diff options
Diffstat (limited to '76613-h/76613-h.htm')
| -rw-r--r-- | 76613-h/76613-h.htm | 5526 |
1 files changed, 5526 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/76613-h/76613-h.htm b/76613-h/76613-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..91a1648 --- /dev/null +++ b/76613-h/76613-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5526 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Nature’s Year | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + +.large {font-size: large;} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + + +.pagenum { + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} + + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} +img.w100 {width: 100%;} + + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + + +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + + +.illowp45 {width: 45%;} +.illowp90 {width: 90%;} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76613 ***</div> + + + + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pgs 1-3]</span></p> +<p class= "center">NATURE’S YEAR</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="Books_by_John_Hay"><i>Books by John Hay</i>:</h2> +</div> + + +<p class= "center">A PRIVATE HISTORY</p> +<p class= "center">THE RUN</p> +<p class= "center">NATURE’S YEAR</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span></p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i005_frontis" style="max-width: 103.875em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i005_frontis.jpg" alt="Soaring Birds"> +</figure> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<h3>JOHN HAY</h3> +<br> +<h1>NATURE’S<br> +YEAR</h1><br> + +<p class= "large center"> +<i>The Seasons of Cape Cod</i></p> +<br> +<p class= "center">ILLUSTRATED BY</p> +<p class= "center">DAVID GROSE</p> +<br> +<br> +<p class= "center"><i>1961</i></p> +<p class= "center"><i>Doubleday & Company, Inc.</i></p> +<p class= "center"><i>Garden City, New York</i></p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span></p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class= "center"><i>Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 61-8166</i></p> +<p class= "center"><i>Copyright © 1961 by John Hay</i></p> +<p class= "center"><i>All Rights Reserved</i></p> +<p class= "center"><i>Printed in the United States of America</i></p> +<p class= "center"><i>First Edition</i></p> + +</div> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pgs 7-8]</span></p> + +<p class= "center"><i>For Kristi, Susan, Kitty, Rebecca, and Charles Mark—</i></p> +<p class= "center"><i>with me on this journey through the year</i></p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span></p> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2><i>Contents</i></h2> +</div> + + +<p class="large"><i><a href="#July">July</a> 11</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">A Start on Cape Cod—An Entry—Other Lands within the “Narrow Land”</p> + +<p class="large"><i><a href="#August">August</a> 25</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">A Wild Home Land—The Musicians—A Walk with an Oven Bird—Toward the Sea</p> + +<p class="large"><i><a href="#September">September</a> 47</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">Youth on the Move—An Open Shore—Chipmunks</p> + +<p class="large"><i><a href="#October">October</a> 61</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">Where Is Home?—The Field of Learning—Colors of the Season—The Last Day in October</p> + +<p class="large"><i><a href="#November">November</a> 81</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">The Seed in the Season—The Clouds—The Inconstant Land—The Dead and the Living</p> + +<p class="large"><i><a href="#December">December</a> 97</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">An Old Place, an Old Man—Night in the Afternoon—Two Encounters</p> + +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> +<p class="large"><i><a href="#January">January</a> 113</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">Exposure—Ice on the Ponds—Contrast and Response</p> + +<p class="large"><i><a href="#February">February</a> 127</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">Secrets in the Open—The Sea in the Ground—Need—Death, Man Made</p> + +<p class="large"><i><a href="#March">March</a> 143</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">Restless Days—An Extravagance—Interpretation—Response</p> + +<p class="large"><i><a href="#April">April</a> 161</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">Deeper News—April Light—“Frightened Away”</p> + +<p class="large"><i><a href="#May">May</a> 173</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">Declarations—Facets of Expression—Travel</p> + +<p class="large"><i><a href="#June">June</a> 187</i></p> +<p class="blockquot">The Garden—Room to Spare—The Binding Rain</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pgs 11-12]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="July"><i>July</i></h2> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>A Start on Cape Cod</i></h3> +</div> + +<p>I drove to Cape Cod with travelers from everywhere. I came +to this narrow peninsula over the blistering, insatiable roads of +America with the summer crowd—in my shirt sleeves, with dark +glasses to protect my sight—conscious of almost nothing but cars, +and casualties ... our migrations have them too, like the birds +and fish.