Stanton Davis Kirkham

“ Day and night it eats its way inward, like a saw cutting to the heart of a forest tree. But see what the rain will do—so gentle a thing as the falling rain. Together they have hewn the cliffs, which are like vast rock tombs with their Egyptian massiveness. A filmy cloud floats down the gorge, trailing along the edge of the precipices, an intangible and shadowy form, spiritlike and ethereal, receiving the rays of the setting sun and becoming golden and then rose-colored, and dissolving away at last into the invisible. This fugitive, shadowy thing, this bit of mist, is the mountain sculptor. ”

“ In this choice of a building site the bird reveals something of itself. Contrast the wren with the phœbe, a cliff-dweller, loving the contact of the ledge itself better than any bush or tree. The song-sparrow has an eye for the wild rose and the yellow warbler for apple blossoms, but the phœbe has some austere traits which make the stern rock more congenial to her. Some birds are architects, others builders merely. The vireos are a family of artists, whereas the improvident cuckoo will not even lay a proper floor to her nest. ”

“ Nature is in herself a perpetual invitation: the birds call, the trees beckon and the winds whisper to us. After the unfeeling pavements, the yielding springy turf of the fields has a sympathy with the feet and invites us to walk. It is good to hear again the fine long-drawn note of the meadow-lark—voice of the early year,—the first bluebird's warble, the field-sparrow's trill, the untamed melody of the kinglet—a magic flute in the wilderness—and to see the ruby crown of the beloved sprite. ”

“ Countless bubbles glide down the current and vanish one by one. Sunbeams dance over the rapids and out upon the pool, and then, as the sun goes under a cloud, the stream as quickly takes on a somber mood. Presently comes the melodious patter of rain-drops on the ground, an even, sustained note, very different from any voice of the brook as it dimples and answers the rain, one soft voice replying to the other. Already little pools form in hollows of the rock and reflect light, so that the face of Nature is perceptibly brighter. ”

“ Like miniature smilax are the mniums, marvelous little trailing beauties, while of all vegetable elves the silvery bryum has the greatest witchery, with young drooping pea-green capsules like so many fairy pipes. A miniature jungle is the fern-moss, a forest of tree ferns at our very doors—Ceylon and Java in our wood lot. It is only a difference of dimension. A patch of this is as rich and luxuriant as any jungle of bamboos on the lower slope of the Himalaya, and a spider might as easily lose himself in one as a man in the other. ”

“ This prodigious self-reliance affects one as a species of heroism, whereas it is as unconscious as the falling rain.
What familiarity with the elements and with natural features of the earth the migrating birds must acquire—with winds and clouds, with mountain chains and rivers and coast lines! They know the landmarks and guide-posts of two continents and can find their own way. The whistle of curlew, or the honk of wild geese high in the air, seems a greeting out of the clouds from these cosmopolites, to us, sitting rooted to the earth beneath. ”

“ Winter lies over the world much as ashes are banked on coals for the night, which nevertheless retain their heat and will be found alive and glowing in the morning. In the tropics the fire is not banked and there is no cold dawn with anticipations of the kindly blaze soon to arise, no gradual uncovering of the cheerful coals. Here in New England the dawn is rigorous and spring more welcome. The winter buds are evidence that it is not far away, and it takes but the least encouragement at any time for this latent heat and life to awake and show itself in the high blueberry twigs. ”

“ It is that quality which Nature alone supplies and no cultivation nor perfection of method can give. When he speaks to his mate in an undertone his voice would melt a heart of stone. There is a time, however, when the catbird rises above any suspicion of self-consciousness [Pg 50] and is transported, and the listener with him, in a reverie of exceeding beauty. It is a wondrous love-song, an incomparable madrigal, blending with the morning sunshine and the first green leaves of the alders, soft and low as faint murmurings of a stream, a fluid melody uttered for chosen ears. ”

“ Consider how the breezes have blown the pollen of the pine and later are to help carry the seed. They thus serve the trees of the forest and the grass of the prairie. These same winds urge the fruit that it should leave the parent tree. "Come, follow us!" say they, and first gently draw, then roughly compel, till the apple falls. They whisper all through the summer to the leaves so green, and at length, on October days, draw them irresistibly.
Verily of wild gardens there is no end; our estates are without number. ”

