The Pines

“ PINES packed the vast valley, climbing raggedly to the pale grey peaks. Sometimes the mountains swooped down in gulch and butte of fantastic beauty. The pines were pale green in the sunshine, the soil strangely red. There was a curious dryness, a hard brilliance about it all.
As Hugh looked from the train window he had a feeling of home-coming. It was as if his ancestors had lived in this land; as if in no other could he thrive so well. ”

“ To the pines that held up soft arms of welcome and clasp them close and will not let them go away though each bough is weighted down, they whisper a soft little cooing word that is surely “love” in any language. No wonder it is warm under pine boughs in a snow-storm. The great trees glow with the happiness of it and the radiance of their delight filters down to you as you stand beneath. The flakes seem to love the bare, smooth twigs of the hard-wood maples less, they give them just a pat and a gentle word of greeting as they go by, and they touch the birches almost flippantly. ”

“ Ah, there is magic in the pine forests! One hears untranslatable harmonies; one sees strange subtleties of colour, and the fragrance is the complement of both. Frances loved the pine glooms. She would sometimes spend hours within the shadowy aisles, an ascetic, black-robed figure, with pale, uplifted face, drawn back, it would seem, by the weight of hair; but there was nothing ascetic in her glowing eyes and smiling mouth as she listened to the sea-music the wind sang to the pines, and inhaled the pine fragrance with a rapture which no flower scents could give her ”

“ Not so, however; for our pathway squeezes itself between two melancholy sentinel-pines, tracing its white scroll into the forest farther than the eye can follow, and in a few moments we leave the clearing behind, and pass into the shadow of the endless avenue, and bow beneath the trailing branches of the silent, stern, immovable warders at the gate. We were fairly in the Pines; and a drive of somewhat more than three miles lay before us still. ”

“ While other trees “may turn their paleness to the sky if but a rush of rain passes them by, the pines must live carelessly amidst the wrath of clouds,” and “only wave their branches to and fro when a storm pleads with them, as men toss their arms in a dream⁠ ⁠... You cannot reach them, cannot cry to them; these trees never heard human voice,” he says, speaking of their inaccessible multitudes among the precipices; “they are far above all sound but of the winds. ”

“ Nothing can be more cheerful in scenery than the occasional groups of Pines which have come up spontaneously on the bald hills near our coast, elsewhere a dreary waste of gray rocks, stunted shrubbery, and prostrate Juniper. In the forest the White Pine constitutes the very sanctuary of Nature, its tall pillars extending into the clouds, and its broad canopy of foliage mixing with the vapors that descend in the storm. ”

“ None of the young growing things in the meadow understood that it is natural for a pine tree to be stiff.
The sugar pine was not always unhappy. [Pg 134] There were days when he caught golden glints of the stream that ran smoothly about the meadow, in a bed of leopard-colored stones, and, reflecting all the light that fell into the hollow of the hills, gave the place its name; days when the air was warm and the sky was purely blue, and the resinous smell of the pines on the meadow border came to the seedling like a sweet savor in a dream, for as yet he did not understand what he was to be. ”

“ There are shops, indeed, and a principal street, but they are so mixed up with the pines and so divided, one from the other, that they do not give an impression of town life at all, and one easily imagines oneself to be in the depths of the country. The pines are the fetishes of Bournemouth. You breathe in their healing balsam, you bathe in pine juice and sleep on pine pillows. You walk in pine groves, and sit on furniture made exclusively of pine and, when you die, you are laid under the shade of the pines. I don’t doubt the fact that pines are healthy in moderation, but they are monotonous. ”

“ She was in a panorama stage-scene; things moved steadily by her, there was a sound of the engine, and a sensation of steering, but she was forever in the same place, among the same pines, with the same scowling blackness between their bare clean trunks. Only the road ahead was clear: a one-way track, the foot-high earthy bank and the pine-roots beside it, two distinct ruts, and a roughening of strewn brown bark and pine-needles, which, in the beating light of the car's lamps, made the sandy road scabrous with little incessant shadows. ”

