Over Prairie Trails

by Frederick Philip Grove

It strangely chimed in with my mood on this particular and very perfect morning that no jolt shook me up, that we glided along over virgin snow which had come soft-footedly over night, in a motion, so smooth and silent as to suggest that wingless flight...

We spurned the miles, and I saw them not. As if in a dream we turned in at one of the “half way farms,” and the horses drank. And we went on and wound our way across that corner of the marsh. We came to the “White Range Line House,” and though there were many things to see, I still closed the eye of conscious vision and saw them not. We neared the bridge, and we crossed it; and then—when I had turned southeast—on to the winding log-road through the bush—at last the spell that was cast over me gave way and broke. My horses fell into their accustomed walk, and at last I saw.

Now, what I saw, may not be worth the describing, I do not know. It surely is hardly capable of being described. But if I had been led through fairylands or enchanted gardens, I could not have been awakened to a truer day of joy, to a greater realization of the good will towards all things than I was here.

Oh, the surpassing beauty of it! There stood the trees, motionless under that veil of mist, and not their slenderest finger but was clothed in white. And the white it was! A translucent white, receding into itself, with strange backgrounds of white behind it—a modest white, and yet full of pride. An elusive white, and yet firm and substantial. The white of a diamond lying on snow white velvet, the white of a diamond in diffused light. None of the sparkle and colour play that the most precious of stones assumes under a definite, limited light which proceeds from a definite, limited source. Its colour play was suggested, it is true, but so subdued that you hardly thought of naming or even recognising its component parts. There was no red or yellow or blue or violet, but merely that which might flash into red and yellow and blue and violet, should perchance the sun break forth and monopolize the luminosity of the atmosphere. There was, as it were, a latent opalescence.

And every twig and every bough, every branch and every limb, every trunk and every crack even in the bark was furred with it. It seemed as if the hoarfrost still continued to form. It looked heavy, and yet it was nearly without weight. Not a twig was bent down under its load, yet with its halo of frost it measured fully two inches across. The crystals were large, formed like spearheads, flat, slablike, yet of infinite thinness and delicacy, so thin and light that, when by misadventure my whip touched the boughs, the flakes seemed to float down rather than to fall. And every one of these flat and angular slabs was fringed with hairlike needles, or with featherlike needles, and longer needles stood in between. There was such an air of fragility about it all that you hated to touch it—and I, for one, took my whip down lest it shook bare too many boughs.

Whoever has seen the trees like that—and who has not?—will see with his mind’s eye what I am trying to suggest rather than to describe. It was never the single sight nor the isolated thing that made my drives the things of beauty which they were. There was nothing remarkable in them either. They were commonplace enough. I really do not know why I should feel urged to describe our western winters. Whatever I may be able to tell you about them, is yours to see and yours to interpret. The gifts of Nature are free to all for the asking. And yet, so it seems to me, there is in the agglomerations of scenes and impressions, as they followed each other in my experience, something of the quality of a great symphony; and I consider this quality as a free and undeserved present which Chance or Nature shook out of her cornucopia so it happened to fall at my feet. I am trying to render this quality here for you.

On that short mile along the first of the east-west grades, before again I turned into the bush, I was for the thousandth time in my life struck with the fact how winter blots out the sins of utility. What is useful, is often ugly because in our fight for existence we do not always have time or effort to spare to consider the looks of things. But the slightest cover of snow will bury the eyesores. Snow is the greatest equalizer in Nature. No longer are there fields and wild lands, beautiful trails and ugly grades—all are hidden away under that which comes from Nature’s purest hands and fertile thoughts alone. Now there was no longer the raw, offending scar on Nature’s body; just a smooth expanse of snow white ribbon that led afar.

That led afar! And here is a curious fact. On this early December morning—it was only a little after nine when I started the horses into their trot again—I noticed for the first time that this grade which sprang here out of the bush opened up to the east a vista into a seemingly endless distance. Twenty-six times I had gone along this piece of it, but thirteen times it had been at night, and thirteen times I had been facing west, when I went back to the scene of my work. So I had never looked east very far. This morning, however, in this strange light, which was at this very hour undergoing a subtle change that I could not define as yet, mile after mile of road seemed to lift itself up in the far away distance, as if you might drive on for ever through fairyland. The very fact of its straightness, flanked as it was by the rows of frosted trees, seemed like a call. And a feeling that is very familiar to me—that of an eternity in the perpetuation of whatever may be the state I happen to be in, came over me, and a desire to go on and on, for ever, and to see what might be beyond...

But then the turn into the bushy trail was reached. I did not see the slightest sign of it on the road. But Dan seemed infallible—he made the turn. And again I was in Winter’s enchanted palace, again the slight whirl in the air that our motion set up made the fairy tracery of the boughs shower down upon me like snow white petals of flowers, so delicate that to disturb the virginity of it all seemed like profaning the temple of the All-Highest.

But then I noticed that I had not been the first one to visit the woods. All over their soft-napped carpet floor there were the restless, fleeting tracks of the snowflake, lacing and interlacing in lines and loops, as if they had been assembled in countless numbers, as no doubt they had. And every track looked like nothing so much as like that kind of embroidery, done white upon white, which ladies, I think; call the feather stitch. In places I could clearly see how they had chased and pursued each other, running, and there was a merriness about their spoors, a suggestion of swiftness which made me look up and about to see whether they were not wheeling their restless curves and circles overhead. But in this I was disappointed for the moment, though only a little later I was to see them in numbers galore. It was on that last stretch of my road, when I drove along the dam of the angling ditch. There they came like a whirlwind and wheeled and curved and circled about as if they knew no enemy, feeding meanwhile with infallible skill from the tops of seed-bearing weeds while skimming along. But I am anticipating just now In the bush I saw only their trails. Yet they suggested their twittering and whistling even there; and since on the gloomiest day their sound and their sight will cheer you, you surely cannot help feeling glad and overflowing with joy when you see any sign of them on a day like this!