blandly expressionless mouth almost curve upward with an elusive smile. Not till your fingers gently close upon him does he become aware of the indiscretion into which he has lapsed, and with a frantic struggle he tears himself away from your grasp and goes plunging headlong into his nether element, bellowing out his shame and astonishment.

Another day as you troll along the channel an oar's length from the weedy borders, you see him afloat on his lily-pad raft, heeding you no more than does the golden-hearted blossom whose orange odor drifts about him, nor is he disturbed by splash of oar nor dip of paddle, nor even when his bark and her perfume-freighted consort are tossed on your undulating wake.

As summer wanes you see and hear him less frequently, but he is still your comrade of the marshes, occasionally announcing his presence with a resonant tw.a.n.g and a jerky splash among the sedges.

The pickerel weeds have struck their blue banners to the conquering frost, and the marshes are sere, and silent, and desolate. When they are warmed again with the new life of spring, we shall listen for the jubilant chorus of our old acquaintance, the bullfrog.

XVII

THE ANGLER

I

Angling is set down by the master of the craft, whom all revere but none now follow, as the Contemplative Man's Recreation; but is the angler, while angling, a contemplative man?

That beloved and worthy brother whose worm-baited hook dangles in quiet waters, placid as his mind--till some wayfaring perch, or bream, or bullhead shall by chance come upon it, he, meanwhile, with rod set in the bank, taking his ease upon the fresh June sward, not touching his tackle nor regarding it but with the corner of an eye--he may contemplate and dream day dreams. He may watch the clouds drifting across the blue, the green branches waving between him and them, consider the lilies of the field, note the songs of the catbird in the willow thicket, watch the poise and plunge of the kingfisher, and so spend all the day with nature and his own lazy thoughts. That is what he came for. Angling with him is only a pretense, an excuse to pay a visit to the great mother whom he so dearly loves; and if he carries home not so much as a scale, he is happy and content.

But how is it with him who comes stealing along with such light tread that it scarcely crushes the violets or shakes the dewdrops from the ferns, and casts his flies with such precise skill upon the very handsbreadth of water that gives most promise to his experienced eye; or drops his minnow with such care into the eddying pool, where he feels a ba.s.s must lie awaiting it. Eye and ear and every organ of sense are intent upon the sport for which he came. He sees only the images of the clouds, no branch but that which impedes him or offers cover to his stealthy approach. His ear is more alert for the splash of fishes than for bird songs. With his senses go all his thoughts, and float not away in day dreams.

Howsoever much he loves her, for the time while he hath rod in hand Mother Nature is a fish-woman, and he prays that she may deal generously with him. Though he be a parson, his thoughts tend not to religion; though a savant, not to science; though a statesman, not to politics; though an artist, to no art save the art of angling. So far removed from all these while he casts his fly or guides his minnow, how much further is his soul from all but the matter in hand when a fish has taken the one or the other, and all his skill is taxed to the utmost to bring his victim to creel. Heresy and paganism may prevail, the light of science be quenched, the country go to the dogs, pictures go unpainted, and statues unmoulded till he has saved this fish.

When the day is spent, the day's sport done, and he wends his way homeward with a goodly score, satisfied with himself and all the world besides, he may ponder on many things apart from that which has this day taken him by green fields and pleasant waters. Now he may brood his thoughts, and dream dreams; but while he angles, the complete angler is not a contemplative man.

II

The rivers roaring between their br.i.m.m.i.n.g banks; the brooks babbling over their pebbled beds and cross-stream logs that will be bridges for the fox in midsummer; the freed waters of lakes and ponds, dashing in slow beat of waves or quicker pulse of ripples against their sh.o.r.es, in voices monotonous but never tiresome, now call all who delight in the craft to go a-fishing.

With the sap in the aged tree, the blood quickens in the oldest angler's veins, whether he be of the anointed who fish by the book, or of the common sort who practice the methods of the forgotten inventors of the art.

The first are busy with rods and reels that are a pleasure to the eye and touch, with fly-books whose leaves are as bright with color as painted pictures, the others rummaging corner-cupboards for mislaid lines, searching the sheds for favorite poles of ash, ironwood, tamarack, or cedar, or perhaps the woods for one just budding on its sapling stump.

Each enjoys as much as the other the pleasant labor of preparation and the antic.i.p.ation of sport, though perhaps that of the scientific angler is more aesthetic enjoyment, as his outfitting is the daintier and more artistic. But to each comes the recollection of past happy days spent on lake, river and brook, memories touched with a sense of loss, of days that can never come again, of comrades gone forever from earthly companionship.

And who shall say that the plebeian angler does not enter upon the untangling of his cotton lines, the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of his new cut pole, and the digging of his worms, with as much zest as his brother of the finer cast on the testing and mending of lancewood or split bamboo rod, the overhauling of silken lines and leaders, and the a.s.sorting of flies.

III

Considering the younger generation of anglers, one finds more enthusiasm among those who talk learnedly of all the niceties of the art. They scorn all fish not acknowledged as game. They plan more, though they may accomplish less than the common sort to whom all of fishing tackle is a pole, a line, and a hook. To them fishing is but fishing, and fish are only fish, and they will go for one or the other when the signs are right and the day propitious.

Descending to the least and latest generation of anglers, we see the conditions reversed. The youth born to rod and reel and fly is not so enthusiastic in his devotion to the sport as the boy whose birthright is only the pole that craftsman never fashioned, the kinky lines of the country store, and hooks known by no maker's name. For it is not in the nature of a boy to hold to any nicety in sport of any sort, and this one, being herein unrestrained, enters upon the art called gentle with all the wild freedom of a young savage or a half-grown mink.