“ The hot air was steeped in the aromatic scents that the sun draws from the mighty pines which clothe the foothills. At midday the little gulley where the men worked was heavy with them. All about them was strangely silent. The pines rising rank on rank stirred to no passing breezes. ”

“ One sees it there, rooted among golden sands, and gazing across{249} a waste of purple sea, the wash of whose waves is hardly to be distinguished from the wash of wind through its own branches....
The mystery of the pines, too, seems to hold a peculiar quality unapproached elsewhere in Nature: it subdues without terrifying, inspires awe without distress, and is more human than the mystery which belongs to mountains, sea, or desert. The fairies come out from the pine woods; for no other woods conceal so gently, yet hold within their velvety recesses such possibilities of revelation. ”

“ It is thrilling business to bring those giant Pines down. The ground trembles under the stroke, while the reverberating echo of its fall, as it rings through mountains and valleys, may, on a still morning, be heard six or eight miles. Before felling the Pine, small trees are cut for bed-pieces, the Pine-tree falling across them transversely, to prevent it from becoming too deeply imbedded in the snow. ”

“ When an observing lad has spent considerable time in these Northern woods, the voices of Nature speak to him in the wailing of the wind whispering secrets as it stirs the branches of the pines; he hears another story in the thunder tones of the rushing rapids ”

“ Then he took the young child up to the mountain, built a cabin under the tamarack pines, and a pit for burning charcoal for the furnace fires.
No one could wish for a better place for a boy to grow up in than the slope of Pine Mountain. There was the drip of pine balm and a wind like wine, white water in the springs, and as much room for roaming as one desired. The charcoal-burner's son chose to go far, coming back with sheaves of strange bloom from the edge of snow banks on the high ridges, bright spar or peacock-painted ores, hatfuls of berries, or strings of shining trout. ”

“ I am very sorry I must die some day and miss these wilding joys and the odour of the trees and flowers, but it is my comfortable hope that when I return to Claeg, the Round One, who is called the earth, I shall be evolved into a pine-tree and grow happily in this mountain pass. Then will other people come to, even as I come to these trees, and say, "Good morning, my friend! I have been lonely for you."
The pines are our fellow-creatures and more closely related to us than anything that has roots in the earth. They speak to our inmost being. ”

“ But when only stray puffs come a-wandering, and other trees are silent, listen at the skirts of a pine grove, and hear those ghosts of sound that fall from nowhere, that thin away to a mere ghost of sighing, and then come running back to you over the motionless crests. For pines can answer the wind apparently without moving. No other sound can faint as this does⁠—or sing alone; among the stragglers at the edge of the wood you may hear distinct solos. Isolated pines respond to a wind you cannot feel ”

“ While the Pines, growing in clusters, seem to constitute the aristocracy—families of nobility—the rest of the forest seems to make up the populace; and I may add, that backwoodsmen are accustomed to pay them the same deferential regard above other gentlemen foresters which is awarded to superiors in human society. Indeed, the Pine has claims upon our regard, not only on account of its unequaled dimensions, but "from the importance of its products in naval, and especially in civil and domestic architecture, in many of the arts, and in some instances in medicine." ”

“ Many varieties of the red, yellow, and pitch pine, intermingled with the graceful larch, the picturesque beech and maple, birch, elm, oak, and numerous other tribes of forest timber, grow down close to the water’s side, spreading in stately grandeur over the broad plains, or stretching proudly up to the summits of the mountains that descend precipitously to the river. In summer the bright and cheerful green of the forests is exceedingly beautiful and refreshing to the eye, the dark pines alone forming a sombre contrast to the vivid freshness of the deciduous trees ”

