The Log of the Sun Part 18

In a severe wrestling match, the moments of supremest strain are those when the opponents are fast-locked, motionless, when the advantage comes, not with quickness, but with staying power; and likewise in the struggle of tree with tree the fact that one or two years, or even whole decades, watch the efforts of the branches to lift their leaves one above the other, detracts nothing from the bitterness of the strife.

Far to the north we will sometimes find groves of young balsam firs or spruce,--hundreds of the same species of sapling growing so close together that a rabbit may not pa.s.s between. The slender trunks, almost touching each other, are bare of branches. Only at the top is there light and air, and the race is ever upward. One year some slight advantage may come to one young tree,--some delicate unbalancing of the scales of life, and that fortunate individual instantly responds, reaching several slender side branches over the heads of his brethren. They as quickly show the effects of the lessened light and forthwith the race is at an end. The victor shoots up tall and straight, stamping and choking out the lives at his side, as surely as if his weapons were teeth and claws instead of delicate root-fibres and soughing foliage.

The contest with its fellows is only the first of many. The same elements which help to give it being and life are ever ready to catch it unawares, to rend it limb from limb, or by patient, long-continued attack bring it crashing to the very dust from which sprang the seed.

We see a mighty spruce whose black leaf.a.ge has waved above its fellows for a century or more, paying for its supremacy by the distortion of every branch. Such are to be seen clinging to the rocky sh.o.r.es of Fundy, every branch and twig curved toward the land; showing the years of battling with constant gales and blizzards. Like giant weather-vanes they stand, and, though there is no elasticity in their limbs and they are gnarled and scarred, yet our hearts warm in admiration of their decades of patient watching beside the troubled waters. For years to come they will defy every blast the storm G.o.d can send against them, until, one wild day, when the soil has grown scanty around the roots of one of the weakest, it will shiver and tremble at some terrific onslaught of wind and sleet; it will fold its branches closer about it and, like the Indian chieftains, who perhaps in years past occasionally watched the waters by the side of the young sapling, the conquered tree will bow its head for the last time to the storm.

Farther inland, sheltered in a narrow valley, stands a sister tree, seeded from the same cone as the storm-distorted spruce. The wind shrieks and howls above the little valley and cannot enter; but the law of compensation brings to bear another element, silent, gentle, but as deadly as the howling blast of the gale. All through the long winter the snow sifts softly down, finding easy lodgment on the dense-foliaged branches.

From the surrounding heights the white crystals pour down until the tree groans with the ma.s.sive weight. Her sister above is battling with the storm, but hardly a feather's weight of snow clings to her waving limbs.

The compressed, down-bent branches of the valley spruce soon become permanently bent and the strain on the trunk fibres is great. At last, with a despairing crash, one great limb gives way and is torn bodily from its place of growth. The very vitals of the tree are exposed and instantly every splintered cell is filled with the sifting snow. Helpless the tree stands, and early in the spring, at the first quickening of summer's growth, a salve of curative resin is poured upon the wound. But it is too late. The invading water has done its work and the elements have begun to rot the very heart of the tree. How much more to be desired is the manner of life and death of the first spruce, battling to the very last!

A beech seedling which takes root close to the bank of a stream has a good chance of surviving, since there will be no compet.i.tors on the water side and moisture and air will never fail. But look at some ancient beech growing thus, whose smooth, whitened hole encloses a century of growth rings. Offsetting its advantages, the stream, little by little, has undermined the maze of roots and the force of annual freshets has trained them all in a down-stream direction. It is an inverted reminder of the wind-moulded spruce. Although the stout beech props itself by great roots thrown landward, yet, sooner or later, the ripples will filter in beyond the centre of gravity and the mighty tree will topple and mingle with its shadow-double which for so many years the stream has reflected.

Thus we find that while without moisture no tree could exist, yet the same element often brings death. The amphibious mangroves which fringe the coral islands of the southern seas hardly attain to the dignity of trees, but in the mysterious depths of our southern swamps we find the strangely picturesque cypresses, which defy the waters about them. One cannot say where trunk ends and root begins, but up from the stagnant slime rise great arched b.u.t.tresses, so that the tree seems to be supported on giant six- or eight-legged stools, between the arches of which the water flows and finds no chance to use its power. Here, in these lonely solitudes,--heron-haunted, snake-infested,--the hanging moss and orchids search out every dead limb and cover it with an unnatural greenness. Here, great lichens grow and a myriad tropical insects bore and tunnel their way from bark to heart of tree and back again. Here, in the blackness of night, when the air is heavy with hot, swampy odours, and only the occasional squawk of a heron or cry of some animal is heard, a rending, grinding, crashing, breaks suddenly upon the stillness, a distant boom and splash, awakening every creature. Then the silence again closes down and we know that a cypress, perhaps linking a trio of centuries, has yielded up its life.