“ One could never, for instance, form such a pleasant acquaintance with a great sugar-pine as with a slender white birch. Fatherly white oaks and village elms seem to ally themselves with man as protecting deities of the wood. But this great race of trees has little affinity with our world. Be that as it may, there [Pg 187] is perhaps no loftier association in Nature than contact with the forest. It is the force of a tremendous personality—calm, inspiring, majestic. Like the sea, it is not to be grasped in its entirety, and the mind responds to it, as some giant sugar-pine to the wind. ”

“ But the pond, fringed with alders and button-bushes, smiles in the sunshine and is friendly and inviting. It is more on the level of our every-day thought. Not always are we consoled by the vast and sublime, and we crave even more the companionable and social aspects of Nature. Grim though the surroundings of granite ledge and somber pines, the nestling pond is winsome, notwithstanding. Never forbidding, never altogether distant in its mood, even though frozen, it is a cheerful and alluring personality to which we are drawn from afar. ”

“ Old gravelly roads, which meander across the pasture and seem destitute of any special beauty, are often adorned from end to end with the round-leaved spurge, of richest hue, varying from maroon to plum color. This little weed is so unpretentious, so sincerely humble and unassuming, that probably very few ever see it or are aware of its existence. It lies prone upon the earth, where, once it attracts the attention, it is seen to be a beautiful embroidery on the bare ground. ”

“ Starting at some center, as if at a signal, these tremulous waves of sound recede farther and farther into the forest and die away in a sigh.
Here the tendency grows on one to wander in the early morning and again in late afternoon, to become crepuscular, like the animals, and to stay in camp in the middle of the day. Deer do not stir abroad in the heat, nor do fish bite, nor birds sing. This love of dawn and twilight is partly inspired by fear of man, but it is none the less natural. ”

“ It is in the air, like a touch of autumn, and we know it as much through feeling as through seeing. The coast is saturated for some distance inland with this presence of the sea, much as the beach is soaked with salt water. It is music and poetry to the soul and as elusive as they, wrapping us in dreams and yielding fugitive glimpses of that which we may never grasp, but which skirts, like a beautiful phantom, the mind's horizon. ”

“ Such are the rare and beautiful places of earth, which the mountain barriers defend and the clouds veil, as if they cherished here the last vestige of the fading youth and innocence of the old world.
There are days when the clouds shut down upon the little valley, veiling it from mortal eyes. The cliffs and buttes seem to float in air; the trail becomes a path to the clouds. You have only to go up on some ridge, and the pinnacles, looming in the fog, appear to be forlorn rocks in mid-ocean. ”

“ The woods offer unlimited opportunity for making acquaintances, and nothing else stimulates the interest more than this. The keenest pleasure is in meeting a new bird: a rare and subtle stimulus not to be defined, to be experienced only and cherished as a memory. You stand in the midst of one of the mixed flocks of autumn—winter visitants with a sprinkling of warblers, and perhaps a blue-headed vireo and a pair of silent thrushes—and recognize old friends, with a chance of discovering a stranger. ”

“ After untold centuries, the wild rose and the hay-scented fern cluster round the boulder, and dandelions star the grass.
I please myself with imagining the venerable pasture stones to have been observant of events and to have retained the memory of it all, as the Colosseum might have memories of Rome, or the Sphinx of Egypt and the desert. Such have seen races live out their lives and disappear. That every dog has his day might well be a maxim among these ancient ones of the earth who saw a tropic jungle resolve itself into an Arctic solitude and as slowly give way to a temperate zone. ”

“ Every season has its characteristic song. More than all others is the voice of the hyla, essentially springlike and to be associated with no other time. For several days there has been an occasional desultory chirp from the woods, when of a sudden, some clear evening, there comes out of the stillness that wonderfully sweet piping of little frogs. Fresh and ringing as child voices, it has, at a distance, a certain rhythm, a soothing cadence, which lulls the ear like the musical patter of rain-drops in summer showers. ”

“ In New England pastures, the boulders are as much in harmony with their environment as any tree or shrub. They have the appearance of having grown here, quite as naturally as the bayberry and the sweet fern, and are kindred of the savin, and the low-spreading juniper which circles round them and hugs the stone like the lichen itself. The migrant boulders from the North are congenial to these hardy northern plants which reflect the somber character of the rock.
A field that has been entirely cleared of its pasture stones and left to stand thus, somehow looks barren and deserted. ”

