Bradford Torrey

“ He that cannot fight must run; and however it may be elsewhere, in the desert the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong. In one way or another everything goes armed. It may be set with thorns like the mesquite and the cactus, or it may have an offensive oil like the creosote; it may run like the rabbit, or strike like the rattlesnake. If it can do nothing else, it must hide. And even the strong and the speedy must hide when that which is stronger and speedier heaves in sight. The desert is open to the sky, but its life is not open. ”

“ And almost I believe that this limited prospect is better than the grander sweep from the summit itself,—less distracting and more restful. So half a loaf may be better than a whole one, if a man cannot be contented without trying to eat the whole one. A white-throat and a myrtle warbler sing to me as I nibble my sandwich. They are the loftiest spirits, it appears. I take off my hat to them.
Already I am down far enough to catch the sound of running water; and every rod brings a new mountain into view from behind the long East Peak. ”

“ Yesterday, however, was a piece of Massachusetts June, while this morning is so perfect that every one, visitor or resident, passes comments upon it. Perfection of any kind is a rare and precious thing,—in this world, at least,—and though it be merely a bit of weather, it should never go unspoken of. So I say to myself as I lie in the shade, and look and breathe.
In truth, I can hardly feel it credible that I was in the midst of snowstorms less than a week ago. For a long two days winter has seemed a thing utterly past and forgotten. ”

“ Blue yellow-backed warblers are musical after their manner (they hardly need to be singers, being so exquisite in color, form, and motion) , and white-eyed vireos are numerous enough, though nothing like so plentiful as at Miami. Here, as there, they have no thought of hiding their light under a bushel.
It is like old times to see Florida jays sitting on the chimney-tops of the summer cottages along the dunes behind the beach. ”

“ I have been in Ormond two days,—two perfect days of temperate summer weather,—and have walked hither and thither, up the river, down the river, across the river, and on the beach, seeing comparatively little of the country as yet, but enough to be able to say that I have never found any place in Florida where a walking man should be better contented. There are paths and roads everywhere,—a convenience not to be taken for granted in this Southern country,—and be his states of mind never so variable, he may here suit the jaunt to the mood. ”

“ If I can set him to scolding, all the birds in the neighborhood will flock this way to ascertain what the trouble is. The device works to a charm; in half a minute the excitement is intense. Nuthatches, white-throats, chickadees, kinglets, and wren, all take a hand in vituperating the intruder, and a youthful redstart comes from the opposite side of the way to satisfy his more gentle curiosity. One creature, strangely enough, remains neutral: a red squirrel, who sits on end at the top of a stump and gazes at me in silence. ”

“ The people generally seem to mistake the thrashers for mockers. If I speak to them about the strangeness of the mocker’s absence, they declare that mockers are common here. At least two persons have turned upon me with the assertion, “Why, there’s one singing out there at this minute.” And they point to a thrasher, a bird that wears not one of the mocker’s three colors,—gray, black, and white,—and for music is as much like him as a child’s tin whistle is like a master’s flute. ”

“ Strange that when two men meet for the only time in their lives they should find nothing more important to communicate than that it rains, or that the sun is shining. But weather is the thing, after all, especially in Florida. Perhaps it deserves all that is said about it. Anyhow, the woodcutter and the stroller have [147] expressed a feeling of neighborliness and have told each other no lies.
With every rod the wood changes from glory to glory. I remark with special joy a grove of tall, slender, smooth-barked water-oaks, every one in new leaf. Height rather than girth is their aim. ”

“ A robin’s sudden cackle I thought almost the sweetest of music; the careless warble of a bluebird was nothing less than a voice from heaven; and a squirrel sputtering defiance from the stone wall set me laughing with pleasure. None of these sounds, nor anything akin to them, was to be heard on the desolate, boulder-covered top of Mount Washington.
Now the trees interlaced their branches over my head. Nothing could be prettier ”

“ He was my first golden eagle, in some respects one of the noblest of all North American birds. I knew him to be not uncommon in the mountains, and had hoped some day to see him passing, especially when I should be far out on the edge of [221] the foothills; and behold, here he was on my idle afternoon, close at home. Who says that the lame and the lazy are not provided for?
My dreamy saunter was turning out ornithological in spite of myself, and as if the gnatcatcher and the eagle had not done enough to that end, the ubiquitous raven now took a hand at the business. ”

“ A cardinal is whistling, a checkerback is chattering, many warblers are in the sunny tree-tops, and from somewhere in the depths of the forest comes the deep, oracular voice of an owl, though the sun is at least half an hour high. Whoo, whoo, who-who, he calls. I love to hear him. On the wire fence is a yellow jessamine vine, still sporting a few last blossoms, and for rods together the sandy railway embankment is draped with exquisite white “bramble roses,” the flowers of the creeping blackberry. ”