Leaving the hundred other mysteries which the trees of the tropics might unfold, let us consider for a moment the danger which the tall, successful tree invites,--the penalty which it pays for having surpa.s.sed all its other brethren. It preeminently attracts the bolts of Jove and the lesser trees see a blinding flash, hear a rending of heart wood, and when the storm has pa.s.sed, the tree, before perfect in trunk, limbs, and foliage, is now but a heap of charred splinters.

Many a great willow overhanging the banks of a wide river could tell interesting tales of the scars on its trunk. That lower wound was a deep gash cut by some Indian, perhaps to direct a war-party making their way through the untrodden wilderness; this bare, unsightly patch was burnt out by the signal fire of one of our forefather pioneers. And so on and on the story would unfold, until the topmost, freshly sawed-off limb had for its purpose only the desire of the present owner for a clearer view of the water beyond.

Finally we come to the tree best beloved of us in the north,--the carefully grafted descendant of some sour little wild crab-apple. A faithful servant indeed has the monarch of the old orchard proved. It has fed us and our fathers before us, and its gnarled trunk and low-hanging branches tell the story of the rosy fruit which has weighed down its limbs year after year. Old age has laid a heavy hand upon it, but not until the outermost twig has ceased to blossom, and its death, unlike that of its wild kindred, has come silently and peacefully, do we give the order to have the tree felled. Even in its death it serves us, giving back from the open hearth the light and heat which it has stored up throughout the summers of many years.

Let us give more thought to the trees about us, and when possible succour them in distress, straighten the bent sapling, remove the parasitic lichen, and give them the best chance for a long, patient, strong life.

In the far North stands a Pine-tree, lone, Upon a wintry height; It sleeps; around it snows have thrown A covering of white.

It dreams forever of a Palm That, far i' the morning-land, Stands silent in a most sad calm Midst of the burning sand.

(_From the German of Heine._) SIDNEY LANIER.

AN OWL OF THE NORTH

It is mid-winter, and from the northland a blizzard of icy winds and swirling snow crystals is sweeping with fury southward over woods and fields. We sit in our warm room before the crackling log fire and listen to the shriek of the gale and wonder how it fares with the little bundles of feathers huddled among the cedar branches.

We picture to ourselves all the wild kindred sheltered from the raging storm; the gray squirrels rocking in their lofty nests of leaves; the chipmunks snug underground; the screech owls deep in the hollow apple trees, all warm and dry.

But there are those for whom the blizzard has no terrors. Far to the north on the barren wastes of Labrador, where the gale first comes in from the sea and gathers strength as it comes, a great owl flaps upward and on broad pinions, white as the driving snowflakes, sweeps southward with the storm. Now over ice-bound river or lake, or rushing past a myriad dark spires of spruce, then hovering wonderingly over a mult.i.tude of lights from the streets of some town, the strong Arctic bird forges southward, until one night, if we only knew, we might open our window and, looking upward, see two great yellow eyes apparently hanging in s.p.a.ce, the body and wings of the bird in snow-white plumage lost amidst the flakes. We thrill in admiration at the grand bird, so fearless of the raging elements.

Only the coldest and fiercest storms will tempt him from the north, and then not because he fears snow or cold, but in order to keep within reach of the s...o...b..rds which form his food. He seeks for places where a less severe cold encourages small birds to be abroad, or where the snow's crust is less icy, through which the field mice may bore their tunnels, and run hither and thither in the moonlight, pulling down the weeds and cracking their frames of ice. Heedless of pa.s.sing clouds, these little rodents scamper about, until a darker, swifter shadow pa.s.ses, and the feathered talons of the snowy owl close over the tiny, shivering bundle of fur.

Occasionally after such a storm, one may come across this white owl in some snowy field, hunting in broad daylight; and that must go down as a red-letter day, to be remembered for years.

What would one not give to know of his adventures since he left the far north. What stories he could tell of hunts for the ptarmigan,--those Arctic fowl, clad in plumage as white as his own; or the little kit foxes, or the seals and polar bears playing the great game of life and death among the grinding icebergs!

His visit to us is a short one. Comes the first hint of a thaw and he has vanished like a melting snowflake, back to his home and his mate. There in a hollow in the half-frozen Iceland moss, in February, as many as ten fuzzy little snowy owlets may grow up in one nest,--all as hardy and beautiful and brave as their great fierce-eyed parents.

THE END