Bird voices sometimes mingle with the hum and roar of my duty-wheel. Opposite my office window are two tall pine-trees, almost the only evergreens in the college yard. These trees swarm with the alien sparrows, whose clamor at times is almost deafening. Better three months of utter silence than such bird music as this. Each year, as autumn deepens into winter, I watch the immigrant sparrow to see whether he is not learning that migration southward in the season of snow is wise and comfortable. He does wander somewhat, already, when food fails, and it will not be strange if, as years pass, he should acquire by sympathetic vibration something of the swing of the migratory pendulum.
When I walk slowly home from my office past Christ Church and the silent field of quaintly lettered stones, past the old elm within whose shade Washington took command of the Colonial army, and past Cotton Mather’s gold chanticleer holding high his ancient head against the rosy afterglow, I seem to see beyond all these things the crouching lion of Chocorua. Waking or dreaming, the outline of that peak is always stamped upon my northern horizon, and the north is the point to which my face turns as surely as does the needle, whenever my face, like the needle, is left to settle its direction in accordance with its controlling affinities. In these October days the picture of Chocorua which haunts me is not a summer picture. Far from it. In it the leaves are falling, drifting down like snow, birds are silent, nervous, always on the alert for danger; new ledges show upon the mountain-sides, new vistas have opened through the forests, and spots which, when behind their August leaf mantles seemed dark and secret, are now as open as the day. The brooks are more noisy, and easily seen, the grouse fly afar off; if one wishes a flower he must pluck the witch-hazel or let the bitter yarrow or the last clusters of goldenrod and asters satisfy him. Nature seems preoccupied and inclined to tell the visitor to see what he wants, and to take what he can find, but to let her alone.
THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES.
Friday, October 21, was observed by Harvard University as a holiday,—Columbus, while hunting for something else, having on that day, four hundred years ago, rediscovered America for the Europeans. On the same day, four hundred years ago, the Americans discovered Columbus, a weary and worn mariner, nearing the shore in a small and feebly-rigged ship. At that time America was much more of a boon to the explorer than he seemed likely to be to the continent.
I left Cambridge about the time the sun reached it, and gained the valley of the Bearcamp at 1 P. M. There are some days in the year which seem to have happened upon the wrong calendar day. They are too cold or too warm to keep company with the days which go before and after. This was not one of them. It was a model late October day, with clear air, a rushing wind, dark blue-gray clouds moving fast across a pale blue sky, leaves flying before the wind, and with ruffled water full of cold lights, though in spots increasing in its reflections the blue of the sky. Marvelous colors were spread upon the face of the meadows, and crept up the sides of the hills. The world was in gay attire, gayer even than the towns this day decked out in honor of the Genoese.
Gazing out of the train window, I have seen the Sandwich range from afar over the melting greens of spring, the rich verdure of summer, and the cold, still snow of winter. To-day I saw it framed in russet and carmine,—the colors of the oak-clad hills of Wakefield. The peak of Chocorua was capped by a dark slate-colored cloud from which rain seemed to be falling. Behind or above the other mountains of the range the same threatening vapors hung. As the train sped onward, past Ossipee Lake, over the Bearcamp, and up to the West Ossipee station, the clouds rolled away and a flood of clear sunlight poured its revealing rays into the hidden colors of the distant forests. From cold, dark masses in which black rocks were no darker than gloomy groves, the mountains’ sides suddenly became aglow with warm tones. The far-reaching view suggested a painter’s palette, upon which he had been daubing his colors from the tubes. Here he laid on a mass of dark green, there crimson, and next to it pale yellow. Then buff and orange, scarlet and blood-red pleased him, and he rubbed them upon spare areas. Cobalt and ultramarine added here and there, with now and then a dash of silvery white or a broad band of burnt sienna, served to make the scarlets more intense and the yellows more aggressive.
