CHAPTER XIV—EARLY WINTER.
Like the inside of a pearl; like the inside of a star-sapphire; like a rainbow at twilight. We are in a white world, and save for the rich warmth of the pines and hemlocks there is no color stronger than the delicate penciling of the woods; but the whiteness is softened all day by a frost-haze which the sunlight turns into silver. The horizon is veiled with smoke-color and tender opal. It is as if the world retired for a little to a space of softened sunrise colors, never hard or sharp; lovely and unearthly as the clouds. We are so well to the north that in winter we enter the sub-arctic borderland, the shadowy-twilight regions of the two ends of the earth.
It is a very still time of year, there is a wonderful uplifting quiet. The sun burns low in the south, a mass of soft white fire, not blinding as in summer; its light plainly that of a great low-hanging star.
This is the dark season; but to make up for the shortness of the days we are given such glories of sunrise and sunset, and such a glittering brilliancy of stars, as come at no other time. All summer these belong to farmers, shepherds, and sailors; but now even slug-abeds can be out before first light, and watch the great stars fade, and dawn grow, and then come back to that cozy and exciting feast, breakfast by candle and fire light.
You step out into the frosty dark, with Venus pulsing and burning like a great lamp, and the snow luminous around you. The stars are like diamonds, and the sky black, and lo! there is the Dipper, straight overhead. It is night, yet not night, because of the whiteness of the snow, and because the air is already alive with the coming morning. The snow crunches sharply underfoot. The dry air tickles and tingles and makes you cough. The street lamps are still bright, and here and there the lighted windows of other early risers show a cheerful yellow in the snow. It is a friendly time of day. Neighbors call good-morning to each other in the dark, and sleigh-bells jingle past. Then you come home to the firelight and the gay-lighted breakfast table, with dawn stealing up fast, like lamplight spreading from the bright crack under a door.
As the first shafts of sunlight strike across, they light up a million frost-crystals. The air is alive with them, on all sides, delicate star and wheel shapes, flashing like diamonds. This beautiful phenomenon lasts only about half an hour. The fairy crystals, light as the air, floating about you, vanish, but the snow continues to flash softly, from countless tiny stars and facets, all day.
Frost mists hover all day about our valley, the breath of the sleeping river. They are drawn through our streets all day in veils and wisps of softness. Smoke and steam clouds hold their shape long in the winter temperatures. At night the smoke from the chimneys curls up in pale blue columns in the rarefied air, against the dark but clear blue of the winter night sky. By day the steam puffs from the locomotives rise pinky-buff, or almost gold-color, and keep their shape for a few moments as firm as thunderheads.
This year, mid-winter for the sun is the moon’s midsummer. The full moon rises and sets so far to the north that she completes full three-quarters of the circle. At night she rides at the zenith, high and small, and the snow fields seem illimitable and remote under her lonely light. The expanse of snow so increases both sun and moon light that she seems to rise while it is still broad day; and still to be shining with full silver, in her unwonted northern station, after broad day again, at dawn.
We share some of the phenomena of light of the polar regions. Moon rainbows are sometimes seen at night; and as this is the season of most frequent mock suns—par-helia—so also mock moons—par-selenes—half-nebulous, massed effects of softly bright radiance, appear on the hovering frost mists; and sharply outlined lunar halos herald snowstorms.
Indeed the greatly increased extent of snow-expanse magnifies all effects of light extraordinarily.
At sunset, softened colors, “peach-blossom and dove-color,” like the bands of a wide and diffused rainbow, appear in the east; this is the sunset light, caught by the snowfields, and reflected on the eastern clouds and mists. Not only this; the “old moon in the new moon’s arms,” instead of being a blank mass, as in summer, is darkly luminous, so greatly has the earth-shine on the moon been magnified.
A winter night is never really dark. Thanks to the rarefied air, the stars burn and blaze as at no other season; Sirius appearing to sparkle with an even bluer light than in summer. You can tell time by a small watch, easily, by starlight, with no other aid but the diffused glimmer of the snow fields.
