Outings At Odd Times

I have spoken of a monstrous water-snake. This serpent has long been a feature of the pond, and, when in the upland fields laying its eggs it probably smelled the water, and so turned northward toward the lilies, instead of returning southward to the splatter-docks in the meadows. I have cornered the creature several times, and always found it exceedingly surly. To be held in the hand it considers an insult, and bites with a rapidity of motion of the head that is marvelous. Its teeth are pretty sharp, too, and bring blood when the hand or bare arm is struck; but then its violent efforts are so amusing that one forgets all about the pain. The snake loves a moonlit night, and at such times occasionally floats upon the surface of the pond without making the slightest motion, and a stranger would suppose it to be a small limb of a tree. This apparent rest, however, has a purpose behind, and is, I think, connected with the capture of food; or so it has appeared to me on several occasions.

That the several turtles of our meadow tracts should find their way to the pond was not surprising, for even those most strictly aquatic take long overland journeys in spring and early summer; but I did not look for fish, as none could come down the brook, and I as little supposed that any could climb fifty feet above the river and reach it; and then they would have, besides, to jump over the dam or waddle around it. And I saw no fish until weeks after the pond was completed. I stocked it with carp, and then, lo! there were mud-minnows in these shut-off waters. Of course, they were there before the dam was built, and now they are too well established to be exterminated. I can only hope they will not find the carps’ eggs, or feed exclusively on the young fish.

What, then, have I accomplished by damming a little brook? I have changed to a watery wilderness the corner of a one-time dusty field. I have brought representatives of many forms of animal life, hitherto unknown to the spot, to a prosy nook, and so changed the whole face of Nature. The very weeds are even now different from those of former years, and hosts of insects that had not been here before now fill the air and make it to tremble with their tireless wings. And to the rambler, after long tramping in dusty fields or along the no less cheerless highway, here is a pleasant spot indeed, one that epitomizes half the country round, and offers, too, many a suggestive novelty. So much by day; but let him tarry until the gloaming, and when the lilies have folded he will catch, what is even better, glimpses of the night-side of Nature.

The Herbs of the Field

Wandering recently in and out the woods and fields, tramping aimlessly whithersoever fancy led me, I crushed with my feet, at last, a stem of pennyroyal. Catching the warm fragrance of its pungent oil, straightway the little-loved present vanished. How true it is that many an odor, however faint, opens the closed doors of the past! Prosy and commonplace it may seem, but full many a time a whiff from the kitchen of some old farm-house, where I have stopped for a drink of water, recalls another farm-kitchen, redolent of marvelous gingerbread and pies, such as I have failed to find in recent years, and with their tempting spiciness went that subtle odor, from which indeed the whole house was never free, that of sweet-smelling herbs. I am daily thankful that the herbs at least have not changed, as the years roll by. It is the same pennyroyal that my grandmother gathered; and think to what strange use she put it! Made pennyroyal puddings! Let them go down to posterity by name only.

The herbs of the field and garden were gathered, each in its proper season, by the folks at home, and in great bunches were suspended from the exposed beams of the old kitchen. In early autumn they made quite a display, but, as the winter wore away, became rather sorry-looking reminders of the past summer. To a limited extent their bulk decreased and their odor became less pronounced; but how seldom were they ever disturbed! I have dared to think that herb-gathering was a survival from prehistoric times, but I never dared to hint this to my grandmother. The nearest to doing this was to coax a braver boy to ask if the old bunches were burned at midnight with secret ceremonies, for they gave place to the new crop each year, yet were not seen lying about the yard. Neither the braver boy nor I could get any satisfaction, but a forcible reprimand instead, for hinting at paganism. I hold, nevertheless, that a trace of it did exist then, and does. Was it not something akin to this that more than one medicinal herb had to be gathered at midnight? This, it is true, was not openly admitted, but unquestionably faith in its virtue as a remedy was diminished if the plant was not gathered as the superstition dictated. Try as we may, the crude faiths of our prehistoric ancestry we can not snap asunder. As elastic bands, they may grow finer and finer with the tension of the centuries, but still, perhaps as but invisible threads, they hold.

However steadily herb-using may have been going out of date in my early boyhood, herb-gathering was not, and I may be mistaken when I say that, except the pennyroyal in puddings, sage in sausage, and a bit of thyme and parsley in soup, the dozen others hung in old kitchens were unused except as fly-roosts – a fact that scarcely added to their virtues.