For him it is almost as good as going fishing, to unearth and gather in an old teapot the worms, every one of which is to his sanguine vision the promise of a fish. What completeness of happiness for him to be allowed to go fishing with his father or grandfather or the acknowledged great fisherman of the neighborhood, a good-for-nothing ne'er-do-well, but wise in all the ways of fish and their taking and very careful of and kind to little boys.

The high-hole never cackled so merrily, nor meadow lark sang sweeter, nor gra.s.s sprang greener nor water shone brighter than to the boy when he goes a-fishing thus accompanied. To him is welcome everything that comes from the waters, be it trout, ba.s.s, perch, bullhead, or sunfish, and he hath pride even in the abominable but toothsome eel and the uneatable bowfin.

Well, remembering that we were once boys and are yet anglers, though we seldom go a-fishing, we wish, in the days of the new springtide, to all the craft, whether they be of high or low degree, bent and cramped with the winter of age or flushed with the spring of life, pleasant and peaceful days of honest sport by all watersides, and full creels and strings and wythes.

IV

In the soft evenings of April when the air is full of the undefinable odor of the warming earth and of the incessant rejoicing of innumerable members of the many families of batrachians, one may see silently moving lights prowling along the low sh.o.r.es of shallow waters, now hidden by trunks of great trees that are knee-deep in the still water, now emerging, illuminating bolls and branches and flashing their glimmering glades far across the ripples of wake and light breeze.

If one were near enough he could see the boat of the spearers, its bow and the intent figure of the spearman aglow in the light of the jack which flares a backward flame with its steady progress, and drops a slow shower of sparks, while the stern and the paddler sitting therein are dimly apparent in the verge of the gloom.

These may be honest men engaged in no illegal affair; they exercise skill of a certain sort; they are enthusiastic in the pursuit of their pastime, which is as fair as jacking deer, a practice upheld by many in high places; yet these who by somewhat similar methods take fish for sport and food are not accounted honest fishermen, but arrant poachers.

If jacking deer is right, how can jacking fish be wrong? or if jacking fish be wrong, how can jacking deer be right? Verily, there are nice distinctions in the ethics of sport.

XVIII

FARMERS AND FIELD SPORTS

"Happy the man whose only care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air On his own ground."

Happier still is such a one who has a love for the rod and gun, and with them finds now and then a day's freedom from all cares by the side of the stream that borders his own acres and in the woods that crest his knolls or shade his swamp.

As a rule none of our people take so few days of recreation as the farmer. Excepting Sundays, two or three days at the county fair, and perhaps as many more spent in the crowd and discomfort of a cheap railroad excursion, are all that are given by the ordinary farmer to anything but the affairs of the farm. It is true that his outdoor life makes it less necessary for him than for the man whose office or shop work keeps him mostly indoors, to devote a month or a fortnight of each year to entire rest from labor. Indeed, he can hardly do this except in winter, when his own fireside is oftener the pleasantest place for rest.

But he would be the better for more days of healthful pleasure, and many such he might have if he would so use those odd ones which fall within his year, when crops are sown and planted or harvested. A day in the woods or by the stream is better for body and mind than one spent in idle gossip at the village store, and nine times out of ten better for the pocket, though one come home without fin or feather to show for his day's outing. One who keeps his eyes and ears on duty while abroad in the field can hardly fail to see and hear something new, or, at least, more interesting and profitable than ordinary gossip, and the wear and tear of tackle and a few charges of ammunition wasted will cost less than the treats which are pretty apt to be part of a day's loafing.

Barring the dearth of the objects of his pursuit, the farmer who goes a-fishing and a-hunting should not be unsuccessful if he has fair skill with the rod and gun. For he who knows most of the habits of fish and game will succeed best in their capture, and no man, except the naturalist and the professional fisherman and hunter, has a better chance to gain this knowledge than the farmer, whose life brings him into everyday companionship with nature. His fields and woods are the homes and haunts of the birds and beasts of venery, from the beginning of the year to its end, and in his streams many of the fishes pa.s.s their lives. By his woodside the quail builds her nest, and when the foam of blossom has dried away on the buckwheat field she leads her young there to feed on the brown kernel stranded on the coral stems. If he chance to follow his wood road in early June, the ruffed grouse limps and flutters along it before him, while her callow chicks vanish as if by a conjurer's trick from beneath his very footfall. A month later, grown to the size of robins, they will scatter on the wing from his path with a vigor that foretells the bold whir and the swiftness of their flight in their grown-up days, when they will stir the steadiest nerve, whether they hurtle from an October-painted thicket or from the blue shadows of untracked snow. No one is likelier to see and hear the strange wooing of the woodc.o.c.k in the soft spring evenings, and to the farmer's ear first comes that a.s.surance of spring, the wail of the Bartram's sandpiper returning from the South to breed in meadow and pasture, and then in hollow trees that overhang the river the wood ducks begin to spoil their holiday attire in the work and care of housekeeping. The fox burrows and breeds in the farmer's woods. The racc.o.o.n's den is there in ledge or hollow tree. The hare makes her form in the shadow of his evergreens, where she dons her dress of tawny or white to match the brown floor of the woods or its soft covering of snow. The ba.s.s comes to his river in May to sp.a.w.n, the pike-perch for food, and the perch lives there, as perhaps the trout does in his brook.

All these are his tenants, or his summer boarders, and if he knows not something of their lives, and when and where to find them at home or in their favorite resorts, he is a careless landlord. His life will be the pleasanter for the interest he takes in theirs, and the skill he acquires in bringing them to bag and creel.