This may seem a bit of sentimentality. And, indeed, we need not expect to find it expressed by any New England farmer. New England does not go out in gay companies to bring back the first blossoms. But New England does nothing in gay companies. It has been taught to distrust ceremonies and expression of any sort. It rejoices with reticence, it appreciates with a reservation. And yet I have seen a sprig of arbutus in rough and clumsy buttonholes on weather-faded lapels which, the rest of the twelve-month through, know no other flower. And when, in unfamiliar country, I have interrupted the ploughing to ask for guidance, I usually get it:—“Arbutus? Yaas. The’s a lot of it up along that hillside and in the woods over beyond—’t was out last week, some of it, I happened to notice”—this in the apologetic tone of one who admits a weakness—“guess you’ll find all you want.” I venture to say that of no other wild flower, except those which work specific harm or good, could I get such information.
To many of us, city-bred, the tradition comes through inheritance. It means, perhaps, the shy, poetic side of our father’s boyhood, only half acknowledged, after the New England fashion, but none the less real and none the less our possession. It means rare days, when the city—whose chiefest signs of spring were the flare of dandelions in yards and parks and the chatter of English sparrows on ivy-clad church walls—was left behind, and we were “in the country.” It was a country excitingly different from the country of the summer vacation, a country not deeply green, but warmly brown, and sweet with the smell of moist, living earth. Green enough, indeed, in the spring-fed meadows and folds of the hills, where the early grass flashes into vividest emerald, but in the woods the soft mist-colored mazes of multitudinous twigs still show through their veilings and dustings of color—palest green of birches, gray-green of poplar, yellow-green of willows, and redder tones of the maples; and along the fence-lines and roadsides—blessed, untidy fence-lines and roadsides of New England—a fine penciling of red stems—the cut-back [pg 119] maple bushes and tangled vines alive to their tips and just bursting into leaf. And everywhere in the woods, on fence-lines and roadsides, the white blossoms of the “shad-blow,” daintiest of spring trees,—too slight for a tree, indeed, though too tall for a bush and looking less like a tree in blossom than like floating blossoms caught for a moment among the twigs. A moment only, for the first gust loosens them again and carpets the woods with their petals, but while they last their whiteness shimmers everywhere.
Such rare days were all blown through with the wonderful wind of spring. Spring wind is really different from any other. It is not a finished thing, like the mellow winds of summer and the cold blasts of winter. It is an imperfect blend of shivering reminiscence and eager promise. One moment it breathes sun and stirring earth, the next it reminds us of old snow in the hollows, and bleak northern slopes.
When, on these days, the wind blew to us, almost before we saw it, the first greeting of the arbutus, it always seemed that the day had found its complete and satisfying expression. [pg 120] Every one comes to realize, at some time in his life, the power of suggestion possessed by odors. Does not half the power of the Church lie in its incense? An odor, just because it is at once concrete and formless, can carry an appeal overwhelmingly strong and searching, superseding all other expression. This is the appeal made to me by the arbutus. It can never be quite precipitated into words, but it holds in solution all the things it has come to mean—dear human tradition and beloved companionship, the poetry of the land and the miracle of new birth.
In late March or early April I am likely to see the first blossom on some friend’s table—I try not to see it first in a florist’s display! To my startled question she gives reassuring answer, “Oh, no, not from around here. This came from Virginia.”
Days pass, and, perhaps, the mail brings some to me, this time from Pennsylvania or New Jersey, and soon I can no longer ignore the trays of tight, leafless bunches for sale on street corners and behind plate-glass windows. “From York State,” they tell me. I grow restive.
“Jonathan,” I say, holding up a spray for him to smell, “we’ve got to go. You can’t resist that. We’ll take a day and go for it—and trout, too.”
It is as well that arbutus comes in the trout season, for to take a day off just to pick a flower might seem a little absurd. But, coupled with trout—all is well. Trout is food. One must eat. The search for food needs no defense, and yet, the curious fact is, that if you go for trout and don’t get any, it doesn’t make so much difference as you might suppose, but if you go for arbutus and don’t get any, it makes all the difference in the world. And so Jonathan knows that in choosing his brook for that particular day, he must have regard primarily to the arbutus it will give us and only secondarily to the trout.
Every one knows the kind of brook that is, for every one knows the kind of country arbutus loves—hilly country, with slopes toward the north; bits of woodland, preferably with pine in it, to give shade, but not too deep shade; a scrub undergrowth of laurel and huckleberry and bay; and always, somewhere [pg 122] within sight or hearing, water. It is curious how arbutus, which never grows in wet places, yet seems to like the neighborhood of water. It loves the slopes above a brook or the shaggy hillsides overlooking a little pond or river.
Fortunately, there is such a brook, in just such country, on our list. There are not so many trout as in other brooks, but enough to justify our rods; and not so much arbutus as I could find elsewhere, but enough—oh, enough!