As I bent over the smooth glistening surface, I was amazed to see the number of messages written there for those who know the language of the wilds well enough to read them! What a scurrying to and fro of little feet had been going on since the snowfall, all on the one quest—food and water! Birds innumerable had left their signatures; some I knew, some I could not identify, save that they were birds. Rabbits I could trace; stoats, too, might have made some of the writing in the snow; and there were bigger tracks—perhaps a fox.
Everywhere there were tidings of other wayfarers, other workers, other seekers—the many other dwellers who have their homes somewhere between the larch-woods and the weir. The moment before the place had seemed a frost-locked, deserted, uninhabitable waste of snow; now I saw it was teeming with life, brave, persistent, not-to-be-daunted life, that in spite of cold and hardship and privation and a universal stoppage of supplies, still set out, with unquenchable faith, on the quest for the food which they have learnt to know is invariably forthcoming, “in due season.”
The surprising thing to me is the fact that such small bodies can ever survive such a welter of snow. Aren’t they afraid they will sink down and be swallowed up in it? Have they no fear lest they lose their way, with the old landmarks obliterated? Doesn’t it strike terror to the heart when they find their doorway blocked, and themselves snowed up in burrow or hole? Yet, judging by outside evidence, it would seem that none of these things daunt them; an obstacle is merely something to be surmounted.
To my mind the most pathetic thing about it all is the fact that their chief fear seems to be fear of human beings, a dread of the very ones who could, and ought to, befriend them.
In my clearing I moved a small wooden box that had been used for seedlings, and since had lain unnoticed beside a hedge. Underneath a tiny field mouse had taken refuge. It seemed almost paralysed with terror when I suddenly lifted the box, and escape was blocked on every side by banks of snow. The poor little thing just sat up on its hind legs and looked at me most pitifully. I can’t say that I exactly cultivate mice, in an ordinary way, but—here was a fellow-creature in distress, such a little one too; I couldn’t have refused its appeal. I quickly put the box over it again, and clearing a space by the hole it had used as a door, I put down some bird-seed—I always carry something in my coat pocket for the birds—and I went away. Ten minutes later, every bit was gone.
Working my way round to another thicket of rhododendrons, that is a bank of purple and creamy white in June, once more I sent the silver-dust flying with my trusty broom. As one great mass came hurtling down, it so deluged me that for the moment I had to hold my breath, shut my eyes, and clutch on to a branch to keep myself from being buried under it. And then I heard a tragic whimper.
Turning round, I saw the small white dog, shaking himself out of the mass—and such a dingy-dirty object his passé white coat looked against the snow! I had left him indoors, a melancholy little figure, very sorry for himself, by reason of a swelled face. He will persist in lying with his nose to the bottom crack of the back door, irrespective of wind or weather, ever hopeful that a hare or a fox may come trailing by; and then—oh joy! what a turmoil there is within (he quite fancies he is “baying”), and what a scurrying of fur and feet without!
Having got him in, and rubbed him down, and wrapped him up in his favourite bit of old blanket, and given him a bone (which he couldn’t eat, poor little chap, but he had it in his basket with him, against such times as his mouth was in working order again), I returned to the garden—you couldn’t have kept me out of it now! I found I didn’t need the hug-me-tight, however, and I left it on the orchard gate.
What a work it was, tumbling over stone edgings one forgot were there, tripping over tree trunks and logs—the whole place seemed strewn with obstacles one never noticed until the snow covered them over.