“ With this plant the whole world would seem rich though none other existed. It is not easy to keep on with the camp cloud while such plant people are standing preaching by the wayside.
During the afternoon we passed a fine meadow bounded by stately pines, mostly the arrowy yellow pine, with here and there a noble sugar pine, its feathery arms outspread above the spires of its companion species in marked contrast; a glorious tree, its cones fifteen to twenty inches long, swinging like tassels at the ends of the branches with superb ornamental effect. ”

“ Here it is succeeded by the hardy Two-leaved Pine, which is speedily joined by the taller Yellow and Mountain Pines. These, with the burly juniper, and shimmering aspen, rapidly grow larger as the sunshine becomes richer, forming groves that block the view; or they stand more apart here and there in picturesque groups, that make beautiful and obvious harmony with the rocks and with one another. Blooming underbrush becomes abundant,—azalea, spiraea, and the brier-rose weaving fringes for the streams, and shaggy rugs to relieve the stern, unflinching rock-bosses. ”

“ Going along the turnpike I look over to the pitch pines on Moore's hillside, and it strikes me that this pine, take the year round, is the most cheerful tree and most living to look at and have about your house, it is so sunny and full of light, in harmony with the yellow sand there and the spring sun. The deciduous trees are apparently dead and the white pine is much darker, but the pitch pine has an ingrained sunniness and is especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season. Yet men will take pains to cut down these trees, and set imported larches in their places! ”

“ The Mountain Pine is first met on the upper margin of the fir zone, growing singly in a subdued, inconspicuous form, in what appear as chance situations, without making much impression on the general forest. Continuing up through the Two-leaved Pines in the same scattered growth, it begins to show its character, and at an elevation of about 10,000 feet attains its noblest development near the middle of the range, tossing its tough arms in the frosty air, welcoming storms and feeding on them, and reaching the grand old age of 1000 years. ”

“ In this northern land they are a symbol of constancy and faith. No one can look at a pine-tree in winter without knowing that spring will come again in due time. The lake itself soon shared in the flood of color brought out by the sun. Most of its surface was ruffled by the breeze, but at points where the high pines sheltered the water and left it rippleless, the mountain-sides mirrored themselves, and the reflection was red like wine. ”

“ The gloom of the pines is the lingering twilight of that far-off time, and the pine-tree lizard, or swift, is the lineal descendant of those reptile monsters who ruled the seas and the dry land before man was.
Throughout southern New Jersey the pine-tree swifts abound. The worm-fences, rail-piles, bridges, stone-heaps, and, above all, the pine-trees are alive with them. They are the true [Pg 82] children of the pines, looking so like a very part of the trees that it seems they must have been made by snipping off the pitch-pines' scaly twigs and giving legs to them. ”

“ How clean and unworn and immortal the woods seemed to be!—the lofty cedars in full bloom laden with golden pollen and their washed plumes shining; the pines rocking gently and settling back into rest, and the evening sunbeams spangling on the broad leaves of the madroños, their tracery of yellow boughs relieved against dusky thickets of Chestnut Oak; liverworts, lycopodiums, ferns were exulting in glorious revival, and every moss that had ever lived seemed to be coming crowding back from the dead to clothe each trunk and stone in living green. ”

“ Now, stumbling up this ridge, we come to a little patch of hemlocks, spreading out their green wings, and making, in the ravine, a deep shelter, where many a fresh springing thing is standing, and where we gain much for our home vases. These pines are motherly creatures. One can think how it must rejoice the heart of a partridge or a rabbit to come from the dry, whistling sweep of a deciduous forest under the home-like shadow of their branches. ”

“ Green field, and glowing rock, and glancing streamlet, all slope together in the sunshine towards the brows of the ravines, where the pines take up their own dominion of saddened shade; and with everlasting roar in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder down pale from the glaciers, filling all their chasms 319 with enchanted cold, beating themselves to pieces against the great rocks that they have themselves cast down, and forcing fierce way beneath their ghastly poise. ”