Winter

by Dallas Lore Sharp

CHAPTER X

TO THE TEACHER

This chapter and the next go together—this for the lover of wild life, the next for the lover of adventure. The spring freshet is one of the most interesting of the year of days for animal study—better even than the day after the first snowfall. But more than this, let both chapters suggest to you how primitive and elemental the real world is after all; with what cataclysmal forces the seasons are changed. As summer often passes into autumn with a silencing frost that rests like a hush of awe over the land; so winter often gives way to spring with a rush of wind and tidal powers that seem to shake the foundations of the world. To feel these forces, to be a part of all these moods, to share in all these feelings—this, too, is one of the ends of nature-study.