Wild Pastures

by Winthrop Packard

That was when I sprang over a stone wall and landed fairly in the middle of a covey of partridges made up of a mother bird and what seemed a small whirlwind of young ones no bigger than my thumb. My plunge startled the mother so that she thundered away through the bushes, a thing that a mother partridge, surprised with her young, will rarely do. At the same moment the young scurried into the air. It was like a gust among a dozen brown leaves, whirling them breast high for a moment and then letting them settle to earth again. You go to pick them up and they surely are brown leaves! It is as if some woodland Merlin had waved his wand. They were young partridges, they are brown leaves. It is as quick as that.

Yet this was my lucky morning, for one of these little birds failed to dematerialize, and I noted him wriggling down under a clump of woodland grass and picked him up. He made pretense of keeping still for a moment, then wriggled in fright in my hand, a pathetically silent, frightened, bright-eyed little chick, mostly down. How his few feathers helped him to make as much of a flight as he had is beyond my conception. He must have mental-scienced himself up into the air and down again.

The mother bird, dancing and mincing along

Holding him gently, I pursed my lips and drew the air sharply in between lips and teeth. The result was a peculiar squeaking chirp which I have often used on similar occasions with many different birds and almost always with success. Then there came a sudden materialization. Out of the atmosphere, apparently, appeared the mother bird, dancing and mincing along toward me till she was very near, her head up, her eyes blazing with excitement, her wings half spread and her feathers fluttering.

It was a sort of pyrrhic dance by a creature as different from the usual partridge as may be conceived. It lasted but a moment; at a sudden, indescribable note from the mother bird the fledgling gave an answering jump and slipped from my relaxed hold, fluttered and dematerialized before my eyes just as the mother bird went into nothingness in the same way. Truly, there are bogies in the wood, for that morning I saw them at their work. It was the illusion and evasion of old Merlin; no less.

Going on down the pasture, I picked up the musky scent of the swamp I was approaching, instead of the thing I sought. The scent of the swamp is cool with humid humus, musky with the breath of the skunk-cabbage, woodsy with that quaint exhalation which you get from the ferns, our oldest form of plant life, still retaining and lending to you as you pass the odor of the very forest primeval. These are the base, and they carry the lighter and daintier odors as ambergris, a vile and dreadful but very strong smell, carries the dainty scents of the perfumer, and just as they in turn give you no hint of the ambergris which is their base, so the odor of the swamp gives you little hint of these three but is a delight of its own.

Beyond the little corner which I must cross in the straight line I had taken was a small hillock of open pasture, fringed on the farther side with alder and button bush which stand ankle deep in the water of the pond. Here on the little knoll daisies sent out that faint, hay-like smell which is common to most of the compositæ. The squaw weed in the meadowy edge between the swamp and the knoll had given me the same fragrance. But standing on the top of the knoll while the soft morning wind swept the daisy fragrance by me knee high, I caught, head high, the elusive, alluring odor that I was seeking. It led me down to the pond side and called me, dared me, to come on. Why not? I was dressed for it, and I was wet to the skin with the drench of the morning dew already.

The cove was but a hundred yards across, and I stood on the bank wishing to note carefully the direction I must take. The lazy morning wind drifted across, just kissing the water here and there, leaving the surface for the most part smooth. I wet my finger and held it up, dropping it cool side down till it was level. It pointed exactly toward the opposite point at the other side of the cove and between it and the next one. There a low, sloping, broad flat rock hung with a canopy of green leaves was the dock at which I might land conveniently, and I splashed resolutely into the water, scaring almost to death with my plunge a big green frog that was sunning himself on a little foot-square cranberry bog island. He gave a shrill little yelp of terror and dived before I could.

Singular thing that little half squeak, half screech, of alarm. I have heard a girl make an almost identical sound when coming suddenly on a particularly fuzzy and well-developed caterpillar. Rabbit, dog, and bird have it as well; indeed, it seems to be the one word which is common to all races and to all articulate creatures. Like the scent of brakes it began with the beginning of things and has survived all the changes of creation.