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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Over Prairie Trails, by Frederick Philip Grove
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+Title: Over Prairie Trails
+
+Author: Frederick Philip Grove
+
+Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6111]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 10, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVER PRAIRIE TRAILS ***
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan.
+
+
+
+
+
+OVER PRAIRIE TRAILS
+
+By Frederick Philip Grove
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+Introductory
+1  Farms and Roads
+2  Fog
+3  Dawn and Diamonds
+4  Snow
+5  Wind and Waves
+6  A Call for Speed
+7  Skies and Scares
+
+
+
+
+Introductory
+
+A few years ago it so happened that my work--teaching
+school--kept me during the week in a small country town
+in the centre of one of the prairie provinces while my
+family--wife and little daughter--lived in the southern
+fringe of the great northern timber expanse, not very
+far from the western shore of a great lake. My wife--like
+the plucky little woman she is--in order to round off my
+far-from-imperial income had made up her mind to look
+after a rural school that boasted of something like a
+residence. I procured a buggy and horse and went "home"
+on Fridays, after school was over, to return to my town
+on Sunday evening--covering thus, while the season was
+clement and allowed straight cross-country driving, coming
+and going, a distance of sixty-eight miles. Beginning
+with the second week of January this distance was raised
+to ninety miles because, as my more patient readers will
+see, the straight cross-country roads became impassable
+through snow.
+
+These drives. the fastest of which was made in somewhat
+over four hours and the longest of which took me nearly
+eleven--the rest of them averaging pretty well up between
+the two extremes--soon became what made my life worth
+living. I am naturally an outdoor creature--I have lived
+for several years "on the tramp"--I love Nature more than
+Man--I take to horses--horses take to me--so how could
+it have been otherwise? Add to this that for various
+reasons my work just then was not of the most pleasant
+kind--I disliked the town, the town disliked me, the
+school board was sluggish and unprogressive, there was
+friction in the staff--and who can wonder that on Fridays,
+at four o'clock, a real holiday started for me: two days
+ahead with wife and child, and going and coming--the drive.
+
+I made thirty-six of these trips: seventy-two drives in
+all. I think I could still rehearse every smallest incident
+of every single one of them. With all their weirdness,
+with all their sometimes dangerous adventure--most of
+them were made at night, and with hardly ever any regard
+being paid to the weather or to the state of the roads--
+they stand out in the vast array of memorable trifles
+that constitute the story of my life as among the most
+memorable ones. Seven drives seem, as it were, lifted
+above the mass of others as worthy to be described in
+some detail--as not too trivial to detain for an hour or
+so a patient reader's kind attention. Not that the others
+lack in interest for myself; but there is little in them
+of that mildly dramatic, stirring quality which might
+perhaps make their recital deserving of being heard beyond
+my own frugal fireside. Strange to say, only one of the
+seven is a return trip. I am afraid that the prospect of
+going back to rather uncongenial work must have dulled
+my senses. Or maybe, since I was returning over the same
+road after an interval of only two days, I had exhausted
+on the way north whatever there was of noticeable
+impressions to be garnered. Or again, since I was coming
+from "home," from the company of those for whom I lived
+and breathed, it might just be that all my thoughts flew
+back with such an intensity that there was no vitality
+left for the perception of the things immediately around me.
+
+
+
+
+ONE
+Farms and Roads
+
+At ten minutes past four, of an evening late in September,
+I sat in the buggy and swung out of the livery stable
+that boarded my horse. Peter, the horse, was a chunky
+bay, not too large, nor too small; and I had stumbled on
+to him through none of my sagacity. To tell the plain
+truth, I wanted to get home, I had to have a horse that
+could stand the trip, no other likely looking horse was
+offered, this one was--on a trial drive he looked as if
+he might do, and so I bought him--no, not quite--I arranged
+with the owner that I should make one complete trip with
+him and pay a fee of five dollars in case I did not keep
+him. As the sequence showed, I could not have found a
+better horse for the work in hand.
+
+I turned on to the road leading north, crossed the bridge,
+and was between the fields. I looked at my watch and
+began to time myself. The moon was new and stood high in
+the western sky; the sun was sinking on the downward
+stretch. It was a pleasant, warm fall day, and it promised
+an evening such as I had wished for on my first drive
+out. Not a cloud showed anywhere. I did not urge the
+horse; he made the first mile in seven, and a half minutes,
+and I counted that good enough.
+
+Then came the turn to the west; this new road was a
+correction line, and I had to follow it for half a mile.
+There was no farmhouse on this short bend. Then north
+for five miles. The road was as level as a table top--a
+good, smooth, hard-beaten, age-mellowed prairie-grade.
+The land to east and west was also level; binders were
+going and whirring their harvest song. Nobody could have
+felt more contented than I did. There were two clusters
+of buildings--substantial buildings--set far back from
+the road, one east, the other one west, both clusters
+huddled homelike and sheltered in bluffs of planted
+cottonwoods, straight rows of them, three, four trees
+deep. My horse kept trotting leisurely along, the wheels
+kept turning, a meadow lark called in a desultory way
+from a nearby fence post. I was "on the go." I had torn
+up my roots, as it were, I felt detached and free; and
+if both these prosperous looking farms had been my
+property--I believe, that moment a "Thank-you" would have
+bought them from me if parting from them had been the
+price of the liberty to proceed. But, of course, neither
+one of them ever could have been my property, for neither
+by temperament nor by profession had I ever been given
+to the accumulation of the wealth of this world.
+
+A mile or so farther on there stood another group of farm
+buildings--this one close to the road. An unpainted barn,
+a long and low, rather ramshackle structure with sagging
+slidedoors that could no longer be closed, stood in the
+rear of the farm yard. The dwelling in front of it was
+a tall, boxlike two-story house, well painted in a rather
+loud green with white door and window frames. The door
+in front, one window beside it, two windows above,
+geometrically correct, and stiff and cold. The house was
+the only green thing around, however. Not a tree, not a
+shrub, not even a kitchen garden that I could see. I
+looked the place over critically, while I drove by.
+Somehow I was convinced that a bachelor owned it--a man
+who made this house--which was much too large for him
+--his "bunk." There it stood, slick and cold, unhospitable
+as ever a house was. A house has its physiognomy as well
+as a man, for him who can read it; and this one,
+notwithstanding its new and shining paint, was sullen,
+morose, and nearly vicious and spiteful. I turned away.
+I should not have cared to work for its owner.
+
+Peter was trotting along. I do not know why on this first
+trip he never showed the one of his two most prominent
+traits--his laziness. As I found out later on, so long
+as I drove him single (he changed entirely in this respect
+when he had a mate), he would have preferred to be hitched
+behind, with me between the shafts pulling buggy and him.
+That was his weakness, but in it there also lay his
+strength. As soon as I started to dream or to be absorbed
+in the things around, he was sure to fall into the slowest
+of walks. When then he heard the swish of the whip, he
+would start with the worst of consciences, gallop away
+at breakneck speed, and slow down only when he was sure
+the whip was safe in its socket. When we met a team and
+pulled out on the side of the road, he would take it for
+granted that I desired to make conversation. He stopped
+instantly, drew one hindleg up, stood on three legs, and
+drooped his head as if he had come from the ends of the
+world. Oh yes, he knew how to spare himself. But on the
+other hand, when it came to a tight place, where only an
+extraordinary effort would do, I had never driven a horse
+on which I could more confidently rely. What any horse
+could do, he did.
+
+About two miles beyond I came again to a cluster of
+buildings, close to the corner of the crossroads, sheltered,
+homelike, inviting in a large natural bluff of tall,
+dark-green poplars. Those first two houses had had an
+aristocratic aloofness--I should not have liked to turn
+in there for shelter or for help. But this was prosperous,
+open-handed, well-to-do middle class; not that conspicuous
+"moneyedness" that we so often find in our new west when
+people have made their success; but the solid, friendly,
+everyday liberality that for generations has not had to
+pinch itself and therefore has mellowed down to taking
+the necessities and a certain amount of give and take
+for granted. I was glad when on closer approach I noticed
+a school embedded in the shady green of the corner. I
+thought with pleasure of children being so close to people
+with whom I should freely have exchanged a friendly
+greeting and considered it a privilege. In my mental
+vision I saw beeches and elms and walnut trees around a
+squire's place in the old country.
+
+The road began to be lined with thickets of shrubs here:
+choke cherry bushes, with some ripe, dried-up black
+berries left on the branches, with iron-black bark, and
+with wiry stems, in the background; in front of them,
+closer to the driveway, hawthorn, rich with red fruit;
+rosebushes with scarlet leaves reaching down to nearly
+underfoot. It is one of the most pleasing characteristics
+of our native thickets that they never rise abruptly
+Always they shade off through cushionlike copses of
+smaller growth into the level ground around.
+
+The sun was sinking. I knew a mile or less further north
+I should have to turn west in order to avoid rough roads
+straight ahead. That meant doubling up, because some
+fifteen miles or so north I should have to turn east
+again, my goal being east of my starting place. These
+fifteen or sixteen miles of the northward road I did not
+know; so I was anxious to make them while I could see.
+I looked at the moon--I could count on some light from
+her for an hour or so after sundown. But although I knew
+the last ten or twelve miles of my drive fairly well, I
+was also aware of the fact that there were in it tricky
+spots--forkings of mere trails in muskeg bush--where
+leaving the beaten log-track might mean as much as being
+lost. So I looked at my watch again and shook the lines
+over Peter's back. The first six miles had taken me nearly
+fifty minutes. I looked at the sun again, rather anxiously
+I could count on him for another hour and a quarter--well
+and good then!
+
+There was the turn. Just north of it, far back from both
+roads, another farmyard. Behind it--to the north, stretched
+out, a long windbreak of poplars, with a gap or a vista
+in its centre. Barn and outbuildings were unpainted, the
+house white; a not unpleasing group, but something slovenly
+about it. I saw with my mind's eye numerous children,
+rather neglected, uncared for, an overworked, sickly
+woman, a man who was bossy and harsh.
+
+The road angles here. Bell's farm consists of three
+quartersections; the southwest quarter lends its diagonal
+for the trail. I had hardly made the turn, however, when
+a car came to meet me. It stopped. The school-inspector
+of the district looked out. I drew in and returned his
+greeting, half annoyed at being thus delayed. But his
+very next word made me sit up. He had that morning
+inspected my wife's school and seen her and my little
+girl; they were both as well as they could be. I felt so
+glad that I got out of my buggy to hand him my pouch of
+tobacco, the which he took readily enough. He praised my
+wife's work, as no doubt he had reason to do, and I should
+have given him a friendly slap on the shoulder, had not
+just then my horse taken it into his head to walk away
+without me.
+
+I believe I was whistling when I got back to the buggy
+seat. I know I slapped the horse's rump with my lines
+and sang out, "Get up, Peter, we still have a matter of
+nearly thirty miles to make."
+
+The road becomes pretty much a mere trail here, a rut-track,
+smooth enough in the rut, where the wheels ran, but rough
+for the horse's feet in between.
+
+To the left I found the first untilled land. It stretched
+far away to the west, overgrown with shrub-willow,
+wolf-willow and symphoricarpus--a combination that is
+hard to break with the plow. I am fond of the silver
+grey, leathery foliage of the wolf-willow which is so
+characteristic of our native woods. Cinquefoil, too, the
+shrubby variety, I saw in great numbers--another one of
+our native dwarf shrubs which, though decried as a weed,
+should figure as a border plant in my millionaire's park.
+
+And as if to make my enjoyment of the evening's drive
+supreme, I saw the first flocks of my favourite bird,
+the goldfinch. All over this vast expanse, which many
+would have called a waste, there were strings of them,
+chasing each other in their wavy flight, twittering on
+the downward stretch, darting in among the bushes, turning
+with incredible swiftness and sureness of wing the shortest
+of curves about a branch, and undulating away again to
+where they came from.
+
+To the east I had, while pondering over the beautiful
+wilderness, passed a fine bluff of stately poplars that
+stood like green gold in the evening sun. They sheltered
+apparently, though at a considerable distance, another
+farmhouse; for a road led along their southern edge,
+lined with telephone posts. A large flock of sheep was
+grazing between the bluff and the trail, the most
+appropriate kind of stock for this particular landscape.
+
+While looking back at them, I noticed a curious trifle.
+The fence along my road had good cedar posts, placed
+about fifteen feet apart. But at one point there were
+two posts where one would have done. The wire, in fact,
+was not fastened at all to the supernumerary one, and
+yet this useless post was strongly braced by two stout,
+slanting poles. A mere nothing, which I mention only
+because it was destined to be an important landmark for
+me on future drives.
+
+We drove on. At the next mile-corner all signs of human
+habitation ceased. I had now on both sides that same
+virgin ground which I have described above. Only here it
+was interspersed with occasional thickets of young
+aspen-boles. It was somewhere in this wilderness that I
+saw a wolf, a common prairie-wolf with whom I became
+quite familiar later on. I made it my custom during the
+following weeks, on my return trips, to start at a given
+point a few miles north of here eating the lunch which
+my wife used to put up for me: sandwiches with crisply
+fried bacon for a filling. And when I saw that wolf for
+the second time, I threw a little piece of bacon overboard.
+He seemed interested in the performance and stood and
+watched me in an averted kind of way from a distance. I
+have often noticed that you can never see a wolf from
+the front, unless it so happens that he does not see you.
+If he is aware of your presence, he will instantly swing
+around, even though he may stop and watch you. If he
+watches, he does so with his head turned back. That is
+one of the many precautions the wily fellow has learned,
+very likely through generations of bitter experience.
+After a while I threw out a second piece, and he started
+to trot alongside, still half turned away; he kept at a
+distance of about two hundred yards to the west running
+in a furtive, half guilty-looking way, with his tail down
+and his eye on me. After that he became my regular
+companion, an expected feature of my return trips, running
+with me every time for a while and coming a little bit
+closer till about the middle of November he disappeared,
+never to be seen again. This time I saw him in the
+underbrush, about a hundred yards ahead and as many more
+to the west. I took him by surprise, as he took me. I
+was sorry I had not seen him a few seconds sooner. For,
+when I focused my eyes on him, he stood in a curious
+attitude: as if he was righting himself after having
+slipped on his hindfeet in running a sharp curve. At the
+same moment a rabbit shot across that part of my field
+of vision to the east which I saw in a blurred way only,
+from the very utmost corner of my right eye. I did not
+turn but kept my eyes glued to the wolf. Nor can I tell
+whether I had stirred the rabbit up, or whether the wolf
+had been chasing or stalking it. I should have liked to
+know, for I have never seen a wolf stalking a rabbit,
+though I have often seen him stalk fowl. Had he pulled
+up when he saw me? As I said, I cannot tell, for now he
+was standing in the characteristic wolf-way, half turned,
+head bent back, tail stretched out nearly horizontally.
+The tail sank, the whole beast seemed to shrink, and
+suddenly he slunk away with amazing agility. Poor fellow
+--he did not know that many a time I had fed some of his
+brothers in cruel winters. But he came to know me, as I
+knew him; for whenever he left me on later drives, very
+close to Bell's corner, after I had finished my lunch,
+he would start right back on my trail, nose low, and I
+have no doubt that he picked up the bits of bacon which
+I had dropped as tidbits for him.
+
+I drove and drove. The sun neared the horizon now It was
+about six o'clock. The poplar thickets on both sides of
+the road began to be larger. In front the trail led
+towards a gate in a long, long line of towering cottonwoods.
+What was beyond?
+
+It proved to be a gate indeed. Beyond the cottonwoods
+there ran an eastward grade lined on the north side by
+a ditch which I had to cross on a culvert. It will
+henceforth be known as the "twelve-mile bridge." Beyond
+the culvert the road which I followed had likewise been
+worked up into a grade. I did not like it, for it was
+new and rough. But less did I like the habitation at the
+end of its short, one-mile career. It stood to the right,
+close to the road, and was a veritable hovel. [Footnote:
+It might be well to state expressly here that, whatever
+has been said in these pages concerning farms and their
+inhabitants, has intentionally been so arranged as not
+to apply to the exact localities at which they are
+described. Anybody at all familiar with the district
+through which these drives were made will readily identify
+every natural landmark. But although I have not consciously
+introduced any changes in the landscape as God made it,
+I have in fairness to the settlers entirely redrawn the
+superimposed man-made landscape.] It was built of logs,
+but it looked more like a dugout, for stable as well as
+dwelling were covered by way of a roof with blower-thrown
+straw In the door of the hovel there stood two brats--poor
+things!
+
+The road was a trail again for a mile or two. It led once
+more through the underbrush-wilderness interspersed with
+poplar bluffs. Then it became by degrees a real "high-class"
+Southern Prairie grade. I wondered, but not for long.
+Tall cottonwood bluffs, unmistakably planted trees,
+betrayed more farms. There were three of them, and,
+strange to say, here on the very fringe of civilization
+I found that "moneyed" type--a house, so new and up-to-date,
+that it verily seemed to turn up its nose to the traveller.
+I am sure it had a bathroom without a bathtub and various
+similar modern inconveniences. The barn was of the
+Agricultural-College type--it may be good, scientific,
+and all that, but it seems to crush everything else around
+out of existence; and it surely is not picturesque--unless
+it has wings and silos to relieve its rigid contours.
+Here it had not.
+
+The other two farms to which I presently came--buildings
+set back from the road, but not so far as to give them
+the air of aloofness--had again that friendly, old-country
+expression that I have already mentioned: here it was
+somewhat marred, though, by an over-rigidity of the lines.
+It is unfortunate that our farmers, when they plant at
+all, will nearly always plant in straight lines. The
+straight line is a flaw where we try to blend the work
+of our hands with Nature. They also as a rule neglect
+shrubs that would help to furnish a foreground for their
+trees; and, worst of all, they are given to importing,
+instead of utilising our native forest growth. Not often
+have I seen, for instance, our high-bush cranberry planted,
+although it certainly is one of the most beautiful shrubs
+to grow in copses.
+
+These two farms proved to be pretty much the last sign
+of comfort that I was to meet on my drives to the north.
+Though later I learned the names of their owners and even
+made their acquaintance, for me they remained the "halfway
+farms," for, after I had passed them, at the very next
+corner, I was seventeen miles from my starting point,
+seventeen miles from "home."
+
+Beyond, stretches of the real wilderness began, the
+pioneer country, where farms, except along occasional
+highroads, were still three, four miles apart, where the
+breaking on few homesteads had reached the thirty-acre
+mark, and where a real, "honest-to-goodness" cash dollar
+bill was often as scarce as a well-to-do teacher in the
+prairie country.
+
+The sun went down, a ball of molten gold--two hours from
+"town," as I called it. It was past six o'clock. There
+were no rosy-fingered clouds; just a paling of the blue
+into white; then a greying of the western sky; and lastly
+the blue again, only this time dark. A friendly crescent
+still showed trail and landmarks after even the dusk had
+died away. Four miles, or a little more, and I should be
+in familiar land again. Four miles, that I longed to
+make, before the last light failed...
+
+The road angled to the northeast. I was by no means very
+sure of it. I knew which general direction to hold, but
+trails that often became mere cattle-paths crossed and
+criss-crossed repeatedly. It was too dark by this time
+to see very far. I did not know the smaller landmarks.
+But I knew, if I drove my horse pretty briskly, I must
+within little more than half an hour strike a black wall
+of the densest primeval forest fringing a creek--and,
+skirting this creek, I must find an old, weather-beaten
+lumber bridge. When I had crossed that bridge, I should
+know the landmarks again.
+
+Underbrush everywhere, mostly symphoricarpus, I thought.
+Large trunks loomed up, charred with forest fires; here
+and there a round, white or light-grey stone, ghostly in
+the waning light, knee-high, I should judge. Once I passed
+the skeleton of a stable--the remnant of the buildings
+put up by a pioneer settler who had to give in after
+having wasted effort and substance and worn his knuckles
+to the bones. The wilderness uses human material up...
+
+A breeze from the north sprang up, and it turned strangely
+chilly I started to talk to Peter, the loneliness seemed
+so oppressive. I told him that he should have a walk, a
+real walk, as soon as we had crossed the creek. I told
+him we were on the homeward half--that I had a bag of
+oats in the box, and that my wife would have a pail of
+water ready... And Peter trotted along.
+
+Something loomed up in front. Dark and sinister it looked.
+Still there was enough light to recognize even that which
+I did not know. A large bluff of poplars rustled, the wind
+soughing through the stems with a wailing note. The brush
+grew higher to the right. I suddenly noticed that I was
+driving along a broken-down fence between the brush and
+myself. The brush became a grove of boles which next
+seemed to shoot up to the full height of the bluff. Then,
+unexpectedly, startlingly, a vista opened. Between the
+silent grove to the south and the large; whispering,
+wailing bluff to the north there stood in a little clearing
+a snow white log house, uncannily white in the paling
+moonlight. I could still distinctly see that its upper
+windows were nailed shut with boards--and yes, its lower
+ones, too. And yet, the moment I passed it, I saw through
+one unclosed window on the northside light. Unreasonably
+I shuddered.
+
+This house, too, became a much-looked-for landmark to me on
+my future drives. I learned that it stood on the range line
+and called it the "White Range Line House." There hangs
+a story by this house. Maybe I shall one day tell it...
+
+Beyond the great and awe-inspiring poplar-bluff the trail
+took a sharp turn eastward. From the southwest another
+rut-road joined it at the bend. I could only just make
+it out in the dark, for even moonlight was fading fast
+now. The sudden, reverberating tramp of the horse's feet
+betrayed that I was crossing a culvert. I had been absorbed
+in getting my bearings, and so it came as a surprise. It
+had not been mentioned in the elaborate directions which
+I had received with regard to the road to follow. For a
+moment, therefore, I thought I must be on the wrong trail.
+But just then the dim view, which had been obstructed by
+copses and thickets, cleared ahead in the last glimmer
+of the moon, and I made out the back cliff of forest
+darkly looming in the north--that forest I knew. Behind
+a narrow ribbon of bush the ground sloped down to the
+bed of the creek--a creek that filled in spring and became
+a torrent, but now was sluggish and slow where it ran at
+all. In places it consisted of nothing but a line of
+muddy pools strung along the bottom of its bed. In summer
+these were a favourite haunting place for mosquito-and-
+fly-plagued cows. There the great beasts would lie down
+in the mud and placidly cool their punctured skins. A
+few miles southwest the creek petered out entirely in a
+bed of shaly gravel bordering on the Big Marsh which I
+had skirted in my drive and a corner of which I was
+crossing just now.
+
+The road was better here and spoke of more traffic. It
+was used to haul cordwood in late winter and early spring
+to a town some ten or fifteen miles to the southwest. So
+I felt sure again I was not lost but would presently
+emerge on familiar territory. The horse seemed to know it,
+too, for he raised his head and went at a better gait.
+
+A few minutes passed. There was hardly a sound from my
+vehicle. The buggy was rubber-tired, and the horse selected
+a smooth ribbon of grass to run on. But from the black
+forest wall there came the soughing of the wind and the
+nocturnal rustle of things unknown. And suddenly there
+came from close at hand a startling sound: a clarion call
+that tore the veil lying over my mental vision: the sharp,
+repeated whistle of the whip-poor-will. And with my mind's
+eye I saw the dusky bird: shooting slantways upward in
+its low flight which ends in a nearly perpendicular slide
+down to within ten or twelve feet from the ground, the
+bird being closely followed by a second one pursuing. In
+reality I did not see the birds, but I heard the fast
+whir of their wings.
+
+Another bird I saw but did not hear. It was a small owl.
+The owl's flight is too silent, its wing is down-padded.
+You may hear its beautiful call, but you will not hear
+its flight, even though it circle right around your head
+in the dusk. This owl crossed my path not more than an
+inch or two in front. It nearly grazed my forehead, so
+that I blinked. Oh, how I felt reassured! I believe,
+tears welled in my eyes. When I come to the home of frog
+and toad, of gartersnake and owl and whip-poor-will, a
+great tenderness takes possession of me, and I should
+like to shield and help them all and tell them not to be
+afraid of me; but I rather think they know it anyway.
+
+The road swung north, and then east again; we skirted
+the woods; we came to the bridge; it turned straight
+north; the horse fell into a walk. I felt that henceforth
+I could rely on my sense of orientation to find the road.
+It was pitch dark in the bush--the thin slice of the moon
+had reached the horizon and followed the sun; no light
+struck into the hollow which I had to thread after turning
+to the southeast for a while. But as if to reassure me
+once more and still further of the absolute friendliness
+of all creation for myself--at this very moment I saw
+high overhead, on a dead branch of poplar, a snow white
+owl, a large one, eighteen inches tall, sitting there in
+state, lord as he is of the realm of night...
+
+Peter walked--though I did not see the road, the horse
+could not mistake it. It lay at the bottom of a chasm of
+trees and bushes. I drew my cloak somewhat closer around
+and settled back. This cordwood trail took us on for half
+a mile, and then we came to a grade leading east. The
+grade was rough; it was the first one of a network of
+grades which were being built by the province, not
+primarily for the roads they afforded, but for the sake
+of the ditches of a bold and much needed drainage-system.
+To this very day these yellow grades of the pioneer
+country along the lake lie like naked scars on Nature's
+body: ugly raw, as if the bowels were torn out of a
+beautiful bird and left to dry and rot on its plumage.
+Age will mellow them down into harmony.
+
+Peter had walked for nearly half an hour. The ditch was
+north of the grade. I had passed, without seeing it, a
+newly cut-out road to the north which led to a lonesome
+schoolhouse in the bush. As always when I passed or
+thought of it, I had wondered where through this
+wilderness-tangle of bush and brush the children came
+from to fill it--walking through winter-snows, through
+summer-muds, for two, three, four miles or more to get
+their meagre share of the accumulated knowledge of the
+world. And the teacher! Was it the money? Could it be
+when there were plenty of schools in the thickly settled
+districts waiting for them? I knew of one who had come
+to this very school in a car and turned right back when
+she saw that she was expected to live as a boarder on a
+comfortless homestead and walk quite a distance and teach
+mostly foreign-born children. It had been the money with
+her! Unfortunately it is not the woman--nor the man
+either, for that matter--who drives around in a car, that
+will buckle down and do this nation's work! I also knew
+there were others like myself who think this backwoods
+bushland God's own earth and second only to Paradise--but
+few! And these young girls that quake at their loneliness
+and yet go for a pittance and fill a mission! But was
+not my wife of their very number?
+
+I started up. Peter was walking along. But here, somewhere,
+there led a trail off the grade, down through the ditch,
+and to the northeast into the bush which swallows it up
+and closes behind it. This trail needs to be looked for
+even in daytime, and I was to find it at night! But by
+this time starlight began to aid. Vega stood nearly
+straight overhead, and Deneb and Altair, the great autumnal
+triangle in our skies. The Bear, too, stood out boldly,
+and Cassiopeia opposite.
+
+I drew in and got out of the buggy; and walking up to
+the horse's head, got ahold of the bridle and led him,
+meanwhile scrutinizing the ground over which I stepped.
+At that I came near missing the trail. It was just a
+darkening of the ground, a suggestion of black on the
+brown of the grade, at the point where poles and logs
+had been pulled across with the logging chain. I sprang
+down into the ditch and climbed up beyond and felt with
+my foot for the dent worn into the edge of the slope, to
+make sure that I was where I should be. It was right, so
+I led the horse across. At once he stood on three legs
+again, left hindleg drawn up, and rested.
+
+"Well, Peter," I said, "I suppose I have made it easy
+enough for you: We have another twelve miles to make.
+You'll have to get up." But Peter this time did not stir
+till I touched him a flick with my whip.
+
+The trail winds around, for it is a logging trail, leading
+up to the best bluffs, which are ruthlessly cut down by
+the fuel-hunters. Only dead and half decayed trees are
+spared. But still young boles spring up in astonishing
+numbers. Aspen and Balm predominate, though there is some
+ash and oak left here and there, with a conifer as the
+rarest treat for the lover of trees. It is a pitiful
+thing to see a Nation's heritage go into the discard. In
+France or in England it would be tended as something
+infinitely precious. The face of our country as yet shows
+the youth of infancy, but we make it prematurely old.
+The settler who should regard the trees as his greatest
+pride, to be cut into as sparingly as is compatible with
+the exigencies of his struggle for life--he regards them
+as a nuisance to be burned down by setting wholesale
+fires to them. Already there is a scarcity of fuel-wood
+in these parts.
+
+Where the fires as yet have not penetrated too badly,
+the cutting, which leaves only what is worthless, determines
+the impression the forest makes. At night this impression
+is distinctly uncanny. Like gigantic brooms, with their
+handles stuck into the ground, the dead wood stands up;
+the underbrush crowds against it, so dense that it lies
+like huge black cushions under the stars. The inner
+recesses form an almost impenetrable mass of young boles
+of shivering aspen and scented balm. This mass slopes
+down to thickets of alder, red dogwood, haw, highbush
+cranberry, and honeysuckle, with wide beds of goldenrod
+or purple asters shading off into the spangled meadows
+wherever the copses open up into grassy glades.
+
+Through this bush, and skirting its meadows, I drove for
+an hour. There was another fork in the trail, and again
+I had to get out and walk on the side, to feel with my
+foot for the rut where it branched to the north. And
+then, after a while, the landscape opened up, the brush
+receded. At last I became conscious of a succession of
+posts to the right, and a few minutes later I emerged on
+the second east-west grade. Another mile to the east
+along this grade, and I should come to the last, homeward
+stretch.
