Winter plumage

“ The grand winter storms that load the mountains with enduring fountain snow seldom set in before the end of November. The fertile clouds, descending, glide about and hover in brooding silence, as if thoughtfully examining the forests and streams with reference to the work before them; then small flakes or single crystals appear, glinting and swirling in zigzags and spirals; and soon the thronging feathery masses fill the sky and make darkness like night, hurrying wandering mountaineers to their winter quarters. ”

“ Now, the trees reared their bare dark branches aloft, for the season was a late one; and Winter, driven from his throne for a few sunshiny days, was returning with increasing force to chase back the approaching Spring. From the gray lowering sky above the snow-flakes were beginning to fall, and, before Flora reached the place of her destination, a brooding storm was wrapping the world in premature night. ”

“ A week of spring days bright in every hour, without a stain or thought of the storm, came in glorious colors, giving still greater pledges of happy life to every living creature of the spring, but a loud, energetic snowstorm possessed every hour of yesterday. Every tree and broken weed bloomed yet once more; all summer distinctions were leveled off; all plants and the very rocks and streams were equally polypetalous.
This morning winter had everything in the valley. The snow drifted about in the frosty wind like meal, and the falls were muffled in thick sheets of frozen spray. ”

“ During intervals between downpours winds blew such as were usual in March, hence fitful and sudden,—winds which broke up and blew away swollen clouds in the sky; on the earth they whined through thickets, roared through forests, and devoured that snow under which just before limbs and branches were dreaming in the calm sleep of winter. On the fields the widely spread water wrinkled its surface, rivers and streams rose. ”

“ The snow of the first winter storm is frequently soft, and lodges in due dense leafy branches, weighing them down against the trunk, and the slender, drooping axis, bending lower and lower as the load increases, at length reaches the ground, forming an ornamental arch. Then, as storm succeeds storm and snow is heaped on snow, the whole tree is at last buried, not again to see the light of day or move leaf or limb until set free by the spring thaws in June or July. ”

“ Since November dawned, have been wrestling still,
In contrary blasts, with the hurricane;
While, thick and full, yet falls amain
The infinite snow, with its weary weight,
O'er the meagre, long plain disconsolate.
Thus journeys the snow afar so fleet.
Into every cranny, on every trail;
Always the snow and its winding-sheet,
The mortuary snow so pale.
The snow, unfruitful and so pale.
In wild and vagabond tatters hurled
Through the limitless winter of the world.
THE GRAVE-DIGGER
In the garden yonder of yews and death,
There sojourneth
A man who toils, and has toiled for aye. ”

“ On the quiet, still days of midsummer, you continually hear the rattle of pieces of rock which have fallen untouched from some scarp or pinnacle, and are racing down the steep talus below. The winter, however, is the time of greatest destruction. Into the thousand cracks and crannies the rains and snows of autumn pour floods of water, which penetrate the inmost recesses of the well-seamed crags. Then comes a frost. The little veins and pockets of water expand with a sudden force, combined and irresistible. ”

“ Again, the practice of fall plowing, so very beneficial in latitudes where frosts are severe and long continued, is just the reverse in the far South. There our snow is rain, and the upturned furrows are washed down into a smooth, sticky mass by the winter storms. ”

“ Winter strips off its broidered tunic and flings white dust in its aged face. Rust corrodes, rains drench, fires scorch it; lightning and frost are forever searching out the weak spots in its harness; but, still uplifting its adamantine crest, it receives unshaken the stroke or the blast, spurns the lightning, mocks the thunder, and stands fast. ”

“ But what has been smitten by the heat and swept away by raging storms is replaced in the first sunshine of spring; and even the devouring fire is not potent enough wholly to destroy what has been spared by the sun and the storms. The spring may seem more potent in tropical lands, but nowhere is it more marvellous than in the steppes, where in its power it stands—alone—opposed to summer, autumn, and winter. ”

“ The winter clouds grow, and bloom, and shed their starry crystals on every leaf and rock, and all the colors vanish like a sunset. The deer gather and hasten down their well-known trails, fearful of being snow-bound. Storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on the cliffs and meadows, and bending the slender pines to the ground in wide arches, one over the other, clustering and interlacing like lodged wheat. Avalanches rush and boom from the shelving heights, piling immense heaps upon the frozen lake, and all the summer glory is buried and lost. ”

“ Here at the bottom of the atmosphere the vapor absorbs the heat radiated from the sun. There is a swift drop in temperature as we go aloft. Moist air pushed upward becomes cooled and ice crystals, water droplets, snowflakes, are squeezed out. Clouds form, beautiful in the sunset, gloomy on a winter day, threatening as the summer thunderstorm shows on the horizon, fearsome as the winter blizzard takes command of the plains and valleys. Here is water vapor coming to the end of a long journey from the surfaces of distant seas. ”

“ The day may close lurid with the frayed streamers of lofty cirrus clouds streaking across the sky—the vaporous overflow of a coming storm—or a week of the same bright weather may continue with the wind all the while blowing softly out of the south, but sooner or later the inevitable winter storm must close this foretaste of the spring. ”

“ Winter comes suddenly, arrayed in storms, though to mountaineers silky streamers on the peaks and the tones of the wind give sufficient warning. You hear strange whisperings among the tree-tops, as if the giants were taking counsel together. One after another, nodding and swaying, calling and replying, spreads the news, until at with one accord break forth into glorious song, welcoming the first grand snowstorm of the year, and looming up in the dim clouds and snowdrifts like lighthouse towers in flying scud and spray. ”

“ During the fall of the snow there has been moisture in the air, and often on that brilliant morning that succeeds the fall, the air is full of minute frozen particles of water that sparkle like the old-fashioned glass-decoration on Christmas cards, so that one walks through a shining company of tiniest diamond fire-flies. ”