</p> + +<p>I saw an accident so terrible I could not describe it. Machines +were flung into the air and smashed. A life was tossed away, a human +being crushed like a doll. Human relationships were pathetically +severed by the brutality of chance. Then we were allowed to +go on—travelers racing down the highway through the blood-boiling +heat of the sun. We come in with speed and we go away +with speed, and we are both afraid and desirous of it. The human +run in its relentless self-absorption seems more abstracted than any +other natural force.</p> + +<p>The resident population of Cape Cod is some 80,000, and +in July the number increases to an estimated 250,000 or more, a +kind of barometric rise that is equivalent to what is happening in +the earth at large. After Labor Day, when the summer tribe has +gone back to the cities, relief comes. You can cross the road in +comparative safety. Then, something like apathy pervades the +Cape, as if its diminished society were trying to recover from an +encounter with enormous odds.</p> + +<p>Now I am off the road and back on the 110-foot hill where +we put our house—part of a ridge that runs along the glacial +moraine about a mile back from Cape Cod Bay. Dry Hill was its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> +local name, and in fact, driving a well, we found a constant source +of water only at 130 feet. This evening the yellow light runs +liquidly through the oak trees and the pitch pines around us. I +can hear the voices of some of my travel companions lifting from +the shore, calling, pleading, protesting. A snatch of radio music +comes in. A plane drones overhead. The warm air seems to breathe +hard, as if to compete with human breath.</p> + +<p>I often wonder, when I am back on the Cape again, whether +I chose the right place in which to live. It looks bare and scrubby, +lean and poor, in comparison with those lands to the north and +west of us which are far prouder in their trees. It has been burned +over, cut down, and generally abused by man, and most of its +healthy trees will never attain full growth because of the salt spray +that the winds drive over them in many storms. And the sea, for +all its surrounding presence, seems a mere backdrop a great deal +of the time, a flatness along the horizon, but it is indomitably +there. All the winds, the plants, the shores, the contours of this low +land, are influenced by it, and because of it we are carried out into +a distance in spite of ourselves. The sea mitigates our insularity.</p> + +<p>Cape Cod reefs out into the Atlantic. I saw our house when +it was new as a ship above the trees. I imagined a voyage. I recognize +that although there are some true fishermen here who sail the +year around, the rest of us are summer sailors, with no lasting +allegiance or commitment to the dangers of salt water. Yet the +Cape provides space for whoever might take the risk or pleasure +of finding it. The sea and sky are very wide. The winds blow in +from all quarters.</p> + +<p>The yellow evening lowers now, through the young, shining +leaves of the oak trees, creating new recesses of darkness. Tides of +fire hang above the water. There are snatches of bird song through +the woods: a robin; the silver pealing of a wood thrush; a towhee; a +whippoorwill, starting in on its over-and-over-again, the loud repetitious +whistling that makes the night known even as the day hangs +on. And finally faint stirrings here and there, easings down, last +faint pips and trills before the dark. I am conscious of the tenancy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> +of nature, in which there is more putting forth, more endurance, +more population, in fact, than any visitor or local man might ever +begin to realize. The great world we live in is no longer one for +hide-outs. If this makes for intolerable pressure and despair, it also +brings much more into view. Local recognition becomes a general +need, and there are more possibilities in it than we have been told. +While the human race has been approaching three billions in number, +and making ready to put its mark on the moon or hang its +hearing aids off Venus, I seem to have spent many years missing, +or unwittingly avoiding, almost as many lives and chances close +to home. How can I begin to compensate?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>An Entry</i></h3> + +<p>I had decided to start this book in July, with the idea that +this was the time embodying the full, crowded height of life—the +noise, the color, the jostle of creatures in wonderful variety, +just like that load of passengers getting off the boat at Provincetown +to see the sights. The leaves are fresh. The motions of greed +and fulfillment are in full course. Even so, I hardly knew what +riches to snatch at first. In fact, another bold, heat-heavy day, with +its crowds and its pride of accident, had the effect of making me +recoil. I was muttering: “Slow down. Slow down. Why so thick +and fast?”