“ As I drew near I saw the tiny creature perched as usual at the tip of the mesquite. How many times he came and went during the hour that I stayed by him I fail to remember; but on the second or third occasion a verdin happened into the neighborhood. The hummer descended upon him hotly, drove him away in no time, and then, as if in celebration of his triumph, mounted straight into the air till he was like a dot, and came down again almost vertically to his perch. It was a brilliant and lovely display, an ebullition of vital spirits well worth a forenoon of any man’s life to witness. ”

“ For three weeks I have been in Miami; birds are plentiful; the country, one may almost say, is full of them; the weather, mostly a few shades too warm for a pedestrian’s comfort, seems to be all that birds could wish; but thus far there has been scarcely a sign of the grand vernal awakening. Warm or cold, for the birds it is still winter. Phœbes, to be sure, have sung ever since my arrival, I cannot help wondering why; and the same is true of white-eyed vireos. ”

“ Just above the Profile House farm the road took me into a flock of birds that proved to be the better part of half a mile in length. The wayside hedges were literally in a flutter, snowbirds being the most abundant, I think, with white-throats and myrtle warblers not far behind. Hermit thrushes, winter wrens, chipping sparrows, song sparrows, and ruby-crowns were continually in sight, and an unseen purple finch was practicing niggardly, disconnected, vireo-like phrases, as the manner of his kind is in the autumnal season. ”

“ The gnatcatcher disappeared, and the dreamer was just dozing off again, when two large birds were seen to be having a hot encounter, high overhead. This time the field-glass came into requisition. A raven was teasing a red-tailed hawk, with all a raven’s pertinacity and spite. Again and again and again he swooped upon him, while the hawk ducked and turned to avoid the stroke. Why the big fellow, biggest of all our hawks, larger and stronger in every way than the raven, did not face his tormentor and lay him out was a mystery. ”

“ If disturbed, they rise in a cloud, and on coming to rest again every one seems to desire a perch at the very tip of a bush. As they must all alight in the same one or two bunches of scrub, however, though there are hundreds of others exactly like them all about, there are by no means top seats enough to go round, and there is a deal of preliminary hovering, accompanied by a grand confusion of formless twittering, during which—the white patches of the quivering wings and outspread tails showing through—the spectacle is most animated and pleasing. ”

“ Like the new leaves of the cypress, it prophesied of spring.
At intervals a heron of one kind or another started up far in advance. One was snow-white, but whether I was to call it an immature little blue heron or a white egret was more than could be made sure of at my distance. I recall, too, a flock of ducks, a cormorant or two, speeding through the air after their usual headlong manner, a solitary red-winged blackbird, astray from the flock, and the cries of killdeer plovers. ”

“ The mountain is only a little one, but it is steep enough—the upper half, at all events—to give the eager pedestrian a puff for his money. For myself, I had time to spare, and, fortunately or unfortunately, had been over the path too often to be subject to the state of mind (I know it well) which we may characterize as climbers’ impatience. Unless something unforeseen should happen, the summit would wait for me. Halfway up, also, a flock of blue jays, five or six at least, who were holding a long and mysterious confabulation close by the path, afforded me a comfortable breathing spell. ”

“ A purple finch warbles ecstatically, a white-throated sparrow whistles in the distance, and now and then, from far down the slope, I catch the upliftings of a hermit thrush.
A man grows thoughtful, not to say sentimental, in such a place, surrounded by fields on which so many years of human labor have been [9] spent, so much ploughing and harrowing, planting and reaping, now given up again to nature. ”

“ But though we Northern visitors may sometimes envy our Southern brethren their gift of happy insouciance, it is not for our possessing. We were born under another star. Our lack is the precise opposite of theirs; even in our vacation hours we have seldom time to sit still.
So it happened that on a sultry, dog-day morning, with a south wind blowing, the sky partly clouded,—a comfort to the eyes,—the professor and the bird-gazer, after an early breakfast, set forth upon a reconnoissance of the Everglades. ”

“ To his mind numberless problems would be suggested touching the methods by which plants, sturdy and patient beings, adapt themselves to untoward circumstances and keep themselves alive—so perpetuating the race—upon the chariest of encouragement. He would understand the significance of the prevailing hairiness of desert-inhabiting species, as well as of the all but universal light bluish or dusty color of the foliage; for, saving the yellow-green creosote, there is hardly so much as a bright green leaf from one end of the desert to the other. ”

“ A pileated woodpecker crosses the track just before me, with all his colors flying, a pair of bluebirds sit in their accustomed place upon the telegraph wire, and from the neighboring pines I catch the finch-like twitters of a brown-headed nuthatch. This is close upon the railway station and the golf links. My afternoon is done, but the golf players are still making the most of daylight. I blush to confess it, but there are some enthusiasms with which even that of a strolling naturalist will hardly endure comparison. ”

“ Think of doing that, or anything like it, in our poor, frost-bitten, winter-killed, over-civilized New England! The tracks would have been a perfect crisscross.
And, notwithstanding all this, footprints or no footprints, the desert is not without its own world of little people. It is a desert only to our dull, provincial, self-absorbed, self-sufficient, narrow-minded, egotistical human apprehension of it. So much ought to be plain as day to the most undiscerning traveler ”