Old Plymouth Trails

by Winthrop Packard

I had thought May with its tender pastels of young color and its bubbling joy of spring song the most beautiful month in this gentle world of out-of-doors, but that was in May. Now I am convinced that November in its ethereal serenity is loveliest. May held but the vivid joy of ecstatic expectation; November speaks with the peace of fulfilment and the calm understanding of those who look with clear eyes into another world.

Between midnight and dawn I fancy the pasture folk who are still this side the pale get their farthest glimpse into the world which lies beyond. The pasture on whose bosom they dwell sleeps deeply then, its breathing not even faintly rustling the frost-browned leaves of the white oaks, not even sighing those ancient, druidical hymns through the pine tops. Sometimes as I stand with them I try to feel this bosom rise and fall in the slow rhythm of deep slumber, but even on such nights with the senses aquiver with expectation of the unknown I fail. I dare say the fox that slips along the winding paths at dawn and the little screech owl that calls lonelily to his mate note without noticing these and many other things in which our human perception fails. Man cultivates his brains to the dulling of his senses and builds a wall of useless possessions, attainments and entertainment about him till he hears only a few things and sees but through tiny chinks like the prisoner in a dungeon. Yet we are not altogether endungeoned. We are beginning to know our danger and cry "back to the woods," which may yet be the slogan of our next emancipation. It is a long path back for some of us and to cover it at a bound has its dangers. The earthworm shrivels in the sudden sun and to leap from the city block to the depths of the woods is to suffer from the "growing pains" of awakening, atrophied senses. The half-way ground is the pasture which once was the forest, which later was man's, and where now nature and human-nature mingle in friendly truce. In the depths of the woods the town draws me toward itself. In the city I long for the woods, In the pasture is the smiling truce of the two forces.

In the one I know best, as in most of our New England pastures, the cattle have long ceased to browse and men came only because nature draws them thither. The wild creatures seem to sense this and to lose much of their woodland fear of me. Last night, in the first promise of the gray of dawn a fox barked at my camp door, scratching at the threshold as if he were the house dog, asking to be let in out of the cold and lie at the fire. I heard the barnyard roosters faintly crowing in the distance, but a little screech owl called clearly on a limb just beyond the ridge-pole. The roosters' cry had in it nothing but self-gratulatory bombast. I know town-dwarfed men that talk like that. The owl's call was to his mate, as was the roosters', but there was no bombast in its plaint, just a mournfulness of endearment, a touch of tears at the silence and delay. After a little the other came and all the mournfulness went out of the tone. Instead there was cooing in its quality as the two talked reassuringly a moment. The first call is of six or eight notes that start high and tremulo down the owl's diatonic scale to a low one that has a round, flute-like quality though the whole sounds as if it were made somewhere else and were merely echoing from the wood. The bird is as hard to locate by sound as an echo would be and is usually much nearer than it seems when I hear him. The second call is the last note of the first one, three or four times repeated with such rapidity that it has a flute-like reverberation that is almost like a round and very musical purr. The cry of this bird has been called eerie and disquieting, but I do not think it so, even in the loneliness of the question call. The satisfied one is as gentle and cuddly as one can find among birds.