+
+Again I began to talk to the horse. "Only five miles now,
+Peter, and then the night's rest. A good drink, a good
+feed of oats and wild hay, and the birds will waken you
+in the morning."
+
+The northern lights leaped into the sky just as I turned
+from this east-west grade, north again, across a high
+bridge, to the last road that led home. To the right I
+saw a friendly light, and a dog's barking voice rang over
+from the still, distant farmstead. I knew the place. An
+American settler with a French sounding name had squatted
+down there a few years ago.
+
+The road I followed was, properly speaking, not a road
+at all, though used for one. A deep master ditch had been
+cut from ten or twelve miles north of here; it angled,
+for engineering reasons, so that I was going northwest
+again. The ground removed from the ditch had been dumped
+along its east side, and though it formed only a narrow,
+high, and steep dam, rough with stones and overgrown with
+weeds, it was used by whoever had to go north or south
+here. The next east-west grade which I was aiming to
+reach, four miles north, was the second correction line
+that I had to use, twenty-four miles distant from the
+first; and only a few hundred yards from its corner I
+should be at home!
+
+At home! All my thoughts were bent on getting home now.
+Five or six hours of driving will make the strongest back
+tired, I am told. Mine is not of the strongest. This road
+lifted me above the things that I liked to watch.
+Invariably, on all these drives, I was to lose interest
+here unless the stars were particularly bright and
+brilliant. This night I watched the lights, it is true:
+how they streamed across the sky, like driving rain that
+is blown into wavy streaks by impetuous wind. And they
+leaped and receded, and leaped and receded again. But
+while I watched, I stretched my limbs and was bent on
+speed. There were a few particularly bad spots in the
+road, where I could not do anything but walk the horse.
+So, where the going was fair, I urged him to redoubled
+effort. I remember how I reflected that the horse as yet
+did not know we were so near home, this being his first
+trip out; and I also remember, that my wife afterwards
+told me that she had heard me a long while before I
+came--had heard me talking to the horse, urging him on
+and encouraging him.
+
+Now I came to a slight bend in the road. Only half a
+mile! And sure enough: there was the signal put out for
+me. A lamp in one of the windows of the school--placed
+so that after I turned in on the yard, I could not see
+it--it might have blinded my eye, and the going is rough
+there with stumps and stones. I could not see the cottage,
+it stood behind the school. But the school I saw clearly
+outlined against the dark blue, star-spangled sky, for
+it stands on a high gravel ridge. And in the most friendly
+and welcoming way it looked with its single eye across
+at the nocturnal guest.
+
+I could not see the cottage, but I knew that my little
+girl lay sleeping in her cosy bed, and that a young woman
+was sitting there in the dark, her face glued to the
+windowpane, to be ready with a lantern which burned in
+the kitchen whenever I might pull up between school and
+house. And there, no doubt, she had been sitting for a
+long while already; and there she was destined to sit
+during the winter that came, on Friday nights--full often
+for many and many an hour--full often till midnight--and
+sometimes longer...
+
+
+
+
+TWO
+Fog
+
+Peter took me north, alone, on six successive trips. We
+had rain, we had snow, we had mud, and hard-frozen ground.
+It took us four, it took us six, it took us on one
+occasion--after a heavy October snowfall--nearly eleven
+hours to make the trip. That last adventure decided me.
+It was unavoidable that I should buy a second horse. The
+roads were getting too heavy for single driving over such
+a distance. This time I wanted a horse that I could sell
+in the spring to a farmer for any kind of work on the
+land. I looked around for a while. Then I found Dan. He
+was a sorrel, with some Clyde blood in him. He looked a
+veritable skate of a horse. You could lay your fingers
+between his ribs, and he played out on the first trip I
+ever made with this newly-assembled, strange-looking
+team. But when I look back at that winter, I cannot but
+say that again I chose well. After I had fed him up, he
+did the work in a thoroughly satisfactory manner, and he
+learnt to know the road far better than Peter. Several
+times I should have been lost without his unerring road
+sense. In the spring I sold him for exactly what I had
+paid; the farmer who bought him has him to this very day
+[Footnote: Spring, 1919.] and says he never had a better
+horse.
+
+I also had found that on moonless nights it was
+indispensable for me to have lights along. Now maybe the
+reader has already noticed that I am rather a thorough-going
+person. For a week I worked every day after four at my
+buggy and finally had a blacksmith put on the finishing
+touches. What I rigged up, was as follows: On the front
+springs I fastened with clamps two upright iron supports;
+between them with thumbscrews the searchlight of a wrecked
+steam tractor which I got for a "Thank-you" from a
+junk-pile. Into the buggy box I laid a borrowed acetylene
+gas tank, strapped down with two bands of galvanized tin.
+I made the connection by a stout rubber tube, "guaranteed
+not to harden in the severest weather." To the side of
+the box I attached a short piece of bandiron, bent at an
+angle, so that a bicycle lamp could be slipped over it.
+Against the case that I should need a handlight, I carried
+besides a so-called dashboard coal-oil lantern with me.
+With all lamps going, it must have been a strange outfit
+to look at from a distance in the dark.
+
+I travelled by this time in fur coat and cap, and I
+carried a robe for myself and blankets for the horses,
+for I now fed them on the road soon after crossing the
+creek.
+
+Now on the second Friday of November there had been a
+smell of smoke in the air from the early morning. The
+marsh up north was afire--as it had been off and on for
+a matter of twenty-odd years. The fire consumes on the
+surface everything that will burn; the ground cools down,
+a new vegetation springs up, and nobody would suspect
+--as there is nothing to indicate--that only a few feet
+below the heat lingers, ready to leap up again if given
+the opportunity In this case I was told that a man had
+started to dig a well on a newly filed claim, and that
+suddenly he found himself wrapped about in smoke and
+flames. I cannot vouch for the truth of this, but I can
+vouch for the fact that the smoke of the fire was smelt
+for forty miles north and that in the afternoon a
+combination of this smoke (probably furnishing "condensation
+nuclei") and of the moisture in the air, somewhere along
+or above the lake brought about the densest fog I had
+ever seen on the prairies. How it spread, I shall discuss
+later on. To give an idea of its density I will mention
+right here that on the well travelled road between two
+important towns a man abandoned his car during the early
+part of the night because he lost his nerve when his
+lights could no longer penetrate the fog sufficiently
+to reach the road.
+
+I was warned at noon. "You surely do not intend to go
+out to-night?" remarked a lawyer-acquaintance to me at
+the dinner table in the hotel; for by telephone from
+lake-points reports of the fog had already reached the
+town. "I intend to leave word at the stable right now,"
+I replied, "to have team and buggy in front of the school
+at four o'clock." "Well," said the lawyer in getting up,
+"I would not; you'll run into fog."
+
+And into fog I did run. At this time of the year I had
+at best only a little over an hour's start in my race
+against darkness. I always drove my horses hard now while
+daylight lasted; I demanded from them their very best
+strength at the start. Then, till we reached the last
+clear road over the dam, I spared them as much as I could.
+I had met up with a few things in the dark by now, and
+I had learned, if a difficulty arose, how much easier it
+is to cope with it even in failing twilight than by the
+gleam of lantern or headlight; for the latter never
+illumine more than a limited spot.
+
+So I had turned Bell's corner by the time I hit the fog.
+I saw it in front and to the right. It drew a slanting
+line across the road. There it stood like a wall. Not a
+breath seemed to be stirring. The fog, from a distance,
+appeared to rise like a cliff, quite smoothly, and it
+blotted out the world beyond. When I approached it, I
+saw that its face was not so smooth as it had appeared
+from half a mile back; nor was it motionless. In fact,
+it was rolling south and west like a wave of great
+viscosity. Though my senses failed to perceive the
+slightest breath of a breeze, the fog was brewing and
+whirling, and huge spheres seemed to be forming in it,
+and to roll forward, slowly, and sometimes to recede, as
+if they had encountered an obstacle and rebounded clumsily.
+I had seen a tidal wave, fifty or more feet high, sweep
+up the "bore" of a river at the head of the Bay of Fundy.
+I was reminded of the sight; but here everything seemed
+to proceed in a strangely, weirdly leisurely way. There
+was none of that rush, of that hurry about this fog that
+characterizes water. Besides there seemed to be no end
+to the wave above; it reached up as far as your eye could
+see--now bulging in, now out, but always advancing. It
+was not so slow however, as for the moment I judged it
+to be; for I was later on told that it reached the town
+at about six o'clock. And here I was, at five, six and
+a half miles from its limits as the crow flies.
+
+I had hardly time to take in the details that I have
+described before I was enveloped in the folds of the fog.
+I mean this quite literally, for I am firmly convinced
+that an onlooker from behind would have seen the grey
+masses fold in like a sheet when I drove against them.
+It must have looked as if a driver were driving against
+a canvas moving in a slight breeze--canvas light and
+loose enough to be held in place by the resistance of the
+air so as to enclose him. Or maybe I should say "veiling"
+instead of canvas--or something still lighter and airier.
+Have you ever seen milk poured carefully down the side
+of a glass vessel filled with water? Well, clear air and
+fog seemed to behave towards each other pretty much the
+same way as milk in that case behaves towards water.
+
+I am rather emphatic about this because I have made a
+study of just such mists on a very much smaller scale.
+In that northern country where my wife taught her school
+and where I was to live for nearly two years as a
+convalescent, the hollows of the ground on clear cold
+summer nights, when the mercury dipped down close to the
+freezing point, would sometimes fill with a white mist
+of extraordinary density. Occasionally this mist would
+go on forming in higher and higher layers by condensation;
+mostly however, it seemed rather to come from below. But
+always, when it was really dense, there was a definite
+plane of demarcation. In fact, that was the criterion by
+which I recognised this peculiar mist. Mostly there is,
+even in the north, a layer of lesser density over the
+pools, gradually shading off into the clear air above.
+Nothing of what I am going to describe can be observed
+in that case.
+
+One summer, when I was living not over two miles from
+the lakeshore, I used to go down to these pools whenever
+they formed in the right way; and when I approached them
+slowly and carefully, I could dip my hand into the mist
+as into water, and I could feel the coolness of the misty
+layers. It was not because my hand got moist, for it did
+not. No evaporation was going on there, nor any condensation
+either. Nor did noticeable bubbles form because there
+was no motion in the mass which might have caused the
+infinitesimal droplets to collide and to coalesce into
+something perceivable to my senses.
+
+Once, of a full-moon night, I spent an hour getting into
+a pool like that, and when I looked down at my feet, I
+could not see them. But after I had been standing in it
+for a while, ten minutes maybe, a clear space had formed
+around my body, and I could see the ground. The heat of
+my body helped the air to redissolve the mist into steam.
+And as I watched, I noticed that a current was set up.
+The mist was continually flowing in towards my feet and
+legs where the body-heat was least. And where evaporation
+proceeded fastest, that is at the height of my waist,
+little wisps of mist would detach themselves from the
+side of the funnel of clear air in which I stood, and
+they would, in a slow, graceful motion, accelerated
+somewhat towards the last, describe a downward and inward
+curve towards the lower part of my body before they
+dissolved. I thought of that elusive and yet clearly
+defined layer of mist that forms in the plane of contact
+between the cold air flowing from Mammoth Cave in Kentucky
+and the ambient air of a sultry summer day. [Footnote:
+See Burroughs' wonderful description of this phenomenon
+in "Riverby."]
+
+On another of the rare occasions when the mists had formed
+in the necessary density I went out again, put a stone
+in my pocket and took a dog along. I approached a shallow
+mist pool with the greatest caution. The dog crouched
+low, apparently thinking that I was stalking some game.
+Then, when I had arrived within about ten or fifteen
+yards from the edge of the pool, I took the stone from
+my pocket, showed it to the dog, and threw it across the
+pool as fast and as far as I could. The dog dashed in
+and tore through the sheet. Where the impact of his body
+came, the mist bulged in, then broke. For a while there
+were two sheets, separated by a more or less clearly
+defined, vertical layer of transparency or maybe blackness
+rather. The two sheets were in violent commotion,
+approaching, impinging upon each other, swinging back
+again to complete separation, and so on. But the violence
+of the motion consisted by no means in speed: it suggested
+a very much retarded rolling off of a motion picture
+reel. There was at first an element of disillusion in
+the impression. I felt tempted to shout and to spur the
+mist into greater activity. On the surface, to both sides
+of the tear, waves ran out, and at the edges of the pool
+they rose in that same leisurely, stately way which struck
+me as one of the most characteristic features of that
+November mist; and at last it seemed as if they reared
+and reached up, very slowly as a dying man may stand up
+once more before he falls. And only after an interval
+that seemed unconscionably long to me the whole pool
+settled back to comparative smoothness, though without
+its definite plane of demarcation now. Strange to say,
+the dog had actually started something, a rabbit maybe
+or a jumping deer, and did not return.
+
+When fogs spread, as a rule they do so in air already
+saturated with moisture. What really spreads, is the cold
+air which by mixing with, and thereby cooling, the warmer,
+moisture-laden atmosphere causes the condensation. That
+is why our fall mists mostly are formed in an exceedingly
+slight but still noticeable breeze. But in the case of
+these northern mist pools, whenever the conditions are
+favourable for their formation, the moisture of the upper
+air seems to be pretty well condensed as dew It is only
+in the hollows of the ground that it remains suspended
+in this curious way. I cannot, so far, say whether it is
+due to the fact that where radiation is largely thrown
+back upon the walls of the hollow, the fall in temperature
+at first is very much slower than in the open, thus
+enabling the moisture to remain in suspension; or whether
+the hollows serve as collecting reservoirs for the cold
+air from the surrounding territory--the air carrying the
+already condensed moisture with it; or whether, lastly,
+it is simply due to a greater saturation of the atmosphere
+in these cavities, consequent upon the greater approach
+of their bottom to the level of the ground water. I have
+seen a "waterfall" of this mist overflow from a dent in
+the edge of ground that contained a pool. That seems to
+argue for an origin similar to that of a spring; as if
+strongly moisture-laden air welled up from underground,
+condensing its steam as it got chilled. It is these
+strange phenomena that are familiar, too, in the northern
+plains of Europe which must have given rise to the belief
+in elves and other weird creations of the brain--"the
+earth has bubbles as the water has"--not half as weird,
+though, as some realities are in the land which I love.
+
+Now this great, memorable fog of that November Friday
+shared the nature of the mist pools of the north in as
+much as to a certain extent it refused to mingle with
+the drier and slightly warmer air into which it travelled.
+It was different from them in as much as it fairly dripped
+and oozed with a very palpable wetness. Just how it
+displaced the air in its path, is something which I cannot
+with certainty say. Was it formed as a low layer somewhere
+over the lake and slowly pushed along by a gentle,
+imperceptible, fan-shaped current of air? Fan-shaped, I
+say; for, as we shall see, it travelled simultaneously
+south and north; and I must infer that in exactly the
+same way it travelled west. Or was it formed originally
+like a tremendous column which flattened out by and by,
+through its own greater gravity slowly displacing the
+lighter air in the lower strata? I do not know, but I am
+inclined to accept the latter explanation. I do know that
+it travelled at the rate of about six miles an hour; and
+its coming was observed somewhat in detail by two other
+observers besides myself--two people who lived twenty-five
+miles apart, one to the north, one to the south of where
+I hit it. Neither one was as much interested in things
+meteorological as I am, but both were struck by the
+unusual density of the fog, and while one saw it coming
+from the north, the other one saw it approaching from
+the south.
+
+I have no doubt that at last it began to mingle with the
+clearer air and to thin out; in fact, I have good testimony
+to that effect. And early next morning it was blown by
+a wind like an ordinary fog-cloud all over Portage Plains.
+
+I also know that further north, at my home, for instance,
+it had the smell of the smoke which could not have
+proceeded from anywhere but the marsh; and the marsh lay
+to the south of it. That seemed to prove that actually
+the mist was spreading from a common centre in at least
+two directions. These points, which I gathered later,
+strongly confirmed my own observations, which will be
+set down further on. It must, then, have been formed as
+a layer of a very considerable height, to be able to
+spread over so many square miles.
+
+As I said, I was reminded of those mist pools in the
+north when I approached the cliff of the fog, especially
+of that "waterfall" of mist of which I spoke. But besides
+the difference in composition--the fog, as we shall see,
+was not homogeneous, this being the cause of its
+wetness--there was another important point of distinction.
+For, while the mist of the pools is of the whitest white,
+this fog showed from the outside and in the mass--the
+single wreaths seemed white enough--rather the colour of
+that "wet, unbleached linen" of which Burroughs speaks
+in connection with rain-clouds.
+
+Now, as soon as I was well engulfed in the fog, I had a
+few surprises. I could no longer see the road ahead; I
+could not see the fence along which I had been driving;
+I saw the horses' rumps, but I did not see their heads.
+I bent forward over the dashboard: I could not even see
+the ground below It was a series of negatives. I stopped
+the horses. I listened--then looked at my watch. The
+stillness of the grave enveloped me. It was a little past
+five o'clock. The silence was oppressive--the misty
+impenetrability of the atmosphere was appalling. I do
+not say "darkness," for as yet it was not really dark.
+I could still see the dial of my watch clearly enough to
+read the time. But darkness was falling fast--"falling,"
+for it seemed to come from above: mostly it rises--from
+out of the shadows under the trees--advancing, fighting
+back the powers of light above.
+
+One of the horses, I think it was Peter, coughed. It was
+plain they felt chilly. I thought of my lights and started
+with stiffening fingers to fumble at the valves of my
+gas tank. When reaching into my trouser pockets for
+matches, I was struck with the astonishing degree to
+which my furs had been soaked in these few minutes. As
+for wetness, the fog was like a sponge. At last, kneeling
+in the buggy box, I got things ready. I smelt the gas
+escaping from the burner of my bicycle lantern and heard
+it hissing in the headlight. The problem arose of how to
+light a match. I tried various places--without success.
+Even the seat of my trousers proved disappointing. I got
+a sizzling and sputtering flame, it is true, but it went
+out before I could apply it to the gas. The water began
+to drip from the backs of my hands. It was no rain because
+it did not fall. It merely floated along; but the droplets,
+though smaller, were infinitely more numerous than in a
+rain--there were more of them in a given space. At last
+I lifted the seat cushion under which I had a tool box
+filled with ropes, leather straps and all manner of things
+that I might ever be in need of during my nights in the
+open. There I found a dry spot where to strike the needed
+match. I got the bicycle lantern started. It burned quite
+well, and I rather admired it: unreasoningly I seemed to
+have expected that it would not burn in so strange an
+atmosphere. So I carefully rolled a sheet of letter paper
+into a fairly tight roll, working with my back to the
+fog and under the shelter of my big raccoon coat. I took
+a flame from the bicycle light and sheltered and nursed
+it along till I thought it would stand the drizzle. Then
+I turned and thrust the improvised torch into the bulky
+reflector case of the searchlight. The result was startling.
+A flame eighteen inches high leaped up with a crackling
+and hissing sound.
+
+The horses bolted, and the buggy jumped. I was lucky,
+for inertia carried me right back on the seat, and as
+soon as I had the lines in my hands again, I felt that
+the horses did not really mean it. I do not think we had
+gone more than two or three hundred yards before the team
+was under control. I stopped and adjusted the overturned
+valves. When I succeeded, I found to my disappointment
+that the heat of that first flame had partly spoiled the
+reflector. Still, my range of vision now extended to the
+belly-band in the horses' harness. The light that used
+to show me the road for about fifty feet in front of the
+horses' heads gave a short truncated cone of great
+luminosity, which was interesting and looked reassuring;
+but it failed to reach the ground, for it was so adjusted
+that the focus of the converging light rays lay ahead
+and not below. Before, therefore, the point of greatest
+luminosity was reached, the light was completely absorbed
+by the fog.
+
+I got out of the buggy, went to the horses' heads and
+patted their noses which were dripping with wetness. But
+now that I faced the headlight, I could see it though I
+had failed to see the horses' heads when seated behind
+it. This, too, was quite reassuring, for it meant that
+the horses probably could see the ground even though I
+did not.
+
+But where was I? I soon found out that we had shot off
+the trail. And to which side? I looked at my watch again.
+Already the incident had cost me half an hour. It was
+really dark by now, even outside the fog, for there was
+no moon. I tried out how far I could get away from the
+buggy without losing sight of the light. It was only a
+very few steps, not more than a dozen. I tried to visualize
+where I had been when I struck the fog. And fortunately
+my habit of observing the smallest details, even, if only
+subconsciously, helped me out. I concluded that the horses
+had bolted straight ahead, thus missing an s-shaped curve
+to the right.
+
+At this moment I heard Peter paw the ground impatiently;
+so I quickly returned to the horses, for I did not relish
+the idea of being left alone. There was an air of impatience
+and nervousness about both of them.
+
+I took my bicycle lantern and reached for the lines.
+Then, standing clear of the buggy, I turned the horses
+at right angles, to the north, as I imagined it to be.
+When we started, I walked alongside the team through
+dripping underbrush and held the lantern with my free
+hand close down to the ground.
+
+Two or three times I stopped during the next half hour,
+trying, since we still did not strike the trail, to reason
+out a different course. I was now wet through and through
+up to my knees; and I had repeatedly run into willow-clumps,
+which did not tend to make me any drier either. At last
+I became convinced that in bolting the horses must have
+swerved a little to the south, so that in starting up
+again we had struck a tangent to the big bend north, just
+beyond Bell's farm. If that was the case, we should have
+to make another turn to the right in order to strike the
+road again, for at best we were then simply going parallel
+to it. The trouble was that I had nothing to tell me the
+directions, not even a tree the bark or moss of which
+might have vouchsafed information. Suddenly I had an
+inspiration. Yes, the fog was coming from the northeast!
+So, by observing the drift of the droplets I could find
+at least an approximate meridian line. I went to the
+headlight, and an observation immediately confirmed my
+conjecture. I was now convinced that I was on that wild
+land where two months ago I had watched the goldfinches
+disporting themselves in the evening sun. But so as not
+to turn back to the south, I struck out at an angle of
+only about sixty degrees to my former direction. I tried
+not to swerve, which involved rough going, and I had many
+a stumble. Thus I walked for another half hour or
+thereabout.
+
+Then, certainly! This was the road! The horses turned
+into it of their own accord. That was the most reassuring
+thing of all. There was one strange doubt left. Somehow
+I was not absolutely clear about it whether north might
+not after all be behind. I stopped. Even a new observation
+of the fog did not remove the last vestige of a doubt.
+I had to take a chance, some landmark might help after
+a while.
+
+I believe in getting ready before I start. So I took my
+coal-oil lantern, lighted and suspended it under the rear
+springs of the buggy in such a way that it would throw
+its light back on the road. Having the light away down,
+I expected to be able to see at least whether I was on
+a road or not. In this I was only partly successful; for
+on the rut-trails nothing showed except the blades of
+grass and the tops of weeds; while on the grades where
+indeed I could make out the ground, I did not need a
+light, for, as I found out, I could more confidently rely
+on my ear.
+
+I got back to my seat and proceeded to make myself as
+comfortable as I could. I took off my shoes and socks
+keeping well under the robe--extracted a pair of heavy
+woollens from my suitcase under the seat, rubbed my feet
+dry and then wrapped up, without putting my shoes on
+again, as carefully and scientifically as only a man who
+has had pneumonia and is a chronic sufferer from pleuritis
+knows how to do.
+
+At last I proceeded. After listening again with great
+care for any sound I touched the horses with my whip,
+and they fell into a quiet trot. It was nearly seven now,
+and I had probably not yet made eight miles. We swung
+along. If I was right in my calculations and the horses
+kept to the road, I should strike the "twelve-mile bridge"
+in about three-quarters of an hour. That was the bridge
+leading through the cottonwood gate to the grade past
+the "hovel." I kept the watch in the mitt of my left hand.
+
+Not for a moment did it occur to me to turn back. Way up
+north there was a young woman preparing supper for me.
+The fog might not be there--she would expect me--I could
+not disappoint her. And then there was the little girl,
+who usually would wake up and in her "nightie" come out
+of bed and sleepily smile at me and climb on to my knee
+and nod off again. I thought of them, to be sure, of the
+hours and hours in wait for them, and a great tenderness
+came over me, and gratitude for the belated home they
+gave an aging man...
+
+And slowly my mind reverted to the things at hand. And
+this is what was the most striking feature about them:
+I was shut in, closed off from the world around. Apart
+from that cone of visibility in front of the headlight,
+and another much smaller one from the bicycle lamp, there
+was not a thing I could see. If the road was the right
+one, I was passing now through some square miles of wild
+land. Right and left there were poplar thickets, and
+ahead there was that line of stately cottonwoods. But no
+suggestion of a landmark--nothing except a cone of light
+which was filled with fog and cut into on both sides by
+two steaming and rhythmically moving horseflanks. It was
+like a very small room, this space of light--the buggy
+itself, in darkness, forming an alcove to it, in which
+my hand knew every well-appointed detail. Gradually,
+while I was warming up, a sense of infinite comfort came,
+and with it the enjoyment of the elvish aspect.
+
+I began to watch the fog. By bending over towards the
+dashboard and looking into the soon arrested glare I
+could make out the component parts of the fog. It was
+like the mixture of two immiscible liquids--oil, for
+instance, shaken up with water. A fine, impalpable, yet
+very dense mist formed the ground mass. But in it there
+floated myriads of droplets, like the droplets of oil in
+water. These droplets would sometimes sparkle in a mild,
+unobtrusive way as they were nearing the light; and then
+they would dash against the pane and keep it dripping,
+dripping down.
+
+I leaned back again; and I watched the whole of the
+light-cone. Snow white wisps would float and whirl through
+it in graceful curves, stirred into motion by the horses'
+trot. Or a wreath of it would start to dance, as if gently
+pulled or plucked at from above; and it would revolve,
+faster towards the end, and fade again into the shadows
+behind. I thought of a summer in Norrland, in Sweden, in
+the stone-and-birch waste which forms the timberline,
+where I had also encountered the mist pools. And a trip
+down a stream in the borderland of the Finns came back
+with great vividness into my mind. That trip had been
+made in a fog like this; only it had been begun in the
+early morning, and the whole mass of the mist had been
+suffused with the whitest of lights. But strange to say,
+what stood out most strikingly in the fleeting memory of
+the voyage, was the weird and mocking laughter of the
+magpies all along the banks. The Finnish woods seemed
+alive with that mocking laughter, and it truly belongs
+to the land of the mists. For a moment I thought that
+something after all was missing here on the prairies.
+But then I reflected again that this silence of the grave
+was still more perfect, still more uncanny and ghostly,
+because it left the imagination entirely free, without
+limiting it by even as much as a suggestion.
+
+No wonder, I thought, that the Northerners in their land
+of heath and bog were the poets of elves and goblins and
+of the fear of ghosts. Shrouds were these fogs, hanging
+and waving and floating shrouds! Mocking spirits were
+plucking at them and setting them into their gentle
+motions. Gleams of light, that dance over the bog, lured
+you in, and once caught in these veils after veils of
+mystery, madness would seize you, and you would wildly
+dash here and there in a vain attempt at regaining your
+freedom; and when, exhausted at last, you broke down and
+huddled together on the ground, the werwolf would come,
+ghostly himself, and huge and airy and weird, his body
+woven of mist, and in the fog's stately and leisurely
+way he would kneel down on your chest, slowly crushing
+you beneath his exceeding weight; and bending and
+straightening, bending and stretching, slowly--slowly
+down came his head to your throat; and then he would lie
+and not stir until morning and suck; and after few or
+many days people would find you, dead in the woods--a
+victim of fog and mist...
+
+A rumbling sound made me sit up at last. We were crossing
+over the "twelve-mile bridge." In spite of my dreaming
+I was keeping my eyes on the look-out for any sign of a
+landmark, but this was the only one I had known so far,
+and it came through the ear, not the eye. I promptly
+looked back and up, to where the cottonwoods must be;
+but no sign of high, weeping trees, no rustling of fall-dry
+leaves, not even a deeper black in the black betrayed
+their presence. Well, never before had I failed to see
+some light, to hear some sound around the house of the
+"moneyed" type or those of the "half way farms." Surely,
+somehow I should be aware of their presence when I got
+there! Some sign, some landmark would tell me how far I
+had gone! . . . The horses were trotting along, steaming,
+through the brewing fog. I had become all ear. Even though
+my buggy was silent and though the road was coated with
+a thin film of soft clay-mud, I could distinctly hear by
+the muffled thud of the horses' hoofs on the ground that
+they were running over a grade. That confirmed my bearings.
+I had no longer a moment's doubt or anxiety over my drive.
+
+The grade was left behind, the rut-road started again,
+was passed and outrun. So now I was close to the three-farm
+cluster. I listened intently for the horses' thump. Yes,
+there was that muffled hoof-beat again--I was on the last
+grade that led to the angling road across the corner of
+the marsh.
+
+Truly, this was very much like lying down in the
+sleeping-car of an overland train. You recline and act
+as if nothing unusual were going on; and meanwhile a
+force that has something irresistible about it and is
+indeed largely beyond your control, wafts you over mile
+after mile of fabled distance; now and then the rumble
+of car on rail will stop, the quiet awakens you, lights
+flash their piercing darts, a voice calls out; it is a
+well known stop on your journey and then the rumbling
+resumes, you doze again, to be awakened again, and so
+on. And when you get up in the morning--there she lies,
+the goal of your dreams-the resplendent city...