</p> + +<p>On my way back from walking to the mailbox just now, I +stepped off the road into the oak trees through which it runs, +dropped the newspapers and the letters, watched and waited. I sat +on the upper edge of a hollow where dappled shadows rocked +lightly between the trees, on their gray trunks, and across the +sloping ground. There was a pervading swish of leaves around me, +an occasional stirring at the tree tops. I heard the slow, dragged +caroling of a red-eyed vireo. Filtered light played on the low growth +of sarsaparilla, hazelnut, huckleberry, and bracken, or dry land +fern, with the brown floor of oak leaves in dead but useful attendance, +holding moisture, shelter, and fruition in reserve.</p> + +<p>The wood had a climate of its own, cooler, darker than the hot, +damp, wide open world of road and shore. There are climates +within climates, as there are worlds within worlds. Under the bark +of a tree the beetle inhabits a place that has special atmospheric +conditions differing from the woods outside it; and so it is with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span> +woodchuck in its hole, the ants in their hill. Any place, of whatever +size, however endowed in our scheme of things with grandeur +or insignificance, any home, may be greatly subtle in its variance.</p> + +<p>A sweet, plaintive “pee-a-wee,” and a wood peewee, a neat +little bird, black, light gray, and white like a phoebe, but with +white wing bars, flew in quickly and lightly, to perch on a gray +limb. The bird would tuck its head down, and then move it from +side to side, looking for flying insects, repeating its song every +five seconds or so. Its tail, not bobbing like a phoebe’s, twitched +very slightly when its head moved. Then, in brief action, it fluttered +out, caught an insect, and returned to its perch. These little flights +covered most of the area around its tree, almost methodically. +Once I heard the crack of its bill as it chased a fly almost down to +the ground, halfway across the wood. It alighted on a new branch—to +try out another base of action? But then another peewee flew +in, perched, and sang at a far corner of the hollow, and the first +one hurriedly flew back to its original perch as if it had been +threatened and was making sure of its position. The wood seemed +strung together by the intangible threads of their motion.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i018" style="max-width: 101.8125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i018.jpg" alt="Wood Peewee"> +</figure> + +<p>These were some of the ways by which a wood peewee follows +its destiny, employing its chosen place, attending to minutiae, to +duty and performance. This was appropriate use, measured necessity. +And as the outer earth led to this part of the wood, and it +in turn to the “micro-climates” within it, so the birds drew my +attention to the insects. I had been bitten a little, just enough +to remind me, in my enjoyment, that the place was not unnaturally +hospitable; and there were unseen spider mites that +would leave me some inflammations to remember them by. Now +I searched the space above me, aware, through the flights of the +peewee, of the flying life it pursued. Some flies hovered, rocking +lightly in the air, and then swung abruptly to one side, or dropped +away, buzzing insistently. Tiny midges, illumined by sunlight, +waggled between the trees. Moths fluttered down briefly to touch +the pale leaves they resembled.</p> + +<p>So I had been filled, as I sat there, with a sense of employment.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> +I was part of a quiet, steady, structure of action. What better +“security” could I find than that—learning, feeling, that a prodigious +energy held all component parts in place and made them +dance. In the neatness, discipline, almost detachment, of the bird’s +little game as it pursued its subsistence, I saw the working out of +natural law in numberless parallels.</p> + +<p>Perhaps there was a law to be learned for <i>me</i>. If nature is +more than just a background for human thought and endeavor, +then it requires a special commitment, a stepping down, a silent, +respectful approach. Otherwise we are liable to hear ourselves +first, and be put off.</p> + +<p>I have been given an entry, but not on my own terms.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Other Lands within the “Narrow Land”</i></h3> + +<p>To answer the question “Where am I?” seems not to be an +easy thing. “Obviously” this is the vacation land of Cape Cod +where the sun sends the bathers to the beaches and the rain drives +them back inland to buy souvenirs, where the harbors are crowded +with pleasure craft and the highways with cars—an area whose +purpose it is to attend to human distraction. Yet right in the middle +of it the action of a small bird reveals a land of its own; and +how many others are there still unmet?