Driving in an open wagon from West Ossipee to the Chocorua House, I found a heavy overcoat, warm gloves, and a fur robe essential to comfort, especially on coming from the steam-heated cars into the racing northwest wind. As we sped through groves and across meadows, my eyes devoured the wonderful coloring of all that had once been green. I could see nothing else, think of nothing else. The contrast to our summer coloring could not have been much sharper if I had been transported to the sanguinary groves and pastures of the red planet Mars. Even the birds which rose from the roadside and whirled away before the wind seemed less interesting, so absorbing were the marvels of coloring in foliage from ancient oak to tender grasses. A flock of birds seemed to dance through the sunlight across the road, yet when I looked after them they were only beech leaves hurried along by the wind. A cloud of leaves, picked up by an eddy of the air and tossed high above the trees, suddenly became bluebirds and sparrows speeding away from the wagon across the pasture. Crows, few in number, and unusually wary, were not so easily mistaken for leaves, nor were the robins, which occasionally rose in flocks from the grass and sought the branches of leafless maples or butternuts.
After a hasty dinner I left the hotel and crossed field and copse to the outlet of the Chocorua lakes. The third lake, with its deep, dark water and its grove of lofty white pines shutting it in from distant views, is one of the most daintily lovely nooks in this region of beauty and grandeur. Crows love the dark pines, wild ducks float in their shadows, and many a mink has been trapped at the end of the dam. I found no life stirring in woods or water, so stepping cautiously along the mouldering logs of the dam, I gained the farther shore and crossed a broad, rock-strewn pasture, once covered by a growth of lofty pines. I know not how many years ago they fell or were felled, but this I do know, that scores of pitch-soaked knots are hidden in their ruins and among the ferns and bushes which have sprung from the decaying stumps. Many is the winter evening in town that I have sat by the fireside and gazed into the red flame of the blazing “light-wood” gathered in happy October days from this old pasture. As the pitch grew hot and burst through the dry wood, whining and whistling, blowing out long jets of white smoke and slender tongues of flame, its voice and warmth have carried me back in spirit to the brown beds of fern, the busy chipmunks under the old oak in the wall, or to the mayflowers gathered in spring from the edges of the lingering snow-banks. I passed a ledge of rocks on which I had seen a woodchuck sunning himself last August, and I recalled how he had squeezed himself into a little cave in the ledge only to find me peering in after him, and quite able to reach him with a stick. His method of escape from me was characteristic. Grunting and snarling, he spent half his time in threatening to come out and attack me, and the other half in undermining himself and poking the earth with his nose into the hole through which I was looking. In five minutes he had completely covered the opening and sunk his plump body out of reach of my probe. Later in the season I had a young woodchuck which had been partly tamed escape from captivity by gnawing his way through a thick pine board. The same individual repeatedly climbed up six feet from the floor on the coarse wire netting which formed the front of his cage, so that in future I shall not think it strange if I see a woodchuck climb a tree. His eccentricity also carried him to the point of devouring nearly a third of the carcass of a freshly-killed red squirrel, although an abundance of clover and young vegetables were close at hand ready for his dinner.
My walk took me up the western side of the lake to my own land and cottage. Robins rose from the ground in small flocks, a few tree sparrows and juncos flew from a plowed field by the wall, and two crows were feeding on swampy ground by a brook. It was to them that the land really belonged, not to me,—a waif from the city. So a flock of white-throats thought, as I disturbed them feeding upon the chaff at the back door of my barn. They flew into a bush on which a few dry leaves swung. While still watching them, as I supposed, I discovered that they had vanished, the wagging leaves alone remaining. In the orchard a few red apples hung, and gleamed like polished stones. One which grew upon a wild tree in the edge of the wood swung near the ground, and sharp little teeth had bitten out pieces from its side. Some of the fruit which lay upon the ground had been gnawed away until its seeds could be reached. Man eats the pulp and throws away the seeds, the mice and squirrels waste the pericarp solely to gain the seeds. Perhaps in this case man would have thrown away both apple and seeds had he tasted the bitter, wild fruit.
The lake was lower by a foot than I had ever before seen it in the autumn. In August it had washed the bushes on its dikes; now a yard or more of sand tempted a stroller to follow its fair rim past wood and meadow. Along my shore of the lake the natural dike is in places fully seven feet high. It has been made during the centuries by the “thrust” of the ice which results from the expansion of the ice-field by day following its contraction by night. On a sandy shore the expanding ice pushes up a little ridge of silt, and works it higher and higher as the ice mass rises during the winter. If the edge of the ice meets an obstacle, it is apt to break at a foot or more from the shore, and the pieces, still carrying their load of gravel, are shoved up the bank to its top, until, as years roll by, the dike is made too high to receive further additions.