The other morning an errand took my brother and me out early over the long hill that makes the Height of Land to the west. There must have been an amazing fall of frost-dew the night before, for we saw a sight which I shall never forget; not only the twigs and the branches, but the actual trunks of the trees, the stone-walls, and the roadside shrubberies and seed-vessels, frosted with crystals like fern-fronds, two inches or more long. There is a wood of pines at the crest of the hill, and here not a green needle showed, not one bit of bark; the trees rose pure white against the pure blue sky, over the white skyline of the hill. Looking out over the country, all the woods were silver; silver-white where the light took them, silver-gray in shadow. Light flashed round us everywhere, so that it was almost dazzling, yet it was softened light; stars, not diamonds.
Once the snow comes, the neighborhood settles to a certain happy quiet. It is as if winter laid a strong arm about us, encircling and soothing. The dry air sparkles like wine. Dusk falls early; the wood fires on the hearths burn bright, and the evenings beside them are never too long. It is a neighborly time, and the long peaceful hours of work bring a sense of achievement.
Out on the farms, the year’s supply of wood is being cut. This, with hauling the hay, and ice-cutting, makes the chief winter work; and the men who are out chopping all day in the woods become hardy indeed.
ICE-CUTTING ON THE RIVER BEGINS IN JANUARY
Ice-cutting on the river begins in January. The wide hollow of the river valley is so white that the men and horses moving up and down stand out in warm color; the strange snow silence makes an almost palpable background to the cheerful and sharp sounds of work, the ring of metal, the squeak of leather, the men’s shouts and talk, and the steady roar which goes up from the ice ploughs and cutters. There are small portable forges here and there for mending tools, at the fires of which the men heat their coffee. The ice-cakes are clear blue, and they are lifted out and started up the run in leisurely procession. Directly the first cutting is made you have the startling sight of a field of bright blue living water in the midst of the whiteness; while along the shore, the rising tide often overflows the shore ice, in pools and rivulets, the color of yellow-green jade.
The work is done with heavy steel tools. First the ice must be marked, then planed to a smooth surface, then grooved more deeply, and for the last few inches sawed by hand with long ice-saws. It is pleasant work on sunny days, and the men, who have mostly come in from the farms, like its sociableness; but often the wind sweeps down the valley bitterly cold, and then it is very severe, especially the work of keeping the canals open at night. The ice generally runs to about two feet thick.
The ice-business in our valley has fallen off since the formation of the Ice Trust and the increased use of artificial ice. A great part of our ice fields are only held in reserve now, in case the more southern ice fails, but it still makes a winter harvest for us. The river towns must always have their own ice, and the farmers who cut it get good pay for their work and that of their horses. They speak of the work entirely in farm terms. They “cultivate” the ice, and “harvest” the “crop.”
Last week we made an expedition across country to where the beautiful little chain of the Assimasqua ponds and streams lies between the ranges of Maple Hill on the west, and Wrenn’s Mountain on the east; and there, on Upper Assimasqua, was the same phenomenon of frost-crystals which we saw on Dunnack Hill, only here it was on the ice. We thought at first the pond was covered with snow, but as we walked out on it, we saw it was frost, in such ice-flowers as I have never seen before. They were like clusters of crystal fern-fronds, each frond an inch and a half to two inches long. At first these flowers were scattered in clusters about six inches apart over the black ice, but farther on they ran together into a solid field of silver, a miniature forest of flashing fern or palm fronds, so delicate and light it seemed as if they must bend with the breeze. They outlined each crack in the ice with close garlands. We could hardly bear to crush them as we walked through them.
The four Assimasqua Ponds lie low between hills that are heavily wooded, mostly with beech and hemlock. The shores are high and irregular and jut out in narrow points, and these and the islands have small cliffs, of gnarled and twisted strata, which the hemlocks overhang, in masses of feathery green.
