A year among the trees

by Wilson Flagg

WOOD-SCENERY IN WINTER.

Winter scenery has met with a remarkable share of neglect both from authors and painters. Poets have sung of winter festivals and holidays, of Christmas festivities, of garlands of holly and trailing evergreens; but they have said little in prose or verse of the beauty or the sublimity of the season’s ordinary aspects. More effort has been made to divert attention from winter, as entirely disagreeable, except within doors, than to lure the mind to its attractions. Its features have been described as only waste and desolate, and what is really admirable in them has been set aside as hardly worthy of thought. It is true there is not much variety in the countenance of winter. Its expressions are wild and rude, and partake more of sublimity than beauty. It presents an insufficient number of individual objects that can be brought to the aid either of painting or poetry; so that the composition must be made up in great degree by auxiliaries drawn from the imagination.

Winter scenery is plainly monotonous. Instead of the charming mosaic of agriculture, displayed by summer and autumn in assemblages of fields, varying in color with the native hue of their different crops, we see either a dull universal waste of seared vegetation, or one broad expanse of whiteness, relieved only by the dark slender lines of fences and the broader stripes of roads and lanes winding over the face of the snow, interspersed with buildings and occasional woods and thickets. It is apparent, however, that snow increases the variety of the landscape, when it is mapped out with groves and fragments of forest, resembling wooded islets rising out of a white sea.

The charm of winter scenery is greatly heightened by the clearing of the forest, which hides the surface of the snow and causes the scene to wear less of the aspect of grandeur than of desolation. Grandeur characterizes the view wherever an almost uninterrupted expanse of some miles of surface is completely whitened with snow. The buoyancy we feel when rambling over such a landscape resembles that produced by great altitude. Our greater physical vigor in clear winter weather prepares us to be agreeably affected by surrounding views, because our thoughts are not diverted by any sense of uncomfortable exertion, as in the languid heat of summer. Our constant transition from valley to open plain, from plain to hill, and from hill to wood, keeps the mind constantly amused with new views. We are also inspired by the grandeur of the whole scene, and do not, as in summer, give ourselves up to voluptuous sensations, but to enjoyments more purely intellectual.

Our attention is not so often directed to the beauty of trees in their denuded state, as when they are dressed in foliage and adorned with flowers and fruit. But when we consider that for six months of the year all the deciduous trees, constituting the greater part of the woods, are leafless, we cannot regard their appearance at this time as an unimportant study. When trees are in leaf their primary qualities as objects in landscape are apparent; but many secondary points of beauty are almost entirely hidden under this mass of foliage. In winter, when the whole frame of the tree is exposed to view, the delicate sculpture, the forms, the angles, and the divergences of their branches, present to sight an infinite variety of picturesque appearances.

There are certain trees, however, which are almost ugly in winter, though very beautiful in their summer dress. We see nothing attractive in the horse-chestnut, the sumach, the catalpa, and the ash, in their denuded state, when the coarseness and deformity of their spray become their salient points. Of these the horse-chestnut and the catalpa are not surpassed in beauty when they are in flower, nor the sumach in its autumnal dress, nor the ash either in summer or autumn. There is as great a variety in the style of the frame and framework of different trees as in the forms and colors of their leaves and flowers. Indeed, in some respects, trees are a more interesting study in their denuded state than when dressed in foliage. In this condition single trees become more special objects of attention than assemblages. Yet it is in winter that we perceive to the best advantage the characters of a forest vista. As we pass under the interlacing branches of the trees, we observe that peculiar arch formed by the meeting and contact of those on opposite sides of an avenue. We see this appearance only in a wide avenue, where the trees have grown since it was laid out. In the pathless wood, or in a path made through the forest after the trees have attained maturity, they have no well-formed lateral branches, and display above our heads only a formless canopy.

