Over Prairie Trails

by Frederick Philip Grove

On we went. We passed the school of which I did not see much except the flagpole. And then we came to the crossroads where the trail bent west into the town. If I had known the road more thoroughly, I should have turned there, too. It would have added another two miles to my already overlong trip, but I invariably did it later on. Firstly, the horses will rest up much more completely when put into a stable for feeding. And secondly, there always radiate from a town fairly well beaten trails. It is a mistake to cut across from one such trail to another. The straight road, though much shorter, is apt to be entirely untravelled, and to break trail after a heavy snowstorm is about as hard a task as any that you can put your team up against. I had the road; there was no mistaking it; it ran along between trees and fences which were plainly visible; but there were ditches and brush buried under the snow which covered the grade to a depth of maybe three feet, and every bit of these drifts was of that treacherous character that I have described.

If you look at some small drift piled up, maybe, against the glass pane of a storm window, you can plainly see how the snow, even in such a miniature pile, preserves the stratified appearance which is the consequence of its being laid down in layers of varying density. Now after it has been lying for some time, it will form a crust on top which is sometimes the effect of wind pressure and sometimes—under favourable conditions—of superficial glaciation. A similar condensation takes place at the bottom as the result of the work of gravity: a harder core will form. Between the two there is layer upon layer of comparatively softer snow. In these softer layers the differences which are due to the stratified precipitation still remain. And frequently they will make the going particularly uncertain; for a horse will break through in stages only. He thinks that he has reached the carrying stratum, gets ready to take his next step—thereby throwing his whole weight on two or at best three feet—and just when he is off his balance, there is another caving in. I believe it is this what makes horses so nervous when crossing drifts. Later on in the winter there is, of course, the additional complication of successive snowfalls. The layers from this cause are usually clearly discernible by differences in colour.

I have never figured out just how far I went along this entirely unbroken road, but I believe it must have been for two miles. I know that my horses were pretty well spent by the time we hit upon another trail. It goes without saying that this trail, too, though it came from town, had not been gone over during the day and therefore consisted of nothing but a pair of whiter ribbons on the drifts; but underneath these ribbons the snow was packed. Hardly anybody cares to be out on a day like that, not even for a short drive. And though in this respect I differ in my tastes from other people, provided I can keep myself from actually getting chilled, even I began to feel rather forlorn, and that is saying a good deal.

A few hundred yards beyond the point where we had hit upon this new trail which was only faintly visible, the horses turned eastward, on to a field. Between two posts the wire of the fence had been taken down, and since I could not see any trail leading along the road further south, I let my horses have their will. I knew the farm on which we were. It was famous all around for its splendid, pure-bred beef cattle herd. I had not counted on crossing it, but I knew that after a mile of this field trail I should emerge on the farmyard, and since I was particularly well acquainted with the trail from there across the wild land to Bell’s corner, it suited me to do as my horses suggested. As a matter of fact this trail became—with the exception of one drive—my regular route for the rest of the winter. Never again was I to meet with the slightest mishap on this particular run. But to-day I was to come as near getting lost as I ever came during the winter, on those drives to and from the north.

For the next ten minutes I watched the work of the wind on the open field. As is always the case with me, I was not content with recording a mere observation. I had watched the thing a hundred times before. “Observing” means to me as much finding words to express what I see as it means the seeing itself. Now, when a housewife takes a thin sheet that is lying on the bed and shakes it up without changing its horizontal position, the running waves of air caught under the cloth will throw it into a motion very similar to that which the wind imparts to the snow-sheets, only that the snow-sheets will run down instead of up. Under a good head of wind there is a vehemence in this motion that suggests anger and a violent disposition. The sheets of snow are “flapped” down. Then suddenly the direction of the wind changes slightly, and the sheet is no longer flapped down but blown up. At the line where the two motions join we have that edge the appearance of which suggested to me the comparison with “exfoliated” rock in a previous paper. It is for this particular stage in the process of bringing about that appearance that I tentatively proposed the term “adfoliation.” “Adfoliated” edges are always to be found on the lee side of the sheet.

