Wood Wanderings

by Winthrop Packard

Here upon a maple I find leaves that are still green, while others just beside them are scarlet. From the hilltop those maples which show the fieriest flame are the ones that on close inspection show leaves where the green and red mingle either in the same leaf or contiguous leaves. Perhaps the green, complementary color of the red takes the part of shadow background and throws up the more vivid color in greater prominence.

The swamp maples are unique in their way of taking on autumnal tints, anyway. In common with all trees that stand with their feet in the water, they lose the rich green of full summer growth long before the frosts touch them, and long before similar trees standing on upland slopes have any idea that autumn is approaching. Occasionally a maple branch growing on some swamp tree, bowered in a little cove of woodland greenery, will flame up in early July, as if some ignis fatuus, wandering in by ghostly moonlight from a near-by ditch, had touched the bough with strange fire that crimsoned but did not consume.

There is nothing the matter with the tree; it is well nourished and of vigorous growth, yet it flares this early signal that winter with her train is sooner or later to whistle down the tracks of the great northern road. Such a maple is like an over-zealous flagman who stands on the crossing and waves his signal before the train has even started from the distant city. I do not recall seeing this trait exhibited by other trees.

Again, individual trees of many species will show ruddy tints in the swamp, sometimes in early September, before other trees of the same species, standing near by, have even a suspicion of it. Yet this rule holds good; the swamp trees color first and lose their leaves first, the maples first of all. Sometimes by October first precocious specimens are bald, their gray polls conspicuous spots among the surrounding greenery. With their vivid colors, their premature baldness, their usually smaller size, and a generally devil-may-care air which, perhaps, is only seeming because of these facts, the swamp maples always appear to me like swashbucklers, roistering young blades in whom riots the wine of life, whose red faces early in the morning of the autumn and whose premature baldness both hint of dissipation. Their roots are deep in the richest of mold dissolved in the water of copious springs. The most bounteous of banquets and the warmest of wine is continually at their lips. It is no wonder if their youth is tempted to excesses.

Most of the lady birches stand aloof on the upland slopes; I notice not far enough away to forbid the handsome young maples from climbing out of their mire of dissipation to nibble the dry husks of gravel-bank breakfast food and drink dew among them if they have the courage. But not all thus withdraw in whispering groups. Down into the swamp others have stepped and stand, erect and dainty, among the rubicund roisterers. Social workers these without doubt, missionaries of the Birch C. T. U., who thus give their lives nobly to teaching by example.

Among the same temptations they stand, their shimmering green skirts drawn slimly about them, their slight forms erect, the very visible essence of virtue. The fervor of autumn touches them only with a pale-yellow aureola, which marks at once their freedom from taint of temptation and their saintliness. There is not much to prove it in a bird’s-eye view of the swamp this October, yet I can but feel that these pure lives radiate an influence among the sensuous swamp maples.

Here and there you will find one of these the rich green of whose summer leaves turns to yellow hue at this time of year, though it is a creature-comfort yellow compared with the soft ethereality of the birches. Such, I believe, are on the road to conversion. The spirituality of their neighbors has touched them and they are beginning to be conscious of the beauty of temperate living and strive toward it.

Perhaps some autumn we shall note the presence of a great revival and the October swamp will be all one pale, misty nimbus of spirituality, a soft yellow radiance of saints who have spurned riotous living and glow with ethereal fires of renunciation. Then will the Birch C. T. U. hold a praise service.

On higher ground another maple which from its autumn coloration as well as other characteristics is a very near relative of the swamp maples is the white maple, sometimes called the silver-leaved maple. This, too, turns a vivid red in early October, though it holds its leaves a little longer than the red maples of the swamp. On the other hand, the imported Norway maples, more shapely and stately trees in their full growth than our own, line our streets and parks with noble round heads that are still green except for a slight frosting of bronzy yellow on top, giving the tree a richness of dignified maturity that is beautiful to look upon. There is nothing of the missionary about these; they simply stand serene, placid reminders of the value of noble example.

Like these trees in the formation of symmetrical, rounded heads are the chestnuts, which are still green when the other deciduous trees of the wood have been caught in the conflagration of autumn coloring. Now, the first week in October being past, they show a certain yellowness of foliage which is enhanced by the yellow-brown of the ripe burs which throng the tips of their upper branches.