When I last lounged on the old settle and counted the several kinds of herbs hanging overhead, an aged negress assured me that every “yarb” kept some disease at bay, and predicted disaster as the new kitchens with their plastered ceilings and modern stoves gave way to more primitive architecture and methods. And I am half inclined to believe that she was right. The old folks had their aches and pains, but not so much of that depressing languor that we call malaria. Might not the ever-present odors of sweet-smelling herbs have kept this at bay? I fancied I felt the better for the whiff of pennyroyal, and, gathering a handful of its leaves, breathed the spiciness until my lungs were filled. It is something to have an herb at hand that revives the past, and more perhaps to have many that add a charm to the present, for the pastures in August would be somewhat dreary, I think, were there not in almost every passing breeze the odor of sweet-smelling herbs.

But if pennyroyal, sweet cicely, and the spicy “mocker”-nut carry me back some twoscore years, what shall be said of a faint odor that can yet be distilled from plants that flourished in the same pastures or where these pastures now are, perhaps a million years ago? One is not given to thinking of anthracite as at one time wood, but it is different in this instance, for the blackened, fern-like plants in the underlying clays are still wood and not petrified; so that they burn with a feeble flame when dry, and burning throw off a rich fragrance akin to frankincense. I have often placed a splinter of these ancient trees in the flame of a candle, and, sniffing the odor that arises, travel in fancy to New Jersey’s upland and meadows before they were trodden by palæolithic man; before even the mastodon and gigantic beaver had appeared; when enormous lizards and a few strange birds ruled the wide wastes. But the world here was not wholly strange, even then, for many a familiar tree was growing in this old river valley, as the delicate impressions of their leaves in the clay so clearly demonstrate.

If, then, one would indulge in retrospection – and therein lies one of life’s most solid comforts – it will be found that suggestive objects are ever about us, and the herbs of the field, in August, would scarcely be missed, if unhappily they ceased to grow. But why, it may be asked, are these same herbs so suggestive of the past, so certain to give rise to retrospective thought? It is not a personal matter, for I have questioned many people, and in this they all agree. One reply is a fair representative of all. Offering a little bunch of garden herbs to an old man no longer able to wander out of doors, he immediately buried his nose in it, drew a long breath, and remarked, “How that carries me back to the old homestead!”

As by the touch of a magician’s wand, in my walk to-day, the present vanished when I crushed the pennyroyal, and the ringing songs of the still tuneful summer birds were not exultant strains glorifying the present, but echoes of a dim past over which, perhaps, I am too prone to brood.

It is absurdly contradictory, of course, to say that I love retrospection, and that in August one is more prone to think of the past than the present, and yet not to love that month, but such is the case. In other words, I am vacillating and contradictory, and fail to command the words that might set me right before the world; but it is August now, and, summer’s activity ended, why should I labor to think? Why not build air-castles as I smell the herbs of the field; build and unbuild them until the day closes, and later, lulled by the monotones of cricket and katydid, hum those ever-melancholy lines —

“Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight;Make me a child again, just for to-night.”

PART IV

IN AUTUMN

A Lake-Side Outing

Having been within the city’s bounds for a week – for me a novel experience that has little merit – it was with the eagerness of a child that I rode a short distance out of town, and, turning my back upon the railway station, started with a few friends upon an old-time tramp. In the company were a geologist, an engineer, a botanist, an artist, and others who, like myself, professing nothing, were eager to extract the good from everything that came in our way. We filed along the dusty highway, some miles from Toronto, with Lake Ontario as our objective point.

There was not a feature of that ancient highway that differed essentially from the country roads at home. The same trees, wayside weeds, and butterflies met me at every turn; even the crickets creaked in the same key, and the farmers’ dogs were equally inquisitive. For more than a mile I am not sure that I saw a bird of any kind. In this respect we are surely better off at home. This absence of novelty was a little disappointing, but I had no right to expect it. Canada has been longer settled than New Jersey, and doubtless many a field we passed was cleared years before the forest was felled along the Delaware.

However this may be, the outlook soon changed for the better, and reaching the upper terrace, or ancient shore, the broad and beautiful expanse of Lake Ontario lay before us. From the upper to the lower terrace was but a step, and then, on the very edge of a precipitous cliff, I looked over to see the waves dashing at its foot, and carrying the loose sand and clay steadily into the lake. Clear as crystal and brightly blue the waters as they struck the shore; roily and heavy laden with the sand as they receded. It is little wonder that the cliff is rapidly yielding; there is nothing to protect it even from the gentle ripples of a summer sea. Yet wherever spared for a short season vegetation came to the rescue, and the yellow-white cliff was dotted with blooming clusters of tansy, golden-rod, eupatorium, and mullein yellow and white, that were too like the background to be conspicuous; but not so the scattered asters, which were large and very blue; more so, indeed, than any that I saw elsewhere.

