A flock of wild geese on the wing is no less than an inspiration. When that strong-voiced, stout-hearted company of pioneers pass overhead, our thoughts ascend and sail with them over the roofs of the world. As band after band come into the field of vision—minute glittering specks in the distant blue—to cross the golden sea of the sunset and disappear in the northern twilight, their faint melodious honk is an Orphean strain drawing irresistibly.
AFTER THE PAINTING BY
LOUIS AGASSIZ FUERTES
[THE POINT OF VIEW]
Nature is in herself a perpetual invitation: the birds call, the trees beckon and the winds whisper to us. After the unfeeling pavements, the yielding springy turf of the fields has a sympathy with the feet and invites us to walk. It is good to hear again the fine long-drawn note of the meadow-lark—voice of the early year,—the first bluebird's warble, the field-sparrow's trill, the untamed melody of the kinglet—a magic flute in the wilderness—and to see the ruby crown of the beloved sprite. It is good to inhale the mint crushed underfoot and to roll between the fingers the new leaves of the sweetbrier; to see again the first anemones—the wind-children,—the mandrake's canopies, the nestling erythronium and the spring beauty, like a delicate carpet; or to seek the clintonia in its secluded haunts, and to feel the old childlike joy at sight of lady's-slippers.
It is worth while to be out-of-doors all of one day, now and then, and to really know what is morning and what evening; to observe the progress of the day as one might attend a spectacle, though this requires leisure and a free mind. The spirit of the woods will not lend itself to a mere fair-weather devotion. You must cast in your lot with the wild and take such weather as befalls. If you do not now and then spend a day in the snow, you miss some impressions that no fair weather can give. When you have walked for a time in the spring shower, you have a new and larger sympathy with the fields. The shining leaves, glistening twigs, jeweled cobwebs and the gentle cadence of the falling rain all tell you it is no time to stay indoors.
Life in the woods sharpens the nose, the eyes, the ears. There are nose-feasts, eye-feasts, ear-feasts. What if the frost-grapes are sour—they are fair to look at. Some things are for the palate and some for the eye. The fragrance of blackberries is as delicate as the flavor, a spicy aroma, a woodsy bouquet, and to eat without seeing or smelling is to lose much. Clustered cherries, so lustrous black with their red stems, refresh the inner and the outer man. You may safely become a gourmand with respect to these wild flavors. Their virtue is of the volatile sort that will not stand bottling; it will not enter into essence or tincture. You must yourself go out and pick the cherry under a September sky and in the presence of the first glowing leaves of sumac and Virginia creeper.
Does not the bayberry revive and exhilarate the walker, as smelling-salts restore fainting women? You have but to roll the waxen berry in the fingers, or crush the leaf, to feel that indefinable thrill which belongs to the woods, to the open air—the free life. Another vigorous and stimulating odor is the fragrance of green butternuts, which contains the goodness, the sweetness, the very marrow of the woods, and calls out the natural and unaffected, as a strain of music arouses the heroic. The tartness of the barberry matches the crispness of the air and rebukes the lack of vigor in us. No true child can resist the lure of wintergreen berries, while to nibble the bark of a fresh young sassafras shoot admits us to some closer association with Nature. A whiff of balsam is an invitation to share the abandon of the woods, and awakens memories of the halcyon days, the shining hours, when nutting and berrying were the real things of life.