Sometimes, however, the opposite process will bring about nearly the same result. The snow-sheet has been spread, and a downward sweep of violent wind will hit the surface, denting it, scraping away an edge of the top layer, and usually gripping through into lower layers; then, rebounding, it will lift the whole sheet up again, or any part of it; and, shattering it into its component crystals, will throw these aloft and afar to be laid down again further on. This is true “exfoliation.” Since it takes a more violent burst of wind to effect this true exfoliation than it does to bring about the adfoliation, and since, further, the snow once indented, will yield to the depth of several layers, the true exfoliation edges are usually thicker than the others: and, of course, they are always to be found on the wind side.

Both kinds of lines are wavy lines because the sheets of wind are undulating. In this connection I might repeat once more that the straight line seems to be quite unknown in Nature, as also is uniformity of motion. I once watched very carefully a ferry cable strung across the bottom of a mighty river, and, failing to discover any theoretical reason for its vibratory motion, I was thrown back upon proving to my own satisfaction that the motion even of that flowing water in the river was the motion of a pulse; and I still believe that my experiments were conclusive. Everybody, of course, is familiar with the vibrations of telephone wires in a breeze. That humming sound which they emit would indeed be hard to explain without the assumption of a pulsating blow. Of course, it is easy to prove this pulsation in air. From certain further observations, which I do not care to speak about at present, I am inclined to assume a pulsating arrangement, or an alternation of layers of greater and lesser density in all organised—that is, crystalline—matter; for instance, in even such an apparently uniform block as a lump of metallic gold or copper or iron. This arrangement, of course, may be disturbed by artificial means; but if it is, the matter seems to be in an unstable condition, as is proved, for instance, by the sudden, unexpected breaking of apparently perfectly sound steel rails. There seems to be a condition of matter which so far we have largely failed to take into account or to utilise in human affairs...

I reached the yard, crossed it, and swung out through the front gate. Nowhere was anybody to be seen. The yard itself is sheltered by a curtain of splendid wild trees to the north, the east, and the south. So I had a breathing spell for a few minutes. I could also clearly see the gap in this windbreak through which I must reach the open. I think I mentioned that on the previous drive, going north, I had found the road four or five miles east of here very good indeed. But the reason had been that just this windbreak, which angles over to what I have been calling the twelve-mile bridge, prevented all serious drifting while the wind came from the north. To-day I was to find things different, for to the south the land was altogether open. The force of the wind alone was sufficient to pull the horses back to a walk, before we even had quite reached the open plain. It was a little after four when I crossed the gap, and I knew that I should have to make the greater part of what remained in darkness. I was about twelve miles from town, I should judge. The horses had not been fed. So, as soon as I saw how things were, I turned back into the shelter of the bluff to feed. I might have gone to the farm, but I was afraid it would cost too much time. After this I always went into town and fed in the stable. While the horses were eating and resting, I cleaned the cutter of snow looked after my footwarmer, and, by tramping about and kicking against the tree trunks, tried to get my benumbed circulation started again. My own lunch on examination proved to be frozen into one hard, solid lump. So I decided to go without it and to save it for my supper.

At half past four we crossed the gap in the bluffs for the second time.

Words fail me to describe or even to suggest the fury of the blast and of the drift into which we emerged. For a moment I thought the top of the cutter would be blown off. With the twilight that had set in the wind had increased to a baffling degree. The horses came as near as they ever came, in any weather, to turning on me and refusing to face the gale. And what with my blurred vision, the twisting and dodging about of the horses, and the gathering dusk, I soon did not know any longer where I was. There was ample opportunity to go wrong. Copses, single trees, and burnt stumps which dotted the wilderness had a knack of looming up with startling suddenness in front or on the side, sometimes dangerously close to the cutter. It was impossible to look straight ahead, because the ice crystals which mimicked snow cut right into my eyes and made my lids smart with soreness. Underfoot the rough ground seemed like a heaving sea. The horses would stumble, and the cutter would pitch over from one side to the other in the most alarming way. I saw no remedy. It was useless to try to avoid the obstacles—only once did I do so, and that time I had to back away from a high stump against which my drawbar had brought up. The pitching and rolling of the cutter repeatedly shook me out of my robes, and if, when starting up again from the bluff, I had felt a trifle more comfortable, that increment of consolation was soon lost.