“ You may become enamored of a winsome pond on October days, a mystical beauty veiled in autumn haze, only to find her mood changed for the reserve and uncommunicativeness of winter.
When the pond freezes over we experience something of that feeling which comes with the first snow, a delightful sense of novelty, briefly entertained each season. The water has suddenly lost its mobility and become passive and expressionless, as one in a hypnotic state. A great calm has settled upon the earth; the winter sleep is in the air and the ponds have succumbed with the woodchuck. ”

“ Not until the wind rises does the forest recover its voice. During the day there is always music; it is as constant as noise in the city. Impalpable currents descend from the empyrean to caress only the tops of the tallest pines, coming no nearer to earth than this, and while all is silent below there arises a distant chant in the tree tops, which have been touched by an invisible hand and made to respond to moods of the sky. ”

“ One can imagine no more irrepressible rabble than these weeds of the garden. They seem possessed almost of a conscious life, and to push and shove and scramble for place like a hard-headed, thick-skinned, piratical crew. Many of them are immigrants, the riffraff of Europe, who have found their way to our shores, some to become good citizens, and others to remain pestilent anarchists, opposed to the law and order of the kitchen-garden and rebelling against all government by the hoe. Yet how happy are the bob-whites and the tree-sparrows for the poor seeds of the ragweed when the snow lies deep. ”

“ The spirit of the woods will not lend itself to a mere fair-weather devotion. You must cast in your lot with the wild and take such weather as befalls. If you do not now and then spend a day in the snow, you miss some impressions that no fair weather can give. When you have walked for a time in the spring shower, you have a new and larger sympathy with the fields. The shining leaves, glistening twigs, jeweled cobwebs and the gentle cadence of the falling rain all tell you it is no time to stay indoors. ”

“ A heap of cold gray ashes is all that is left of the fire, in the center a single glowing spot, which may have been the eye of the genii of the night. The black mantle has been lifted, and the earth is illumined by a faint glow, as if solely by the reflected rays of that planet. Unspeakably soft is this light, the forerunner of the dawn, in which the forest is bathed and from which one derives a peculiar satisfaction. ”

“ After their many vicissitudes, the boulders have settled down upon the bosom of the pasture and come to be a fixture in the landscape. This present age is to them the serene and mellow autumn of their troubled life. Their day is a thousand years. But they are melting into soil—as icicles dissolve in the sun—in that measureless and yet imperceptible thaw which melts granite. The pasture land is perhaps the dust of a still more primitive race whose life has been transmuted into the dandelion and the thistle. ”

“ Spagnum grew in places along the trail, and the fern moss was in evidence on the rocks. False hellebore was abundant, and on the very top stood a poison sumac—a typical bog plant. Yet the summit was rocky and covered for the most part with stunted balsam as thickly matted together as a hedge. The mountain pokes its cold head up into the clouds, and is continually refreshed by the dews of heaven. In some unaccountable manner the swamp plants, as if guided by instinct, ascend and find their natural environment at the top. ”

“ A creek flowing sluggishly through the alluvial districts of the South is insipid compared to a mountain stream in New England. Your mountain brook is a strong, salient personality which dominates the landscape. It sweeps in bold curves about the base of cliffs, and contracts into a mere mill race cut in the distorted schist and gneiss. Its suggestion is wholly of savage strength, a rude, forceful thing of the wilderness; its song a masterful strain, a triumphant chant of power. Again, there are merry little streams tinkling in the sunlight. ”

“ About a pond as about a mountain there is a kind of magnetism. A new field of discovery, there is ever the hope that from a new scene we shall gain a fresh impression. Every pond holds out this possibility and invites exploration of its shores, as if there were the promised land. But over and [Pg 165] above this is that element of personality, a charm purely feminine, and eluding any attempt to hold it.
Peculiarly sensitive to light and air, a pond is susceptible of little moods that do not come to the sea. It is the eye of the landscape. Dawn, high noon and dusk are each reflected there. ”

“ Nature works deftly, at first with delicate brush touching a shadbush, a clump of osmunda, or again only a leaf, a spot of color, a patch here and a streak there; but the day of transfiguration approaches. Early October sees the stag-horn sumacs fairly scintillate with color. At last the whole color-box is upset and runs red down a hillside huckleberry patch, meeting a yellow streak in a ravine and spreading out over the swamps, a sea of scarlet and gold. Every year Nature starts out in this modest fashion and ends in an upset and riot of color. ”