The proportion of clay in the cliff differed exceedingly, and where it was greatly in excess of the sand had withstood the destructive action of wind and wave, and stood out in great pillars, walls, and turrets, that suggested at once the ruins of ancient lake-side castles.

Leaving the cliff, not because weary of it, but to crowd a week’s outing into an hour, the party turned to a deep, shady, vine-entangled ravine. I was happy. Indifferent to the geology ably explained by one, to the botany by another, to the beauty as extolled by the artist, I found a rustic seat and feasted upon raspberries. To eat is a legitimate pastime of the confirmed rambler. One’s eyes and ears should not monopolize all the good things in nature; but these again were not neglected, for I stopped eating – when the berries gave out – and toyed with the beautiful seed-pods of the Actæa, or bane-berry. This I never find near home, and so its novelty gave it additional merit; but it needs no extraneous suggestiveness. The deep, coral-red stems and snow-white seed-pods completely captivated my fancy. Bearing this as a prize, I moved slowly over a pathless wild, hearing pine finches to my delight, and above all other sounds the muffled roar of the lake as it beat upon the narrow beach nearly two hundred feet below me. At last I was in a strange country; one that bore not the remotest resemblance to any I had seen before.

There was no time to tarry, however attractive any spot might prove; and next in order, having seen the uplands, was to descend to the foot of the cliff and stroll along the beach. I was assured that Fortune favored us, as near by was a well-worn path. Never was a path better described – it was well worn. Smooth as a toboggan-slide and with few shrubs or sturdy weeds to seize in case of accident, my steps were clogged with fear; each foot weighted with a painful doubt. I hate to run a risk, and fear so strained my nerves that when the base was reached every muscle ached through sympathy.

If we limit the localities to sand and water, the lake was an ocean on a small scale, and not a very small scale either. Sky and water closed in the earth’s boundary upon three sides; but the water lacked life. Not a shell, not an insect, not a fish had been tossed upon the sand – nothing but sand. This want was a disappointment, for the gathering of flotsam along our sea-coast is a never-ending source of pleasure. Perhaps, had there been recently a violent storm, I might have been more successful, but probably the water is too cold. On the other hand, it was a comfort to have land and water about one free from every trace of man’s interference. Thank goodness, there were no iron piers and hideous rows of booths and bath-houses! For aught one could see, the Indians might have left these shores but yesterday.

Where we now strolled the cliff had been spared for several years, and a rank vegetation covered it from base to top. Squatty willows and dwarf sumachs, golden-rod and chess, a wild grass that recalled the graceful plumes of the Panicum crusgalli at home; these held the winds at bay, but were likely, when next it stormed to be carried out to sea, and with them tons of the cliff upon which they grew. As so many of the rank growths near by were heavy with seed, it was and is an unsolved puzzle why there should have been a complete absence of birds. Everything that an ornithologist would say seed-eating birds required was here in profusion; yet the birds were not. Already the summer migrants had departed – I found many warblers’ and fly-catchers’ nests – and the winter birds of the region had not yet appeared. From what I saw this day and afterward in other localities, I am well convinced that, taking the year through, there is no spot, east of the Alleghanies, in the United States where birds are so abundant as in the valley of the Delaware. I have seen, since my return, more birds of many kinds in one half-hour at home than I saw during two weeks’ rambles in Canada.

I was in no hurry to climb up the cliff, the descent of which was still impressed upon my memory, but the order to march came from the guide, and we struggled slowly up the well-worn path. If a brief rest had not been permitted, I should have rebelled; but we were fortunate in this, and never did lake look lovelier than “in the golden lightning of the sunken sun.” It was with regret that we turned our faces landward and crossed prosy fields, and even longed for the bright waters while threading a fragment of Canadian forest. Here, too, silence brooded over nature; not even a chickadee flitted among the branches of the sturdy oaks and maples, nor a woodpecker rattled the rough bark of towering white pines. As we reached the public road, and stopped for supper at an old wayside inn, three silent crows passed by high overhead. They were flying in a southeasterly direction, and I watched them long, and wondered if they were bound for the far-off meadows at home, where hundreds of their kind gather daily as the sun goes down.