</p> + +<p>It is very strange to me that I have known so little about what +was around me, and that I took so long merely to make some +inquiries ... about a few names, a few alliances between living +things, just enough to give me a hint or two about the growing +we are never finished with. We live in a common realm about +which we are still half ignorant and half afraid.</p> + +<p>A little girl at the beach comes running through the shallow +waters crying: “Something touched me, and it wasn’t Daddy!”</p> + +<p>Later on, her mother wonders aloud if crabs bite. She picks +one up and when she gets her answer, screams with pain and +anger at all the “unnatural” and the unknown.</p> + +<p>Just the other side of us is not only a bewildering variety +but a space, which we have still to find, filled with an unfamiliar +silence, or random sounds, seemingly disconnected motions, sudden +flights that we witness out of the corner of an eye. When we +only assign the word “purpose” to ourselves, it is hard to understand +just what credit to give that which only stands and waits, +or moves from one place to another. I sit on the beach, moving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> +a little away from a portable radio that a man has brought to +assure himself of his continuous hold on human affairs, and look +out over the hazy surface of the water, past a long border of waves +that lollop on the sand. There is a large bird standing on a rock +not far offshore. I know it as a great black-backed gull, a scavenger, +a predator, which sometimes eats the eggs and kills the young of +other species of gulls whose nesting islands it shares, and robs +other birds of their food ... and that is about all I know, aside +from having watched its splendid, easy flight. So it stands, and +may stand, for an hour or more at a time, sea-surrounded, glaring +out with expressionless yellow eyes. Is it digesting a heavy meal? Is +it waiting for low tide so that its feeding grounds will be uncovered? +Is it greedy, savage, lazy, and bold? All such questions +are tentative. The subject is aloof.</p> + +<p>Why is there so much hanging around and waiting, so much +suspension in nature? It comes as an occasional surprise to us +timekeepers. In the gull we suspect obliviousness, and yet it may +be prompted by the demands of a space of water, light, air, +stretching before and around it, in its being, of whose motion +and sense we are scarcely aware.</p> + +<p>We see very little. I am told that the very sands we sit on +are full of minute organisms. The visible life, perhaps in the +form of a few beach fleas, represents an extremely small percentage +of the life unseen, a condition which has its parallel in the soil. +But a short walk or wade along the shore can give you proof +enough, without the need of a nip from a crab, that the tidal +grounds are covered and circulating with life, a life which in +its marine forms might seem small, simple, primitive, and unallied +with much that we landed mammals can understand.</p> + +<p>I cannot inquire much of the moon snail, blindly, slowly +moving across the sands under the tidal waters, with its large +foot feeling for a clam. It only reveals itself to me by outward +acts and signs which do not seem to have much variety. A small +hole, countersunk in a shell, is common proof that a moon snail +has drilled in and then eaten the occupant. When you see a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> +“sand collar,” which this animal forms of sand grains and eggs, +you know another side of its existence. Perhaps that is all there +is to it—eating and reproduction—the round shellfish mindlessly +carrying out its destiny. If it says anything at all to me it is only +out of undeciphered darkness, silence, and original need.</p> + +<p>A tiny, shrimplike animal hovers in the water, then darts over +my foot, only describing itself to me by its quick motion, and that +is all I know of it. It suddenly buries itself in the sandy bottom, +where reflected sunlight makes golden nets, that stretch and tremble +through the constantly flowing waters.</p> + +<p>The tide ebbs. The sun starts to evaporate the moisture +from the top surface of a big rock, part of a jetty that thrusts +out from the beach. I see a number of dark periwinkles around +and under an algae-sheathed, water-soaked branch that lies there, +a source of food for these browsers and vegetarians. They are a +common marine snail, used for human food in many parts of the +world, and usually so numerous and well known as to be taken +for granted. As the water recedes and sinks below the surface of +the jetty, the sun beats down, drying the rock. Some of the +animals stay under the shade and moisture of the stick, but more +begin to move slowly away from it. When these travelers finally +reach the edge of the rock, they start down its shaded face. Their +dark, whorled shells, though an intrinsic part of them, are