+
+My goal was my "home," and mildly startling, at least
+one such mid-nightly awakening came. I had kept peering
+about for a landmark, a light. Somewhere here in those
+farmhouses which I saw with my mind's eye, people were
+sitting around their fireside, chatting or reading. Lamps
+shed their homely light; roof and wall kept the fog-spook
+securely out: nothing as comfortable then as to listen
+to stories of being lost on the marsh, or to tell them...
+But between those people and myself the curtain had
+fallen--no sign of their presence, no faintest gleam of
+their light and warmth! They did not know of the stranger
+passing outside, his whole being a-yearn with the desire
+for wife and child. I listened intently--no sound of man
+or beast, no soughing of wind in stems or rustling of
+the very last leaves that were now fast falling... And
+then the startling neighing of Dan, my horse! This was
+the third trip he made with me, and I might have known
+and expected it, but it always came as a surprise. Whenever
+we passed that second farm, he stopped and raising his
+head, with a sideways motion, neighed a loud and piercing
+call. And now he had stopped and done it again. He knew
+where we were. I lowered my whip and patted his rump.
+How did he know? And why did he do it? Was there a horse
+on this farmstead which he had known in former life? Or
+was it a man? Or did he merely feel that it was about
+time to put in for the night? I enquired later on, but
+failed to discover any reason for his behaviour.
+
+Now came that angling road past the "White Range Line
+House." I relied on the horses entirely. This "Range Line
+House" was inhabited now--a settler was putting in
+winter-residence so he might not lose his claim. He had
+taken down the clapboards that closed the windows, and
+always had I so far seen a light in the house.
+
+It seemed to me that in this corner of the marsh the fog
+was less dense than it had been farther south, and the
+horses, once started, were swinging along though in a
+leisurely way, yet without hesitation. Another half hour
+passed. Once, at a bend in the trail, the rays from the
+powerful tractor searchlight, sweeping sideways past the
+horses, struck a wetly glistening, greyish stone to the
+right of the road. I knew that stone. Yes, surely the
+fog must be thinning, or I could not have seen it. I
+could now also dimly make out the horses' heads, as they
+nodded up and down...
+
+And then, like a phantom, way up in the mist, I made out
+a blacker black in the black--the majestic poplars north
+of the "Range Line House." Not that I could really see
+them or pick out the slightest detail--no! But it seemed
+to my searching eyes as if there was a quiet pool in the
+slow flow of the fog--as the water in a slow flowing
+stream will come to rest when it strikes the stems of a
+willow submerged at its margin. I was trying even at the
+time to decide how much of what I seemed to divine rather
+than to perceive was imagination and how much reality.
+And I was just about ready to contend that I also saw to
+the north something like the faintest possible suggestion
+of an eddy, such as would form in the flowing water below
+a pillar or a rock--when I was rudely shaken up and jolted.
+
+Trap, trap, I heard the horses' feet on the culvert.
+Crash! And Peter went stumbling down. Then a violent
+lurch of the buggy, I holding on--Peter rallied, and
+then, before I had time to get a firmer grasp on the
+lines, both horses bolted again. It took me some time to
+realize what had happened. It was the culvert, of course;
+it had broken down, and lucky I was that the ditch
+underneath was shallow. Only much later, when reflecting
+upon the incident, did I see that this accident was really
+the best verification of what I was nearly inclined to
+regard as the product of my imagination. The trees must
+indeed have stood where I had seemed to see that quiet
+reach in the fog and that eddy...
+
+We tore along. I spoke to the horses and quietly and
+evenly pulled at the lines. I think it must have been
+several minutes before I had them under control again.
+And then--in this night of weird things--the weirdest
+sight of them all showed ahead.
+
+I was just beginning to wonder, whether after all we had
+not lost the road again, when the faintest of all faint
+glimmers began to define itself somewhere in front.
+And ... was I right? Yes, a small, thin voice came out of
+the fog that incessantly floated into my cone of light
+and was left behind in eddies. What did it mean?...
+
+The glimmer was now defining itself more clearly. Somewhere,
+not very far ahead and slightly to the left, a globe of
+the faintest iridescent luminosity seemed suspended in
+the brewing and waving mist. The horses turned at right
+angles on to the bridge, the glimmer swinging round to
+the other side of the buggy. Their hoofs struck wood,
+and both beasts snorted and stopped.
+
+In a flash a thought came. I had just broken through a
+culvert--the bridge, too, must have broken down, and
+somebody had put a light there to warn the chance traveller
+who might stray along on a night like this! I was on the
+point of getting out of my wraps, when a thinner wave in
+the mist permitted me to see the flames of three lanterns
+hung to the side-rails of the bridge. And that very moment
+a thin, piping voice came out of the darkness beyond.
+"Daddy, is that you?" I did not know the child's voice,
+but I sang out as cheerily as I could. "I am a daddy all
+right, but I am afraid, not yours. Is the bridge broken
+down, sonny? Anything wrong?" "No, Sir," the answer came,
+"nothing wrong." So I pulled up to the lanterns, and
+there I saw, dimly enough, God wot, a small, ten-year
+old boy standing and shivering by the signal which he
+had rigged up. He was barefooted and bareheaded, in shirt
+and torn knee-trousers. I pointed to the lanterns with
+my whip. "What's the meaning of this, my boy?" I asked
+in as friendly a voice as I could muster. "Daddy went to
+town this morning," he said rather haltingly, "and he
+must have got caught in the fog. We were afraid he might
+not find the bridge." "Well, cheer up, son," I said, "he
+is not the only one as you see; his horses will know the
+road. Where did he go?" The boy named the town--it was
+to the west, not half the distance away that I had come.
+"Don't worry," I said; "I don't think he has started out
+at all. The fog caught me about sixteen miles south of
+here. It's nine o'clock now If he had started before the
+fog got there, he would be here by now." I sat and thought
+for a moment. Should I say anything about the broken
+culvert? "Which way would your daddy come, along the
+creek or across the marsh?" "Along the creek." All right
+then, no use in saying anything further. "Well, as I
+said," I sang out and clicked my tongue to the horses,
+"don't worry; better go home; he will come to-morrow" "I
+guess so," replied the boy the moment I lost sight of
+him and the lanterns.
+
+I made the turn to the southeast and walked my horses.
+Here, where the trail wound along through the chasm of
+the bush, the light from my cone would, over the horses'
+backs, strike twigs and leaves now and then. Everything
+seemed to drip and to weep. All nature was weeping I
+walked the horses for ten minutes more. Then I stopped.
+It must have been just at the point where the grade began;
+but I do not know for sure.
+
+I fumbled a long while for my shoes; but at last I found
+them and put them on over my dry woollens. When I had
+shaken myself out of my robes, I jumped to the ground.
+There was, here, too, a film of mud on top, but otherwise
+the road was firm enough. I quickly threw the blankets
+over the horses' backs, dropped the traces, took the bits
+out of their mouths, and slipped the feed-bags over their
+heads. I looked at my watch, for it was my custom to let
+them eat for just ten minutes, then to hook them up again
+and walk them for another ten before trotting. I had
+found that that refreshed them enough to make the remainder
+of the trip in excellent shape.
+
+While I was waiting, I stood between the wheels of the
+buggy, leaning against the box and staring into the light.
+It was with something akin to a start that I realized
+the direction from which the fog rolled by: it came from
+the south! I had, of course, seen that already, but it
+had so far not entered my consciousness as a definite
+observation. It was this fact that later set me to thinking
+about the origin of the fog along the lines which I have
+indicated above. Again I marvelled at the density of the
+mist which somehow seemed greater while we were standing
+than while we were driving. I had repeatedly been in the
+clouds, on mountainsides, but they seemed light and thin
+as compared with this. Finland, Northern Sweden, Canada
+--no other country which I knew had anything resembling
+it. The famous London fogs are different altogether.
+These mists, like the mist pools, need the swamp as their
+mother, I suppose, and the ice-cool summer night for
+their nurse...
+
+The time was up. I quickly did what had to be done, and
+five minutes later we were on the road again. I watched
+the horses for a while, and suddenly I thought once more
+of that fleeting impression of an eddy in the lee of the
+poplar bluff at the "White Range Line House." It was on
+the north side of the trees, if it was there at all! The
+significance of the fact had escaped me at the time. It
+again confirmed my observation of the flow of the fog in
+both directions. It came from a common centre. And still
+there was no breath of air. I had no doubt any longer;
+it was not the air that pushed the fog; the floating
+bubbles, the infinitesimally small ones as well as those
+that were quite perceptible, simply displaced the lighter
+atmosphere. I wondered what kept these bubbles apart.
+Some repellent force with which they were charged?
+Something, at any rate, must be preventing them from
+coalescing into rain. Maybe it was merely the perfect
+evenness of their flow, for they gathered thickly enough
+on the twigs and the few dried leaves, on any obstacles
+in their way. And again I thought of the fact that the
+mist had seemed thinner when I came out on the marsh.
+This double flow explained it, of course. There were
+denser and less dense waves in it: like veils hung up
+one behind the other. So long as I went in a direction
+opposite to its flow, I had to look through sheet after
+sheet of the denser waves. Later I could every now and
+then look along a plane of lesser density...
+
+It was Dan who found the turn off the grade into the
+bushy glades. I could see distinctly how he pushed Peter
+over. Here, where again the road was winding, and where
+the light, therefore, once more frequently struck the
+twigs and boughs, as they floated into my cone of
+luminosity, to disappear again behind, a new impression
+thrust itself upon me. I call it an impression, not an
+observation. It is very hard to say, what was reality,
+what fancy on a night like that. In spite of its air of
+unreality, of improbability even, it has stayed with me
+as one of my strongest visions. I nearly hesitate to put
+it in writing.
+
+These boughs and twigs were like fingers held into a
+stream that carried loose algae, arresting them in their
+gliding motion. Or again, those wisps of mist were like
+gossamers as they floated along, and they would bend and
+fold over on the boughs before they tore; and where they
+broke, they seemed like comets to trail a thinner tail
+of themselves behind. There was tenacity in them, a
+certain consistency which made them appear as if woven
+of different things from air and mere moisture. I have
+often doubted my memory here, and yet I have my very
+definite notes, and besides there is the picture in my
+mind. In spite of my own uncertainty I can assure you,
+that this is only one quarter a poem woven of impressions;
+the other three quarters are reality. But, while I am
+trying to set down facts, I am also trying to render
+moods and images begot by them...
+
+We went on for an hour, and it lengthened out into two.
+No twigs and boughs any longer, at last. But where I was,
+I knew not. Much as I listened, I could not make out any
+difference in the tramp of the horses now I looked down
+over the back of my buggy seat, and I seemed to see the
+yellow or brownish clay of a grade. I went on rather
+thoughtlessly. Then, about eleven o'clock, I noticed that
+the road was rough. I had long since, as I said, given
+myself over to the horses. But now I grew nervous. No
+doubt, unless we had entirely strayed from our road, we
+were by this time riding the last dam; for no other trail
+over which we went was quite so rough. But then I should
+have heard the rumble on the bridge, and I felt convinced
+that I had not. It shows to what an extent a man may be
+hypnotised into insensibility by a constant sameness of
+view, that I was mistaken. If we were on the dam and
+missed the turn at the end of it, on to the correction
+line, we should infallibly go down from the grade, on to
+muskeg ground, for there was a gap in the dam. At that
+place I had seen a horse disappear, and many a cow had
+ended there in the deadly struggle against the downward
+suck of the swamp...
+
+I pulled the horses back to a walk, and we went on for
+another half hour. I was by this time sitting on the left
+hand side of the side, bicycle lantern in my left hand,
+and bending over as far as I could to the left, trying,
+with arm outstretched, to reach the ground with my light.
+The lantern at the back of the buggy was useless for
+this. Here and there the drop-laden, glistening tops of
+the taller grasses and weeds would float into this
+auxiliary cone of light--but that was all.
+
+Then no weeds appeared any longer, so I must be on the
+last half-mile of the dam, the only piece of it that was
+bare and caution extreme was the word. I made up my mind
+to go on riding for another five minutes and timed myself,
+for there was hardly enough room for a team and a walking
+man besides. When the time was up, I pulled in and got
+out. I took the lines short, laid my right hand on Peter's
+back and proceeded. The bicycle lantern was hanging down
+from my left and showed plainly the clayey gravel of the
+dam. And so I walked on for maybe ten minutes.
+
+Suddenly I became again aware of a glimmer to the left,
+and the very next moment a lantern shot out of the mist,
+held high by an arm wrapped in white. A shivering woman,
+tall, young, with gleaming eyes, dressed in a linen house
+dress, an apron flung over breast and shoulders, gasped
+out two words, "You came!" "Have you been standing here
+and waiting?" I asked. "No, no! I just could not bear it
+any longer. Something told me. He's at the culvert now,
+and if I do not run, he will go down into the swamp!"
+There was something of a catch in the voice. I did not
+reply I swung the horses around and crossed the culvert
+that bridges the master ditch.
+
+And while we were walking up to the yard--had my drive
+been anything brave--anything at all deserving of the
+slightest reward--had it not in itself been a thing of
+beauty, not to be missed by selfish me--surely, the touch
+of that arm, as we went, would have been more than enough
+to reward even the most chivalrous deeds of yore.
+
+
+
+
+THREE
+Dawn and Diamonds
+
+Two days before Christmas the ground was still bare. I
+had a splendid new cutter with a top and side curtains;
+a heavy outfit, but one that would stand up, I believed,
+under any road conditions. I was anxious to use it, too,
+for I intended to spend a two weeks' holiday up north
+with my family. I was afraid, if I used the buggy, I
+might find it impossible to get back to town, seeing that
+the first heavy winter storms usually set in about the
+turn of the year.
+
+School had closed at noon. I intended to set out next
+morning at as early an hour as I could. I do not know
+what gave me my confidence, but I firmly expected to find
+snow on the ground by that time. I am rather a student
+of the weather. I worked till late at night getting my
+cutter ready. I had to adjust my buggy pole and to stow
+away a great number of parcels. The latter contained the
+first real doll for my little girl, two or three picture
+books, a hand sleigh, Pip--a little stuffed dog of the
+silkiest fluffiness--and as many more trifles for wife
+and child as my Christmas allowance permitted me to buy.
+It was the first time in the five years of my married
+life that, thanks to my wife's co-operation in earning
+money, there was any Christmas allowance to spend; and
+since I am writing this chiefly for her and the little
+girl's future reading, I want to set it down here, too,
+that it was thanks to this very same co-operation that
+I had been able to buy the horses and the driving outfit
+which I needed badly, for the poor state of my health
+forbade more rigorous exercise. I have already said, I
+think, that I am essentially an outdoor creature; and
+for several years the fact that I had been forced to look
+at the out-of-doors from the window of a town house only,
+had been eating away at my vitality. Those drives took
+decades off my age, and in spite of incurable illness my
+few friends say that I look once more like a young man.
+
+Besides my Christmas parcels I had to take oats along,
+enough to feed the horses for two weeks. And I was, as
+I said, engaged that evening in stowing everything away,
+when about nine o'clock one of the physicians of the town
+came into the stable. He had had a call into the country,
+I believe, and came to order a team. When he saw me
+working in the shed, he stepped up and said, "You'll kill
+your horses." "Meaning?" I queried. "I see you are getting
+your cutter ready," he replied. "If I were you, I should
+stick to the wheels." I laughed. "I might not be able to
+get back to work." "Oh yes," he scoffed, "it won't snow
+up before the end of next month. We figure on keeping
+the cars going for a little while yet." Again I laughed.
+"I hope not," I said, which may not have sounded very
+gracious.
+
+At ten o'clock every bolt had been tightened, the horses'
+harness and their feed were ready against the morning,
+and everything looked good to me.
+
+I was going to have the first real Christmas again in
+twenty-five years, with a real Christmas tree, and with
+wife and child, and even though it was a poor man's
+Christmas, I refused to let anything darken my Christmas
+spirit or dull the keen edge of my enjoyment. Before
+going out, I stepped into the office of the stable,
+slipped a half-dollar into the hostler's palm and asked
+him once more to be sure to have the horses fed at
+half-past five in the morning.
+
+Then I left. A slight haze filled the air, not heavy
+enough to blot out the stars; but sufficient to promise
+hoarfrost at least. Somehow there was no reason to despair
+as yet of Christmas weather.
+
+I went home and to bed and slept about as soundly as I
+could wish. When the alarm of my clock went off at five
+in the morning, I jumped out of bed and hurried down to
+shake the fire into activity. As soon as I had started
+something of a blaze, I went to the window and looked
+out. It was pitch dark, of course, the moon being down
+by this time, but it seemed to me that there was snow on
+the ground. I lighted a lamp and held it to the window;
+and sure enough, its rays fell on white upon white on
+shrubs and fence posts and window ledge. I laughed and
+instantly was in a glow of impatience to be off.
+
+At half past five, when the coffee water was in the kettle
+and on the stove, I hurried over to the stable across
+the bridge. The snow was three inches deep, enough to
+make the going easy for the horses. The slight haze
+persisted, and I saw no stars. At the stable I found, of
+course, that the horses had not been fed; so I gave them
+oats and hay and went to call the hostler. When after
+much knocking at last he responded to my impatience, he
+wore a guilty look on his face but assured me that he
+was just getting up to feed my team. "Never mind about
+feeding," I said "I've done that. But have them harnessed
+and hitched up by a quarter past six. I'll water them on
+the road." They never drank their fill before nine o'clock.
+And I hurried home to get my breakfast...
+
+"Merry Christmas!" the hostler called after me; and I
+shouted back over my shoulder, "The same to you." The
+horses were going under the merry jingle of the bells
+which they carried for the first time this winter.
+
+I rarely could hold them down to a walk or a trot now,
+since the cold weather had set in; and mostly, before
+they even had cleared the slide-doors, they were in a
+gallop. Peter had changed his nature since he had a mate.
+By feeding and breeding he was so much Dan's superior in
+vitality that, into whatever mischief the two got
+themselves, he was the leader. For all times the picture,
+seen by the light of a lantern, stands out in my mind
+how he bit at Dan, wilfully, urging him playfully on,
+when we swung out into the crisp, dark, hazy morning air.
+Dan being nothing loth and always keen at the start, we
+shot across the bridge.
+
+It was hard now, mostly, to hitch them up. They would
+leap and rear with impatience when taken into the open
+before they were hooked to the vehicle. They were being
+very well fed, and though once a week they had the hardest
+of work, for the rest of the time they had never more
+than enough to limber them up, for on schooldays I used
+to take them out for a spin of three or four miles only,
+after four. At home, when I left, my wife and I would
+get them ready in the stable; then I took them out and
+lined them up in front of the buggy. My wife quickly took
+the lines: I hooked the traces up, jumped in, grabbed
+for the lines and waved my last farewell from the road
+afar off. Even at that they got away from us once or
+twice and came very near upsetting and wrecking the buggy;
+but nothing serious ever happened during the winter. I
+had to have horses like that, for I needed their speed
+and their staying power, as the reader will see if he
+cares to follow me very much farther.
+
+We flew along--the road seemed ideal--the air was
+wonderfully crisp and cold--my cutter fulfilled the
+highest expectations--the horses revelled in speed. But
+soon I pulled them down to a trot, for I followed the
+horsemen's rules whenever I could, and Dan, as I mentioned,
+was anyway rather too keen at the start for steady work
+later on. I settled back. The top of my cutter was down,
+for not a breath stirred; and I was always anxious to
+see as much of the country as I could...
+
+Do you know which is the stillest hour of the night? The
+hour before dawn. It is at that time, too, that in our
+winter nights the mercury dips down to its lowest level.
+Perhaps the two things have a causal relation--whatever
+there is of wild life in nature, withdraws more deeply
+within itself; it curls up and dreams. On calm summer
+mornings you hear no sound except the chirping and
+twittering of the sleeping birds. The birds are great
+dreamers--like dogs; like dogs they will twitch and stir
+in their sleep, as if they were running and flying and
+playing and chasing each other. Just stalk a bird's nest
+of which you know at half past two in the morning, some
+time during the month of July; and before you see them,
+you will hear them. If there are young birds in the nest,
+all the better; take the mother bird off and the little
+ones will open their beaks, all mouth as they are, and
+go to sleep again; and they will stretch their featherless
+little wings; and if they are a little bit older, they
+will even try to move their tiny legs, as if longing to
+use them. As with dogs, it is the young ones that dream
+most. I suppose their impressions are so much more vivid,
+the whole world is so new to them that it rushes in upon
+them charged with emotion. Emotions penetrate even us to
+a greater depth than mere apperceptions; so they break
+through that crust that seems to envelop the seat of our
+memory, and once inside, they will work out again into
+some form of consciousness--that of sleep or of the
+wakeful dream which we call memory.
+
+The stillest hour! In starlit winter nights the heavenly
+bodies seem to take on an additional splendour, something
+next to blazing, overweening boastfulness. "Now sleeps
+the world," they seem to say, "but we are awake and
+weaving destiny" And on they swing on their immutable paths.
+
+The stillest hour! If you step out of a sleeping house
+and are alone, you are apt to hold your breath; and if
+you are not, you are apt to whisper. There is an expectancy
+in the air, a fatefulness--a loud word would be blasphemy
+that offends the ear and the feeling of decency It is
+the hour of all still things, the silent things that pass
+like dreams through the night. You seem to stand hushed.
+Stark and bare, stripped of all accidentals, the universe
+swings on its way.
+
+The stillest hour! But how much stiller than still, when
+the earth has drawn over its shoulders that morning mist
+that allows of no slightest breath--when under the haze
+the very air seems to lie curled and to have gone to
+sleep. And yet how portentous! The haze seems to brood.
+It seems somehow to suggest that there is all of life
+asleep on earth. You seem to feel rather than to hear
+the whole creation breathing in its sleep--as if it was
+soundlessly stirring in dreams--presently to stretch, to
+awake. There is also the delicacy, the tenderness of all
+young things about it. Even in winter it reminds me of
+the very first unfolding of young leaves on trees; of
+the few hours while they are still hanging down, unable
+to raise themselves up as yet; they look so worldlywise
+sometimes, so precocious, and before them there still
+lie all hopes and all disappointments... In clear nights
+you forget the earth--under the hazy cover your eye is
+thrown back upon it. It is the contrast of the universe
+and of creation.
+
+We drove along--and slowly, slowly came the dawn. You
+could not define how it came. The whole world seemed to
+pale and to whiten, and that was all. There was no sunrise.
+It merely seemed as if all of Nature--very gradually--was
+soaking itself full of some light; it was dim at first,
+but never grey; and then it became the whitest, the
+clearest, the most undefinable light. There were no
+shadows. Under the brush of the wild land which I was
+skirting by now there seemed to be quite as much of
+luminosity as overhead. The mist was the thinnest haze,
+and it seemed to derive its whiteness as much from the
+virgin snow on the ground as from above. I could not
+cease to marvel at this light which seemed to be without
+a source--like the halo around the Saviour's face. The
+eye as yet did not reach very far, and wherever I looked,
+I found but one word to describe it: impalpable--and that
+is saying what it was not rather than what it was. As I
+said, there was no sunshine, but the light was there,
+omnipresent, diffused, coming mildly, softly, but from
+all sides, and out of all things as well as into them.
+
+Shakespeare has this word in Macbeth, and I had often
+pondered on it:
+
+   So fair and foul a day I have not seen.
+
+This was it, I thought. We have such days about four or
+five times a year--and none but the northern countries
+have them. There are clouds--or rather, there is a uniform
+layer of cloud, very high, and just the slightest suggestion
+of curdiness in it; and the light is very white. These
+days seem to waken in me every wander instinct that lay
+asleep. There is nothing definite, nothing that seems to
+be emphasized--something seems to beckon to me and to
+invite me to take to my wings and just glide along--without
+beating of wings--as if I could glide without sinking,
+glide and still keep my height... If you see the sun at
+all--as I did not on this day of days--he stands away
+up, very distant and quite aloof. He looks more like the
+moon than like his own self, white and heatless and
+lightless, as if it were not he at all from whom all this
+transparency and visibility proceeded.
+
+I have lived in southern countries, and I have travelled
+rather far for a single lifetime. Like an epic stretch
+my memories into dim and ever receding pasts. I have
+drunk full and deep from the cup of creation. The Southern
+Cross is no strange sight to my eyes. I have slept in
+the desert close to my horse, and I have walked on Lebanon.
+I have cruised in the seven seas and seen the white
+marvels of ancient cities reflected in the wave of
+incredible blueness. But then I was young. When the years
+began to pile up, I longed to stake off my horizons, to
+flatten out my views. I wanted the simpler, the more
+elemental things, things cosmic in their associations,
+nearer to the beginning or end of creation. The parrot
+that flashed through "nutmeg groves" did not hold out so
+much allurement as the simple gray-and-slaty junco. The
+things that are unobtrusive and differentiated by shadings
+only--grey in grey above all--like our northern woods,
+like our sparrows, our wolves--they held a more compelling
+attraction than orgies of colour and screams of sound.
+So I came home to the north. On days like this, however,
+I should like once more to fly out and see the tireless
+wave and the unconquerable rock. But I should like to
+see them from afar and dimly only--as Moses saw the
+promised land. Or I should like to point them out to a
+younger soul and remark upon the futility and innate
+vanity of things.
+
+And because these days take me out of myself, because
+they change my whole being into a very indefinite longing
+and dreaming, I wilfully blot from my vision whatever
+enters. If I meet a tree, I see it not. If I meet a man,
+I pass him by without speaking. I do not care to be
+disturbed. I do not care to follow even a definite thought.
+There is sadness in the mood, such sadness as
+enters--strange to say--into a great and very definitely
+expected disappointment. It is an exceedingly delicate
+sadness--haughty, aloof like the sun, and like him cool
+to the outer world. It does not even want sympathy; it
+merely wants to be left alone.
+
+It strangely chimed in with my mood on this particular
+and very perfect morning that no jolt shook me up, that
+we glided along over virgin snow which had come
+soft-footedly over night, in a motion, so smooth and
+silent as to suggest that wingless flight...
+
+We spurned the miles, and I saw them not. As if in a
+dream we turned in at one of the "half way farms," and
+the horses drank. And we went on and wound our way across
+that corner of the marsh. We came to the "White Range
+Line House," and though there were many things to see,
+I still closed the eye of conscious vision and saw them
+not. We neared the bridge, and we crossed it; and then--when
+I had turned southeast--on to the winding log-road through
+the bush--at last the spell that was cast over me gave
+way and broke. My horses fell into their accustomed walk,
+and at last I saw.
+
+Now, what I saw, may not be worth the describing, I do
+not know. It surely is hardly capable of being described.
+But if I had been led through fairylands or enchanted
+gardens, I could not have been awakened to a truer day
+of joy, to a greater realization of the good will towards
+all things than I was here.
+
+Oh, the surpassing beauty of it! There stood the trees,
+motionless under that veil of mist, and not their slenderest
+finger but was clothed in white. And the white it was!
+A translucent white, receding into itself, with strange
+backgrounds of white behind it--a modest white, and yet
+full of pride. An elusive white, and yet firm and
+substantial. The white of a diamond lying on snow white
+velvet, the white of a diamond in diffused light. None
+of the sparkle and colour play that the most precious of
+stones assumes under a definite, limited light which
+proceeds from a definite, limited source. Its colour play
+was suggested, it is true, but so subdued that you hardly
+thought of naming or even recognising its component parts.
+There was no red or yellow or blue or violet, but merely
+that which might flash into red and yellow and blue and
+violet, should perchance the sun break forth and monopolize
+the luminosity of the atmosphere. There was, as it were,
+a latent opalescence.
+
+And every twig and every bough, every branch and every
+limb, every trunk and every crack even in the bark was
+furred with it. It seemed as if the hoarfrost still
+continued to form. It looked heavy, and yet it was nearly
+without weight. Not a twig was bent down under its load,
+yet with its halo of frost it measured fully two inches
+across. The crystals were large, formed like spearheads,
+flat, slablike, yet of infinite thinness and delicacy,
+so thin and light that, when by misadventure my whip
+touched the boughs, the flakes seemed to float down rather
+than to fall. And every one of these flat and angular
+slabs was fringed with hairlike needles, or with featherlike
+needles, and longer needles stood in between. There was
+such an air of fragility about it all that you hated to
+touch it--and I, for one, took my whip down lest it shook
+bare too many boughs.
+
+Whoever has seen the trees like that--and who has not?
+--will see with his mind's eye what I am trying to suggest
+rather than to describe. It was never the single sight
+nor the isolated thing that made my drives the things of
+beauty which they were. There was nothing remarkable in
+them either. They were commonplace enough. I really do
+not know why I should feel urged to describe our western
+winters. Whatever I may be able to tell you about them,
+is yours to see and yours to interpret. The gifts of
+Nature are free to all for the asking. And yet, so it
+seems to me, there is in the agglomerations of scenes
+and impressions, as they followed each other in my
+experience, something of the quality of a great symphony;
+and I consider this quality as a free and undeserved
+present which Chance or Nature shook out of her cornucopia
+so it happened to fall at my feet. I am trying to render
+this quality here for you.