Dew and Frost

At sunrise to-day, by reason of the dew, the whole earth was beautiful. Every harsh outline was softened to comely roundness. Not even an ungainly fence scarred the landscape. Instead of Nature tortured out of shape, the outlook was as a peep into a fairy-land. And all by reason of the glittering dew. What is dew? Says the physical geography at hand: “When at night the earth radiates the heat which it has received during the day, the surface becomes colder than the ground beneath or the air above. Vapor rises from the moist soil below, to be condensed at the cooler surface. The adjacent layer of air above is also cooled to its point of saturation, and its vapor is deposited. This condensed moisture at the surface, whether from the soil or the air, is dew… Dew does not fall, but is condensed on the best radiators, such as grass and trees.”

Going no further into explanations, let us consider the dewy morn as we find it. What of this “early, bright, transient, and chaste” moisture that bathes the world alike? No, it does not, by the way. Many a spot is dry as powder, while elsewhere all is dripping. It does not do to make sweeping assertions even about such a phenomenon as this. You will stir the lurking critic in his den if you do, and what a fell catastrophe!

But to-day, October 3d, the dry spots are to be looked for, so scattered are they, and practically everywhere are sparkling globules of pure water. Finding the world so, it becomes the essential business of the rambler to determine its effects. Are the birds chilled to silence? Does the field-mouse shiver in his grassy nest? I think not. Often have I wished to detect some marked evidence of the influence of dew, but my sluggish senses have failed me. Up from the glistening expanse of weedy meadows comes the blithe song of the sparrow; out from the misty depths of the river valley floats the triumphant cawing of the crow. The bluebird greets the dawn with prophetic warble, promising the brightness of summer when the dew has gone; and chill though the night has been, the twittering swifts are alert and aloft at daybreak. Whether there be dew or none, it seems to matter nothing to the birds. But it is a veritable tell-tale so far as the early stirring mammals are concerned. They can never move so daintily that the dew-drops are not brushed aside, and the long lines of swept herbage stand out in boldest relief as the sunlight sweeps across the field. One can now track the belated creature to his home.

Most marked of all the effects of a heavy dew is the beading of a spider’s web. A more exquisite object than a dew-spangled gossamer I have never seen. Within a week I saw a single silken strand that reached a rod in length, and not a break was there in the row of sparkling beads that clung to it. At the same time, from rail to rail of the roadside fence were stretched the marvelous weavings of the geometric spider, and every horizontal thread was dew-laden. I waited until the sun broke through the bank of clouds in the east, anticipating a splendid exhibition, nor was I disappointed. Alas! that language is so inadequate to one’s needs, when such magnificence is before us. What the spiders may think of dew remains to be determined. As I prodded several of them, and forced them to the fore, they were a sorry-looking set, and shook their webs and themselves in a disconsolate way, as though chilled to the core. An hour later, as I passed by, their energy had revived.

And now what of dew as a weather sign? I turn to the “weather proverbs” that have been gathered and made into a little book (Signal Service Notes, No. IX), and find the sum and substance of fourteen “sayings” to be that dew in summer and autumn is indicative of fair days; the absence of it, of rain. “If your feet you wet with the dew in the morning, you may keep them dry for the rest of the day.” It is a comfort to know that a modicum of truth lies in some of the sayings in everybody’s mouth; and certainly a dewy morn is likely to be followed by a dry and sunny noon. Nevertheless, do not expect to notch off your three score and ten years without a failure in these sayings. Euripides never hit the nail more squarely on the head than when he wrote —

What to-morrow is to beHuman wisdom never learns.

Sooner or later in October we have frost. The beautiful dewy morning two days ago was followed to-day by a no less beautiful morning; but the meadows were gray with frost. Says the physical geography: “When the weather is cold, so that but little vapor can be carried in the air, the dew-point may be below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. In this event what is deposited is solid frost.”

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,

and whatever it might have killed it compensated therefor by adding life to the air. Despite its beauty, the country was reeking with an unseen, unsuspected poison, but one none the less sure in its fell effects. How different to-day! There is evidence of vigor so widely spread that the blighted leaves and drooping blossoms may well be overlooked. No sounds are muffled; the faintest chirping of a distant bird falls sharply on the ear. The loose bark of the nut trees snaps and crackles at the squirrel’s touch, and not a tiny twig breaks in the timid rabbit’s path but we plainly hear it. The languor that held spellbound the woods and fields fled with the coming of that “killing frost.” Well can we spare the daintier bloom of summer, seeing how great a train of blessings follows in the wake of frost.