hoisted, +moved around, almost in a full circle, seeming to slip loosely over +their bodies as they move down. Their black tentacles, like antennae +on insects, wave slightly on their snouts, and their slimy foot +works slowly down. Their motion is a curious combination of +probing, oozing, gliding, and at the same time, holding on, assuring +the grip, with a kind of portentous caution. Since I can easily +tip one off with my finger, I also feel a tenuousness about them, +in their relation to this realm of tidal power with its constant +displacements—but adaptability is probably a better way to think +of it. They have lasted, in their loose wandering, through a period +of time which we can only estimate. They have a special authority. +As I watch them it seems to me that no other action is of any more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span> +pressing importance during this moment in the scheme of things.</p> + +<p>These personifications of motion, these strangers, have untouched +lands of their own.</p> + +<p>That silent sea at my side is colossal, inscrutable, and holds +out no solace or advice. We only have our toes in, on a tiny +section of its summer shore. Most of us barely touch its surface. +Even so, it offers as much to a traveling human as to a snail. +It is still an old space unexplored, and if we leave the vacation +sands and set out on an afternoon’s sail, we may be following +some need of wind and water in us, some unused acquaintance.</p> + +<p>There is a well-known sand bar to steer by in the hazy +distance across Cape Cod Bay. We buck the steely waves upwind, +close hauled, half hot in the sun, half cold and shivering when +the water thrashes in over the bow of the boat. Ropes creak +slightly through the boom and the mast. The wake bubbles. Wood +strains through water. The west wind blows stiff over conflicting +waves. The time passes with a certain monotony but for the craft +of sailors and its requirements. There is nothing called for but to +sail, with no other distractions on this immediate flat world of +light, no concern ... and yet we sense some ultimate demand +that comes from this blue giant, whose depths and tricks are +still unfathomed.</p> + +<p>The flat necessity of it makes sailing its own satisfaction. It +becomes physical. We fly, we feel, we calculate, by sinew, flesh, +and bones, and through the salty blood in our veins. We may be +a degree closer to the black-backed gull.</p> + +<p>There on arrival are great white sheets of sand curving up +into a barrier of dunes back of a pebbly beach, where a beach +buggy rolls along scaring up clouds and crowds of terns, and +sanderlings in spinning flight. The jeep stops and teen-agers jump +down and out, crying stridently. We anchor the boat just off the +beach. The water is clear and cold. The dunes are sun reflectors, +clean and warm, and we find whitish-gray grasshoppers on them, +flecked like the sand.</p> + +<p>Sailing back again in late afternoon, the boat goes fast and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pgs 23-24]</span> +free before the wind over the water now turned green, a blend +of sky blue and the yellow of a falling sun. The bay lies out like +an enormous garden, patched with color and motion, the salt +waters full of latent power, ready with every kind of mood, flowing +by and over, interwrought, crossing time and circumstance. We +pass a clanging bell buoy. Evening comes on. Gold icicles on +the water are turning and softening to shades of pink and purple. +It is like striding over a wide land of peace and plenty, before +we tack into the harbor.</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pgs 25-26]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="August"><i>August</i></h2> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p> +<h3><i>A Wild Home Land</i></h3> + +<p>What I wanted to do was follow the year around, recognizing +that hours, days, months, or years are as elusive as unseen atoms +(even though, universal law being consistent, we deduce their +behavior with some success). I am not sure where July left off +and August began. Summer flies away from me, like an unknown +bird.</p> + +<p>Out into August then, while there is time. When I step +into it as if into something new, I sense thousands and thousands +of roving lives, taking their opportunities where and when they +can. The day is hot and shining. The oak leaves, no longer fresh +and young, but spotted with growths, chewed by insects, frayed +and scarred, are still tough, deeply green, harnessing the sun, +under a stir and slide of air. Two big red-tailed hawks sail high +overhead, screaming constantly. A blue jay screams, in a fair +likeness. The hawks wheel lower down along the trees, inside +the horizon. Then two little tree sparrows flit by. Insects drone, +stir, and buzz. There is a dragging, rattling sound of leaves as a +box turtle moves slowly along. A cicada chorus rises like a sudden +breeze from the southeast and then subsides. Two black and white +warblers go through the cover of the woods in a quick butterfly +flight together. The “Tock! Tock!” of a chipmunk sounds behind a +brush pile, almost like the end notes of a whippoorwill’s song.