There are other days in March so soft and beautiful that they might well have a place in May.
"And in thy reign of blast and storm,
Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day
When the changed winds are soft and warm,
And heaven puts on the blue of May."
From the summit of a thinly-treed hill we look across a wide valley on the right which gradually slopes up to a high ridge three miles away. On the left there is a clear view for fully twenty miles, out to where the lavender haze hangs softly on the forest-fringed horizon. The plowed fields lie mellow and chocolate-hued in the sunlight and the russet meadows are beginning to show a faint undertone of green. The golden green of the willow fences which separate some of the fields shines from afar in the abundant light and there is a quickening crimson in the tops of the red maple groves around the homesteads. The deep blue of the high-domed sky gives a glory to the landscape. The few, far clouds, soft and white, float slowly in the azure sea and now and then approach the throne of the king of day, sending dark shadows chasing the sunlight over the smiling fields. When these shadows reach the nearer woodlands across the valley on the right it is as if a moving belt of dark pines was swiftly passing through the deciduous forest. We think of Birnam wood removing to Dunsinane, but that was trivial compared with this. The dark belt of shadow makes a strong and beautiful contrast to the reddish brown and gray of the winter woods.
The river is more than bank full. Shut in on one side by the high ridge upon which we are standing it has spread over half a mile of bottom on the other side. Once more, after many months of waiting we rejoice in the gleam of its waters. The broad valley, which has so long been paved with white, is bottomed with amethyst now, the fainter reflection of the azure sky above. The trees which have so long stood comfortless again see their doubles in the waters below. The huge gray trunks of the water elms and the silver maples, the red rags of the birches and the delicate tracery of their spray, the ruby gold of the willows, the shining white of the sycamores, the ashen green of the poplars and the dark crimson of the wild rose and the red osier dogwood,—all these are reflected as from a vast mirror.
There is not a ripple on the surface. But anon a belated ice floe comes down the main channel and shows how swiftly the waters are flowing now that they once more move "unvexed to the sea." There are still some masses hugging the shore. One by one they slip into the waters and float away,—just as a man's prejudices and delusions are the last to leave him after the light of truth and the warmth of love have set his soul free from the bondage of error and wrong.
The stillness is a marked contrast to the recent roar of the winds. You may hear your watch ticking in your pocket. The leisurely tapping of a downy woodpecker sounds like the ticking of a clock in a vast ancestral hall. You may actually hear a squirrel running down a tree, twenty rods away. He paws out an acorn and begins to eat. The noise of your footstep seems like a profanation of holy ground. Also it disturbs the squirrel who scurries up to the topmost twigs of an elm nearly a hundred feet high. With a glass you may see his eyes shine as he watches you. His long red tail hangs down still and straight and there is not breeze enough, even up there, to stir it.
Gnats and moths flit in the soft sunlight and spiders run over tree trunks while their single shining lines of silk are stretched among the hazel.
Anon the bird chorus breaks out, full and strong. The winter birds report all present but there are a number of new voices, especially the warble of the robin, the tremulous, confiding "sol-si, sol-si" of the bluebird and the clear call of the phoebe. The robins are thick down in the birch swamps, on the islands among the last year's knot-weed. You may tell them at a distance by their trim, military manner of walking, and if you wish you may get close enough to them to take their complete description. And, by the way, how many can describe this common bird, the color of his head and bill, his back and tail, and the exact shade of his breast. Is there any white on him, and if so, where?
After the ice is out of the rivers the bird-lover is kept busy. In the early sunny morning the duet of the robins and the meadow larks is better than breakfast. March usually gives us the hermit thrush and the ruby-and golden-crowned kinglets; the song, field, fox, white throated, Savannah and Lincoln sparrows; the meadow lark, the bronzed grackle and the cowbird; the red-winged, the yellow-head and the rusty blackbirds; the wood pewee and the olive-sided flycatcher; the flicker and the sap-sucker, the mourning dove and several of the water fowl. Last week—the first week in March—a golden eagle paused in his migration to sit awhile on a fence post at the side of a timber road. Two men got near enough to see the color of his feathers and then one of them, with a John Burroughs instinct, took a shot at him. He missed; there was a spread of the great wings and the big bird resumed his journey northward.