+
+On that short mile along the first of the east-west
+grades, before again I turned into the bush, I was for
+the thousandth time in my life struck with the fact how
+winter blots out the sins of utility. What is useful, is
+often ugly because in our fight for existence we do not
+always have time or effort to spare to consider the looks
+of things. But the slightest cover of snow will bury the
+eyesores. Snow is the greatest equalizer in Nature. No
+longer are there fields and wild lands, beautiful trails
+and ugly grades--all are hidden away under that which
+comes from Nature's purest hands and fertile thoughts
+alone. Now there was no longer the raw, offending scar
+on Nature's body; just a smooth expanse of snow white
+ribbon that led afar.
+
+That led afar! And here is a curious fact. On this early
+December morning--it was only a little after nine when
+I started the horses into their trot again--I noticed
+for the first time that this grade which sprang here out
+of the bush opened up to the east a vista into a seemingly
+endless distance. Twenty-six times I had gone along this
+piece of it, but thirteen times it had been at night,
+and thirteen times I had been facing west, when I went
+back to the scene of my work. So I had never looked east
+very far. This morning, however, in this strange light,
+which was at this very hour undergoing a subtle change
+that I could not define as yet, mile after mile of road
+seemed to lift itself up in the far away distance, as if
+you might drive on for ever through fairyland. The very
+fact of its straightness, flanked as it was by the rows
+of frosted trees, seemed like a call. And a feeling that
+is very familiar to me--that of an eternity in the
+perpetuation of whatever may be the state I happen to be
+in, came over me, and a desire to go on and on, for ever,
+and to see what might be beyond...
+
+But then the turn into the bushy trail was reached. I
+did not see the slightest sign of it on the road. But
+Dan seemed infallible--he made the turn. And again I was
+in Winter's enchanted palace, again the slight whirl in
+the air that our motion set up made the fairy tracery of
+the boughs shower down upon me like snow white petals of
+flowers, so delicate that to disturb the virginity of it
+all seemed like profaning the temple of the All-Highest.
+
+But then I noticed that I had not been the first one to
+visit the woods. All over their soft-napped carpet floor
+there were the restless, fleeting tracks of the snowflake,
+lacing and interlacing in lines and loops, as if they
+had been assembled in countless numbers, as no doubt they
+had. And every track looked like nothing so much as like
+that kind of embroidery, done white upon white, which
+ladies, I think; call the feather stitch. In places I
+could clearly see how they had chased and pursued each
+other, running, and there was a merriness about their
+spoors, a suggestion of swiftness which made me look up
+and about to see whether they were not wheeling their
+restless curves and circles overhead. But in this I was
+disappointed for the moment, though only a little later
+I was to see them in numbers galore. It was on that last
+stretch of my road, when I drove along the dam of the
+angling ditch. There they came like a whirlwind and
+wheeled and curved and circled about as if they knew no
+enemy, feeding meanwhile with infallible skill from the
+tops of seed-bearing weeds while skimming along. But I
+am anticipating just now In the bush I saw only their
+trails. Yet they suggested their twittering and whistling
+even there; and since on the gloomiest day their sound
+and their sight will cheer you, you surely cannot help
+feeling glad and overflowing with joy when you see any
+sign of them on a day like this!
+
+Meanwhile we were winging along ourselves, so it seemed.
+For there was the second east-west grade ahead. And that
+made me think of wife and child to whom I was coming like
+Santa Claus, and so I stopped under a bush that overhung
+the trail; and though I hated to destroy even a trifling
+part of the beauty around, I reached high up with my whip
+and let go at the branches, so that the moment before
+the horses bolted, the flakes showered down upon me and
+my robes and the cutter and changed me into a veritable
+snowman in snow white garb.
+
+And then up on the grade. One mile to the east, and the
+bridge appeared.
+
+It did not look like the work of man. Apart from its
+straight lines it resembled more the architecture of a
+forest brook as it will build after heavy fall rains
+followed by a late drought when all the waters of the
+wild are receding so that the icy cover stands above them
+like the arches of a bridge. It is strange how rarely
+the work of man will really harmonize with Nature. The
+beaver builds, and his work will blend. Man builds, and
+it jars--very likely because he mostly builds with silly
+pretensions. But in winter Nature breathes upon his
+handiwork and transforms it. Bridges may be imposing and
+of great artificial beauty in cities--as for instance
+the ancient structure that spans the Tiber just below
+the tomb of Hadrian, or among modern works the spider
+web engineering feat of Brooklyn bridge--but if in the
+wilderness we run across them, there is something
+incongruous about them, and they disturb. Strange to say,
+there is the exception of high-flung trellis-viaducts
+bridging the chasm of mountain canyons. Maybe it is
+exactly on account of their unpretentious, plain utility;
+or is it that they reconcile by their overweening boldness,
+by their very paradoxality--as there is beauty even in
+the hawk's bloodthirsty savagery. To-day this bridge was,
+like the grades, like the trees and the meadows furred
+over with opalescent, feathery frost.
+
+And the dam over which I am driving now! This dam that
+erstwhile was a very blasphemy, an obscenity flung on
+the marshy meadows with their reeds, their cat-tails,
+and their wide-leaved swamp-dock clusters! It had been
+used by the winds as a veritable dumping ground for
+obnoxious weeds which grew and thrived on the marly clay
+while every other plant despised it! Not that I mean to
+decry weeds--far be it from me. When the goldenrod flings
+its velvet cushions along the edge of the copses, or when
+the dandelion spangles the meadows, they are things of
+beauty as well as any tulip or tiger-lily. But when they
+or their rivals, silverweed, burdock, false ragweed,
+thistles, gumweed, and others usurp the landscape and
+seem to choke up the very earth and the very air with
+ceaseless monotony and repetition, then they become an
+offence to the eye and a reproach to those who tolerate
+them. To-day, however, they all lent their stalks to
+support the hoarfrost, to double and quadruple its total
+mass. They were powdered over with countless diamonds.
+
+It was here that I met with the flocks of snowflakes;
+and if my joyous mood had admitted of any enhancement,
+they would have given it.
+
+And never before had I seen the school and the cottage
+from quite so far! The haze was still there, but somehow
+it seemed to be further overhead now, with a stratum of
+winterclear air underneath. Once before, when driving
+along the first east-west grade, where I discovered the
+vista, I had wondered at the distance to which the eye
+could pierce. Here, on the dam, of course, my vision was
+further aided by the fact that whatever of trees and
+shrubs there was in the way--and a ridge of poplars ran
+at right angles to the ditch, throwing up a leafy curtain
+in summer--stood bare of its foliage. I was still nearly
+four miles from my "home" when I first beheld it. And
+how pitiably lonesome it looked! Not another house was
+to be seen in its neighbourhood. I touched the horses up
+with my whip. I felt as if I should fly across the distance
+and bring my presence to those in the cottage as their
+dearest gift. They knew I was coming. They were at this
+very moment flying to meet me with their thoughts. Was
+I well? Was I finding everything as I had wished to find
+it? And though I often told them how I loved and enjoyed
+my drives, they could not view them but with much anxiety,
+for they were waiting, waiting, waiting... Waiting on
+Thursday for Friday to come, waiting on Wednesday and
+Tuesday and Monday--waiting on Sunday even, as soon as
+I had left; counting the days, and the hours, and the
+minutes, till I was out, fighting storm and night to my
+heart's content! And then--worry, worry, worry--what
+might not happen! Whatever my drives were to me, to them
+they were horrors. There never were watchers of weather
+and sky so anxiously eager as they! And when, as it often,
+too often happened, the winter storms came, when care
+rose, hope fell, then eye was clouded, thought dulled,
+heart aflutter... Sometimes the soul sought comfort from
+nearest neighbours, and not always was it vouchsafed.
+"Well," they would say, "if he starts out to-day, he will
+kill his horses!"--or, "In weather like this I should
+not care to drive five miles!"--Surely, surely, I owe it
+to them, staunch, faithful hearts that they were, to set
+down this record so it may gladden the lonesome twilight
+hours that are sure to come...
+
+And at last I swung west again, up the ridge and on to
+the yard. And there on the porch stood the tall, young,
+smiling woman, and at her knee the fairest-haired girl
+in all the world. And quite unconscious of Nature's
+wonder-garb, though doubtlessly gladdened by it the little
+girl shrilled out, "Oh, Daddy, Daddy, did du see Santa
+Claus?" And I replied lustily, "Of course, my girl, I am
+coming straight from his palace."
+
+
+
+
+FOUR
+Snow
+
+The blizzard started on Wednesday morning. It was that
+rather common, truly western combination of a heavy
+snowstorm with a blinding northern gale--such as piles
+the snow in hills and mountains and makes walking next
+to impossible.
+
+I cannot exactly say that I viewed it with unmingled joy.
+There were special reasons for that. It was the second
+week in January; when I had left "home" the Sunday before,
+I had been feeling rather bad; so my wife would worry a
+good deal, especially if I did not come at all. I knew
+there was such a thing as its becoming quite impossible
+to make the drive. I had been lost in a blizzard once or
+twice before in my lifetime. And yet, so long as there
+was the least chance that horse-power and human will-power
+combined might pull me through at all, I was determined
+to make or anyway to try it.
+
+At noon I heard the first dismal warning. For some reason
+or other I had to go down into the basement of the school.
+The janitor, a highly efficient but exceedingly bad-humoured
+cockney, who was dissatisfied with all things Canadian
+because "in the old country we do things differently"
+--whose sharp tongue was feared by many, and who once
+remarked to a lady teacher in the most casual way, "If
+you was a lidy, I'd wipe my boots on you!"--this selfsame
+janitor, standing by the furnace, turned slowly around,
+showed his pale and hollow-eyed face, and smiled a
+withering and commiserating smile. "Ye won't go north
+this week," he remarked--not without sympathy, for somehow
+he had taken a liking to me, which even prompted him off
+and on to favor me with caustic expressions of what he
+thought of the school board and the leading citizens of
+the town. I, of course, never encouraged him in his
+communicativeness which seemed to be just what he would
+expect, and no rebuff ever goaded him into the slightest
+show of resentment. "We'll see," I said briefly "Well,
+Sir," he repeated apodeictically, "ye won't." I smiled
+and went out.
+
+But in my classroom I looked from the window across the
+street. Not even in broad daylight could you see the
+opposite houses or trees. And I knew that, once a storm
+like that sets in, it is apt to continue for days at a
+stretch. It was one of those orgies in which Titan Wind
+indulges ever so often on our western prairies. I certainly
+needed something. to encourage me, and so, before leaving
+the building, I went upstairs to the third story and
+looked through a window which faced north. But, though
+I was now above the drifting layer, I could not see very
+far here either; the snowflakes were small and like little
+round granules, hitting the panes of the windows with
+little sounds of "ping-ping"; and they came, driven by
+a relentless gale, in such numbers that they blotted out
+whatever was more than two or three hundred yards away.
+
+The inhabitant of the middle latitudes of this continent
+has no data to picture to himself what a snowstorm in
+the north may be. To him snow is something benign that
+comes soft-footedly over night, and on the most silent
+wings like an owl, something that suggests the sleep of
+Nature rather than its battles. The further south you
+go, the more, of course, snow loses of its aggressive
+character.
+
+At the dinner table in the hotel I heard a few more
+disheartening words. But after four I defiantly got my
+tarpaulin out and carried it to the stable. If I had to
+run the risk of getting lost, at least I was going to
+prepare for it. I had once stayed out, snow-bound, for
+a day and a half, nearly without food and altogether
+without shelter; and I was not going to get thus caught
+again. I also carefully overhauled my cutter. Not a bolt
+but I tested it with a wrench; and before the stores were
+closed, I bought myself enough canned goods to feed me
+for a week should through any untoward accident the need
+arise. I always carried a little alcohol stove, and with
+my tarpaulin I could convert my cutter within three
+minutes into a windproof tent. Cramped quarters, to be
+sure, but better than being given over to the wind at
+thirty below!
+
+More than any remark on the part of friends or acquaintances
+one fact depressed me when I went home. There was not a
+team in town which had come in from the country. The
+streets were deserted: the stores were empty. The north
+wind and the snow had the town to themselves.
+
+On Thursday the weather was unchanged. On the way to the
+school I had to scale a snowdrift thrown up to a height
+of nearly six feet, and, though it was beginning to
+harden, from its own weight and the pressure of the wind,
+I still broke in at every step and found the task tiring
+in the extreme. I did my work, of course, as if nothing
+oppressed me, but in my heart I was beginning to face
+the possibility that, even if I tried, I might fail to
+reach my goal. The day passed by. At noon the
+school-children, the teachers, and a few people hurrying
+to the post-office for their mail lent a fleeting appearance
+of life to the streets. It nearly cheered me; but soon
+after four the whole town again took on that deserted
+look which reminded me of an abandoned mining camp. The
+lights in the store windows had something artificial
+about them, as if they were merely painted on the
+canvas-wings of a stage-setting. Not a team came in all
+day.
+
+On Friday morning the same. Burroughs would have said
+that the weather had gone into a rut. Still the wind
+whistled and howled through the bleak, dark, hollow dawn;
+the snow kept coming down and piling up, as if it could
+not be any otherwise. And as if to give notice of its
+intentions, the drift had completely closed up my front
+door. I fought my way to the school and thought things
+over. My wife and I had agreed, if ever the weather should
+be so bad that there was danger in going at night, I was
+to wait till Saturday morning and go by daylight. Neither
+one of us ever mentioned the possibility of giving the
+attempt up altogether. My wife probably understood that
+I would not bind myself by any such promise. Now even on
+this Friday I should have liked to go by night, if for
+no other reason, than for the experience's sake; but I
+reflected that I might get lost and not reach home at
+all. The horses knew the road--so long as there was any
+road; but there was none now. I felt it would not be fair
+to wife and child. So, reluctantly and with much hesitation,
+but definitely at last, I made up my mind that I was
+going to wait till morning. My cutter was ready--I had
+seen to that on Wednesday. As soon as the storm had set
+in, I had instinctively started to work in order to
+frustrate its designs.
+
+At noon I met in front of the post-office a charming lady
+who with her husband and a young Anglican curate constituted
+about the only circle of real friends I had in town.
+"Why!" I exclaimed, "what takes you out into this storm,
+Mrs. ---?" "The desire," she gasped against the wind and
+yet in her inimitable way, as if she were asking a favour,
+"to have you come to our house for tea, my friend. You
+surely are not going this week?" "I am going to go
+to-morrow morning at seven," I said. "But I shall be
+delighted to have tea with you and Mr. ---." I read her
+at a glance. She knew that in not going out at night I
+should suffer--she wished to help me over the evening,
+so I should not feel too much thwarted, too helpless,
+and too lonesome. She smiled. "You really want to go?
+But I must not keep you. At six, if you please." And we
+went our ways without a salute, for none was possible at
+this gale-swept corner.
+
+After four o'clock I took word to the stable to have my
+horses fed and harnessed by seven in the morning. The
+hostler had a tale to tell. "You going out north?" he
+enquired although he knew perfectly well I was. "Of
+course," I replied. "Well," he went on, "a man came in
+from ten miles out; he was half dead; come, look at his
+horses! He says, in places the snow is over the telephone
+posts." "I'll try it anyway," I said. "Just have the team
+ready I know what I can ask my horses to do. If it cannot
+be done, I shall turn back, that is all."
+
+When I stepped outside again, the wind seemed bent upon
+shaking the strongest faith. I went home to my house
+across the bridge and dressed. As soon as I was ready,
+I allowed myself to be swept past stable, past hotel and
+post-office till I reached the side street which led to
+the house where I was to be the guest.
+
+How sheltered, homelike and protected everything looked
+inside. The hostess, as usual, was radiantly amiable.
+The host settled back after supper to talk old country.
+The Channel Islands, the French Coast, Kent and London
+--those were from common knowledge our most frequently
+recurring topics. Both host and hostess, that was easy
+to see, were bent upon beguiling the hours of their rather
+dark-humored guest. But the howling gale outside was
+stronger than their good intentions. It was not very long
+before the conversation got around--reverted, so it
+seemed--to stories of storms, of being lost, of nearly
+freezing. The boys were sitting with wide and eager eyes,
+afraid they might be sent to bed before the feast of
+yarns was over. I told one or two of my most thrilling
+escapes, the host contributed a few more, and even the
+hostess had had an experience, driving on top of a railroad
+track for several miles, I believe, with a train, snowbound,
+behind her. I leaned over. "Mrs. ---," I said, "do not
+try to dissuade me. I am sorry to say it, but it is
+useless. I am bound to go." "Well," she said, "I wish
+you would not." "Thanks," I replied and looked at my
+watch. It was two o'clock. "There is only one thing wrong
+with coming to have tea in this home," I continued and
+smiled; "it is so hard to say good-bye."
+
+I carefully lighted my lantern and got into my wraps.
+The wind was howling dismally outside. For a moment we
+stood in the hall, shaking hands and paying the usual
+compliments; then one of the boys opened the door for
+me; and in stepping out I had one of the greatest surprises.
+Not far from the western edge of the world there stood
+the setting half-moon in a cloudless sky; myriads of
+stars were dusted over the vast, dark blue expanse,
+twinkling and blazing at their liveliest. And though the
+wind still whistled and shrieked and rattled, no snow
+came down, and not much seemed to drift. I pointed to
+the sky, smiled, nodded and closed the door. As far as
+the drifting of the snow went, I was mistaken, as I found
+out when I turned to the north, into the less sheltered
+street, past the post-office, hotel and stable. In front
+of a store I stopped to read a thermometer which I had
+found halfways reliable the year before. It read minus
+thirty-two degrees...
+
+It was still dark, of course, when I left the house on
+Saturday morning to be on my way. Also, it was cold,
+bitterly cold, but there was very little wind. In crossing
+the bridge which was swept nearly clean of snow I noticed
+a small, but somehow ominous-looking drift at the southern
+end. It had such a disturbed, lashed-up appearance. The
+snow was still loose, yet packed just hard enough to have
+a certain degree of toughness. You could no longer swing
+your foot through it: had you run into it at any great
+speed, you would have fallen; but as yet it was not hard
+enough to carry you. I knew that kind of a drift; it is
+treacherous. On a later drive one just like it, only
+built on a vastly larger scale, was to lead to the first
+of a series of little accidents which finally shattered
+my nerve. That was the only time that my temerity failed
+me. I shall tell you about that drive later on.
+
+At the stable I went about my preparations in a leisurely
+way. I knew that a supreme test was ahead of myself and
+the horses, and I meant to have daylight for tackling
+it. Once more I went over the most important bolts; once
+more I felt and pulled at every strap in the harness. I
+had a Clark footwarmer and made sure that it functioned
+properly I pulled the flaps of my military fur cap down
+over neck, ears and cheeks. I tucked a pillow under the
+sweater over my chest and made sure that my leggings
+clasped my furlined moccasins well. Then, to prevent my
+coat from opening even under the stress of motion, just
+before I got into the cutter, I tied a rope around my
+waist.
+
+The hostler brought the horses into the shed. They pawed
+the floor and snorted with impatience. While I rolled my
+robes about my legs and drew the canvas curtain over the
+front part of the box, I weighed Dan with my eyes. I had
+no fear for Peter, but Dan would have to show to-day that
+he deserved the way I had fed and nursed him. Like a
+chain, the strength of which is measured by the strength
+of its weakest link, my team was measured by Dan's pulling
+power and endurance. But he looked good to me as he danced
+across the pole and threw his head, biting back at Peter
+who was teasing him.
+
+The hostler was morose and in a biting mood. Every motion
+of his seemed to say, "What is the use of all this? No
+teamster would go out on a long drive in this weather,
+till the snow has settled down; and here a schoolmaster
+wants to try it."
+
+At last he pushed the slide doors aside, and we swung
+out. I held the horses tight and drove them into that
+little drift at the bridge to slow them down right from
+the start.
+
+The dawn was white, but with a strictly localised angry
+glow where the sun was still hidden below the horizon.
+In a very few minutes he would be up, and I counted on
+making that first mile just before he appeared.
+
+This mile is a wide, well levelled road, but ever so
+often, at intervals of maybe fifty to sixty yards, steep
+and long promontories of snow had been flung across--some
+of them five to six feet high. They started at the edge
+of the field to the left where a rank growth of shrubby
+weeds gave shelter for the snow to pile in. Their base,
+alongside the fence, was broad, and they tapered across
+the road, with a perfectly flat top, and with concave
+sides of a most delicate, smooth, and finished looking
+curve, till at last they ran out into a sharp point,
+mostly beyond the road on the field to the right.
+
+The wind plays strange pranks with snow; snow is the most
+plastic medium it has to mould into images and symbols
+of its moods. Here one of these promontories would slope
+down, and the very next one would slope upward as it
+advanced across the open space. In every case there had
+been two walls, as it were, of furious blow, and between
+the two a lane of comparative calm, caused by the shelter
+of a clump of brush or weeds, in which the snow had taken
+refuge from the wind's rough and savage play. Between
+these capes of snow there was an occasional bare patch
+of clean swept ground. Altogether there was an impression
+of barren, wild, bitter-cold windiness about the aspect
+that did not fail to awe my mind; it looked inhospitable,
+merciless, and cruelly playful.
+
+As yet the horses seemed to take only delight in dashing
+through the drifts, so that the powdery crystals flew
+aloft and dusted me all over. I peered across the field
+to the left, and a curious sight struck me. There was
+apparently no steady wind at all, but here and there,
+and every now and then a little whirl of snow would rise
+and fall again. Every one of them looked for all the
+world like a rabbit reconnoitring in deep grass. It jumps
+up on its hindlegs, while running, peers out, and settles
+down again. It was as if the snow meant to have a look
+at me, the interloper at such an early morning hour. The
+snow was so utterly dry that it obeyed the lightest
+breath; and whatever there was of motion in the air,
+could not amount to more than a cat's-paw's sudden reach.
+
+At the exact moment when the snow where it stood up
+highest became suffused with a rose-red tint from the
+rising sun, I arrived at the turn to the correction line.
+Had I been a novice at the work I was engaged in, the
+sight that met my eye might well have daunted me. Such
+drifts as I saw here should be broken by drivers who have
+short hauls to make before the long distance traveller
+attempts them. From the fence on the north side of the
+road a smoothly curved expanse covered the whole of the
+road allowance and gently sloped down into the field at
+my left. Its north edge stood like a cliff, the exact
+height of the fence, four feet I should say. In the centre
+it rose to probably six feet and then fell very gradually,
+whaleback fashion, to the south. Not one of the fence
+posts to the left was visible. The slow emergence of the
+tops of these fence posts became during the following
+week, when I drove out here daily, a measure for me of
+the settling down of the drift. I believe I can say from
+my observations that if no new snow falls or drifts in,
+and if no very considerable evaporation takes place, a
+newly piled snowdrift, undisturbed except by wind-pressure,
+will finally settle down to about from one third to one
+half of its original height, according to the pressure
+of the wind that was behind the snow when it first was
+thrown down. After it has, in this contracting process,
+reached two thirds of its first height, it can usually
+be relied upon to carry horse and man.
+
+The surface of this drift, which covered a ditch besides
+the grade and its grassy flanks, showed that curious
+appearance that we also find in the glaciated surfaces
+of granite rock and which, in them, geologists call
+exfoliation. In the case of rock it is the consequence
+of extreme changes in temperature. The surface sheet in
+expanding under sudden heat detaches itself in large,
+leaflike layers. In front of my wife's cottage up north
+there lay an exfoliated rock in which I watched the
+process for a number of years. In snow, of course, the
+origin of this appearance is entirely different; snow is
+laid down in layers by the waves in the wind. "Adfoliation"
+would be a more nearly correct appellation of the process.
+But from the analogy of the appearance I shall retain
+the more common word and call it exfoliation. Layers upon
+layers of paperlike sheets are superimposed upon each
+other, their edges often "cropping out" on sloping
+surfaces; and since these edges, according to the
+curvatures of the surfaces, run in wavy lines, the total
+aspect is very often that of "moire" silk.
+
+I knew the road as well as I had ever known a road. In
+summer there was a grassy expanse some thirty feet wide
+to the north; then followed the grade, flanked to the
+south by a ditch; and the tangle of weeds and small brush
+beyond reached right up to the other fence. I had to stay
+on or rather above the grade; so I stood up and selected
+the exact spot where to tackle it. Later, I knew, this
+drift would be harmless enough; there was sufficient
+local traffic here to establish a well-packed trail. At
+present, however, it still seemed a formidable task for
+a team that was to pull me over thirty-three miles more.
+Besides it was a first test for my horses; I did not know
+yet how they would behave in snow.
+
+But we went at it. For a moment things happened too fast
+for me to watch details. The horses plunged wildly and
+reared on their hind feet in a panic, straining against
+each other, pulling apart, going down underneath the
+pole, trying to turn and retrace their steps. And meanwhile
+the cutter went sharply up at first, as if on the crest
+of a wave, then toppled over into a hole made by Dan,
+and altogether behaved like a boat tossed on a stormy
+sea. Then order returned into the chaos. I had the lines
+short, wrapped double and treble around my wrists; my
+feet stood braced in the corner of the box, knees touching
+the dashboard; my robes slipped down. I spoke to the
+horses in a soft, quiet, purring voice; and at last I
+pulled in. Peter hated to stand. I held him. Then I looked
+back. This first wild plunge had taken us a matter of
+two hundred yards into the drift. Peter pulled and champed
+at the bit; the horses were sinking nearly out of sight.
+But I knew that many and many a time in the future I
+should have to go through just this and that from the
+beginning I must train the horses to tackle it right.
+So, in spite of my aching wrists I kept them standing
+till I thought that they were fully breathed. Then I
+relaxed my pull the slightest bit and clicked my tongue.
+"Good," I thought, "they are pulling together!" And I
+managed to hold them in line. They reared and plunged
+again like drowning things in their last agony, but they
+no longer clashed against nor pulled away from each other.
+I measured the distance with my eye. Another two hundred
+yards or thereabout, and I pulled them in again. Thus we
+stopped altogether four times. The horses were steaming
+when we got through this drift which was exactly half a
+mile long; my cutter was packed level full with slabs
+and clods of snow; and I was pretty well exhausted myself.
+
+"If there is very much of this," I thought for the moment,
+"I may not be able to make it." But then I knew that a
+north-south road will drift in badly only under exceptional
+circumstances. It is the east-west grades that are most
+apt to give trouble. Not that I minded my part of it,
+but I did not mean to kill my horses. I had sized them
+up in their behaviour towards snow. Peter, as I had
+expected, was excitable. It was hard to recognize in him
+just now, as he walked quietly along, the uproar of
+playing muscle and rearing limbs that he had been when
+we first struck the snow. That was well and good for a
+short, supreme effort; but not even for Peter would it
+do in the long, endless drifts which I had to expect.
+Dan was quieter, but he did not have Peter's staying
+power, in fact, he was not really a horse for the road.
+Strange, in spite of his usual keenness on the level
+road, he seemed to show more snow sense in the drift.
+This was to be amply confirmed in the future. Whenever
+an accident happened, it was Peter's fault. As you will
+see if you read on, Dan once lay quiet when Peter stood
+right on top of him.
+
+On this road north I found the same "promontories" that
+had been such a feature of the first one, flung across
+from the northwest to the southeast. Since the clumps of
+shrubs to the left were larger here, and more numerous,
+too, the drifts occasionally also were larger and higher;
+but not one of them was such that the horses could not
+clear it with one or two leaps. The sun was climbing,
+the air was winter-clear and still. None of the farms
+which I passed showed the slightest sign of life. I had
+wrapped up again and sat in comparative comfort and at
+ease, enjoying the clear sparkle and glitter of the virgin
+snow. It was not till considerably later that the real
+significance of the landscape dawned upon my consciousness.
+Still there was even now in my thoughts a speculative
+undertone. Subconsciously I wondered what might be ahead
+of me.
+
+We made Bell's corner in good time. The mile to the west
+proved easy. There were drifts, it is true, and the going
+was heavy, but at no place did the snow for any length
+of time reach higher than the horses' hocks. We turned
+to the north again, and here, for a while, the road was
+very good indeed; the underbrush to the left, on those
+expanses of wild land, had fettered, as it were, the feet
+of the wind. The snow was held everywhere, and very little
+of it had drifted. Only one spot I remember where a clump
+of Russian willow close to the trail had offered shelter
+enough to allow the wind to fill in the narrow road-gap
+to a depth of maybe eight or nine feet; but here it was
+easy to go around to the west. Without any further incident
+we reached the point where the useless, supernumerary
+fence post had caught my eye on my first trip out. I had
+made nearly eight miles now.
+
+But right here I was to get my first inkling of sights
+that might shatter my nerve. You may remember that a
+grove of tall poplars ran to the east, skirted along its
+southern edge by a road and a long line of telephone
+posts. Now here, in this shelter of the poplars, the snow
+from the more or less level and unsheltered spaces to
+the northwest had piled in indeed. It sloped up to the
+east; and never shall I forget what I beheld.
+
+The first of the posts stood a foot in snow; at the second
+one the drift reached six or seven feet up; the next one
+looked only half as long as the first one, and you might
+have imagined, standing as it did on a sloping hillside,
+that it had intentionally been made so much shorter than
+the others; but at the bottom of the visible part the
+wind, in sweeping around the pole, had scooped out a
+funnel-shaped crater which seemed to open into the very
+earth like a sinkhole. The next pole stood like a giant
+buried up to his chest and looked singularly helpless
+and footbound; and the last one I saw showed just its
+crossbar with three glassy, green insulators above the
+mountain of snow. The whole surface of this gigantic
+drift showed again that "exfoliated" appearance which I
+have described. Strange to say, this very exfoliation
+gave it something of a quite peculiarly desolate aspect.