We may observe in the spray of different trees an invariable correspondence with some of their other characters. Nut-bearers, for example, have a coarser spray than small seed-bearers; trees with large or compound leaves, than those with small or simple foliage; and trees with opposite, than those with alternate branches. Hence the oak and the hickory have a coarser spray than the birch and the elm, and the large-leaved poplar than the slender-leaved willow; the ash, with compound leaves, than the maple with simple leaves, though both have opposite branches. But if a tree bears a large nut, with leaves compound and branches opposite, like the horse-chestnut, it has no spray at all. The beech-tree, however, having a very small nut, has a fine and elegant spray, not surpassed by any tree of the forest. The opposite character of the smaller branches of certain trees is never continued in the larger divisions. But the angularity of the boughs of the oak is repeated in its angular spray, and the gracefulness of the principal branches of the elm, the birch, and the lime is traced through all their minute subdivisions.

All these phenomena are interesting subjects of observation in winter wood-scenery. But the geometric beauty of the spray of trees is hardly less remarkable than its different colors. A maple wood, for example, is gray; a poplar wood is greenish olive; a wood consisting chiefly of limes, black birches, and cherry-trees has a dark shade. These differences of coloring, as seen in masses, when viewing the wood from an elevated stand, often excite the surprise of spectators; for it is only the most careful observers who have noticed this variety of shades. In many assemblages of wood that consist of an evenly promiscuous combination of species, we observe no such picturesque marks of distinction. But in all unique assemblages, of which our land affords very frequent examples, the differences between a maple, a poplar, a willow, and a lime grove are respectively very striking. The study of these shades is of considerable importance to the painter who should wish to give a true representation of a winter landscape, with reference chiefly to its wood.

Some of my most delightful wood rambles have been taken in the winter, which has always seemed to me less a season of melancholy than autumn. The sadness we feel while the leaves are falling around us and the light of noon seems but an ominous twilight passes away after these changes are completed; we resume our cheerfulness, and look forward in pleasant anticipation of spring. I have never allowed the winter to interfere with my rambling, save when the cold was intense, the weather wet or stormy, or the snow too deep for pedestrian excursions. These difficulties are seldom in the way for more than a fourth part of the season. When the snow has been hardened by repeated freezing and thawing so as to bear our footsteps, or when the ground is bare, a winter walk affords positive pleasure. At such times I have often passed a day in the woods, not only to enjoy the physical pleasure of air and exercise and the sweet odors of the pines, but also to note the changes in the face of nature, and the manners and habits of the few remaining birds and quadrupeds.

One of the most noted circumstances attending a winter ramble in the woods is their silence. But this silence is an aid to thought as well as observation, and gives importance to every sound, as the white snow gives prominence to visual objects. When the winter sun is bright and the chilly atmosphere is calm, we may listen to the distant village hum with a sensation of melody; and we catch the gurgling sounds of streams under the glistening ice, and the voices of jubilant echoes, that send back in the general stillness every sound that penetrates their secret shell. The crumpling of the hardened snow under our feet produces a tone that silence alone could turn to music; and the rustling of every zephyr seems like a living note in this solitude. The occasional voices of winter birds have a charm hardly less delightful than the melodies of June, when every note is but the part of a general chorus. In winter we listen to sounds because they are few. Even the lowing of herds is musical, reminding us that our present solitude is encompassed by life and civilization.

The wood is no longer a green recess, a temple of leafy beauty, a sanctuary of shade, an orchestra of melodious voices. There is perhaps less solemnity within it than when it is darkened by overarching foliage. The sun shines into it and renders some little nooks more cheerful than at any other season. I have often lingered in one of these sunny retreats to watch the chickadees and woodpeckers, that never fail to appear in sight, diligently exploring every branch of the neighboring trees. It is pleasant to woo this solitude when thus enlivened by the sun, to saunter along the turfy wood-paths, still green with clumps of moss and lycopodium, to look up into the lofty trees which have parted with their shade, observing the sculptured elegance of their limbs and the intricate beauty of their spray; pondering on the rare carvings of their bark, broken into many geometrical forms, and the curious devices of nature displayed in the incrustations upon their surface.

Sometimes a solitary evergreen stands in our way, shedding upon the hoary wood some of the greenness of summer. We should know but half of what is open to observation if we never visited the forest in the winter, and we should miss one of the most remarkable features of a winter landscape if the coniferous evergreens were absent from it. Sad and sombre as they appear when the deciduous trees are putting forth their light green leaves, they are great heighteners of the beauty of a winter scene, and are more valuable than any other woods as a protection from wind and cold.