“ What can exceed the dazzling splendour of a rising sun, on the trees and bushes, after a night of rain and freezing, when every branch appears like a shining crystal? A prospect grand indeed!
The severe frosts of Winter, with the agitated atmosphere, dispel the sickening fumes which arise from heated and stagnant pools, and decaying vegetation.
This gives health and vigour to the body, and an it were, new spring to thought. Who but has observed the lively sensations of body and mind on a clear frosty morning in winter? ”

“ The snow-fleas, as to-day, are washed out of the bark of meadow trees, and cover the surface of the flood. The winter's wood is bargained for and being hauled. There is not much more for the farmer to do in the fields. This storm reminds men to put things on a winter footing. ”

“ But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer. ”

“ It now and then happens that the winter is hurried off by a sudden increase of temperature, when the accumulated snows melt away simultaneously over the whole country, and the south-easterly wind which then usually blows, brings along with it a continued fall of heavy rain, which, mingling with the dissolving snow, deluges the alluvial portions of the western country, filling up the rivulets, ravines, creeks and small rivers. ”

“ Here, if snow has fallen, as sometimes happens, while wind is blowing, it is driven into all manner of curving wave crests and undulations; then when the fall is over, the sky clears again, a night of frost hardens and congeals the outlines, and the trees wear fine feathers and{17} plumes of whiteness. As the snowfall packs with its own weight, there grows on the surface of the fields a crust half snow, half ice, covered with dazzling minute crystals. ”

“ The clouds and storm rapidly pass over eastward, and the wind falls, while the sun warms the air, and in a few minutes removes every trace of hail or snow. Thus we were often treated to winter and summer weather, with all the gradations between, several times over in the space of an hour. ”

“ The first breath of spring comes at last, but only slowly can it free the land from winter’s shackles. Only when the life-giving sunshine is accompanied by the soft south wind, at the earliest in the beginning of April, usually about the middle of the month, does the snow disappear quickly from the lower slopes of the mountains and from the deep valleys rich in black earth. ”

“ But in Winter when the cold and windy weather is coming, they fly in great flocks like clouds of huge snow-flakes, and we watch them from the window and wonder how soon the storm will follow them. And the next day or the day after, or sometimes the very day when they come, the air is white again, this time with driving snow. It comes flying past the windows, to be whirled up high by the gale and dropped again till we see the ground speckled with white, and then white everywhere except close round the big tree trunks. ”

“ A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,—its slow, upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in the western horizon like new-created volcanoes, veined with fire, shattered by exploding thunders. Even the wild gales of the equinox have their varieties,—sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs, and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this dull, dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very clouds seem too spiritless and languid to storm outright or take themselves out of the way of fair weather ”

“ Snowstorms of the same gentle kind abound among the high peaks, but in spring they not unfrequently attain larger proportions, assuming a violence and energy of expression scarcely surpassed by those bred in the depths of winter. ”

“ Frequently narrow bands or stripes extend from east to west or north to south over the entire aërial arch, the storm invariably coming from the direction pointed out by the clouds.
Local signs go to show that in winter a dark-blue cloud over the lake foretells a thaw; when the lower portion, however, is dark and the upper portion gray, snow may be expected. A halo round the moon is a sure indication of rain, snow, or wind, and the larger the circle the nearer the storm. ”

“ Every tree during the progress of gentle storms is loaded with, fairy bloom at the coldest and darkest time of year, bending the branches, and hushing every singing needle. But as soon as the storm is over, and the sun shines, the snow at once begins to shift and settle and fall from the branches in miniature avalanches, and the white forest soon becomes green again. ”

“ Presently the storm broke forth into full snowy bloom, and the thronging crystals darkened the air. The wind swept past in hissing floods, grinding the snow into meal and sweeping down into the hollows in enormous drifts all the heavier particles, while the finer dust was sifted through the sky, increasing the icy gloom. ”

“ Another weather type, often noted during our winter in the central and eastern United States, and strongly contrasted with both of the preceding conditions, is that which brings us a warm, damp, southerly wind, frequently accompanied by heavy rains. As these damp winds blow over snow-covered surfaces they become foggy and the ground is said to “smoke”; the heavy rain rapidly melts the snow; slush and mud make bad walking; rivers and brooks rise rapidly, perhaps overflowing their banks; low-lying places become filled with standing water. ”

“ The great century avalanches and the kind that mow wide swaths through the upper forests occur on mountain-sides about ten or twelve thousand feet high, where under ordinary weather conditions the snow accumulated from winter to winter lies at rest for many years, allowing trees, fifty to a hundred feet high, to grow undisturbed on the slopes beneath them. ”

“ Nowhere else have I felt so rapturous a quality of stillness: the frozen snow lies taut under the grip of the immense energy of the frost: no avalanches slipping from the snow-laden flanks of the Jungfrau under the hot beams of the sun, startle the valley with sonorous thunder: the wind stirs not the lightest needle of the pines; the villagers are home from the frozen fields, and doors are shut. ”

“ Such storms as I experienced come in close succession in the winter months, burying everything under many feet of snow. The night frosts clutch everything with a grip of iron. Cascades become threads of shining icicles. Nothing but the main body of the streams resist the binding cold. ”

“ The comparatively warm rain falling on the snow was at first absorbed and held back, and so also was that portion of the snow that the rain melted, and all that was melted by the warm wind, until the whole mass of snow was saturated and became sludgy, and at length slipped and rushed simultaneously from a thousand slopes in wildest extravagance, heaping and swelling flood over flood, and plunging into the Valley in stupendous avalanches. ”