+It looked so harsh, so millennial-old, so antediluvian
+and pre-adamic! I still remember with particular
+distinctness the slight dizziness that overcame me, the
+sinking feeling in my heart, the awe, and the foreboding
+that I had challenged a force in Nature which might defy
+all tireless effort and the most fearless heart.
+
+So the hostler had not been fibbing after all!
+
+But not for a moment did I think of turning back. I am
+fatalistic in temperament. What is to be, is to be, that
+is not my outlook. If at last we should get bound up in
+a drift, well and good, I should then see what the next
+move would have to be. While the wind blows, snow drifts;
+while my horses could walk and I was not disabled, my
+road led north, not south. Like the snow I obeyed the
+laws of my nature. So far the road was good, and we swung
+along.
+
+Somewhere around here a field presented a curious view
+Its crop had not been harvested; it still stood in stooks.
+But from my side I saw nothing of the sheaves--it seemed
+to be flax, for here and there a flag of loose heads
+showed at the top. The snow had been blown up from all
+directions, so it looked, by the counter-currents that
+set up in the lee of every obstacle. These mounds presented
+one and all the appearance of cones or pyramids of butter
+patted into shape by upward strokes made with a spoon.
+There were the sharp ridges, irregular and erratic, and
+there were the hollows running up their flanks--exactly
+as such a cone of butter will show them. And the whole
+field was dotted with them, as if there were so many
+fresh graves.
+
+I made the twelve-mile bridge--passing through the
+cottonwood gate--reached the "hovel," and dropped into
+the wilderness again. Here the bigger trees stood strangely
+bare. Winter reveals the bark and the "habit" of trees.
+All ornaments and unessentials have been dropped. The
+naked skeletons show I remember how I was more than ever
+struck by that dappled appearance of the bark of the
+balm: an olive-green, yellowish hue, ridged and spotted
+with the black of ancient, overgrown leaf-scars; there
+was actually something gay about it; these poplars are
+certainly beautiful winter trees. The aspens were different.
+Although their stems stood white on white in the snow,
+that greenish tinge in their white gave them a curious
+look. From the picture that I carry about in my memory
+of this morning I cannot help the impression that they
+looked as if their white were not natural at all; they
+looked white-washed! I have often since confirmed this
+impression when there was snow on the ground.
+
+In the copses of saplings the zigzagging of the boles
+from twig to twig showed very distinctly, more so, I
+believe, than to me it had ever done before. How slender
+and straight they look in their summer garb--now they
+were stripped, and bone and sinew appeared.
+
+We came to the "half way farms," and the marsh lay ahead.
+I watered the horses, and I do not know what made me rest
+them for a little while, but I did. On the yard of the
+farm where I had turned in there was not a soul to be
+seen. Barns and stables were closed--and I noticed that
+the back door of the dwelling was buried tight by the
+snow. No doubt everybody preferred the neighbourhood of
+the fire to the cold outside. While stopping, I faced
+for the first time the sun. He was high in the sky by
+now--it was half-past ten--and it suddenly came home to
+me that there was something relentless, inexorable, cruel,
+yes, something of a sneer in the pitiless way in which
+he looked down on the infertile waste around. Unaccountably
+two Greek words formed on my lips: Homer's Pontos
+atrygetos--the barren sea. Half an hour later I was to
+realize the significance of it.
+
+I turned back to the road and north again. For another
+half mile the fields continued on either side; but somehow
+they seemed to take on a sinister look. There was more
+snow on them than I had found on the level land further
+south; the snow lay more smoothly, again under those
+"exfoliated" surface sheets which here, too, gave it an
+inhuman, primeval look; in the higher sun the vast expanse
+looked, I suppose, more blindingly white; and nowhere
+did buildings or thickets seem to emerge. Yet, so long
+as the grade continued, the going was fair enough.
+
+Then I came to the corner which marked half the distance,
+and there I stopped. Right in front, where the trail had
+been and where a ditch had divided off the marsh, a
+fortress of snow lay now: a seemingly impregnable bulwark,
+six or seven feet high, with rounded top, fitting
+descriptions which I had read of the underground bomb-proofs
+around Belgian strongholds--those forts which were hammered
+to pieces by the Germans in their first, heart-breaking
+forward surge in 1914. There was not a wrinkle in this
+inverted bowl. There it lay, smooth and slick--curled up
+in security, as it were, some twenty, thirty feet across;
+and behind it others, and more of them to the right and
+to the left. This had been a stretch, covered with brush
+and bush, willow and poplar thickets; but my eye saw
+nothing except a mammiferous waste, cruelly white,
+glittering in the heatless, chuckling sun, and scoffing
+at me, the intruder. I stood up again and peered out. To
+the east it seemed as if these buttes of snow were a
+trifle lower; but maybe the ground underneath also sloped
+down. I wished I had travelled here more often by daytime,
+so I might know. As it was, there was nothing to it; I
+had to tackle the task. And we plunged in.
+
+I had learned something from my first experience in the
+drift one mile north of town, and I kept my horses well
+under control. Still, it was a wild enough dash. Peter
+lost his footing two or three times and worked himself
+into a mild panic. But Dan--I could not help admiring
+the way in which, buried over his back in snow, he would
+slowly and deliberately rear on his hindfeet and take
+his bound. For fully five minutes I never saw anything
+of the horses except their heads. I inferred their motions
+from the dusting snowcloud that rose above their bodies
+and settled on myself. And then somehow we emerged. We
+reached a stretch of ground where the snow was just high
+enough to cover the hocks of the horses. It was a hollow
+scooped out by some freak of the wind. I pulled in, and
+the horses stood panting. Peter no longer showed any
+desire to fret and to jump. Both horses apparently felt
+the wisdom of sparing their strength. They were all white
+with the frost of their sweat and the spray of the snow...
+
+While I gave them their time, I looked around, and here
+a lesson came home to me. In the hollow where we stood,
+the snow did not lie smoothly. A huge obstacle to the
+northwest, probably a buried clump of brush, had made
+the wind turn back upon itself, first downward, then, at
+the bottom of the pit, in a direction opposite to that
+of the main current above, and finally slantways upward
+again to the summit of the obstacle, where it rejoined
+the parent blow. The floor of the hollow was cleanly
+scooped out and chiselled in low ridges; and these ridges
+came from the southeast, running their points to the
+northwest. I learned to look out for this sign, and I
+verily believe that, had I not learned that lesson right
+now, I should never have reached the creek which was
+still four or five miles distant.
+
+The huge mound in the lee of which I was stopping was a
+matter of two hundred yards away; nearer to it the snow
+was considerably deeper; and since it presented an
+appearance very characteristic of Prairie bush-drifts,
+I shall describe it in some detail. Apparently the winds
+had first bent over all the stems of the clump; for
+whenever I saw one of them from the north, it showed a
+smooth, clean upward sweep. On the south side the snow
+first fell in a sheer cliff; then there was a hollow
+which was partly filled by a talus-shaped drift thrown
+in by the counter currents from the southern pit in which
+we were stopping; the sides of this talus again showed
+the marks that reminded of those left by the spoon when
+butter is roughly stroked into the shape of a pyramid.
+The interesting parts of the structure consisted in the
+beetling brow of the cliff and the roof of the cavity
+underneath. The brow had a honeycombed appearance; the
+snow had been laid down in layers of varying density (I
+shall discuss this more fully in the next chapter when
+we are going to look in on the snow while it is actually
+at work); and the counter currents that here swept upward
+in a slanting direction had bitten out the softer layers,
+leaving a fine network of little ridges which reminded
+strangely of the delicate fretwork-tracery in
+wind-sculptured rock--as I had seen it in the Black Hills
+in South Dakota. This piece of work of the wind is
+exceedingly short-lived in snow, and it must not be
+confounded with the honeycombed appearance of those faces
+of snow cliffs which are "rotting" by reason of their
+exposure to the heat of the noonday sun. These latter
+are coarse, often dirty, and nearly always have something
+bristling about them which is entirely absent in the
+sculptures of the wind. The under side of the roof in
+the cavity looked very much as a very stiff or viscid
+treacle would look when spread over a meshy surface, as,
+for instance, over a closely woven netting of wire. The
+stems and the branches of the brush took the place of
+the wire, and in their meshes the snow had been pressed
+through by its own weight, but held together by its
+curious ductility or tensile strength of which I was to
+find further evidence soon enough. It thus formed
+innumerable, blunted little stalactites, but without the
+corresponding stalagmites which you find in limestone
+caves or on the north side of buildings when the snow
+from the roof thaws and forms icicles and slender cones
+of ice growing up to meet them from the ground where the
+trickling drops fall and freeze again.
+
+By the help of these various tokens I had picked my next
+resting place before we started up again. It was on this
+second dash that I understood why those Homeric words
+had come to my lips a while ago. This was indeed like
+nothing so much as like being out on rough waters and in
+a troubled sea, with nothing to brace the storm with but
+a wind-tossed nutshell of a one-man sailing craft. I knew
+that experience for having outridden many a gale in the
+mouth of the mighty St. Lawrence River. When the snow
+reached its extreme in depth, it gave you the feeling
+which a drowning man may have when fighting his desperate
+fight with the salty waves. But more impressive than that
+was the frequent outer resemblance. The waves of the
+ocean rise up and reach out and batter against the rocks
+and battlements of the shore, retreating again and ever
+returning to the assault, covering the obstacles thrown
+in the way of their progress with thin sheets of licking
+tongues at least. And if such a high crest wave had
+suddenly been frozen into solidity, its outline would
+have mimicked to perfection many a one of the snow shapes
+that I saw around.
+
+Once the horses had really learned to pull exactly
+together--and they learned it thoroughly here--our progress
+was not too bad. Of course, it was not like going on a
+grade, be it ever so badly drifted in. Here the ground
+underneath, too, was uneven and overgrown with a veritable
+entanglement of brush in which often the horses' feet
+would get caught. As for the road, there was none left,
+nothing that even by the boldest stretch of imagination
+could have been considered even as the slightest indication
+of one. And worst of all, I knew positively that there
+would be no trail at any time during the winter. I was
+well aware of the fact that, after it once snowed up,
+nobody ever crossed this waste between the "half way
+farms" and the "White Range Line House." This morning it
+took me two and a half solid hours to make four miles.
+
+But the ordeal had its reward. Here where the fact that
+there was snow on the ground, and plenty of it, did no
+longer need to be sunk into my brain--as soon as it had
+lost its value as a piece of news and a lesson, I began
+to enjoy it just as the hunter in India will enjoy the
+battle of wits when he is pitted against a yellow-black
+tiger. I began to catch on to the ways of this snow; I
+began, as it were, to study the mentality of my enemy.
+Though I never kill, I am after all something of a
+sportsman. And still another thing gave me back that
+mental equilibrium which you need in order to see things
+and to reason calmly about them. Every dash of two hundred
+yards or so brought me that much nearer to my goal. Up
+to the "half way farms" I had, as it were, been working
+uphill: there was more ahead than behind. This was now
+reversed: there was more behind than ahead, and as yet
+I did not worry about the return trip.
+
+Now I have already said that snow is the only really
+plastic element in which the wind can carve the vagaries
+of its mood and leave a record of at least some permanency.
+The surface of the sea is a wonderful book to be read
+with a lightning-quick eye; I do not know anything better
+to do as a cure for ragged nerves--provided you are a
+good sailor. But the forms are too fleeting, they change
+too quickly--so quickly, indeed, that I have never
+succeeded in so fixing their record upon my memory as to
+be able to develop one form from the other in descriptive
+notes. It is that very fact, I believe, upon which hinges
+the curative value of the sight: you are so completely
+absorbed by the moment, and all other things fall away.
+Many and many a day have I lain in my deck chair on board
+a liner and watched the play of the waves; but the
+pleasure, which was very great indeed, was momentary;
+and sometimes, when in an unsympathetic mood, I have
+since impatiently wondered in what that fascination may
+have consisted. It was different here. Snow is very nearly
+as yielding as water and, once it fully responds in its
+surface to the carving forces of the wind, it stays--as
+if frozen into the glittering marble image of its motion.
+I know few things that are as truly fascinating as the
+sculptures of the wind in snow; for here you have time
+and opportunity a-plenty to probe not only into the what,
+but also into the why. Maybe that one day I shall write
+down a fuller account of my observations. In this report
+I shall have to restrict myself to a few indications,
+for this is not the record of the whims of the wind, but
+merely the narrative of my drives.
+
+In places, for instance, the rounded, "bomb-proof" aspect
+of the expanses would be changed into the distinct contour
+of gigantic waves with a very fine, very sharp crest-line.
+The upsweep from the northwest would be ever so slightly
+convex, and the downward sweep into the trough was always
+very distinctly concave. This was not the ripple which
+we find in beach sand. That ripple was there, too, and
+in places it covered the wide backs of these huge waves
+all over; but never was it found on the concave side.
+Occasionally, but rarely, one of these great waves would
+resemble a large breaker with a curly crest. Here the
+onward sweep from the northwest had built the snow out,
+beyond the supporting base, into a thick overhanging
+ledge which here and there had sagged; but by virtue of
+that tensile strength and cohesion in snow which I have
+mentioned already, it still held together and now looked
+convoluted and ruffled in the most deceiving way. I
+believe I actually listened for the muffled roar which
+the breaker makes when its subaqueous part begins to
+sweep the upward sloping beach. To make this illusion
+complete, or to break it by the very absurdity and
+exaggeration of a comparison drawn out too far--I do not
+know which--there would, every now and then, from the
+crest of one of these waves, jut out something which
+closely resembled the wide back of a large fish diving
+down into the concave side towards the trough. This looked
+very much like porpoises or dolphins jumping in a heaving
+sea; only that in my memory picture the real dolphins
+always jump in the opposite direction, against the run
+of the waves, bridging the trough.
+
+In other places a fine, exceedingly delicate crest-line
+would spring up from the high point of some buried obstacle
+and sweep along in the most graceful curve as far as the
+eye would carry I particularly remember one of them, and
+I could discover no earthly reason for the curvature in it.
+
+Again there would be a triangular--or should I say
+"tetrahedral"?--up-sweep from the direction of the wind,
+ending in a sharp, perfectly plane down-sweep on the
+south side; and the point of this three-sided but oblique
+pyramid would hang over like the flap of a tam. There
+was something of the consistency of very thick cloth
+about this overhanging flap.
+
+Or an up-slope from the north would end in a long, nearly
+perpendicular cliff-line facing south. And the talus
+formation which I have mentioned would be perfectly
+smooth; but it did not reach quite to the top of the
+cliff, maybe to within a foot of it. The upsloping layer
+from the north would hang out again, with an even brow;
+but between this smooth cornice and the upper edge of
+the talus the snow looked as if it had been squeezed out
+by tremendous pressure from above, like an exceedingly
+viscid liquid--cooling glue, for instance, which is being
+squeezed out from between the core and the veneer in a
+veneering press.
+
+Once I passed close to and south of, two thickets which
+were completely buried by the snow. Between them a ditch
+had been scooped out in a very curious fashion. It
+resembled exactly a winding river bed with its water
+drained off; it was two or three feet deep, and wherever
+it turned, its banks were undermined on the "throw" side
+by the "wash" of the furious blow. The analogy between
+the work of the wind and the work of flowing water
+constantly obtrudes, especially where this work is one
+of "erosion."
+
+But as flowing water will swing up and down in the most
+surprising forms where the bed of the river is rough with
+rocks and throws it into choppy waves which do not seem
+to move, so the snow was thrown up into the most curious
+forms where the frozen swamp ground underneath had bubbled,
+as it were, into phantastic shapes. I remember several
+places where a perfect circle was formed by a sharp
+crestline that bounded an hemispherical, crater-like
+hollow. When steam bubbles up through thick porridge, in
+its leisurely and impeded way, and the bubble bursts with
+a clucking sound, then for a moment a crater is formed
+just like these circular holes; only here in the snow
+they were on a much larger scale, of course, some of them
+six to ten feet in diameter.
+
+And again the snow was thrown up into a bulwark, twenty
+and more feet high, with that always repeating cliff face
+to the south, resembling a miniature Gibraltar, with many
+smaller ones of most curiously similar form on its back:
+bulwarks upon bulwarks, all lowering to the south. In
+these the aggressive nature of storm-flung. snow was most
+apparent. They were formidable structures; formidable
+and intimidating, more through the suggestiveness of
+their shape than through mere size.
+
+I came to places where the wind had had its moments of
+frolicksome humour, where it had made grim fun of its
+own massive and cumbersome and yet so pliable and elastic
+majesty. It had turned around and around, running with
+breathless speed, with its tongue lolling out, as it
+were, and probably yapping and snapping in mocking mimicry
+of a pup trying to catch its tail; and it had scooped
+out a spiral trough with overhanging rim. I felt sorry
+that I had not been there to watch it, because after all,
+what I saw, was only the dead record of something that
+had been very much alive and vociferatingly noisy. And
+in another place it had reared and raised its head like
+a boa constrictor, ready to strike at its prey; up to
+the flashing, forked tongue it was there. But one spot
+I remember, where it looked exactly as if quite consciously
+it had attempted the outright ludicrous: it had thrown
+up the snow into the semblance of some formidable animal
+--more like a gorilla than anything else it looked, a
+gorilla that stands on its four hands and raises every
+hair on its back and snarls in order to frighten that
+which it is afraid of itself--a leopard maybe.
+
+And then I reached the "White Range Line House." Curiously
+enough, there it stood, sheltered by its majestic bluff
+to the north, as peaceful looking as if there were no
+such a thing as that record, which I had crossed, of the
+uproar and fury of one of the forces of Nature engaged
+in an orgy. And it looked so empty, too, and so deserted,
+with never a wisp of smoke curling from its flue-pipe,
+that for a moment I was tempted to turn in and see whether
+maybe the lonely dweller was ill. But then I felt as if I
+could not be burdened with any stranger's worries that day.
+
+The effective shelter of the poplar forest along the
+creek made itself felt. The last mile to the northeast
+was peaceful driving. I felt quite cheered, though I
+walked the horses over the whole of the mile since both
+began to show signs of wear. The last four miles had been
+a test to try any living creature's mettle. To me it had
+been one of the culminating points in that glorious
+winter, but the horses had lacked the mental stimulus,
+and even I felt rather exhausted.
+
+On the bridge I stopped, threw the blankets over the
+horses, and fed. Somehow this seemed to be the best place
+to do it. There was no snow to speak of. and I did not
+know yet what might follow. The horses were drooping,
+and I gave them an additional ten minutes' rest. Then I
+slowly made ready. I did not really expect any serious
+trouble.
+
+We turned at a walk, and the chasm of the bush road opened
+up. Instantly I pulled the horses in. What I saw, baffled
+me for a moment so completely that I just sat there and
+gasped. There was no road. The trees to both sides were
+not so overly high, but the snow had piled in level with
+their tops; the drift looked like a gigantic barricade.
+It was that fleeting sight of the telephone posts over
+again, though on a slightly smaller scale; but this time
+it was in front. Slowly I started to whistle and then
+looked around. I remembered now. There was a newly cut-out
+road running north past the school which lay embedded in
+the bush. It had offered a lane to the wind; and the
+wind, going there, in cramped space, at a doubly furious
+stride, had picked up and carried along all the loose
+snow from the grassy glades in its path. The road ended
+abruptly just north of the drift, where the east-west
+grade sprang up. When the wind had reached this end of
+the lane, where the bush ran at right angles to its
+direction, it had found itself in something like a blind
+alley, and, sweeping upward, to clear the obstacle, it
+had dropped every bit of its load into the shelter of
+the brush, gradually, in the course of three long days,
+building up a ridge that buried underbrush and trees. I
+might have known it, of course. I knew enough about snow;
+all the conditions for an exceptionally large drift were
+provided for here. But it had not occurred to me, especially
+after I had found the northern fringe of the marsh so
+well sheltered. Here I felt for a moment as if all the
+snow of the universe had piled in. As I said, I was so
+completely baffled that I could have turned the horses
+then and there.
+
+But after a minute or two my eyes began to cast about.
+I turned to the south, right into the dense underbrush
+and towards the creek which here swept south in a long,
+flat curve. Peter was always intolerant of anything that
+moved underfoot. He started to bolt when the dry and
+hard-frozen stems snapped and broke with reports resembling
+pistol shots. But since Dan kept quiet, I held Peter well
+in hand. I went along the drift for maybe three to four
+hundred yards, reconnoitring. Then the trees began to
+stand too dense for me to proceed without endangering my
+cutter. Just beyond I saw the big trough of the creek
+bed, and though I could not make out how conditions were
+at its bottom, the drift continued on its southern bank,
+and in any case it was impossible to cross the hollow.
+So I turned; I had made up my mind to try the drift.
+
+About a hundred and fifty yards from the point where I
+had turned off the road there was something like a fold
+in the flank of the drift. At its foot I stopped. For a
+moment I tried to explain that fold to myself. This is
+what I arrived at. North of the drift, just about where
+the new cut-out joined the east-west grade, there was a
+small clearing caused by a bush fire which a few years
+ago had penetrated thus far into this otherwise virgin
+corner of the forest. Unfortunately it stood so full of
+charred stumps that it was impossible to get through
+there. But the main currents of the wind would have free
+play in this opening, and I knew that, when the blizzard
+began, it had been blowing from a more northerly quarter
+than later on, when it veered to the northwest. And though
+the snow came careering along the lane of the cut-out,
+that is, from due north, its "throw" and therefore, the
+direction of the drift would be determined by the direction
+of the wind that took charge of it on this clearing.
+Probably, then, a first, provisional drift whose long
+axis lay nearly in a north-south line, had been piled up
+by the first, northerly gale. Later a second, larger
+drift had been superimposed upon it at an angle, with
+its main axis running from the northwest to the southeast.
+The fold marked the point where the first, smaller drift
+still emerged from the second larger one. This reasoning
+was confirmed by a study of the clearing itself which I
+came to make two or three weeks after.
+
+Before I called on the horses to give me their very last
+ounce of strength, I got out of my cutter once more and
+made sure that my lines were still sound. I trusted my
+ability to guide the horses even in this crucial test,
+but I dreaded nothing so much as that the lines might
+break; and I wanted to guard against any accident. I
+should mention that, of course, the top of my cutter was
+down, that the traces of the harness were new, and that
+the cutter itself during its previous trials had shown
+an exceptional stability. Once more I thus rested my
+horses for five minutes; and they seemed to realize what
+was coming. Their heads were up, their ears were cocked.
+When I got back into my cutter, I carefully brushed the
+snow from moccasins and trousers, laid the robe around
+my feet, adjusted my knees against the dashboard, and
+tied two big loops into the lines to hold them by.
+
+Then I clicked my tongue. The horses bounded upward in
+unison. For a moment it looked as if they intended to
+work through, instead of over, the drift. A wild shower
+of angular snow-slabs swept in upon me. The cutter reared
+up and plunged and reared again--and then the view cleared.
+The snow proved harder than I had anticipated--which
+bespoke the fury of the blow that had piled it. It did
+not carry the horses, but neither--once we had reached
+a height of five or six feet--did they sink beyond their
+bellies and out of sight. I had no eye for anything except
+them. What lay to right or left, seemed not to concern
+me. I watched them work. They went in bounds, working
+beautifully together. Rhythmically they reared, and
+rhythmically they plunged. I had dropped back to the
+seat, holding them with a firm hand, feet braced against
+the dashboard; and whenever they got ready to rear, I
+called to them in a low and quiet voice, "Peter--Dan--now!"
+And their muscles played with the effort of desperation.
+It probably did not take more than five minutes, maybe
+considerably less, before we had reached the top, but to
+me it seemed like hours of nearly fruitless endeavour.
+I did not realize at first that we were high. I shall
+never forget the weird kind of astonishment when the fact
+came home to me that what snapped and crackled in the
+snow under the horses' hoofs, were the tops of trees.
+Nor shall the feeling of estrangement, as it were--as if
+I were not myself, but looking on from the outside at
+the adventure of somebody who yet was I--the feeling of
+other-worldliness, if you will pardon the word, ever fade
+from my memory--a feeling of having been carried beyond
+my depth where I could not swim--which came over me when
+with two quick glances to right and left I took in the
+fact that there were no longer any trees to either side,
+that I was above that forest world which had so often
+engulfed me.
+
+Then I drew my lines in. The horses fought against it,
+did not want to stand. But I had to find my way, and
+while they were going, I could not take my eyes from
+them. It took a supreme effort on my part to make them
+obey. At last they stood, but I had to hold them with
+all my strength, and with not a second's respite. Now
+that I was on top of the drift, the problem of how to
+get down loomed larger than that of getting up had seemed
+before. I knew I did not have half a minute in which to
+decide upon my course; for it became increasingly difficult
+to hold the horses back, and they were fast sinking away.
+
+During this short breathing spell I took in the situation.
+We had come up in a northeast direction, slanting along
+the slope. Once on top, I had instinctively turned to
+the north. Here the drift was about twenty feet wide,
+perfectly level and with an exfoliated surface layer. To
+the east the drift fell steeply, with a clean, smooth
+cliff-line marking off the beginning of the descent; this
+line seemed particularly disconcerting, for it betrayed
+the concave curvature of the down-sweep. A few yards to
+the north I saw below, at the foot of the cliff, the old
+logging-trail, and I noticed that the snow on it lay as
+it had fallen, smooth and sheer, without a ripple of a
+drift. It looked like mockery. And yet that was where I
+had to get down.
+
+The next few minutes are rather a maze in my memory. But
+two pictures were photographed with great distinctness.
+The one is of the moment when we went over the edge. For
+a second Peter reared up, pawing the air with his forefeet;
+Dan tried to back away from the empty fall. I had at this
+excruciating point no purchase whatever on the lines.
+Then apparently Peter sat or fell down, I do not know
+which, on his haunches and began to slide. The cutter
+lurched to the left as if it were going to spill all it
+held. Dan was knocked off his hind feet by the drawbar--and
+we plunged... We came to with a terrific jolt that sent
+me in a heap against the dashboard. One jump, and I stood
+on the ground. The cutter--and this is the second picture
+which is etched clearly on the plate of my memory--stood
+on its pole, leaning at an angle of forty-five degrees
+against the drift. The horses were as if stunned. "Dan,
+Peter!" I shouted, and they struggled to their feet. They
+were badly winded, but otherwise everything seemed all
+right. I looked wistfully back and up at the gully which
+we had torn into the flank of the drift.
+
+I should gladly have breathed the horses again, but they
+were hot, the air was at zero or colder, the rays of the
+sun had begun to slant. I walked for a while alongside
+the team. They were drooping sadly. Then I got in again,
+driving them slowly till we came to the crossing of the
+ditch. I had no eye for the grade ahead. On the bush road
+the going was good--now and then a small drift, but
+nothing alarming anywhere. The anti-climax had set in.
+Again the speckled trunks of the balm poplars struck my
+eye, now interspersed with the scarlet stems of the red
+osier dogwood. But they failed to cheer me--they were
+mere facts, unable to stir moods...
+
+I began to think. A few weeks ago I had met that American
+settler with the French sounding name who lived alongside
+the angling dam further north. We had talked snow, and
+he had said, "Oh, up here it never is bad except along
+this grade,"--we were stopping on the last east-west
+grade, the one I was coming to--"there you cannot get
+through. You'd kill your horses. Level with the tree-tops."
+Well, I had had just that a little while ago--I could
+not afford any more of it. So I made up my mind to try
+a new trail, across a section which was fenced. It meant
+getting out of my robes twice more, to open the gates,
+but I preferred that to another tree-high drift. To spare
+my horses was now my only consideration. I should not
+have liked to take the new trail by night, for fear of
+missing the gates; but that objection did not hold just
+now. Horses and I were pretty well spent. So, instead of
+forking off the main trail to the north we went straight
+ahead.
+
+In due time I came to the bridge which I had to cross in
+order to get up on the dam. Here I saw--in an absent-minded,
+half unconscious, and uninterested way--one more structure
+built by architect wind. The deep master ditch from the
+north emptied here, to the left of the bridge, into the
+grade ditch which ran east and west. And at the corner
+the snow had very nearly bridged it--so nearly that you
+could easily have stepped across the remaining gap. But
+below it was hollow--nothing supported the bridge--it
+was a mere arch, with a vault underneath that looked
+temptingly sheltered and cosy to wearied eyes.
+
+The dam was bare, and I had to pull off to the east, on
+to the swampy plain. I gave my horses the lines, and
+slowly, slowly they took me home! Even had I not always
+lost interest here, to-day I should have leaned back and
+rested. Although the horses had done all the actual work,
+the strain of it had been largely on me. It was the
+after-effect that set in now.
+
+I thought of my wife, and of how she would have felt had
+she been able to follow the scenes in some magical mirror
+through every single vicissitude of my drive. And once
+more I saw with the eye of recent memory the horses in
+that long, endless plunge through the corner of the marsh.
+Once more I felt my muscles a-quiver with the strain of
+that last wild struggle over that last, inhuman drift.