</p> + +<p>I feel a balance in space between them all: the roamers, +hawks, or gulls, in the sky’s great allowance; the spider swinging +on a thread and making its own web of a world; colorful, elusive +warblers through the trees; the chipmunk on its chosen ground.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> +These sounds, synonymous with motion, seem to hold them in +mutual alliance, round in a lightness of air that is strict and easy +in its coming and release, like the cicadas; but there is an intensity +here that makes my heart beat faster.</p> + +<p>A jay jumps down to a branch, cocks its crested head, with +those black eyes full of readiness, and brays. The spider wraps +up a captured moth with rapid skill. A robber fly waits on a leaf +with throbbing abdomen and a look of contained vitality. It is +not to be known. I see the brown, glazed wings folded back in +the sunlight, and two black, sky-light eyes on top of its head. It +seems preternaturally lean. It stays there for ten minutes and I +watch it closely, almost suspended with it in my attention. A +robber fly is a tough predator, but to call it cold, indifferent to +pain, careless of life, darkness personified? Our terms are useless. +I do not know. Then my attention is cut, as it abruptly darts +off, swinging in an arc, perhaps to catch a housefly a hundred +feet away.</p> + +<p>In the buzz, the running light, the stir of summer, I feel +as if each motion, each event had its own pressing concern. This +homeland, no longer graced with the name of wilderness, is full +of wild, unparalleled desire.</p> + +<p>Everyone knows that the month of August is loaded with +insects, although they come under the heading of “bugs,” a +menace to human society. Their fibrous trills are incessant in the +grass. Their high, shrill sounds announce the heated air. Those two +species that we hate more than most, just for their familiarity, the +flies and mosquitoes, drone around us. In the heat of noon our +senses are a little clouded. We may be mumbling something about +“the will of life be done,” and it is being done ... in great +part by the insects. The summer rage to take and to share in +taking is carried out in minute detail, from the tiniest mite in +the soil to the dragonfly.</p> + +<p>Manifest energy, using its short summer span, fills our +surroundings with its wealth of insects. It has not been long +since I was taught the modicum of knowledge needed to name a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> +few of them, to start in on a fraction of the 680,000 species +that fill the earth; but it was enough to add to my sight. I had +never realized that such foreign and incredible variety existed so +close to me.</p> + +<p>A yellow jacket tugs furiously at a dead cricket on the road, +like a hungry dog with raw meat. Delicate aphids waver on flower +stalks. A big striped cicada killer roams through the oaks. Other +wasps sip juice or nibble carrion. Dragonflies dart across both land +and water on their tangential licks of speed. The cabbage butterflies +flutter and alight with pale, yellow wings held together +like one thin sail against the sunlight. Over and under, in and out, +flying, crawling, suspended in plants and in the growth of plants, +seizing their time, waiting, indefinitely if need be, held in chrysalis +or egg, emerging, feeding, adding to death and life in death ... +what are these strangers?</p> + +<p>There are wasps as red as rubies; flies of a more scintillating, +vibrant green than emeralds; and shiny bronze or golden beetles +which are the envy of human art. If color is life, to make the +human eyes ring and the body respond, they have it, and they +also lack it. Some are so diaphanous as to belong only to the +sunlit air, and some are so dark, as though part of unseen +depths, that all color is only a dance, springing away.</p> + +<p>We use up constant, frustrated energy keeping them in check. +Their dry throbbing annoys us. They eat our crops, transmit +disease, and drive us away from our pleasures: although in the +bold stare of nature they are effective employees. We might, +slapping a mosquito, recognize their necessity as pollinators, earth +movers, or food, respect the role they play in decomposition and +growth ... then we must turn around and invent new poisons. +Insects are redoubtable enemies. We are never quite sure which +of us is in the ascendancy, just as we are never sure of what they +are.</p> + +<p>Still we can look and marvel at their complex detail: these +wings like lace or spun glass; wings cut short and wide or thin +as a hair; wings with the pattern of flowers, or veins of a leaf;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span> +bodies round and narrow, oval or oblong; strange truncated abdomens; +huge, compound eyes; legs impossibly thin and long, or +unbelievable in number and still co-ordinated; heads like alligators; +bodies like sticks; false eyes; false horns; repulsive, intangible, +unreal.