The Fox that slips along the Winding Path at Dawn

The pasture ghosts of still November nights are apt to be most portentous between the hours of midnight and dawn. The giants of eld stall noiselessly about them, figures of gray mist out of a world of silence. Sometimes they rise like simulacrums of ancient forest trees out of grassy spots that by day were cosey with sunshine and enclosed by barberry bushes hung with coral fruit and prim cedars, spots where no tree has stood these hundred years. Anon they change to dim figures of preposterous beasts, called back to earth for a brief hour while the old moon, worn and thin, rises through them, a nebulous red crescent, and the stars fade, yet show dimly through like the moon, proving that these are but disembodied monsters. Sometimes they wait till dawn bids them dematerialize before it. More often winter, which is most apt to steal in upon us late at night in November, breaks their backs with the weight of his cold and spreads them as hoar frost upon all things below, showing us how thin and of little substance they really are. Sometimes this breakage comes with the first gleams of morning light and I feel the chill of their passing as they sink slowly to the grass. They are beautiful in their eerie suggestions as they flout my three o'clock in the morning courage, but lovelier far when they sparkle on the grass and shrubs under the sudden flare of the rising sun. I fancy that with clearer light all our gorgons and chimeras dire will become but sparkling fairies, for these certainly do. Twig and leaf and grass spear bend with the clusters of them. I see the fluff of their ermine garments, their tossing white plumes, and get the glint of their jewels, breaking up the white light into multiple rainbows that flash all the pasture world with a dainty glamour of romance. Just as the touch of winter, slipping down from the far north tinder cover of darkness, first raises these spectres, then lays them, so the sun makes their cheery, frostwork beauty a marvel of delight for a brief time, then sends it back to the earth whence it sprang and wipes away all tears from the eyes of the shrubs and grasses that weep at losing such delicate beauty.

In those crisp morning hours of early sunlight all the ghosts are laid. The winter chill which made them has frozen them all out of the air. The twigs and leaves that gave them refuge have wept and kissed them good-bye at the shout of the oncoming sun and no suggestion from the world beyond meets the eye. The ghost chill is frozen out of the sky with the ghosts; the wine of the morning is so poured through the dry air that you must drink it to the lees whether you will or not. Such mornings as you have had in April you may get in November, nor hardly can you tell without the assistance of the almanac which season it is. The bare twigs have the flush of expectancy on them, the blushing hope of new buds, as soon as the leaves of the year are off them. It may not be so bright and winning, but you will not note the difference, for it is there, painted during the ripening of this year's leaves. If it were not that some of these still cling the illusion might be complete.

There too, to be sure, are the brown stems of the pasture goldenrod standing stiffly as if to state with grim definiteness that all rainbow hopes are folly and there will be no more blossoming for them. Their leaves are dun and sere where they have not already fallen and their tops that in early September were such soft cumulus clouds of golden yellow are but scrawny clots of brown, draggled by the tears in which the sudden sun has drowned the pasture. Yet these least of all should be pessimistic in November, for as the sun dries their tears another summer comes back to them and to us, Indian summer, which is the finest season of the year. The Indian winter of the dark hours before dawn steals dawn with all spears pointed for the massacre of the summer flowers that still linger unprotected, and the white magic of its own cold changes the spears to delicate, tiny frost fronds and blooms on all the outdoor world. Then, with the full day, comes Indian summer, slipping along all the pasture paths and lingering in the sheltered hollows among the evergreens. In her presence all the sorrowing plants seem to lift their heads and a new blossom time comes back to the brown, despondent goldenrod. A warmth glows in its pith which is as dear as that of its prime yet has in it some of the stir of autumn crispness. Under its power the draggled clots that once were flowers lift, fluff out, bud and bloom as does the magic plant under the potent spell of the sorcerer of the Far East. You may see on such Indian summer mornings the florets of these dead goldenrod stems lifting and spreading and before your very eyes the plant bursts into bloom once more. These blooms are the day-time ghosts with which the November pastures are full, misty gray flowers that stand on the same receptacles that held the yellow blooms of late summer, but are lovelier far than the first blossoms were. Each dewy night, each rainy day, they shrivel and seem to pass but the warmth of the sun and the drying wind need but a brief hour in which to bring them all out again. After Indian summer has gone for good and the December snows are deep the stiff stems will still hold these renewing gray blooms above the drifts and make all the pasture beautiful with the ghosts of summer flowers. Nor, lovely as they are to my eye, will they be less beautiful to the winter chippies, the goldfinches, juncos and a host of other seed-eating birds who will find them bountifully spread for their delectation all the winter through. On rainy days I like to bring these brawn stems into camp and, setting them by the glow of the open fire, see them bloom as they dry out. It is a most magical flowering and to be one's own wizard is one of the delightful, privileges of being a November sojourner in the pasture.

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