+And slowly I made up my mind that the next time, the very
+next day, on my return trip, I was going to add another
+eleven miles to my already long drive and to take a
+different road. I knew the trail over which I had been
+coming so far was closed for the rest of the winter--there
+was no traffic there--no trail would be kept open. That
+other road of which I was thinking and which lay further
+west was the main cordwood trail to the towns in the
+south. It was out of my way, to be sure, but I felt
+convinced that I could spare my horses and even save time
+by making the detour.
+
+Being on the east side of the dam, I could not see school
+or cottage till I turned up on the correction line. But
+when at last I saw it, I felt somewhat as I had felt
+coming home from my first big trip overseas. It seemed
+a lifetime since I had started out. I seemed to be a
+different man.
+
+Here, in the timber land, the snow had not drifted to
+any extent. There were signs of the gale, but its record
+was written in fallen tree trunks, broken branches, a
+litter of twigs--not in drifts of snow. My wife would
+not surmise what I had gone through.
+
+She came out with a smile on her face when I pulled in
+on the yard. It was characteristic of her that she did
+not ask why I came so late; she accepted the fact as
+something for which there were no doubt compelling reasons.
+"I was giving our girl a bath," she said; "she cannot
+come." And then she looked wistfully at my face and at
+the horses. Silently I slipped the harness off their
+backs. I used to let them have their freedom for a while
+on reaching home. And never yet but Peter at least had
+had a kick and a caper and a roll before they sought
+their mangers. To-day they stood for a moment knock-kneed,
+without moving, then shook themselves in a weak,
+half-hearted way and went with drooping heads and weary
+limbs straight to the stable.
+
+"You had a hard trip?" asked my wife; and I replied with
+as much cheer as I could muster, "I have seen sights
+to-day that I did not expect to see before my dying day."
+And taking her arm, I looked at the westering sun and
+turned towards the house.
+
+
+
+
+FIVE
+Wind and Waves
+
+When I awoke on the morning after the last described
+arrival at "home," I thought of the angry glow in the
+east at sunrise of the day before. It had been cold again
+over night, so cold that in the small cottage, whatever
+was capable of freezing, froze to its very core. The
+frost had even penetrated the hole which in this "teacher's
+residence" made shift for a cellar, and, in spite of
+their being covered with layer upon layer of empty bags,
+had sweetened the winter's supply of potatoes.
+
+But towards morning there had been a let-up, a sudden
+rise in temperature, as we experience it so often,
+coincident with a change in the direction of the wind,
+which now blew rather briskly from the south, foreboding
+a storm.
+
+I got the horses ready at an early hour, for I was going
+to try the roundabout way at last, forty-five miles of
+it; and never before had I gone over the whole of it in
+winter. Even in summer I had done so only once, and that
+in a car, when I had accompanied the school-inspector on
+one of his trips. I wanted to make sure that I should be
+ready in time to start at ten o'clock in the morning.
+
+This new road had chiefly two features which recommended
+it to me. Firstly, about thirty-eight miles out of
+forty-five led through a fairly well settled district
+where I could hope to find a chain of short-haul trails.
+The widest gap in this series of settlements was one of
+two miles where there was wild land. The remaining seven
+miles, it is true, led across that wilderness on the east
+side of which lay Bell's farm. This piece, however, I
+knew so well that I felt sure of finding my way there by
+night or day in any reasonable kind of weather. Nor did
+I expect to find it badly drifted. And secondly, about
+twenty-nine miles from "home" I should pass within one
+mile of a town which boasted of boarding house and livery
+stable, offering thus, in case of an emergency, a convenient
+stopping place.
+
+I watched the sky rather anxiously, not so much on my
+own account as because my wife, seeing me start, would
+worry a good deal should that start be made in foul
+weather. At nine the sky began to get grey in spots.
+Shortly after a big cloud came sailing up, and I went
+out to watch it. And sure enough, it had that altogether
+loose appearance, with those wind-torn, cottony appendages
+hanging down from its darker upper body which are sure
+to bring snow. Lower away in the south--a rare thing to
+come from the south in our climate--there lay a black
+squall-cloud with a rounded outline, like a big windbag,
+resembling nothing so much as a fat boy's face with its
+cheeks blown out, when he tries to fill a football with
+the pressure from his lungs. That was an infallible sign.
+The first cloud, which was travelling fast, might blow
+over. The second, larger one was sure to bring wind
+a-plenty. But still there was hope. So long as it did
+not bring outright snow, my wife would not worry so much.
+Here where she was, the snow would not drift--there was
+altogether too much bush. She--not having been much of
+an observer of the skies before--dreaded the snowstorm
+more than the blizzard. I knew the latter was what
+portended danger.
+
+When I turned back into the house, a new thought struck
+me. I spoke to my wife, who was putting up a lunch for
+me, and proposed to take her and our little girl over to
+a neighbour's place a mile and a half west of the school.
+Those people were among the very few who had been decent
+to her, and the visit would beguile the weary Sunday
+afternoon. She agreed at once. So we all got ready; I
+brought the horses out and hooked them up, alone--no
+trouble from them this morning: they were quiet enough
+when they drank deep at the well.
+
+A few whirls of snow had come down meanwhile--not enough,
+however, as yet to show as a new layer on the older snow.
+Again a cloud had torn loose from that squall-bag on the
+horizon, and again it showed that cottony, fringy, whitish
+under layer which meant snow. I raised the top of the
+cutter and fastened the curtains.
+
+By the time we three piled in, the thin flakes were
+dancing all around again, dusting our furs with their
+thin, glittering crystals. I bandied baby-talk with the
+little girl to make things look cheerful, but there was
+anguish in the young woman's look. I saw she would like
+to ask me to stay over till Monday, but she knew that I
+considered it my duty to get back to town by night.
+
+The short drive to the neighbour's place was pleasant
+enough. There was plenty of snow on this part of the
+correction line, which farther east was bare; and it was
+packed down by abundant traffic. Then came the parting.
+I kissed wife and child; and slowly, accompanied by much
+waving of hands on the part of the little girl and a
+rather depressed looking smile on that of my wife, I
+turned on the yard and swung back to the road. The cliffs
+of black poplar boles engulfed me at once: a sheltered
+grade.
+
+But I had not yet gone very far--a mile perhaps, or a
+little over--when the trees began to bend under the impact
+of that squall. Nearly at the same moment the sun, which
+so far had been shining in an intermittent way, was
+blotted from the sky, and it turned almost dusky. For a
+long while--for more than an hour, indeed--it had seemed
+as if that black squall-cloud were lying motionless at
+the horizon--an anchored ship, bulging at its wharf. But
+then, as if its moorings had been cast off, or its sails
+unfurled, it travelled up with amazing speed. The wind
+had an easterly slant to it--a rare thing with us for a
+wind from that quarter to bring a heavy storm. The gale
+had hardly been blowing for ten or fifteen minutes, when
+the snow began to whirl down. It came in the tiniest
+possible flakes, consisting this time of short needles
+that looked like miniature spindles, strung with the
+smallest imaginable globules of ice--no six-armed crystals
+that I could find so far. Many a snowstorm begins that
+way with us. And there was even here, in the chasm of
+the road, a swing and dance to the flakes that bespoke
+the force of the wind above.
+
+My total direction--after I should have turned off the
+correction line--lay to the southeast; into the very
+teeth of the wind. I had to make it by laps though, first
+south, then east, then south again, with the exception
+of six or seven miles across the wild land west of Bell's
+corner; there, as nearly as I could hold the direction,
+I should have to strike a true line southeast.
+
+I timed my horses; I could not possibly urge them on
+to-day. They took about nine minutes to the mile, and I
+knew I should have to give them many a walk. That meant
+at best a drive of eight hours. It would be dark before
+I reached town. I did not mind that, for I knew there
+would be many a night drive ahead, and I felt sure that
+that half-mile on the southern correction line, one mile
+from town, would have been gone over on Saturday by quite
+a number of teams. The snow settles down considerably,
+too, in thirty hours, especially under the pressure of
+wind. If a trail had been made over the drift, I was
+confident my horses would find it without fail. So I
+dismissed all anxiety on my own score.
+
+But all the more did the thought of my wife worry me. If
+only I could have made her see things with my own eyes
+--but I could not. She regarded me as an invalid whose
+health was undermined by a wasting illness and who needed
+nursing and coddling on the slightest provocation. Instead
+of drawing Nature's inference that, what cannot live,
+should die, she clung to the slender thread of life that
+sometimes threatened to break--but never on these drives.
+I often told her that, if I could make my living by
+driving instead of teaching, I should feel the stronger,
+the healthier, and the better for it--my main problem
+would have been solved. But she, with a woman's instinct
+for shelter and home, cowered down before every one of
+Nature's menaces. And yet she bore up with remarkable
+courage.
+
+A mile or so before I came to the turn in my road the
+forest withdrew on both sides, yielding space to the
+fields and elbow-room for the wind to unfold its wings.
+As soon as its full force struck the cutter, the curtains
+began to emit that crackling sound which indicates to
+the sailor that he has turned his craft as far into the
+wind as he can safely do without losing speed. Little
+ripples ran through the bulging canvas. As yet I sat snug
+and sheltered within, my left shoulder turned to the
+weather, but soon I sighted dimly a curtain of trees that
+ran at right angles to my road. Behind it there stood a
+school building, and beyond that I should have to turn
+south. I gave the horses a walk. I decided to give them
+a walk of five minutes for every hour they trotted along.
+We reached the corner that way and I started them up
+again.
+
+Instantly things changed. We met the wind at an angle of
+about thirty degrees from the southeast. The air looked
+thick ahead. I moved into the left-hand corner of the
+seat, and though the full force of the wind did not strike
+me there, the whirling snow did not respect my shelter.
+It blew in slantways under the top, then described a
+curve upward, and downward again, as if it were going to
+settle on the right end of the back. But just before it
+touched the back, it turned at a sharp angle and piled
+on to my right side. A fair proportion of it reached my
+face which soon became wet and then caked over with ice.
+There was a sting to the flakes which made them rather
+disagreeable. My right eye kept closing up, and I had to
+wipe it ever so often to keep it open. The wind, too,
+for the first and only time on my drives, somehow found
+an entrance into the lower part of the cutter box, and
+though my feet were resting on the heater and my legs
+were wrapped, first in woollen and then in leather
+leggings, besides being covered with a good fur robe, my
+left side soon began to feel the cold. It may be that
+this comparative discomfort, which I had to endure for
+the better part of the day, somewhat coloured the kind
+of experience this drive became.
+
+As far as the road was concerned, I had as yet little to
+complain of. About three miles from the turn there stood
+a Lutheran church frequented by the Russian Germans that
+formed a settlement for miles around. They had made the
+trail for me on these three miles, and even for a matter
+of four or five miles south of the church, as I found
+out. It is that kind of a road which you want for long
+drives: where others who have short drives and, therefore,
+do not need to consider their horses break the crust of
+the snow and pack it down. I hoped that a goodly part of
+my day's trip would be in the nature of a chain of shorter,
+much frequented stretches; and on the whole I was not to
+be disappointed.
+
+Doubtless all my readers know how a country road that is
+covered with from two to three feet of snow will look
+when the trail is broken. There is a smooth expanse,
+mostly somewhat hardened at the surface, and there are
+two deep-cut tracks in it, each about ten to twelve inches
+wide, sharply defined, with the snow at the bottom packed
+down by the horses' feet and the runners of the respective
+conveyances. So long as you have such a trail and horses
+with road sense, you do not need to worry about your
+directions, no matter how badly it may blow. Horses that
+are used to travelling in the snow will never leave the
+trail, for they dread nothing so much as breaking in on
+the sides. This fact released my attention for other
+things.
+
+Now I thought again for a while of home, of how my wife
+would be worrying, how even the little girl would be
+infected by her nervousness--how she would ask, "Mamma,
+is Daddy in ... now?" But I did not care to follow up
+these thoughts too far. They made me feel too soft.
+
+After that I just sat there for a while and looked ahead.
+But I saw only the whirl, whirl, whirl of the snow slanting
+across my field of vision. You are closed in by it as by
+insecure and ever receding walls when you drive in a
+snowstorm. If I had met a team, I could not have seen
+it, and if my safety had depended on my discerning it in
+time to turn out of the road, my safety would not have
+been very safe indeed. But I could rely on my horses:
+they would hear the bells of any encountering conveyance
+long enough ahead to betray it to me by their behaviour.
+And should I not even notice that, they would turn out
+in time of their own accord: they had a great deal of
+road sense.
+
+Weariness overcame me. In the open the howling and
+whistling of the wind always acts on me like a soporific.
+Inside of a house it is just the reverse; I know nothing
+that will keep my nerves as much on edge and prevent me
+as certainly from sleeping as the voices at night of a
+gale around the buildings. I needed something more definite
+to look at than that prospect ahead. The snow was by this
+time piling in on the seat at my right and in the box,
+so as to exclude all drafts except from below I felt that
+as a distinct advantage.
+
+Without any conscious intention I began to peer out below
+the slanting edge of the left side-curtain and to watch
+the sharp crest-wave of snow-spray thrown by the curve
+of the runner where it cut into the freshly accumulating
+mass. It looked like the wing-wave thrown to either side
+by the bow of a power boat that cuts swiftly through
+quiet water. From it my eye began to slip over to the
+snow expanse. The road was wide, lined with brush along
+the fence to the left. The fields beyond had no very
+large open areas--windbreaks had everywhere been spared
+out when the primeval forest had first been broken into
+by the early settlers. So whatever the force of the wind
+might be, no high drift layer could form. But still the
+snow drifted. There was enough coming down from above to
+supply material even on such a narrow strip as a road
+allowance. It was the manner of this drifting that held
+my eye and my attention at last.
+
+All this is, of course, utterly trivial. I had observed
+it myself a hundred times before. I observe it again
+to-day at this very writing, in the first blizzard of
+the season. It always has a strange fascination for me;
+but maybe I need to apologize for setting it down in
+writing.
+
+The wind would send the snowflakes at a sharp angle
+downward to the older surface. There was no impact, as
+there is with rain. The flakes, of course, did not rebound.
+But they did not come to rest either, not for the most
+imperceptible fraction of time. As soon as they touched
+the white, underlying surface, they would start to scud
+along horizontally at a most amazing speed, forming with
+their previous path an obtuse angle. So long as I watched
+the single flake--which is quite a task, especially while
+driving--it seemed to be in a tremendous hurry. It rushed
+along very nearly at the speed of the wind, and that was
+considerable, say between thirty-five and forty miles an
+hour or even more. But then, when it hit the trail, the
+crack made by horses and runners, strange to say, it did
+not fall down perpendicularly, as it would have done had
+it acted there under the influence of gravity alone; but
+it started on a curved path towards the lower edge of
+the opposite wall of the crack and there, without touching
+the wall, it started back, first downward, thus making
+the turn, and then upward again, towards the upper edge
+of the east wall, and not in a straight line either, but
+in a wavy curve, rising very nearly but not quite to the
+edge; and only then would it settle down against the
+eastern wall of the track, helping to fill it in. I
+watched this with all the utmost effort of attention of
+which I was capable. I became intensely interested in my
+observations. I even made sure--as sure as anybody can
+be of anything--that the whole of this curious path lay
+in the same perpendicular plane which ran from the
+southeast to the northwest, that is to say in the direction
+of the main current of the wind. I have since confirmed
+these observations many times.
+
+I am aware of the fact that nobody--nobody whom I know,
+at least--takes the slightest interest in such things.
+People watch birds because some "Nature-Study-cranks" (I
+am one of them) urge it in the schools. Others will make
+desultory observations on "Weeds" or "Native Trees." Our
+school work in this respect seems to me to be most
+ridiculously and palpably superficial. Worst of all, most
+of it is dry as dust, and it leads nowhere. I sometimes
+fear there is something wrong with my own mentality. But
+to me it seems that the Kingdom of Heaven lies all around
+us, and that most of us simply prefer the moving-picture-
+show. I have kept weather records for whole seasons--brief
+notes on the everyday observations of mere nothings. You,
+for whom above all I am setting these things down, will
+find them among my papers one day. They would seem
+meaningless to most of my fellow men, I believe; to me
+they are absorbingly interesting reading when once in a
+great while I pick an older record up and glance it over.
+But this is digressing.
+
+Now slowly, slowly another fact came home to me. This
+unanimous, synchronous march of all the flakes coming
+down over hundreds of square miles--and I was watching
+it myself over miles upon miles of road--in spite of the
+fact that every single flake seemed to be in the greatest
+possible hurry--was, judged as a whole, nevertheless an
+exceedingly leisurely process. In one respect it reminded
+me of bees swarming; watch the single bee, and it seems
+to fly at its utmost speed; watch the swarm, and it seems
+to be merely floating along. The reason, of course, is
+entirely different. The bees wheel and circle around
+individually, the whole swarm revolves--if I remember
+right, Burroughs has well described it (as what has he
+not?). [Footnote: Yes; I looked it up. See the "Pastoral
+Bees" in "Locusts and Wild Honey."] But the snow will
+not change its direction while drifting in a wind that
+blows straight ahead. Its direction is from first to last
+the resultant of the direction of the wind and that of
+the pull of gravity, into which there enters besides only
+the ratio of the strengths of these two forces. The single
+snowflake is to the indifferent eye something infinitesimal,
+too small to take individual notice of, once it reaches
+the ground. For most of us it hardly has any separate
+existence, however it may be to more astute observers.
+We see the flakes in the mass, and we judge by results.
+Now firstly, to talk of results, the filling up of a
+hollow, unless the drifting snow is simply picked up from
+the ground where it lay ready from previous falls, proceeds
+itself rather slowly and in quite a leisurely way. But
+secondly, and this is the more important reason, the wind
+blows in waves of greater and lesser density; these
+waves--and I do not know whether this observation has
+ever been recorded though doubtless it has been made by
+better observers than I am--these waves, I say, are
+propagated in a direction opposite to that of the wind.
+They are like sound-waves sent into the teeth of the
+wind, only they travel more slowly. Anybody who has
+observed a really splashing rain on smooth ground--on a
+cement sidewalk, for instance--must have observed that
+the rebounding drops, like those that are falling, form
+streaks, because they, too, are arranged in vertical
+layers--or sheets--of greater and lesser density--or
+maybe the term "frequency" would be more appropriate;
+and these streaks travel as compared with the wind, and,
+as compared with its direction, they travel against it.
+It is this that causes the curious criss-cross pattern
+of falling and rebounding rain-streaks in heavy showers.
+Quite likely there are more competent observers who might
+analyze these phenomena better than I can do it; but if
+nobody else does, maybe I shall one day make public a
+little volume containing observations on our summer rains.
+But again I am digressing.
+
+The snow, then, hits the surface of the older layers in
+waves, no matter whether the snow is freshly falling or
+merely drifting; and it is these waves that you notice
+most distinctly. Although they travel with the wind when
+you compare their position with points on the ground--yet,
+when compared with the rushing air above, it becomes
+clear that they travel against it. The waves, I say, not
+the flakes. The single flake never stops in its career,
+except as it may be retarded by friction and other
+resistances. But the aggregation of the multitudes of
+flakes, which varies constantly in its substance, creates
+the impression as if the snow travelled very much more
+slowly than in reality it does. In other words, every
+single flake, carried on by inertia, constantly passes
+from one air wave to the next one, but the waves themselves
+remain relatively stationary. They swing along in
+undulating, comparatively slow-moving sheets which may
+simply be retarded behind the speed of the wind, but more
+probably form an actual reaction, set up by a positive
+force counteracting the wind, whatever its origin may be.
+
+When at last I had fully satisfied my mind as to the
+somewhat complicated mechanics of this thing, I settled
+back in my seat--against a cushion of snow that had
+meanwhile piled in behind my spine. If I remember right,
+I had by this time well passed the church. But for a
+while longer I looked out through the triangular opening
+between the door of the cutter and the curtain. I did
+not watch snowflakes or waves any longer, but I matured
+an impression. At last it ripened into words.
+
+Yes, the snow, as figured in the waves, CRAWLED over the
+ground. There was in the image that engraved itself on
+my memory something cruel--I could not help thinking of
+the "cruel, crawling foam" and the ruminating pedant
+Ruskin, and I laughed. "The cruel, crawling snow!" Yes,
+and in spite of Ruskin and his "Pathetic Fallacy," there
+it was! Of course, the snow is not cruel. Of course, it
+merely is propelled by something which, according to Karl
+Pearson, I do not even with a good scientific conscience
+dare to call a "force" any longer. But nevertheless, it
+made the impression of cruelty, and in that lay its
+fascination and beauty. It even reminded me of a cat
+slowly reaching out with armed claw for the "innocent"
+bird. But the cat is not cruel either--we merely call it
+so! Oh, for the juggling of words!...
+
+Suddenly my horses brought up on a farmyard. They had
+followed the last of the church-goers' trails, had not
+seen any other trail ahead and faithfully done their
+horse-duty by staying on what they considered to be the
+road.
+
+I had reached the northern limit of that two-mile stretch
+of wild land. In summer there is a distinct and good road
+here, but for the present the snow had engulfed it. When
+I had turned back to the bend of the trail, I was for
+the first time up against a small fraction of what was
+to come. No trail, and no possibility of telling the
+direction in which I was going! Fortunately I realized
+the difficulty right from the start. Before setting out,
+I looked back to the farm and took my bearings from the
+fence of the front yard which ran north-south. Then I
+tried to hold to the line thus gained as best I could.
+It was by no means an easy matter, for I had to wind my
+weary way around old and new drifts, brush and trees.
+The horses were mostly up to their knees in snow, carefully
+lifting their hindlegs to place them in the cavities
+which their forelegs made. Occasionally, much as I tried
+to avoid it, I had to make a short dash through a snow
+dam thrown up over brush that seemed to encircle me
+completely. The going, to be sure, was not so heavy as
+it had been the day before on the corner of the marsh,
+but on the other hand I could not see as far beyond the
+horses' heads. And had I been able to see, the less
+conspicuous landmarks would not have helped me since I
+did not know them. It took us about an hour to cross this
+untilled and unfenced strip. I came out on the next
+crossroad, not more than two hundred yards east of where
+I should have come out. I considered that excellent; but
+I soon was to understand that it was owing only to the
+fact that so far I had had no flying drifts to go through.
+Up to this point the snow was "crawling" only wherever
+the thicket opened up a little. What blinded my vision
+had so far been only the new, falling snow.
+
+I am sure I looked like a snowman. Whenever I shook my
+big gauntlets bare, a cloud of exceedingly fine and hard
+snow crystals would hit my face; and seeing how much I
+still had ahead, I cannot say that I liked the sensation.
+I was getting thoroughly chilled by this time. The mercury
+probably stood at somewhere between minus ten and twenty.
+The very next week I made one trip at forty below--a
+thermometer which I saw and the accuracy of which I have
+reason to doubt showed minus forty-eight degrees. Anyway,
+it was the coldest night of the winter, but I was not to
+suffer then. I remember how about five in the morning,
+when I neared the northern correction line, my lips began
+to stiffen; hard, frozen patches formed on my cheeks,
+and I had to allow the horses to rub their noses on fence
+posts or trees every now and then, to knock the big
+icicles off and to prevent them from freezing up
+altogether--but. my feet and my hands and my body kept
+warm, for there was no wind. On drives like these your
+well-being depends largely on the state of your feet and
+hands. But on this return trip I surely did suffer. Every
+now and then my fingers would turn curd-white, and I had
+to remove my gauntlets and gloves, and to thrust my hands
+under my wraps, next to my body. I also froze two toes
+rather badly. And what I remember as particularly
+disagreeable, was that somehow my scalp got chilled.
+Slowly, slowly the wind seemed to burrow its way under
+my fur-cap and into my hair. After a while it became
+impossible for me to move scalp or brows. One side of my
+face was now thickly caked over with ice--which protected,
+but also on account of its stiffness caused a minor
+discomfort. So far, however, I had managed to keep both my
+eyes at work. And for a short while I needed them just now.
+
+We were crossing a drift which had apparently not been
+broken into since it had first been piled up the previous
+week. Such drifts are dangerous because they will bear
+up for a while under the horses' weight, and then the
+hard pressed crust will break and reveal a softer core
+inside. Just that happened here, and exactly at a moment,
+too, when the drifting snow caught me with its full force
+and at its full height. It was a quarter-minute of
+stumbling, jumping, pulling one against the other--and
+then a rally, and we emerged in front of a farmyard from
+which a fairly fresh trail led south. This trail was
+filled in, it is true, for the wind here pitched the snow
+by the shovelful, but the difference in colour between
+the pure white, new snow that filled it and the older
+surface to both sides made it sufficiently distinct for
+the horses to guide them. They plodded along.
+
+Here miles upon miles of open fields lay to the southeast,
+and the snow that fell over all these fields was at once
+picked up by the wind and started its irresistible march
+to the northwest. And no longer did it crawl. Since it
+was bound upon a long-distance trip, somewhere in its
+career it would be caught in an upward sweep of the wind
+and thrown aloft, and then it would hurtle along at the
+speed of the wind, blotting everything from sight, hitting
+hard whatever it encountered, and piling in wherever it
+found a sheltered space. The height of this drifting snow
+layer varies, of course, directly and jointly (here the
+teacher makes fun of his mathematics) as the amount of
+loose snow available and as the carrying force of the
+wind. Many, many years ago I once saved the day by climbing
+on to the seat of my cutter and looking around from this
+vantage-point. I was lost and had no idea of where I was.
+There was no snowstorm going on at the time, but a recent
+snowfall was being driven along by a merciless northern
+gale. As soon as I stood erect on my seat, my head reached
+into a less dense drift layer, and I could clearly discern
+a farmhouse not more than a few hundred yards away. I
+had been on the point of accepting it as a fact that I
+was lost. Those tactics would not have done on this
+particular day, there being the snowstorm to reckon with.
+For the moment, not being lost, I was in no need of them,
+anyway. But even later the possible but doubtful advantage
+to be gained by them seemed more than offset by the great
+and certain disadvantage of having to get out of my robes
+and to expose myself to the chilling wind.
+
+This north-south road was in the future invariably to
+seem endlessly long to me. There were no very prominent
+landmarks--a school somewhere--and there was hardly any
+change in the monotony of driving. As for landmarks, I
+should mention that there was one more at least. About
+two miles from the turn into that town which I have
+mentioned I crossed a bridge, and beyond this bridge the
+trail sloped sharply up in an s-shaped curve to a level
+about twenty or twenty-five feet higher than that of the
+road along which I had been driving. The bridge had a
+rail on its west side; but the other rail had been broken
+down in some accident and had never been replaced. I
+mention this trifle because it became important in an
+incident during the last drive which I am going to
+describe.
+
+On we went. We passed the school of which I did not see
+much except the flagpole. And then we came to the crossroads
+where the trail bent west into the town. If I had known
+the road more thoroughly, I should have turned there,
+too. It would have added another two miles to my already
+overlong trip, but I invariably did it later on. Firstly,
+the horses will rest up much more completely when put
+into a stable for feeding. And secondly, there always
+radiate from a town fairly well beaten trails. It is a
+mistake to cut across from one such trail to another.
+The straight road, though much shorter, is apt to be
+entirely untravelled, and to break trail after a heavy
+snowstorm is about as hard a task as any that you can
+put your team up against. I had the road; there was no
+mistaking it; it ran along between trees and fences which
+were plainly visible; but there were ditches and brush
+buried under the snow which covered the grade to a depth
+of maybe three feet, and every bit of these drifts was
+of that treacherous character that I have described.
+
+If you look at some small drift piled up, maybe, against
+the glass pane of a storm window, you can plainly see
+how the snow, even in such a miniature pile, preserves
+the stratified appearance which is the consequence of
+its being laid down in layers of varying density. Now
+after it has been lying for some time, it will form a
+crust on top which is sometimes the effect of wind pressure
+and sometimes--under favourable conditions--of superficial
+glaciation. A similar condensation takes place at the
+bottom as the result of the work of gravity: a harder
+core will form. Between the two there is layer upon layer
+of comparatively softer snow. In these softer layers the
+differences which are due to the stratified precipitation
+still remain. And frequently they will make the going
+particularly uncertain; for a horse will break through
+in stages only. He thinks that he has reached the carrying
+stratum, gets ready to take his next step--thereby throwing
+his whole weight on two or at best three feet--and just
+when he is off his balance, there is another caving in.
+I believe it is this what makes horses so nervous when
+crossing drifts. Later on in the winter there is, of
+course, the additional complication of successive snowfalls.
+The layers from this cause are usually clearly discernible
+by differences in colour.
+
+I have never figured out just how far I went along this
+entirely unbroken road, but I believe it must have been
+for two miles. I know that my horses were pretty well
+spent by the time we hit upon another trail. It goes
+without saying that this trail, too, though it came from
+town, had not been gone over during the day and therefore
+consisted of nothing but a pair of whiter ribbons on the
+drifts; but underneath these ribbons the snow was packed.
+Hardly anybody cares to be out on a day like that, not
+even for a short drive. And though in this respect I
+differ in my tastes from other people, provided I can
+keep myself from actually getting chilled, even I began
+to feel rather forlorn, and that is saying a good deal.