There was something appealing and endearing in the beauty of this little forest chain of lakes and streams, lying still and white between its wooded shores. We crossed its wide surface on foot, and followed up the course of the stream which whirled and tumbled so, only a month ago. Every tiny reach and channel was ours to explore. It was as quiet as a child lying asleep.
We built a fire on the south shore of a headland, where a curve of the gnarled cliffs enclosed a tiny beach, cooked bacon, and heated coffee. Twenty yards from the shore there was a round hole, some eight inches across, of black dimpling water. It had not been cut, but was natural, being, I suppose, over a warm spring. The ice was so strong around it that we could drink from it.
It was so warm in the sun that we sat about bareheaded and barehanded, yet not a frost-needle melted. The sunlight glinted on the hemlock needles, all the way up the hillsides, and a balsamy sweetness seemed to be all about us, mixed with the pungent smoke of our wood fire.
The chickadees were busy all round us, making little bright chirrupy sounds. We could hear blue-jays calling, deeper in the woods, and the occasional “crake, crake, crake,” of a blue nuthatch. The dry winter woods cracked and the pond rang and gurgled with pretty hollow noises. The hemlocks had fruited heavily, and were hung all over with little bright brown cones, like Christmas trees. They seem to give out fragrant sunny health all winter, a dry thrifty vigor.
We did not see a soul on all the Upper Ponds, and only fox tracks ran in and out of the marsh-grasses of the stream, but on Lower Assimasqua there were men cutting wood. They were cutting out beech and white and yellow birch for firewood, and leaving the hemlock, which grew very thick here. The cut wood stood about the slope in neatly piled bright-colored stacks, with colored chips among the fallen branches, and the axe blows rang sharp and musical in the winter silence. The men, who were good-looking fellows, wore woolen or corduroy, with high moccasins, and their sheepskin and mackinaw coats were thrown aside on the snow. There were five or six of them, mostly young men, and one handsome older man, with hawk features and a bright color, silver hair and beard, and bright warm brown eyes. They had bread, doughnuts, and pie for their dinner, and a jug of cider.
The Lower is the largest of the four ponds. It is, perhaps, three miles long by a mile wide, but it seemed almost limitless, under the snow, and we felt like pygmy creatures, walking in the midst, with the unbroken level stretching away around us.
The sky was deepening into indescribable colors, peacock blue, peacock gray, and in the middle of the expanse, over the woods, we saw the great full moon, just rising clear out of the violet and opal tenebrae, the fringes of the sky. She was as pale as a bubble, or as the palest pink summer cloud, but gathered color fast, then poured her floods of silver. The whiteness of the pond glimmered more and more strangely as dusk increased.
We came home, stiff and happy, to a great wood fire, piled in a wide and deep fireplace, and to a room of firelight and evergreen-scented shadows.
That night a light rain fell, then turned to a busy snow-storm, which fell for hours on the wet surfaces in thick soft-falling flakes, so that by the next morning the world was a fairy forest of white. The trees bent down under their feathery load. Wonderful low intricately crossed branches were everywhere. Each littlest grove and clump of shrubbery became a dense thicket of white. This fairy forest was close, close round us, so that each street seemed magical and unfamiliar, a place that we had never seen before. It was a perfectly hushed world. Our footsteps made no sound, and even the masses from the overladen branches came down silently. Everything but whiteness was obliterated; then at night the moon came out clear again, and lighted up this fairy world, and the white spirits of trees stood up against the gray-black sky.
Ten days after this there followed a great ice-storm, when for two days rain fell incessantly, and, as it fell, covered the twigs and branches with crystal. It cleared on the third morning, and instead of white, we were in a world of diamond. The dazzling brilliancy was almost more than the eye could bear. Every blade of grass and seed-vessel was changed to a crystal jewel, and the breeze set them tinkling. The sky was fairy blue. The woods and all the fields flashed round us as we walked almost spell-bound through their strange beauty. The wonder was that the whole star-like world did not clash and ring as if with silver harp music.
As the sun rose higher, the country was veiled with frost haze, but through it, and beyond, we saw the shining of the crust on all the distant hills.