The Lay of the Land

by Dallas Lore Sharp

In the orchard there were half a dozen chippies’ nests, even more robins’, two nests of bluebirds, and one each of the tree swallow, flicker, yellow warbler, chebec, downy woodpecker, kingbird, great crested flycatcher, redstart, and screech owl.

Baltimore orioles nested in the elms along the road; close to the little river were the nests of catbirds and red-winged blackbirds; a nest of swamp sparrows and of Maryland yellow-throats in the meadow, and in the woodlot a pewee’s nest, a crow’s nest, and three nests of ovenbirds.

All these I found; but besides these I know that a pair of yellow-billed cuckoos built somewhere near the house, as did a pair of blue jays, wood thrushes, and chestnut-sided warblers. These I am still waiting for. I need another June.

Not one of all these birds is rare or even shy, unless it be the swamp sparrow; none of them that the veriest beginner should not come to know in the course of one June. For these are almost domesticated, our near neighbors and friends, who desire and who will return our friendly, neighborly calls.

There are other birds, like the hawks, the owls, the herons, the rarer thrushes, sparrows, warblers, and marsh birds, that require time and tramping for their discovery. I know the very log in which I could find young turkey buzzards in June; the clump of dog-roses where a least bittern will build; the old gum that for years has harbored a pair of barred owls; the little cove where, spring after spring, a black duck nests. But I should need a vacation to visit these.

I watch the others between times,—between five o’clock in the morning and breakfast, between breakfast and train time and church time, and on Saturdays to and from the garden. If you are your own gardener, you can carry not only a hoe, but along with it a pair of field glasses. I even combine the care of my pig and the study of the phœbes that share his pen. Occasionally I drop everything and hunt for a nest, as if life depended upon my finding it. But life doesn’t, the more’s the pity, for me. Life depends on the finding of things that are very different from birds’ nests, things that require a deal of hunting the whole year around. Yet I take the time to hunt birds’ nests, too, for life is more than meat (I raise a good many vegetables), and, after all, my life does depend, in no small measure, upon my finding a few birds’ nests in June.

I remember a June when I tried to get life out of a grocery store, and the sickness of it comes over me even yet at times. I sold kerosene oil, brown sugar, coffee, salt mackerel, and plug tobacco. I breathed the mingled breath of kerosene oil, brown sugar, coffee, salt mackerel, and plug tobacco,—the odor of mere money,—when I knew the fox grapes were in blossom, the magnolias and the azaleas; when I knew the fields were green and the birds were in song! I have longed for many things, but never as I longed that June for the farm, for the long, long day, yes, and for the long, long row. It was that kerosened, salt-mackereled, plug-tobaccoed—moneyed—June that took me back to sweet poverty and the farm.

I do not wish to think of living where the birds and wild flowers do not live with me. A city flat is convenient, and city life is exciting; but convenience and excitement plus meat and raiment are not the sum of life; neither, on the other hand, are pure air, sunshine, birds, flowers, a garden, quiet, and time to think, the whole of life. No; but when you consider the matter, there appears very little still needing to make life whole that you cannot have along with your birds, thoughts, and garden.

Whether you love the country or not, whether you know the difference between a kingbird and a kingcrab or not, you owe it to your body and your soul to get out into the open fields in June,—not to collect bird skins or birds’ eggs or to make a herbarium or a nature diary, but to live a while where the birds and flowers live. The city may be heaven enough for you all the rest of the year; but God didn’t make the city. There are seasons—March and February, usually—when it seems as if some one else has a hand in making the country. In June, however, the country is all and more than the poets say,—if it is poetry that you come out into the country for to feel.

Take my meadow, for instance, all aglow in June with buttercups, as if spread with a sheet of beaten gold! But now, if it is only hay that I am after (alas, too often it is), then my gold turns all to brass, and worse than brass, for buttercups, as my dairyman neighbor tells me, make the poorest kind of hay. I should keep no cow, perhaps. She gives nice milk, to be sure, but she eats up my beaten gold, she kills my buttercup poetry. Maybe I am too rich, I own too much: one cow, one horse, two pigs, thirty hens, fourteen acres of hills and trees. For it is the truth that I do not enjoy the foxes now as I did before I kept hens, nor the buttercups as I did before I got the cow. Suppose, now, besides all of this, I had money,—a lot of it!—several thousand dollars! You never get money along with a farm, and that is one reason why a farm is such a safe and sure investment for the soul. It is not the cow nor the chores, but money in or out of the bank, that robs life of its June.