+
+A few hundred yards beyond the point where we had hit
+upon this new trail which was only faintly visible, the
+horses turned eastward, on to a field. Between two posts
+the wire of the fence had been taken down, and since I
+could not see any trail leading along the road further
+south, I let my horses have their will. I knew the farm
+on which we were. It was famous all around for its
+splendid, pure-bred beef cattle herd. I had not counted
+on crossing it, but I knew that after a mile of this
+field trail I should emerge on the farmyard, and since
+I was particularly well acquainted with the trail from
+there across the wild land to Bell's corner, it suited
+me to do as my horses suggested. As a matter of fact this
+trail became--with the exception of one drive--my regular
+route for the rest of the winter. Never again was I to
+meet with the slightest mishap on this particular run.
+But to-day I was to come as near getting lost as I ever
+came during the winter, on those drives to and from the
+north.
+
+For the next ten minutes I watched the work of the wind
+on the open field. As is always the case with me, I was
+not content with recording a mere observation. I had
+watched the thing a hundred times before. "Observing"
+means to me as much finding words to express what I see
+as it means the seeing itself. Now, when a housewife
+takes a thin sheet that is lying on the bed and shakes
+it up without changing its horizontal position, the
+running waves of air caught under the cloth will throw
+it into a motion very similar to that which the wind
+imparts to the snow-sheets, only that the snow-sheets
+will run down instead of up. Under a good head of wind
+there is a vehemence in this motion that suggests anger
+and a violent disposition. The sheets of snow are "flapped"
+down. Then suddenly the direction of the wind changes
+slightly, and the sheet is no longer flapped down but
+blown up. At the line where the two motions join we have
+that edge the appearance of which suggested to me the
+comparison with "exfoliated" rock in a previous paper.
+It is for this particular stage in the process of bringing
+about that appearance that I tentatively proposed the
+term "adfoliation." "Adfoliated" edges are always to be
+found on the lee side of the sheet.
+
+Sometimes, however, the opposite process will bring about
+nearly the same result. The snow-sheet has been spread,
+and a downward sweep of violent wind will hit the surface,
+denting it, scraping away an edge of the top layer, and
+usually gripping through into lower layers; then,
+rebounding, it will lift the whole sheet up again, or
+any part of it; and, shattering it into its component
+crystals, will throw these aloft and afar to be laid down
+again further on. This is true "exfoliation." Since it
+takes a more violent burst of wind to effect this true
+exfoliation than it does to bring about the adfoliation,
+and since, further, the snow once indented, will yield
+to the depth of several layers, the true exfoliation
+edges are usually thicker than the others: and, of course,
+they are always to be found on the wind side.
+
+Both kinds of lines are wavy lines because the sheets of
+wind are undulating. In this connection I might repeat
+once more that the straight line seems to be quite unknown
+in Nature, as also is uniformity of motion. I once watched
+very carefully a ferry cable strung across the bottom of
+a mighty river, and, failing to discover any theoretical
+reason for its vibratory motion, I was thrown back upon
+proving to my own satisfaction that the motion even of
+that flowing water in the river was the motion of a pulse;
+and I still believe that my experiments were conclusive.
+Everybody, of course, is familiar with the vibrations of
+telephone wires in a breeze. That humming sound which
+they emit would indeed be hard to explain without the
+assumption of a pulsating blow. Of course, it is easy to
+prove this pulsation in air. From certain further
+observations, which I do not care to speak about at
+present, I am inclined to assume a pulsating arrangement,
+or an alternation of layers of greater and lesser density
+in all organised--that is, crystalline--matter; for
+instance, in even such an apparently uniform block as a
+lump of metallic gold or copper or iron. This arrangement,
+of course, may be disturbed by artificial means; but if
+it is, the matter seems to be in an unstable condition,
+as is proved, for instance, by the sudden, unexpected
+breaking of apparently perfectly sound steel rails. There
+seems to be a condition of matter which so far we have
+largely failed to take into account or to utilise in
+human affairs...
+
+I reached the yard, crossed it, and swung out through
+the front gate. Nowhere was anybody to be seen. The yard
+itself is sheltered by a curtain of splendid wild trees
+to the north, the east, and the south. So I had a breathing
+spell for a few minutes. I could also clearly see the
+gap in this windbreak through which I must reach the
+open. I think I mentioned that on the previous drive,
+going north, I had found the road four or five miles east
+of here very good indeed. But the reason had been that
+just this windbreak, which angles over to what I have
+been calling the twelve-mile bridge, prevented all serious
+drifting while the wind came from the north. To-day I
+was to find things different, for to the south the land
+was altogether open. The force of the wind alone was
+sufficient to pull the horses back to a walk, before we
+even had quite reached the open plain. It was a little
+after four when I crossed the gap, and I knew that I
+should have to make the greater part of what remained in
+darkness. I was about twelve miles from town, I should
+judge. The horses had not been fed. So, as soon as I saw
+how things were, I turned back into the shelter of the
+bluff to feed. I might have gone to the farm, but I was
+afraid it would cost too much time. After this I always
+went into town and fed in the stable. While the horses
+were eating and resting, I cleaned the cutter of snow
+looked after my footwarmer, and, by tramping about and
+kicking against the tree trunks, tried to get my benumbed
+circulation started again. My own lunch on examination
+proved to be frozen into one hard, solid lump. So I
+decided to go without it and to save it for my supper.
+
+At half past four we crossed the gap in the bluffs for
+the second time.
+
+Words fail me to describe or even to suggest the fury of
+the blast and of the drift into which we emerged. For a
+moment I thought the top of the cutter would be blown
+off. With the twilight that had set in the wind had
+increased to a baffling degree. The horses came as near
+as they ever came, in any weather, to turning on me and
+refusing to face the gale. And what with my blurred
+vision, the twisting and dodging about of the horses,
+and the gathering dusk, I soon did not know any longer
+where I was. There was ample opportunity to go wrong.
+Copses, single trees, and burnt stumps which dotted the
+wilderness had a knack of looming up with startling
+suddenness in front or on the side, sometimes dangerously
+close to the cutter. It was impossible to look straight
+ahead, because the ice crystals which mimicked snow cut
+right into my eyes and made my lids smart with soreness.
+Underfoot the rough ground seemed like a heaving sea.
+The horses would stumble, and the cutter would pitch over
+from one side to the other in the most alarming way. I
+saw no remedy. It was useless to try to avoid the
+obstacles--only once did I do so, and that time I had to
+back away from a high stump against which my drawbar had
+brought up. The pitching and rolling of the cutter
+repeatedly shook me out of my robes, and if, when starting
+up again from the bluff, I had felt a trifle more
+comfortable, that increment of consolation was soon lost.
+
+We wallowed about--there is only this word to suggest
+the motion. To all intents and purposes I was lost. But
+still there was one thing, provided it had not changed,
+to tell me the approximate direction--the wind. It had
+been coming from the south-southeast. So, by driving
+along very nearly into its teeth, I could, so I thought,
+not help emerging on the road to town.
+
+Repeatedly I wished I had taken the old trail. That
+fearful drift in the bush beyond the creek, I thought,
+surely had settled down somewhat in twenty-four hours.
+[Footnote: As a matter of fact I was to see it once more
+before the winter was over, and I found it settled down
+to about one third its original height. This was partly
+the result of superficial thawing. But still even then,
+shortly before the final thaw-up, it looked formidable
+enough.] I had had as much or more of unbroken trail
+to-day as on the day before. On the whole, though, I
+still believed that the four miles across the corner of
+the marsh south of the creek had been without a parallel
+in their demands on the horses' endurance. And gradually
+I came to see that after all the horses probably would
+have given out before this, under the cumulative effect
+of two days of it, had they not found things somewhat
+more endurable to-day.
+
+We wallowed along... And then we stopped. I shouted to
+the horses--nothing but a shout could have the slightest
+effect against the wind. They started to fidget and to
+dance and to turn this way and that, but they would not
+go. I wasted three or four minutes before I shook free
+of my robes and jumped out to investigate. Well, we were
+in the corner formed by two fences--caught as in a trap.
+I was dumbfounded. I did not know of any fence in these
+parts, of none where I thought I should be. And how had
+we got into it? I had not passed through any gate. There
+was, of course, no use in conjecturing. If the wind had
+not veered around completely, one of the fences must run
+north-south, the other one east-west, and we were in the
+southeast corner of some farm. Where there was a fence,
+I was likely to find a farmyard. It could not be to the
+east, so there remained three guesses. I turned back to
+the west. I skirted the fence closely, so closely that
+even in the failing light and in spite of the drifting
+snow I did not lose sight of it. Soon the going began to
+be less rough; the choppy motion of the cutter seemed to
+indicate that we were on fall-ploughed land; and not much
+later Peter gave a snort. We were apparently nearing a
+group of buildings. I heard the heavy thump of galloping
+horses, and a second later I saw a light which moved.
+
+I hailed the man; and he came over and answered my
+questions. Yes, the wind had turned somewhat; it came
+nearly from the east now (so that was what had misled
+me); I was only half a mile west of my old trail, but
+still, for all that, nearly twelve miles from town. In
+this there was good news as well as bad. I remembered
+the place now; just south of the twelve-mile bridge I
+had often caught sight of it to the west. Instead of
+crossing the wild land along its diagonal, I had, deceived
+by the changed direction of the wind, skirted its northern
+edge, holding close to the line of poplars. I thought of
+the fence: yes, the man who answered my questions was
+renting from the owner of that pure-bred Angus herd; he
+was hauling wood for him and had taken the fence on the
+west side down. I had passed between two posts without
+noticing them. He showed me the south gate and gave me
+the general direction. He even offered my horses water,
+which they drank eagerly enough. But he did not offer
+bed and stable-room for the night; nor did he open the
+gate for me, as I had hoped he would. I should have
+declined the night's accommodation, but I should have
+been grateful for a helping hand at the gate. I had to
+get out of my wraps to open it. And meanwhile I had been
+getting out and in so often, that I did no longer even
+care to clean my feet of snow; I simply pushed the heater
+aside so as to prevent it from melting.
+
+I "bundled in"--that word, borrowed from an angry lady,
+describes my mood perhaps better than anything else I
+might say. And yet, though what followed, was not exactly
+pleasure, my troubles were over for the day. The horses,
+of course, still had a weary, weary time of it, but as
+soon as we got back to our old trail--which we presently
+did--they knew the road at least. I saw that the very
+moment we reached it by the way they turned on to it and
+stepped out more briskly.
+
+From this point on we had about eleven miles to make,
+and every step of it was made at a walk. I cannot, of
+course say much about the road. There was nothing for me
+to do except as best I could to fight the wind. I got my
+tarpaulin out from under the seat and spread it over
+myself. I verily believe I nodded repeatedly. It did not
+matter. I knew that the horses would take me home, and
+since it was absolutely dark, I could not have helped it
+had they lost their way. A few times, thinking that I
+noticed an improvement in the road, I tried to speed the
+horses up; but when Dan at last, in an attempt to respond,
+went down on his knees, I gave it up. Sometimes we pitched
+and rolled again for a space, but mostly things went
+quietly enough. The wind made a curious sound, something
+between an infuriated whistle and the sibilant noise a
+man makes when he draws his breath in sharply between
+his teeth.
+
+I do not know how long we may have been going that way.
+But I remember how at last suddenly and gradually I
+realized that there was a change in our motion. Suddenly,
+I say--for the realization of the change came as a
+surprise; probably I had been nodding, and I started up.
+Gradually--for I believe it took me quite an appreciable
+time before I awoke to the fact that the horses at last
+were trotting. It was a weary, slow, jogging trot--but
+it electrified me, for I knew at once that we were on
+our very last mile. I strained my eye-sight, but I could
+see no light ahead. In fact, we were crossing the bridge
+before I saw the first light of the town.
+
+The livery stable was deserted. I had to open the doors,
+to drive in, to unhitch, to unharness, and to feed the
+horses myself. And then I went home to my cold and lonesome
+house.
+
+It was a cheerless night.
+
+
+
+
+SIX
+A Call for Speed
+
+I held the horses in at the start. Somehow they realized
+that a new kind of test was ahead. They caught the
+infection of speed from my voice, I suppose, or from my
+impatience. They had not been harnessed by the hostler
+either. When I came to the stable--it was in the forenoon,
+too, at an hour when they had never been taken out
+before--the hostler had been away hauling feed. The boys
+whom I had pressed into service had pulled the cutter
+out into the street; it was there we hitched up. Everything,
+then, had been different from the way they had been used
+to. So, when at last I clicked my tongue, they bounded
+off as if they were out for a sprint of a few miles only.
+
+I held them in and pulled them down to a trot; for of
+all days to-day was it of the utmost importance that
+neither one of them should play out. At half past twelve
+a telephone message had reached me, after having passed
+through three different channels, that my little girl
+was sick; and over the wire it had a sinister, lugubrious,
+reticent sound, as if the worst was held back. Details
+had not come through, so I was told. My wife was sending
+a call for me to come home as quickly as I possibly could;
+nothing else. It was Thursday. The Sunday before I had
+left wife and child in perfect health. But scarlatina
+and diphtheria were stalking the plains. The message had
+been such a shock to me that I had acted with automatic
+precision. I had notified the school-board and asked the
+inspector to substitute for me; and twenty minutes after
+word had reached me I crossed the bridge on the road to
+the north.
+
+The going was heavy but not too bad. Two nights ago there
+had been a rather bad snowstorm and a blow, and during
+the last night an exceedingly slight and quiet fall had
+followed it. Just now I had no eye for its beauty, though.
+
+I was bent on speed, and that meant watching the horses
+closely; they must not be allowed to follow their own
+bent. There was no way of communicating with my wife; so
+that, whatever I could do, was left entirely to my
+divination. I had picked up a few things at the drug
+store--things which had occurred to me on the spur of
+the moment as likely to be needed; but now I started a
+process of analysis and elimination. Pneumonia, diphtheria,
+scarlatina and measles--all these were among the more
+obvious possibilities. I was enough of a doctor to trust
+my ability to diagnose. I knew that my wife would in that
+respect rather rely on me than on the average country-town
+practitioner. All the greater was my responsibility.
+
+Since the horses had not been fed for their midday-meal,
+I had in any case to put in at the one-third-way town.
+It had a drug store; so there was my last chance of
+getting what might possibly be needed. I made a list of
+remedies and rehearsed it mentally till I felt sure I
+should not omit anything of which I had thought.
+
+Then I caught myself at driving the horses into a gallop.
+It was hard to hold in. I must confess that I thought
+but little of the little girl's side of it; more of my
+wife's; most of all of my own. That seems selfish. But
+ever since the little girl was born, there had been only
+one desire which filled my life. Where I had failed, she
+was to succeed. Where I had squandered my energies and
+opportunities, she was to use them to some purpose. What
+I might have done but had not done, she was to do. She
+was to redeem me. I was her natural teacher. Teaching
+her became henceforth my life-work. When I bought a book,
+I carefully considered whether it would help her one day
+or not before I spent the money. Deprived of her, I myself
+came to a definite and peremptory end. With her to continue
+my life, there was still some purpose in things, some
+justification for existence.
+
+Most serious-minded men at my age, I believe, become
+profoundly impressed with the futility of "it all." Unless
+we throw ourselves into something outside of our own
+personality, life is apt to impress us as a great mockery.
+I am afraid that at the bottom of it there lies the
+recognition of the fact that we ourselves were not worth
+while, that we did not amount to what we had thought we
+should amount to; that we did not measure up to the
+exigencies of eternities to come. Children are among the
+most effective means devised by Nature to delude us into
+living on. Modern civilization has, on the whole, deprived
+us of the ability for the enjoyment of the moment. It
+raises our expectations too high--realization is bound
+to fall short, no matter what we do. We live in an
+artificial atmosphere. So we submerge ourselves in
+business, profession, or superficial amusement. We live
+for something--do not merely live. The wage-slave lives
+for the evening's liberty, the business man for his
+wealth, the preacher for his church. I used to live for
+my school. Then a moment like the one I was living through
+arrives. Nature strips down our pretences with a relentless
+finger, and we stand, bare of disguises, as helpless
+failures. We have lost the childlike power of living
+without conscious aims. Sometimes, when the aims have
+faded already in the gathering dusk, we still go on by
+the momentum acquired. Inertia carries us over the dead
+points--till a cog breaks somewhere, and our whole
+machinery of life comes to with a jar. If no such awakening
+supervenes, since we never live in the present, we are
+always looking forward to what never comes; and so life
+slips by, unlived.
+
+If my child was taken from me, it meant that my future
+was made meaningless. I felt that I might just as well
+lie down and die.
+
+There was injustice in this, I know I was reasoning, as
+it were, in a phantom world. Actualities, outlooks,
+retrospections--my view of them had been jarred and
+distorted by an unexpected, stunning blow. For that it
+did not really matter how things actually were up north.
+I had never yet faced such possibilities; they opened up
+like an abyss which I had skirted in the dark, unknowingly.
+True, my wife was something like a child to me. I was
+old enough to be her father, older even in mind than in
+actual years. But she, too, by marrying an aging man,
+had limited her own development, as it were, by mine.
+Nor was she I, after all. My child was. The outlook
+without her was night. Such a life was not to be lived.
+
+There was the lash of a scourge in these thoughts, so
+that I became nervous, impatient, and unjust--even to
+the horses. Peter stumbled, and I came near punishing
+him with my whip. But I caught myself just before I
+yielded to the impulse. I was doing exactly what I should
+not do. If Peter stumbled, it was more my own fault than
+his. I should have watched the road more carefully instead
+of giving in to the trend of my thoughts. A stumble every
+five minutes, and over a drive of forty-five miles: that
+might mean a delay of half an hour--it might mean the
+difference between "in time" and "too late." I did not
+know what waited at the other end of the road. It was my
+business to find out, not to indulge in mere surmises
+and forebodings.
+
+So, with an effort, I forced my attention to revert to
+the things around. And Nature, with her utter lack of
+sentiment, is after all the only real soother of anguished
+nerves. With my mind in the state it was in, the drive
+would indeed have been nothing less than torture, had I
+not felt, sometimes even against my will, mostly without
+at any rate consciously yielding to it, the influence of
+that merriest of all winter sights which surrounded me.
+
+The fresh fall of snow, which had come over night, was
+exceedingly slight. It had come down softly, floatingly,
+with all the winds of the prairies hushed, every flake
+consisting of one or two large, flat crystals only, which,
+on account of the nearly saturated air, had gone on
+growing by condensation till they touched the ground.
+Such a condition of the atmosphere never holds out in a
+prolonged snowfall, may it come down ever so soft-footedly;
+the first half hour exhausts the moisture content of the
+air. After that the crystals are the ordinary, small,
+six-armed "stars" which bunch together into flakes. But
+if the snowfall is very slight, the moisture content of
+the lower air sometimes is not exhausted before it stops;
+those large crystals remain at the surface and are not
+buried out of sight by the later fall. These large,
+coarse, slablike crystals reflect as well as refract the
+light of the sun. There is not merely the sparkle and
+glitter, but also the colour play. Facing north, you see
+only glittering points of white light; but, facing the
+sun, you see every colour of the rainbow, and you see it
+with that coquettish, sudden flash which snow shares only
+with the most precious of stones.
+
+Through such a landscape covered with the thinnest possible
+sheet of the white glitter we sped. A few times, in
+heavier snow, the horses were inclined to fall into a
+walk; but a touch of the whip sent them into line again.
+I began to view the whole situation more quietly.
+Considering that we had forty-five miles to go, we were
+doing very well indeed. We made Bell's corner in forty
+minutes, and still I was saving the horses' strength.
+
+On to the wild land we turned, where the snow underfoot
+was soft and free from those hard clods that cause the
+horses' feet to stumble. I beguiled the time by watching
+the distance through the surrounding brush. Everybody,
+of course, has noticed how the open landscape seems to
+turn when you speed along. The distance seems to stand
+still, while the foreground rushes past you. The whole
+countryside seems to become a revolving, horizontal wheel
+with its hub at the horizon. It is different when you
+travel fast through half open bush, so that the eye on
+its way to the edge of the visible world looks past trees
+and shrubs. In that case there are two points which speed
+along: you yourself, and with you, engaged, as it were,
+in a race with you, the distance. You can go many miles
+before your horizon changes. But between it and yourself
+the foreground is rushed back like a ribbon. There is no
+impression of wheeling; there is no depth to that ribbon
+which moves backward and past. You are also more distinctly
+aware that it is not the objects near you which move,
+but you yourself. Only a short distance from you trees
+and objects seem rather to move with you, though more
+slowly; and faster and faster all things seem to be moving
+in the same direction with you, the farther away they
+are, till at last the utmost distance rushes along at an
+equal speed, behind all the stems of the shrubs and the
+trees, and keeps up with you.
+
+So is it truly in life. My childhood seems as near to me
+now as it was when I was twenty--nearer, I sometimes
+think; but the years of my early manhood have rushed by
+like that ribbon and are half swallowed by oblivion.
+
+This line of thought threw me back into heavier moods.
+And yet, since now I banished the hardest of all thoughts
+hard to bear, I could not help succumbing to the influence
+of Nature's merry mood. I did so even more than I liked.
+I remember that, while driving through the beautiful
+natural park that masks the approach to the one-third-way
+town from the south, I as much as reproached myself
+because I allowed Nature to interfere with my grim purpose
+of speed. Half intentionally I conjured up the vision of
+an infinitely lonesome old age for myself, and again the
+sudden palpitation in my veins nearly prompted me to send
+my horses into a gallop. But instantly I checked myself.
+Not yet, I thought. On that long stretch north, beyond
+the bridge, there I was going to drive them at their
+utmost speed. I was unstrung, I told myself; this was
+mere sentimentalism; no emotional impulses were of any
+value; careful planning only counted. So I even pulled
+the horses back to a walk. I wanted to feed them shortly
+after reaching the stable. They must not be hot, or I
+should have trouble.
+
+Then we turned into the main street of the town. In front
+of the stable I deliberately assumed the air of a man of
+leisure. The hostler came out and greeted me. I let him
+water the horses and waited, watch in hand. They got some
+hay, and five minutes after I had stopped, I poured their
+oats into the feeding boxes.
+
+Then to the drug store--it was locked. I hunted the
+druggist all over town for nearly twenty minutes. Everybody
+had seen him a short while ago; everybody knew exactly
+where he had been a minute before; but nobody could
+discover him just then. I worked myself into a veritable
+frenzy of hurry. The moisture began to break out all over
+my body. I rushed back to the livery stable to tell the
+hostler to hitch up again--and there stood the druggist,
+looking my horses over! I shall not repeat what I said.
+
+Five minutes later I had what I wanted, and after a few
+minutes more I walked my horses out of town. It had taken
+me an hour and fifty minutes to make the town, and
+thirty-five minutes to leave it behind.
+
+One piece of good news I received before leaving. While
+I was getting into my robes and the hostler hooked up,
+he told me that no fewer than twenty-two teams had that
+very morning come in with cordwood from the northern
+correction line. They had made a farm halfways to town
+by nightfall of the day before; the rest they had gone
+that very day. So there would be an unmistakable trail
+all the way, and there was no need to worry over the
+snow.
+
+I walked the horses for a while; then, when we were
+swinging round the turn to the north, on that long,
+twenty-mile grade, I speeded them up. The trail was good:
+that just about summarizes what I remember of the road.
+All details were submerged in one now, and that one was
+speed. The horses, which were in prime condition, gave
+me their best. Sometimes we went over long stretches that
+were sandy under that inch or so of new snow--with sand
+blown over the older drifts from the fields--stretches
+where under ordinary circumstances I should have walked
+my horses--at a gallop. Once or twice we crossed bad
+drifts with deep holes in them, made by horses that were
+being wintered outside and that had broken in before the
+snow had hardened down sufficiently to carry them. There,
+of course, I had to go slowly. But as soon as the trail
+was smooth again, the horses would fall back into their
+stride without being urged. They had, as I said, caught
+the infection. My yearning for speed was satisfied at last.
+
+Four sights stand out.
+
+The first is of just such bunches of horses that were
+being brought through the winter with practically no yard
+feeding at all; and consequently their healthy outdoor
+looks, and their velvety rumps were very conspicuous as
+they scattered away from the trail on our approach.
+Several times we dashed right in among them, and I had
+to shout in order to clear the road. They did not like
+to leave the firm footing on the trail, where they fed
+by pawing away the snow on both sides and baring the
+weeds. Sometimes a whole bunch of them would thunder
+along in a stampede ahead of us till they came to a
+cross-trail or to a farmyard; there we left them behind.
+Sometimes only one of them would thus try to keep in
+front, while the rest jumped off into the drifts; but,
+being separated from his mates, he would stop at last
+and ponder how to get back to them till we were right on
+him again. There was, then, no way to rejoin those left
+behind except by doing what he hated to do, by getting
+off the trail and jumping into the dreaded snow, thus
+giving us the right of way. And when, at last, he did
+so, he felt sadly hampered and stopped close to the trail,
+looking at us in a frightened and helpless sort of way
+while we dashed by.
+
+The next sight, too, impressed me with the degree to
+which snow handicaps the animal life of our plains. Not
+more than ten feet from the heads of my horses a rabbit
+started up. The horses were going at a gallop just then.
+There it jumped up, unseen by myself until it moved, ears
+high, eyes turned back, and giving a tremendous thump
+with its big hind feet before setting out on its wild
+and desperate career. We were pretty close on its heels
+and going fast. For maybe a quarter of a mile it stayed
+in one track, running straight ahead and at the top of
+its speed so that it pulled noticeably away. Every hundred
+yards or so, however, it would slow down a little, and
+its jumps, as it glanced back without turning--by merely
+taking a high, flying leap and throwing its head
+aloft--would look strangely retarded, as if it were
+jumping from a sitting posture or braking with its hind
+feet while bending its body backward. Then, seeing us
+follow at undiminished speed, it would straighten out
+again and dart away like an arrow. At the end of its
+first straight run it apparently made up its mind that
+it was time to employ somewhat different tactics in order
+to escape. So it jumped slantways across the soft, central
+cushion of the trail into the other track. Again it ran
+straight ahead for a matter of four or five hundred yards,
+slowing down three or four times to reconnoitre in its
+rear. After that it ran in a zigzag line, taking four or
+five jumps in one track, crossing over into the other
+with a gigantic leap, at an angle of not more than thirty
+degrees to its former direction; then, after another four
+or five bounds, crossing back again, and so on. About
+every tenth jump was now a high leap for scouting purposes,
+I should say. It looked breathless, frantic, and desperate.
+But it kept it up for several miles. I am firmly convinced
+that rabbits distinguish between the man with a gun and
+the one without it. This little animal probably knew that
+I had no gun. But what was it to do? It was caught on
+the road with us bearing down upon it. It knew that it
+did not stand a chance of getting even beyond reach of
+a club if it ventured out into the deep, loose snow.
+There might be dogs ahead, but it had to keep on and take
+that risk. I pitied the poor thing, but I did not stop.
+I wished for a cross-trail to appear, so it would be
+relieved of its panic; and at last there came one, too,
+which it promptly took.
+
+And as if to prove still more strikingly how helpless
+many of our wild creatures are in deep snow, the third
+sight came. We started a prairie chicken next. It had
+probably been resting in the snow to the right side of
+the trail. It began to run when the horses came close.
+And in a sudden panic as it was, it did the most foolish
+thing it possibly could do: it struck a line parallel to
+the trail. Apparently the soft snow in which it sank
+prevented it from taking to its wings. It had them lifted,
+but it did not even use them in running as most of the
+members of its family will do; it ran in little jumps or
+spurts, trying its level best to keep ahead. But the
+horses were faster. They caught up with it, passed it.
+And slowly I pulled abreast. Its efforts certainly were
+as frantic as those of the rabbit had looked. I could
+have picked it up with my hands. Its beak was open with
+the exertion--the way you see chickens walking about with
+open beaks on a swooningly hot summer day I reached for
+the whip to lower it in front of the bird and stop it
+from this unequal race. It cowered down, and we left it
+behind...
+
+We had by that time reached the narrow strip of wild land
+which separated the English settlements to the south from
+those of the Russian Germans to the north. We came to
+the church, and like everything else it rushed back to
+the rear; the school on the correction line appeared.
+
+Strangely, school was still on in that yellow building
+at the corner. I noticed a cutter outside, with a man in
+it, who apparently was waiting for his children. This is
+the fourth of the pictures that stand out in my memory.
+The man looked so forlorn. His horse, a big, hulking farm
+beast, wore a blanket under the harness. I looked at my
+watch. It was twenty-five minutes past four. Here, in
+the bush country where the pioneers carve the farms out
+of the wilderness, the time kept is often oddly at variance
+with the time of the towns. I looked back several times,
+as long as I could see the building, which was for at
+least another twenty minutes; but school did not close.
+Still the man sat there, humped over, patiently waiting.
+It is this circumstance, I believe, which fixed in my
+memory the exact hour at which I reached the correction
+line.
+
+Beyond, on the first mile of the last road east there
+was no possibility of going fast. This piece was blown
+in badly. There was, however, always a trail over this
+mile-long drift. The school, of course, had something to
+do with that. But when you drive four feet above the
+ground, with nothing but uncertain drifts on both sides
+of the trail, you want to be chary of speeding your horses
+along. One wrong step, and a horse might wallow in snow
+up to his belly, and you would lose more time than you
+could make up for in an hour's breathless career. A horse
+is afraid, too, of trotting there, and it takes a great
+deal of urging to make him do it.
+
+So we lost a little time here; but when a mile or so
+farther on we reached the bush, we made up for it. This
+last run of five or six miles along the correction line
+consisted of one single, soft, smooth bed of snow. The
+trail was cut in sharply and never drifted. Every successive
+snowfall was at once packed down by the tree-fellers,
+and whoever drove along, could give his horses the lines.