</p> + +<p>Here seems to be automatic, nerve-end response in unreflecting +zeros, whose lives pass with their deaths, but still, on this +earth crust they are affiliated with everything. That which may +frighten or startle a bird, like the eye spots on a moth’s wing, +is related to a bird. Animals are adapted to their environments +and the medium in which they live and act; but so many tricks +and curiosities are embodied in the insects, so many far-fetched +connections of shape and motion, as to leave all particular +environments behind.</p> + +<p>In their variety they are in balance with our imagination. +Don’t they show as many bursts, tricks, starts, halts, and fires, +as much somnolence and surprise in their color, shape, and action +as we desire in the exercise of our consciousness? Nature is +unbiased in its attention, concentrating equal power on all forms +of its expression. When we begin to conceive of nature in terms +of creative process—continually evolving, fantastically complex, +immensely resourceful—then we recognize our counterparts wherever +the sunlight strikes across the air. We share in a communication.</p> + +<p>Last month I noticed a group of small butterflies on the +mauve flower of a milkweed. They were, as I found out, hairstreak +butterflies, with a dusky, grayish-lavender coloration, and little +orange patches on the lower edge of their wings. When the wings +are folded, their hind tips have tails resembling antennae, which +may have the effect of a protective device to confuse a predator. +After I frightened them off, they returned in a little while to rest +on the very same flower. Their color was not the same as a +milkweed’s but in tone and value it was close enough so as to +hide them from view at a fairly short distance. The flower and the +animal were united in a sensitive embodiment of contrast.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span></p> + +<p>A few days later I noticed that the flower was gradually +paling. Then, on the twenty-fifth of July, the last blossoms dropped +off, and the butterflies were gone. An obvious affinity, and a +mystery at the same time, of two forms of life in a unique response +to nature’s web of motion.</p> + +<p>It took me a long time to become aware of just how much +these affiliations and responses made up the life of earth, how much +of an elaboration they amounted to. In the past also, when I +saw a robin hop across the lawn, a frog jump into the water, or +a tree swallow glide through the air, I reacted with pleasure +or disregard—by chance, in other words—without realizing just +how big a role chance played in their appearance. In the same +sense the obvious upheavals of a season—drought, or heavy rains—meant +little to me beyond their immediate, local effect. After +a while I began to be aware of all the circumstances that must +surround me. One dull day I realized their unlimited context, and +thought how slow and agonizing my own changes were in +comparison.</p> + +<p>Expected things happen. But the variations are just as compelling +as the stable order from which they come. This June, +for example, was cold and wet, and the rains continued into the +summer months. The hatching of insects was delayed and the +development of some plants and grasses. Many fledgling tree +swallows were found dead in their nests, a disaster which seems +to have been caused directly by the weather. Aquatic insects are +a favorite food of the tree swallows, but in cold, wet weather these +insects tend to remain in immature stages and do not develop into +flying adults. (Swallows chase after their food in flight.) And, in +fact, when insects are few, the tree swallows seem to be discouraged +from looking for them. If such conditions keep up, they may leave +a nesting area to look for food elsewhere.</p> + +<p>Our local run of alewives, those inland herring that migrate +from salt water every spring to spawn in fresh-water ponds, seemed +to be a little later than usual; and the young, hatched from the +eggs they left behind them, started down to salt water past<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span> +schedule in July. If the ponds are colder in temperature than is +normal, it probably affects the young alewives’ size and chance of +survival. They grow larger and healthier in warm-water ponds +because they are started sooner and have a richer supply of food. +A smaller, slightly weaker fish is more easily caught by a predator.</p> + +<p>Because this spring was somewhat off the average mark (and +in a sense there is no average), many of the relationships between +plants and animals dependent on it were altered. Some of the +effects, in animal population or health, might be felt for a long +time to come.