Another patch of woods, where a distant Canadian nuthatch is calling (strange how I love that nasal, penetrating, far-reaching voice, whose quality my reasoning taste condemns), and I see before me another house, standing in broad acres of cleared land. This one is not painted, and, as I presently make out, is uninhabited, its old tenant gone, dead or discouraged, and no new one looked for; an “abandoned farm,” such as one grows used to seeing in our northern country. It is beautiful for situation, one of those sightly places which the city-worn passer-by in a mountain wagon pitches upon at once as just the place he should like to buy and retire to—some day; in that autumn of golden leisure of which, now and then,
“When all his active powers are still,”
he has a pleasing vision. Oh yes, he means to do something of that kind—some day; and even while he talks of it he knows in his heart that “some day” is only another name for “next day after never.”
A few happy barn swallows (wise enough, or simple enough, to be happy now) go skimming over the grass, and a pair of robins and a pair of bluebirds seem to be at home in the orchard; which they like none the worse, we may be sure,—the bluebirds, especially,—because, along with the house and the barn, it is falling into decay. What are apple trees for, but to grow old and become usefully hollow? Otherwise they would be no better than so many beeches or butternuts. It is impossible but that every creature should look at the world through its own eyes; and no bluebird ever ate an apple. A purple finch warbles ecstatically, a white-throated sparrow whistles in the distance, and now and then, from far down the slope, I catch the upliftings of a hermit thrush.
A man grows thoughtful, not to say sentimental, in such a place, surrounded by fields on which so many years of human labor have been spent, so much ploughing and harrowing, planting and reaping, now given up again to nature. Here was the garden patch, its outlines still traceable. Here was the well. Long lines of stone wall still separate the mowing land from the pasturage; and scattered over the fields are heaps of boulders, thrown together thus to get them out of the grass’s way. About the edges of every pile, and sometimes through the midst, have sprung up a few shrubs,—shad bushes, cherries, willows, and the like. Here they escape the scythe, as we are all trying to do. “Give us room that we may dwell!”—so these children of Zion cry. It is the great want of seeds, so many millions of which go to waste annually in every acre,—a place in which to take root and (harder yet) to keep it. And the birds, too, find the boulder heaps a convenience. I watch a savanna sparrow as he flits from one to another, stopping to sing a measure or two from each. Even this humble, almost voiceless artist needs a stage or platform. The lowliest sparrow ever hatched has some rudiments of a histrionic faculty; and be we birds or humans, it is hard to do one’s best without a bit of posing.
What further uses these humble stone heaps may serve I cannot say; no doubt they shelter many insects; but it is encouraging to consider how few things a farmer can do that will not be of benefit to others beside himself. Surely the man who piled these boulders for the advantage of his hay crop never expected them to serve as a text for preaching.
The cloud drops again, and is at its old trick of exaggeration. A bird that I take for a robin turns out to be a sparrow. Did it look larger because it seemed to be farther away than it really was? Or is it seen now as it actually is, my vision not being deceived, but rather corrected of an habitual error? The fog makes for me a newer and stranger world, at any rate; I am farther from home because of it; another day’s travel might have done less for me. And for all that, I am not sorry when it rises again, and the hills come out. How beautiful they are! They will hardly be more so, I think, when the June foliage replaces the square miles of bare boughs which now give them a blue-purple tint, interrupted here and there by patches of new yellow-green poplar leaves—a veritable illumination, sun-bright even in this sunless weather—or a few sombre evergreens.
As I get away from the farm, the mountain woods on either side seem to be filled with something like a chorus of rose-breasted grosbeaks. Except for a few days at Highlands, North Carolina, some years ago, I have never seen so many together. A grand “migratory wave” must have broken on the mountains within a night or two. As far as music is concerned, the grosbeaks have the field mostly to themselves, though a grouse beats his drum at short intervals, and now and then a white-throat whistles. There is no bird’s voice to which a fog is more becoming, I say to myself, with a pleasing sense of having said something unintended. To my thinking, the white-throat should always be a good distance away (perhaps because in the mountains one grows accustomed to hearing him thus); and the fog puts him there, with no damage to the fullness of his tone.
Looking at the flowers along the wayside,—a few yellow violets, a patch of spring-beauties, and little else,—my eye falls upon what seems to be a miniature forest of curious tiny plants growing in the gutter. At first I see only the upright, whitish stalks, an inch or two in height, each bearing at the top a globular brown knob. Afterward I discover that the stalks, which, examined more closely, have a crystalline, glassy appearance, spring from a leaf-like or lichen-like growth, lying prostrate upon the wet soil. The plant is a liverwort, or scale-moss, of some kind, I suppose, and is growing here by the mile. How few are the things we see! And of those we see, how few there are concerning which we have any real knowledge,—enough, even, to use words about them! (When a man can do that concerning any class of natural objects, no matter what they are or what he says about them, he passes with the crowd for a scholar, or at the very least a “close observer.”) But to tell the shameful truth, my mood just now is not inquisitive. I should like to know? Yes; but I can get on without knowing. There are worse things than ignorance. Let this plant be what it will. I should be little the wiser for being able to name it.[2] I have no body of facts to which to attach this new one; and unrelated knowledge is almost the same as none at all. At best it is quickly forgotten. So my indolence excuses itself.
The road begins to climb rather sharply. Unless I am going to the top of the ridge and beyond, I have gone far enough. So I turn my back upon the mountain; and behold, the cloud having lifted again, there, straight before me down the road and across the valley, is the house from which I set out, almost or quite the only one in sight. After all, I have walked but a little way, though I have been a good while about it; for I have hardly begun my return before I find myself again approaching the abandoned farm. Downhill miles are short. Here a light shower comes on, and I raise my umbrella. Then follows a grand excitement among a flock of sheep, whose day, perhaps, needs enlivening as badly as my own. They gaze at the umbrella, start away upon the gallop, stop again to look (“There are forty looking like one,” I say to myself), and are again struck with panic. This time they scamper down the field out of sight. Another danger escaped! Shepherds, it is evident, cannot be so effeminate as to carry umbrellas.