CHAPTER III.
WAYS OF THE MARCH HARE
Follow him to the woods and you know his fascination, but never give the March hare a reference for sobriety. His reputation cannot be rehabilitated, yet his intimates love him in spite of it. He is such an accomplished tease! He wakens, playful and ingratiating, with the sun; he skips cajolingly among the crocuses; and before an hour passes he is rushing about the fields in a fury, scattering the worn-out, brown grasses, scaring the first robins, and bouncing over the garden fence to break the necks of any tulips deceived by his morning mood. Impossible animal, he is an eccentric born, glorying in his queerness; and none the less, there are some who think he knows the zest of life better than April’s infatuated starling or the woodchuck drowsing in May clover. He loves to kick the chilly brooks into foam and fluster them until they run over their unthawed banks and tear downhill and through the swamp to alarm the rivers, so that they, too, come out on land and the whole world looks as though it had gone back to the watery beginning. He chases north the snowy owl, ornament of our winter woods, and fraternizes with the sinful sparrow. Shrike and grosbeak leave, saying that really it is growing quite warm, and, glancing behind them, they behold the March hare turning somersaults in snowdrifts. He freezes the mud that the shore lark was enjoying. No one depends upon him. Yet, to see swift and enchanting changes of sky, lake, and woodland, go forth with the March hare and find with him, better than quiet, the earth astir.
Trees lose the archaic outline as leaf buds swell. Reddened maples and black ash twigs, yellow flowers on the willow, begin the coloring of a landscape that will not fade to gray and dun again until December comes. The lilacs are growing impatient, for already the sophisticated city lilac bush is wearing costly bloom, careless that a debut made so early early ends. The crocuses, spring’s opening ballet, dressed in pastel tints, take their places on the lawn, standing delicately erect, waiting for bird music. Unknown to March’s gales, the still swamp pools are fringed with shooting green, full of hints of cowslips; and arbutus—few know on what hillsides—is lifting the warm leaf blanket, trusting that vandal admirers are far away. The March violet is sung more than seen, visiting Northern slopes and woods hollows only by caprice, but all the legends lingering over it, and the magic beauty it gives to maidens who gather it at dawn, make the violet still, for lyrical needs, the flower of March. Cuddled close to sun-warmed stones, cloaked by quaint leaves lined with sapphire and maroon, sometimes now the hepatica has come; and bloodroot nested under bowlders, and in fence corners where the sun is faithful, lifts praying, exquisite petals that open swiftly from the slim bud and are scattered by a touch. The dark blue grape hyacinth stands calm in winds and bitter weather; waist-deep in snow, it proudly holds its ground. Sap is visibly climbing to the highest limbs. It seems even to be mounting in the ancient wild-grape vines that swing from the roof of the wood, bearing no buds and looking dead a hundred years, though there is life beneath the somber and shaggy bark. Sap called back through the ducts of the winter-warped thorn, solitary in the clearing where the cruel nor’easter raced, will cover the sad branches, once the soft days are here, with shining blossoms. The year turns when the sap runs. Little boys who have their sugar maples picked out and under guard, being more forehanded about some things than others, are whittling intensely.
Loneliest of all sounds, the “peepers” take up their forsaken song in flooded meadows, silenced in ghostly fashion by a footstep that comes near. Heartbroken chant, it is more elegy than spring song, hard to hear at dusk, yet it is certain that those peepers are delighted that March is here—as content with their fate, while they utter the poignant notes, as the emphatic old frogs by the deeper water. Wander-birds, almost unresting, are posting north again through the twilights. Bold wild geese are awing for Canada. Quiet returning hawks cross the valleys, and the pine grosbeak hastens past. Spring dowers the devoted but undesired starling with a pleasant voice which will change by summer into an exasperating croak, and so many of our birds suffer this unfair loss that a feathered critic would have good reason to declare that poets ought to be slain in youth. The terrifying little screech owl wails from shadowy woods, and from the venerable timber sounds the horned owl’s obscure threat. The chickadee repeats with natural pride his charming repertoire of two notes—“Spring soon!” Nothing is refused this fortunate one, born with a sweet disposition and a winsome song, while sparrows, angrily conducting their courtships, remain on earth solely by dint of original cleverness.
Meadow mole and turtle, woodchuck and chipmunk, are recovering from a three months’ nap, waiting patiently in the sunshine for the season to begin. Snakes come out with the rest of the yawning company. Fish glitter again in the hurrying streams, building their nests and houses like the others—often obeying a spring impulse to rush from lake to outlet or from quiet water to streamhead, ending their journey suddenly and forever amid wire meshes. The brooks are icy on the mildest days with melted snow from the mountains, where hemlocks green as arctic waters, shutting out the sun, keep a white floor long after the valley wears grasses.
Whoever has a touch of madness to lend him sympathy with the March hare likes the bewildering days through which he scampers to vanish at the edge of April. Rebellious, whitening ponds and wind-bent trees; defiant buds and all the kindled life of marsh, hill, and woodland, set free once more from cold, but not from dread—hear at the coming of the mighty month their promise of release. But only to comrades who will run with him through muddy lanes and tangled brush does he show his treasures: forest creatures sped like the couriers, petals lifted like the banners, of life resurgent.