+I did so, too, and the horses ran.
+
+I relaxed. I had done what I could do. Anxiety there was
+hardly any now. A drive over more than forty miles, made
+at the greatest obtainable speed, blunts your emotional
+energies. I thought of home, to be sure, did so all the
+time; but it was with expectation now, with nothing else.
+Within half an hour I should know...
+
+Then the bush opened up. The last mile led along between
+snow-buried meadows, school and house in plain view ahead.
+There lay the cottage, as peaceful in the evening sun as
+any house can look. Smoke curled up from its chimney and
+rose in a nearly perpendicular column. I became aware of
+the colder evening air, and with the chill that crept
+over me I was again overwhelmed by the pitifully lonesome
+looks of the place.
+
+Mostly I shouted when I drew near to tell of my coming.
+To-day I silently swung up through the shrubby thicket
+in which the cottage and the stable behind it lay embedded
+and turned in to the yard. As soon as the horses stopped,
+I dropped the lines, jerked the door of the cutter back,
+and jumped to the ground.
+
+Then I stood transfixed. That very moment the door of
+the cottage opened. There stood my wife, and between her
+knee and the door-post a curly head pushed through, and
+a child's voice shouted, "Daddy, come to the house! Daddy,
+come to the house!"
+
+A turn to the better had set in sometime during the
+morning. The fever had dropped, and quickly, as children's
+illness will come, it had gone. But the message had sped
+on its way, irrevocable and, therefore, unrevoked. My
+wife, when she told me the tale, thought, well had she
+reason to smile, for had I not thus gained an additional
+holiday?
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN
+Skies and Scares
+
+We had a "soft spell" over a week end, and on Monday it
+had been followed by a fearful storm--snowstorm and
+blizzard, both coming from the southeast and lasting
+their traditional three days before they subsided. On
+Thursday, a report came in that the trail across the wild
+land west of Bell's corner was closed completely--in
+fact, would be impassable for the rest of the winter.
+This report came with the air of authority; the man who
+brought it knew what he was talking about; of that I had
+no doubt. For the time being, he said, no horses could
+possibly get through.
+
+That very day I happened to meet another man who was
+habitually driving back and forth between the two towns.
+"Why don't you go west?" he said. "You angle over anyway.
+Go west first and then straight north." And he described
+in detail the few difficulties of the road which he
+followed himself. There was no doubt, he of all men should
+certainly know which was the best road for the first
+seventeen miles. He had come in from that one-third-way
+town that morning. I knew the trails which he described
+as summer-roads, had gone over them a good many times,
+though never in winter; so, the task of finding the trail
+should not offer any difficulty. Well and good, then; I
+made up my mind to follow the advice.
+
+On Friday afternoon everything was ready as usual. I rang
+off at four o'clock and stepped into the hall. And right
+there the first thing went wrong.
+
+Never before had I been delayed in my start. But now
+there stood three men in the hall, prominent citizens of
+the town. I had handed my resignation to the school-board;
+these men came to ask me that I reconsider. The board,
+so I had heard, was going to accept my decision and let
+it go at that. According to this committee the board did
+not represent the majority of the citizens in town. They
+argued for some time against my stubbornness. At last,
+fretting under the delay, I put it bluntly. "I have
+nothing to reconsider, gentlemen. The matter does no
+longer rest with me. If, as I hear, the board is going
+to accept my resignation, that settles the affair for
+me. It must of necessity suit me or I should not have
+resigned. But you might see the board. Maybe they are
+making a mistake. In fact, I think so. That is not my
+business, however." And I went.
+
+The time was short enough in any case; this cut it shorter.
+It was five o'clock before I swung out on the western
+road. I counted on moonlight, though, the fickle luminary
+being in its first quarter. But there were clouds in the
+north and the weather was by no means settled. As for my
+lights, they were useless for driving so long as the
+ground was completely buried under its sheet of snow. On
+the snow there form no shadows by which you can recognize
+the trail in a light that comes from between the two
+tracks. So I hurried along.
+
+We had not yet made the first three miles, skirting
+meanwhile the river, when the first disaster came. I
+noticed a rather formidable drift on the road straight
+ahead. I thought I saw a trail leading up over it--I
+found later on that it was a snowshoe trail. I drove
+briskly up to its very edge; then the horses fell into
+a walk. In a gingerly kind of way we started to climb.
+And suddenly the world seemed to fall to pieces. The
+horses disappeared in the snow, the cutter settled down,
+there was a sharp snap, I fell back--the lines had broken.
+With lightning quickness I reached over the dashboard
+down to the whiffletrees and unhooked one each of the
+horses' traces. That would release the others, too, should
+they plunge. For the moment I did not know what they were
+doing. There was a cloud of dust dry snow which hid them.
+Then Peter emerged. I saw with horror that he stood on
+Dan who was lying on his side. Dan started to roll over;
+Peter slipped off to the right. That brought rebellion
+into Dan, for now the neck yoke was cruelly twisting his
+head. I saw Dan's feet emerging out of the snow, pawing
+the air: he was on his back. Everything seemed convulsed.
+Then Peter plunged and reared, pulling Dan half-ways up;
+that motion of his released the neck yoke from the pole.
+The next moment both horses were on their feet, head by
+head now, but facing each other, apparently trying to
+pull apart; but the martingales held. Then both jumped
+clear of the cutter and the pole; and they plunged out,
+to the rear, past the cutter, to solid ground.
+
+I do not remember how I got out; but after a minute or
+so I stood at their heads, holding them by the bridles.
+The knees of both horses shook, their nostrils trembled;
+Peter's eye looked as if he were going to bolt. We were
+only a hundred yards or so from a farm. A man and a boy
+came running with lanterns. I snapped the halter ropes
+into the bit rings and handed the horses over to the boy
+to be led to and fro at a walk so as to prevent a chill;
+and I went with the man to inspect the cutter. Apparently
+no damage was done beyond the snapping of the lines. The
+man, who knew me, offered to lend me another pair, which
+I promptly accepted. We pulled the cutter out backwards,
+straightened the harness, and hitched the horses up again.
+It was clear that, though they did not seem to be injured,
+their nerves were on edge.
+
+The farmer meanwhile enlightened me. I mentioned the name
+of the man who had recommended the road. Yes, the road
+was good enough from town to town. This was the only bad
+drift. Yes, my adviser had passed here the day before;
+but he had turned off the road, going down to the river
+below, which was full of holes, it is true, made by the
+ice-harvesters, but otherwise safe enough. The boy would
+go along with his lantern to guide me to the other side
+of the drift. I am afraid I thought some rather uncharitable
+things about my adviser for having omitted to caution me
+against this drift. What I minded most, was, of course,
+the delay.
+
+The drift was partly hollow, it appeared; the crust had
+thawed and frozen again; the huge mass of snow underneath
+had settled down. The crust had formed a vault, amply
+strong enough to carry a man, but not to carry horse and
+cutter.
+
+When in the dying light and by the gleam of the lantern
+we went through the dense brush, down the steep bank,
+and on to the river, the horses were every second ready
+to bolt. Peter snorted and danced, Dan laid his ears back
+on his head. But the boy gave warning at every open hole,
+and we made it safely. At last we got back to the road,
+I kept talking and purring to the horses for a while,
+and it seemed they were quieting down.
+
+It was not an auspicious beginning for a long night-drive.
+And though for a while all things seemed to be going
+about as well as I could wish, there remained a nervousness
+which, slight though it seemed while unprovoked, yet
+tinged every motion of the horses and even my own state
+of mind. Still, while we were going west, and later,
+north into the one-third-way town, the drive was one of
+the most marvellously beautiful ones that I had had during
+that winter of marvellous sights.
+
+As I have mentioned, the moon was in its first quarter
+and, therefore, during the early part of the night high
+in the sky. It was not very cold; the lower air was quiet,
+of that strange, hushed stillness which in southern
+countries is the stillness of the noon hour in
+midsummer--when Pan is frightened into a panic by the
+very quiet. It was not so, however, in the upper reaches
+of the atmosphere. It was a night of skies, of shifting,
+ever changing skies. Not for five minutes did an aspect
+last. When I looked up, after maybe having devoted my
+attention for a while to a turn in the road or to a drift,
+there was no trace left of the picture which I had seen
+last. And you could not help it, the sky would draw your
+eye. There was commotion up there--operations were
+proceeding on a very vast scale, but so silently, with
+not a whisper of wind, that I felt hushed myself.
+
+A few of the aspects have persisted in my memory, but it
+seems an impossible task to sketch them.
+
+I was driving along through open fields. The trail led
+dimly ahead. Huge masses of snow with sharp, immovable
+shadows flanked it. The horses were very wide awake. They
+cocked their ears at every one of the mounds; and sometimes
+they pressed rump against rump, as if to reassure each
+other by their mutual touch.
+
+About halfway up from the northern horizon there lay a
+belt of faintest luminosity in the atmosphere--no play
+of northern lights--just an impalpable paling of the dark
+blue sky. There were stars, too, but they were not very
+brilliant. Way down in the north, at the edge of the
+world, there lay a long, low-flung line of cloud, black,
+scarcely discernible in the light of the moon. And from
+its centre, true north, there grew out a monstrous human
+arm, reaching higher and higher, up to the zenith, blotting
+the stars behind it. It looked at first--in texture and
+rigid outline--as the stream of straw looks that flows
+from the blower of a threshing machine when you stand
+straight in its line and behind it. But, of course, it
+did not curve down. It seemed to stretch and to rise,
+growing more and more like an arm with a clumsy fist at
+its end, held unconceivably straight and unbending. This
+cloud, I have no doubt, was forming right then by
+condensation. And it stretched and lengthened till it
+obscured the moon.
+
+Just then I reached the end of my run to the west. I was
+nearing a block of dense poplar bush in which somewhere
+two farmsteads lay embedded. The road turned to the north.
+I was now exactly south of and in line with that long,
+twenty-mile trail where I had startled horses, rabbit,
+and partridge on the last described drive. I believe I
+was just twenty-five miles from the northern correction
+line. At this corner where I turned I had to devote all
+my attention to the negotiating of a few bad drifts.
+
+When I looked up again, I was driving along the bottom
+of a wide road gap formed by tall and stately poplars on
+both sides--trees which stood uncannily still. The light
+of the moon became less dim, and I raised my eyes. That
+band of cloud--for it had turned into a band now, thus
+losing its threatening aspect--had widened out and loosened
+up. It was a strip of flocculent, sheepy-looking, little
+cloudlets that suggested curliness and innocence. And
+the moon stood in between like a goodnatured shepherd in
+the stories of old.
+
+For a while I kept my eyes on the sky. The going was good
+indeed on this closed-in road. And so I watched that
+insensible, silent, and yet swift shifting of things in
+the heavens that seemed so orderly, pre-ordained, and as
+if regulated by silent signals. The clouds lost their
+sheeplike look again; they became more massive; they took
+on more substance and spine, more manliness, as it were;
+and they arranged themselves in distinct lines. Soldiers
+suggested themselves, not soldiers engaged in war, but
+soldiers drilling in times of peace, to be reviewed,
+maybe, by some great general. That central point from
+which the arm had sprung and which had been due north
+had sidled over to the northwest; the low-flung line
+along the horizon had taken on the shape of a long wedge
+pointing east; farther west it, too, looked more massive
+now--more like a rather solid wall. And all those
+soldier-clouds fell into a fan-shaped formation--into
+lines radiating from that common central point in the
+northwest. This arrangement I have for many years been
+calling "the tree." It is quite common, of course, and
+I read it with great confidence as meaning "no amount of
+rain or snow worth mentioning." "The tree" covered half
+the heavens or more, and nowhere did I see any large
+reaches of clear sky. Here and there a star would peep
+through, and the moon seemed to be quickly and quietly
+moving through the lines. Apparently he was the general
+who reviewed the army.
+
+Again there came a shifting in the scenes. It looked as
+if some unseen hands were spreading a sheet above these
+flocculent clouds--a thin and vapoury sheet that came
+from the north and gradually covered the whole roof of
+the sky. Stars and moon disappeared; but not, so far,
+the light of the moon; it merely became diffused--the
+way the light from an electric bulb becomes diffused when
+you enclose it in a frosted globe. And then, as the sheet
+of vapour above began to thicken, the light on the snow
+became dim and dimmer, till the whole of the landscape
+lay in gloom. The sheet still seemed to be coming, coming
+from the north. But no longer did it travel away to the
+south. It was as if it had brought up against an obstacle
+there, as if it were being held in place. And since there
+was more and more of it pressing up--it seemed rather to
+be pushed now--it telescoped together and threw itself
+into folds, till at last the whole sky looked like an
+enormous system of parallel clothes-lines over all of
+which one great, soft, and loose cloth were flung, so
+that fold after fold would hang down between all the
+neighbouring pairs of lines; and between two folds there
+would be a sharply converging, upward crease. It being
+night, this arrangement, common in grey daylight, would
+not have shown at all, had it not been for the moon above.
+As it was, every one of the infolds showed an increasingly
+lighter grey the higher it folded up, and like huge,
+black udders the outfolds were hanging down. This sky,
+when it persists, I have often found to be followed within
+a few days by heavy storms. To-night, however, it did
+not last. Shifting skies are never certain signs, though
+they normally indicate an unsettled condition of the
+atmosphere. I have observed them after a blizzard, too.
+
+I looked back over my shoulder, just when I emerged from
+the bush into the open fields. And there I became aware
+of a new element again. A quiet and yet very distinct
+commotion arose from the south. These cloth-clouds lifted,
+and a nearly impalpable change crept over the whole of
+the sky. A few minutes later it crystallised into a
+distinct impression. A dark grey, faintly luminous,
+inverted bowl stood overhead. Not a star was to be seen
+above, nor yet the moon. But all around the horizon there
+was a nearly clear ring, suffused with the light of the
+moon. There, where the sky is most apt to be dark and
+hazy, stars peeped out--singly and dimly only--I did not
+recognize any constellation.
+
+And then the grey bowl seemed to contract into patches.
+Again the change seemed to proceed from the south. The
+clouds seemed to lift still higher, and to shrink into
+small, light, feathery cirrus clouds, silvery on the dark
+blue sky--resembling white pencil shadings. The light of
+the moon asserted itself anew. And this metamorphosis
+also spread upward, till the moon herself looked out
+again, and it went on spreading northward till it covered
+the whole of the sky.
+
+This last change came just before I had to turn west
+again for a mile or so in order to hit a trail into town.
+I did not mean to go on straight ahead and to cut across
+those radiating road lines of which I have spoken in a
+former paper. I knew that my wife would be sitting up
+and waiting till midnight or two o'clock, and I wanted
+to make it. So I avoided all risks and gave my attention
+to the road for a while. I had to drive through a ditch
+and through a fence beyond, and to cross a field in order
+to strike that road which led from the south through the
+park into town. A certain farmstead was my landmark.
+Beyond it I had to watch out sharply if I wanted to find
+the exact spot where according to my informant the wire
+of the fence had been taken down. I found it.
+
+To cross the field proved to be the hardest task the
+horses had had so far during the night. The trail had
+been cut in deep through knee-high drifts, and it was
+filled with firmly packed, freshly blown-in snow. That
+makes a particularly bad road for fast driving. I simply
+had to take my time and to give all my attention to the
+guiding of the horses. And here I was also to become
+aware once more of the fact that my horses had not yet
+forgotten their panic in that river drift of two hours
+ago. There was a strawstack in the centre of the field;
+at least the shape of the big, white mound suggested a
+strawstack; and the trail led closely by it. Sharp shadows
+showed, and the horses, pricking their ears, began to
+dance and to sidle away from it as we passed along its
+southern edge.
+
+But we made it. By the time we reached the park that
+forms the approach to the town from the south, the skies
+had changed completely. There was now, as far as my eye
+would reach, just one vast, dark-blue, star-spangled
+expanse. And the skies twinkled and blazed down upon the
+earth with a veritable fervour. There was not one of the
+more familiar stars that did not stand out brightly, even
+the minor ones which you do not ordinarily see oftener
+than, maybe, once or twice a year--as, for instance,
+Vega's smaller companions in the constellation of the
+Lyre, or the minor points in the cluster of the Pleiades.
+
+I sometimes think that the mere fact of your being on a
+narrow bush-road, with the trees looming darkly to both
+sides, makes the stars seem brighter than they appear
+from the open fields. I have heard that you can see a
+star even in daytime from the bottom of a deep mine-pit
+if it happens to pass overhead. That would seem to make
+my impression less improbable, perhaps. I know that not
+often have the stars seemed so much alive to me as they
+did that night in the park.
+
+And then I came into the town. I stayed about forty-five
+minutes, fed the horses, had supper myself, and hitched
+up again.
+
+On leaving town I went for another mile east in the
+shelter of a fringe of bush; and this bush kept rustling
+as if a breeze had sprung up. But it was not till I turned
+north again, on the twenty-mile stretch, that I became
+conscious of a great change in the atmosphere. There was
+indeed a slight breeze, coming from the north, and it
+felt very moist. Somehow it felt homely and human, this
+breeze. There was a promise in it, as of a time, not
+too far distant, when the sap would rise again in the
+trees and when tender leaflets would begin to stir in
+delicate buds. So far, however, its more immediate promise
+probably was snow.
+
+But it did not last, either. A colder breeze sprang up.
+Between the two there was a distinct lull. And again
+there arose in the north, far away, at the very end of
+my seemingly endless road, a cloud-bank. The colder wind
+that sprang up was gusty; it came in fits and starts,
+with short lulls in between; it still had that water-laden
+feeling, but it was now what you would call "damp" rather
+than "moist"--the way you often feel winter-winds along
+the shores of great lakes or along sea-coasts. There was
+a cutting edge to it--it was "raw" And it had not been
+blowing very long before low-hanging, dark, and formless
+cloud-masses began to scud up from the north to the
+zenith. The northern lights, too, made their appearance
+again about that time. They formed an arc very far to
+the south, vaulting up behind my back, beyond the zenith.
+No streamers in them, no filtered rays and streaks--nothing
+but a blurred luminosity high above the clouds and--so
+it seemed--above the atmosphere. The northern lights have
+moods, like the clouds--moods as varied as theirs--though
+they do not display them so often nor quite so
+ostentatiously.
+
+We were nearing the bridge across the infant river. The
+road from the south slopes down to this bridge in a rather
+sudden, s-shaped curve, as perhaps the reader remembers.
+I still had the moonlight from time to time, and whenever
+one of the clouds floated in front of the crescent, I
+drove more slowly and more carefully. Now there is a
+peculiar thing about moonlight on snow. With a fairly
+well-marked trail on bare ground, in summertime, a very
+little of it will suffice to indicate the road, for there
+are enough rough spots on the best of trails to cast
+little shadows, and grass and weeds on both sides usually
+mark the beaten track off still more clearly, even though
+the road lead north. But the snow forms such an even
+expanse, and the trail on it is so featureless that these
+signs are no longer available. The light itself also is
+too characterless and too white and too nearly of the
+same quality as the light reflected by the snow to allow
+of judging distances delicately and accurately. You seem
+to see nothing but one vast whiteness all around. When
+you drive east or west, the smooth edges of the tracks
+will cast sharply defined shadows to the north, but when
+you drive north or south, even these shadows are absent,
+and so you must entirely rely on your horses to stay on
+the trail. I have often observed how easily my own judgment
+was deluded.
+
+But still I felt so absolutely sure that I should know
+when I approached the bridge that, perhaps through
+overconfidence, I was caught napping. There was another
+fact which I did not take sufficiently into account at
+the time. I have mentioned that we had had a "soft spell."
+In fact, it had been so warm for a day or two that the
+older snow had completely iced over. Now, much as I
+thought I was watching out, we were suddenly and quite
+unexpectedly right on the downward slope before I even
+realized that we were near it.
+
+As I said, on this slope the trail described a double
+curve, and it hit the bridge at an angle from the west.
+The first turn and the behaviour of the horses were what
+convinced me that I had inadvertently gone too far. If
+I had stopped the horses at the point where the slope
+began and then started them downward at a slow walk, we
+should still have reached the bridge at too great a speed;
+for the slope had offered the last big wind from the
+north a sheer brow, and it was swept clean of new snow,
+thus exposing the smooth ice underneath; the snow that
+had drifted from the south, on the other hand, had been
+thrown beyond the river, on to the lower northern bank;
+the horses skidded, and the weight of the cutter would
+have pushed them forward. As it was, they realized the
+danger themselves; for when we turned the second curve,
+both of them stiffened their legs and spread their feet
+in order to break the momentum of the cutter; but in
+spite of the heavy calks under their shoes they slipped
+on all fours, hardly able to make the bend on to the
+bridge.
+
+They had to turn nearly at right angles to their last
+direction, and the bridge seemed to be one smooth sheet
+of ice. The moon shone brightly just then; so I saw
+exactly what happened. As soon as the runners hit the
+iced-over planks, the cutter swung out sideways; the
+horses, however, slipping and recovering, managed to make
+the turn. It was a worth-while sight to see them strike
+their calks into the ice and brace themselves against
+the shock which they clearly expected when the cutter
+started to skid. The latter swung clear of the bridge--you
+will remember that the railing on the east-side was broken
+away--out into space, and came down with a fearful crash,
+but right side up, on the steep north bank of the
+river--just at the very moment when the horses reached
+the deep, loose snow beyond which at least gave them a
+secure footing. They had gone along the diagonal of the
+bridge, from the southwest corner, barely clearing the
+rail, to the northwest corner where the snow had piled
+in to a depth of from two to five feet on the sloping
+bank. If the ground where I hit the bank had been bare,
+the cutter would have splintered to pieces; as it was,
+the shock of it seemed to jar every bone in my body.
+
+It seemed rather a piece of good luck that the horses
+bolted; the lines held; they pulled me free of the drift
+on the bank and plunged out on the road. For a mile or
+two we had a pretty wild run; and this time there was no
+doubt about it, either, the horses were thoroughly
+frightened. They ran till they were exhausted, and there
+was no holding them; but since I was on a clear road, I
+did not worry very much. Nevertheless, I was rather badly
+shaken up myself; and if I had followed the good advice
+that suggested itself, I should have put in for some time
+at the very next farm which I passed. The way I see things
+now, it was anything rather than safe to go on. With
+horses in the nervous condition in which mine were I
+could not hope any longer to keep them under control
+should a further accident happen. But I had never yet
+given in when I had made up my mind to make the trip,
+and it was hard to do so for the first time.
+
+As soon as I had the horses sufficiently in hand again,
+I lighted my lantern, got out on the road, and carefully
+looked my cutter over. I found that the hardwood lining
+of both runners was broken at the curve, but the steel
+shoes were, though slightly bent, still sound. Fortunately
+the top had been down, otherwise further damage would
+have been sure to result. I saw no reason to discontinue
+the drive.
+
+Now after a while--when the nervousness incident upon
+the shock which I had received subsided--my interest in
+the shifting skies revived once more, and again I began
+to watch the clouds. The wind was squally, and the low,
+black vapour-masses overhead had coalesced into a vast
+array of very similar but yet distinct groups. There was
+still a certain amount of light from the moon, but only
+just enough to show the texture and the grouping of the
+clouds. Hardly ever had I seen, or at least consciously
+taken note of a sky that with its blackness and its massed
+multitudes of clouds looked so threatening, so sinister,
+so much like a battle-array. But way up in the northeast
+there were two large areas quite suffused with light from
+the north. They must have been thin cloud-layers in whose
+upper reaches the northern lights were playing. And these
+patches of light were like a promise, like a word of
+peace arresting the battle. Had it not been for these
+islands of light, I should have felt depressed when I
+looked back to the road.
+
+We were swinging along as before. I had rested the horses
+by a walk, and to a casual observer they would have seemed
+to be none the worse for their fling at running away.
+But on closer scrutiny they would again have revealed
+the unmistakable signs of nervous tension. Their ears
+moved jerkily on the slightest provocation. Still, the
+road was good and clear, and I had no apprehensions.
+
+Then came the sudden end of the trail. It was right in
+front of a farm yard. Clearly, the farmer had broken the
+last part of the road over which I had come. The trail
+widened out to a large, circus-shaped flat in the drifts.
+The snow had the ruffled appearance of being thoroughly
+tramped down by a herd of cattle. On both sides there
+were trees--wild trees--a-plenty. Brush lined the narrow
+road gap ahead; but the snow had piled in level with its
+tops. This had always been rather a bad spot, though the
+last time I had seen it the snow had settled down to
+about half the height of the shrubs. I stopped and
+hesitated for a moment. I knew just where the trail had
+been. It was about twenty-five feet from the fence of
+the field to the east. It was now covered under three to
+four feet of freshly drifted-in snow. The drift seemed
+to be higher towards the west, where the brush stood
+higher, too. So I decided to stay as nearly as I could
+above the old trail. There, even though we might break
+through the new snow the older drifts underneath were
+likely to be firm enough.
+
+We went ahead. The drift held, and slowly we climbed to
+its summit. It is a strange coincidence that just then
+I should have glanced up at the sky. I saw a huge, black
+cloud-mass elbowing its way, as it were, in front of
+those islands of light, the promise of peace. And so much
+was I by this time imbued with the moods of the skies
+that the disappearance of this mild glimmer sent a regret
+through my very body. And simultaneously with this thrill
+of regret there came--I remember this as distinctly as
+if it had been an hour ago--the certainty of impending
+disaster. The very next moment chaos reigned. The horses
+broke in, not badly at all; but as a consequence of their
+nervous condition they flew into a panic. I held them
+tight as they started to plunge. But there was no guiding
+them; they were bound to have things their own way
+altogether. It seemed as if they had lost their road-sense,
+too, for instead of plunging at least straight ahead,
+out on the level trail, they made, with irresistible
+bounds and without paying the slightest attention to the
+pull of the lines, towards the east. There the drift,
+not being packed by any previous traffic, went entirely
+to pieces under their feet. I had meanwhile thrown off
+my robes, determined at all costs to bring them to a
+stop, for I knew, if I allowed them to get away with me
+this time, they would be spoiled for any further drives
+of mine.
+
+Now just the very fraction of a second when I got my feet
+up against the dashboard so as to throw my whole weight
+into my pull, they reared up as if for one tremendous
+and supreme bound, and simultaneously I saw a fence post
+straight under the cutter pole. Before I quite realized
+it, the horses had already cleared the fence. I expected
+the collision, the breaking of the drawbar and the bolting
+of the horses; but just then my desperate effort in
+holding them told, and dancing and fretting they stood.
+Then, in a flash, I mentally saw and understood the whole
+situation. The runners of the cutter, still held up by
+the snow of the drift which sloped down into the field
+and which the horses had churned into slabs and clods,
+had struck the fence wire and, lifting the whole of the
+conveyance, had placed me; cutter and all, balanced for
+a moment to a nicety, on top of the post. But already we
+began to settle back.
+
+I felt that I could not delay, for a moment later the
+runners would slip off the wire and the cutter fall
+backward; that was the certain signal for the horses to
+bolt. The very paradoxicality of the situation seemed to
+give me a clue. I clicked my tongue and, holding the
+horses back with my last ounce of strength, made them
+slowly dance forward and pull me over the fence. In a
+moment I realized that I had made a mistake. A quick pull
+would have jerked me clear of the post. As it was, it
+slowly grated along the bottom of the box; then the cutter
+tilted forward, and when the runners slipped off the
+wire, the cutter with myself pitched back with a frightful
+knock against the post. The back panel of the box still
+shows the splintered tear that fence post made. The shock
+of it threw me forward, for a second I lost all purchase
+on the lines, and again the horses went off in a panic.
+It was quite dark now, for the clouds were thickening in
+the sky. While I attended to the horses, I reflected that
+probably something had broken back there in the cutter,
+but worst of all, I realized that this incident, for the
+time being at least, had completely broken my nerve. As
+soon as I had brought the horses to a stop, I turned in
+the knee-deep snow of the field and made for the fence.
+
+Half a mile ahead there gleamed a light. I had, of course,
+to stay on the field, and I drove along, slowly and
+carefully, skirting the fence and watching it as closely
+as what light there was permitted.
+
+I do not know why this incident affected me the way it
+did; but I presume that the cumulative effect of three
+mishaps, one following the other, had something to do
+with it; the same as it affected the horses. But more
+than that, I believe, it was the effect of the skies. I
+am rather subject to the influence of atmospheric
+conditions. There are not many things that I would rather
+watch. No matter what the aspect of the skies may be,
+they fascinate me. I have heard people say, "What a dull
+day!"--or, "What a sleepy day!"--and that when I was
+enjoying my own little paradise in yielding to the moods
+of cloud and sky. To this very hour I am convinced that
+the skies broke my nerve that night, that those incidents
+merely furnished them with an opportunity to get their
+work in more tellingly.
+
+Of the remainder of the drive little needs to be said.
+I found a way out of the field, back to the road, drove
+into the yard of the farm where I had seen the light,
+knocked at the house, and asked for and obtained the
+night's accommodation for myself and for my horses.
+
+At six o'clock next morning I was on the road again. Both
+I and the horses had shaken off the nightmare, and through
+a sprinkling, dusting fall of snow we made the correction
+line and finally home in the best of moods and conditions.
+
+
+
+END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Over Prairie Trails, by Frederick Philip Grove
+
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