Suddenly, In The Middle Of Her
Work, On A Stuffy-Still July Day, She Called A Wind Out Of The
Northwest, a wind blown under an arch of steel-bellied clouds, a wicked
bitter wind with a lacing of hail
To it, a wind that came and was gone
in less than ten minutes, but blocked the roads with fallen trees,
toppled over a barn, and - blew potatoes out of the ground! When that was
done, a white cloud shaped like a dumb-bell whirled down the valley
across the evening blue, roaring and twisting and twisting and roaring
all alone by itself. A West Indian hurricane could not have been quicker
on its feet than our little cyclone, and when the house rose a-tiptoe,
like a cockerel in act to crow, and a sixty-foot elm went by the board,
and that which had been a dusty road became a roaring torrent all in
three minutes, we felt that the New England summer had creole blood in
her veins. She went away, red-faced and angry to the last, slamming all
the doors of the hills behind her, and Autumn, who is a lady, took
charge.
No pen can describe the turning of the leaves - the insurrection of the
tree-people against the waning year. A little maple began it, flaming
blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a
pine-belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp
where the sumacs grow. Three days later, the hill-sides as far as the
eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold.
Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army;
and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull
and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf,
till nothing remained but pencil-shading of bare boughs, and one could
see into the most private heart of the woods.
Frost may be looked for till the middle of May and after the middle of
September, so Summer has little time for enamel-work or leaf-embroidery.
Her sisters bring the gifts - Spring, wind-flowers, Solomon's-Seal,
Dutchman's-breeches, Quaker-ladies, and trailing arbutus, that smells as
divinely as the true May. Autumn has golden-rod and all the tribe of
asters, pink, lilac, and creamy white, by the double armful. When these
go the curtain comes down, and whatever Powers shift the scenery behind,
work without noise. In tropic lands you can hear the play of growth and
decay at the back of the night-silences. Even in England the tides of
the winter air have a set and a purpose; but here they are dumb
altogether. The very last piece of bench-work this season was the
trailed end of a blackberry-vine, most daringly conventionalised in
hammered iron, flung down on the frosty grass an instant before people
came to look. The blue bloom of the furnace was still dying along the
central rib, and the side-sprays were cherry red, even as they had been
lifted from the charcoal. It was a detail, evidently, of some invisible
gate in the woods; but we never found that workman, though he had left
the mark of his cloven foot as plainly as any strayed deer. In a week
the heavy frosts with scythes and hammers had slashed and knocked down
all the road-side growth and the kindly bushes that veil the drop off
the unfenced track.
There the seasons stopped awhile. Autumn was gone, Winter was not. We
had Time dealt out to us - mere, clear, fresh Time - grace-days to enjoy.
The white wooden farm-houses were banked round two feet deep with dried
leaves or earth, and the choppers went out to get ready next year's
stores of wood. Now, chopping is an art, and the chopper in all respects
an artist. He makes his own axe-helve, and for each man there is but one
perfect piece of wood in all the world. This he never finds, but the
likest substitute is trimmed and balanced and poised to that ideal. One
man I know has evolved very nearly the weapon of Umslopogaas. It is
almost straight, lapped at the butt with leather, amazingly springy, and
carries a two-edged blade for splitting and chopping. If his Demon be
with him - and what artist can answer for all his moods? - he will cause a
tree to fall upon any stick or stone that you choose, uphill or down, to
the right or to the left. Artist-like, however, he explains that that is
nothing. Any fool can play with a tree in the open, but it needs the
craftsman to bring a tree down in thick timber and do no harm. To see an
eighty-foot maple, four feet in the butt, dropped, deftly as a fly is
cast, in the only place where it will not outrage the feelings and swipe
off the tops of fifty juniors, is a revelation. White pine, hemlock, and
spruce share this country with maples, black and white birches, and
beech. Maple seems to have few preferences, and the white birches
straggle and shiver on the outskirts of every camp; but the pines hold
together in solid regiments, sending out skirmishers to invade a
neglected pasture on the first opportunity. There is no overcoat warmer
than the pines in a gale when the woods for miles round are singing like
cathedral organs, and the first snow of the year powders the
rock-ledges.
The mosses and lichens, green, sulphur, and amber, stud the copper floor
of needles, where the feathery ground-pine runs aimlessly to and fro
along the ground, spelling out broken words of half-forgotten charms.
There are checker-berries on the outskirts of the wood, where the
partridge (he is a ruffed grouse really) dines, and by the deserted
logging-roads toadstools of all colours sprout on the decayed stumps.
Wherever a green or blue rock lifts from the hillside, the needles have
been packed and matted round its base, till, when the sunshine catches
them, stone and setting together look no meaner than turquoise in dead
gold.
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