There is a widespread impression that animal life is affected almost to the same extent as vegetation by these so-called killing frosts. This is not true. Insects are benumbed by it, but recover before noon. Frogs and salamanders are silenced and sluggish, but the morning sun renews their vigor; and who ever heard of a frostbitten bird? On the contrary, scarcely an hour after the sun rose on October 5th, there were a dozen birds, that, moping and peevish, had petulantly chirped for weeks, and now sang gayly. Later there was an old-time concert in the hillside thicket, even a brown thrush singing half his May-day song. Nature is renewed by a killing frost. It destroys the old to give place to the new; and this early autumn life that makes glorious October and softens the gloom of November has charms too little heeded. The world does not need to be embowered in green leaves to tempt the rambler. He who lives out of town well knows how many are the frosty days when the uplands and meadows alike teem with myriad forms of happy life.

A Hermit for the Day

A peculiarly disagreeable northeast storm, continuing for some time, kept me out of the woods, and it was long after the October moon had fulled that my opportunity came. Then I turned hermit for the day.

I question if it matters much at what time of year you turn your back upon civilization and take to the woods. They will greet you kindly at all seasons. If, by reason of your delay, they do not charm you with spring flowers, they have cool shades to offer when the dog-star rages; and following these, a carnival of color and harvest of sweet nuts. If you have tarried in town too long for these, then plunge into the forest at midwinter, and, sheltered by a sturdy oak, build your camp-fire. Do this, and if you return without a harvest of new thoughts, the chances are that you have turned up on the wrong planet.

The best means of realizing what others have enjoyed or suffered is to taste of their experience. I know of hermits from hearsay only, and I wished to test the accuracy of what I had heard and read concerning them. Pleased with the novelty of my quick-laid scheme, I renounced the world at midnight, and, laden with a blanket and provisions, started long before sunrise for a hollow sycamore miles deep in a lonely swamp. Of what I was to do when I reached the proposed goal I had no idea. The one controlling purpose was to get, not out of the world, but on one of its edges. Trudging half-heartedly along – the silence of midnight clogs one’s energy – I reached before dawn the confines of that lonely swamp. As seen by the dim light of the drowsy stars, there was little to tempt me to enter, although the now scarcely discerned wood road that crossed it was familiar enough. What if there was no real danger (and he is a coward who turns from an imaginary foe) still the imagination persists in peopling a forest with most strange shapes – shapes at which one shudders; and yet, contradictory as we are, we give no heed to hosts of creatures daily about us that are far more marvelous. If I had any purpose whatever in this unusual outing, it was to study wild life; and now, because the dry twigs cracked loudly and the chafing branches overhead groaned dolorously, I was disposed to forget that it was my own feet that broke the former and the wind that moved the tree-tops. What a fool man can be upon occasion! Be it on record, however, that the woods were entered, and many a rod was measured with firm steps, when, at a turn in the road, a flickering, sickly light danced in the foreground. A gypsy camp, I thought, and how still I stood! Then, while staring steadily at the pallid flame, I saw there was no one near it, and the truth flashed upon me. It was merely a will-o’-the-wisp. I laughed at my blunder; so did an owl. Woo-roo-roo! shouted the feathered imp in my ears. Never was sound more welcome. Now I was well at home. A hermit for a day loves company – this I learned; and the little red owl and I are old friends. I took his hooting as a hearty welcome, and with lighter steps followed the crooked wood road. Now every sound excited curiosity, no doubt; and when this is true, a walk in the woods, be it night or day, is an unmixed delight. Later, as the pale gray dawn sifted its meager light through the trees, I paused at many a familiar tree and shrub. All regrets had vanished, and I bade the swamp “Good morning” with a hearty shout, when the old sycamore loomed up before me, its scattered leaves gilded by the herald rays of the slowly rising sun. There was scarcely a dozen rods between us, but that much of my journey was not to be accomplished. A huge old maple had fallen across the road, the course of a little creek had recently been changed, and bees were swarming about the hollow tree. It was plain that I must seek a new hermitage. But why any particular spot? There was no tree so inhospitable as to refuse me a shelter. But why seek shelter at all, under an unclouded sky? Placing my burdens on a mossy knoll, I sat down. Now, I thought, I am a hermit, and perhaps a fool. The latter thought nettled me, but what could I do? Still I vowed that I would not return empty-handed. I had met Nature half-way; would she make like advances?