Summer

by Dallas Lore Sharp

VIII

You ought to learn how to browse and nibble in the woods. What do I mean? Why, just this: that you ought to learn how to taste the woods as well as to see them. Maurice Thompson, in “Byways and Bird Notes,” a book you ought to read (and that is another “ought to do” for this summer), has a chapter called “Browsing and Nibbling” in which his mountain guide says: “What makes me allus a-nibblin’ an’ a-browsin’ of the bushes an’ things as I goes along? I kinder b’lieve hit keeps a feller’s heart stiddy an’ his blood pure for to nibble an’ browse kinder like a deer does. You know a deer is allus strong an’ active, an’ hit is everlastin’ly a-nibblin’ an’ a-browsin’. Ef hit is good for the annymel, hit otter be good for the feller.”

SASSAFRAS

DEADLY NIGHTSHADE

The guide may not be right about the strength to be had from tasting the roots and barks and buds of things, but I know that I am right when I tell you that the very sap of the summer woods will seem to mingle with your blood at the taste of the aromatic sassafras root, the spicy bark of the sweet birch and the biting bulb of the Indian turnip. Many of the perfumes, odors, resins, gums, saps, and nectars of the woods can be known to you only by sense of taste.