</p> + +<p>Although ice, fire, storms, hurricanes, unusually wet or dry +seasons, and now the hand of man, may alter the local earth almost +beyond recognition and bring its inhabitants to disaster, natural +occurrence has an indomitable will. Its changes outlast all others. +Uncounted lives are sent ahead, balanced always, but with relationships +through time and space that are never exactly the same. +A leaf drops earlier. Frogs start to shed their skins, or migrate +locally at a time that depends on new climactic conditions. Why +have I seen so few mole runs this year? Last year there were +comparatively few baltimore orioles. This year in orange pride +they were leaf calling and diving everywhere. I have seen very few +phoebes in our vicinity of late, and scarcely any bluebirds. There +may be more mosquitoes this summer and fewer grasshoppers +than usual. I can inquire, for each species, and find out what I +want to know, if there is logic, and cause and effect to its behavior; +but all are related in a realm that is wider than I ever imagined.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>The Musicians</i></h3> + +<p>Many Augusts, singing loud, have passed me by without +my giving them a shred of attention. What made the sound? The +air, or the trees, the month itself, embodied in unknown voices? +I don’t think I knew much more than that, although I suppose +I was aware of what a cricket sounded like. Perhaps it is time to +find out more. I know now, as I did then, that at night when +the air is soft and cool, a multitude of separate actions having +died down, and when the earth is relieved of a fire taken to the +stars, a plainsong goes up and the night takes substance in +pulsing sound.</p> + +<p>When I listen, I see that in detail the sounding of an August +night is not melodious. It is full of clicks, dry rasps, ratchets, +reedy, resinous scrapings, and except for countless populations +playing on one string, disassociated. There is only one phrase +for each species of insect. The over-all sound is occasionally +reminiscent of telegraph wires, mechanically shrill and tense; but +in the context of the night, speckled with stars, it becomes as +wide, warm, and luminous as any symphony.</p> + +<p>Having heard of using a flashlight to search for these musicians, +I go out, sometime after eight-thirty, and start training +it on sounds, with complete lack of success at first. Either the +sound stops, or the animal that makes it is invisible to me. A +bat flies overhead, chasing insects. It is known for accuracy, having +ears with a receptiveness like radar, tuned to the finest measurements +of space, but its flight seems frantic. It beats back and +forth, around, over and under. Suddenly it is very close, perhaps<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> +a few inches over my head. I duck at the leathery, fluttering +sound, something like the rippling folds of a taut chute, despite +my knowing that only in lingering myth and hearsay do bats +catch in human hair. Then it is off again, with its violent, erratic +flight.</p> + +<p>The darkness takes deeper hold. It is full of the loud throbbing, +the insistently high-pitched rasping of the insects, with an +occasional tree frog sounding a contrapuntal “Ek-ek.” Playing my +flashlight under the trees shows up a spider web in beautiful detail. +The silk strands are clear against the black night, their swoops and +whorls all held together by long perfected execution, with the +tiny engineer way up on his round span, his semblance of the +globe in its vast waters.</p> + +<p>In high suspension, in the larger silences of the sky, all +rings well in consonance, and the pulse of living instruments +is with the massed stars that run out and dive away above all +heads, and with the ground, my heart and ear, my blood and +bone.</p> + +<p>A persistent light racheting makes me concentrate on one +bush, where I eventually find a green, well-camouflaged, long-horned +grasshopper with orange eyes—a male, since it has no +ovipositor on its abdomen. The females are silent, with the honored +role of being courted and invited.</p> + +<p>The flashlight seems to have no effect on him. The front +wings are slightly apart, raised up a little, and vibrating ... a kind +of fast, dry shuddering. The sound is a light “zzz,” ending with a +rapid “tic-tic-tic.” This grasshopper is a waxy green. His antennae, +almost twice as long as his body, go up in sweeping curves, +and wave, sometimes both together in a semicircle, sometimes +singly in both directions, as he stops his playing, and begins to +move slightly down a twig. Then I notice a female moving in +his direction. Had he increased the tempo of his playing when she +came near? Did he sense success?</p> + +<p>Still harder to spot—almost impossible by day, and difficult +enough at night—are the snowy tree crickets, but they are numerous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> +in this low-treed, shrubby area. Where the long-horned grasshoppers +sound at intervals, the combined chorus of snowy tree +crickets pulses on. They are slender little creatures, a very pale, +almost immaterial, green, but their fragile, transparent, membranous +wings, raised higher than those of a long-horned when it +plays, make a cry that rises up like peepers in the spring. This +is the famous “temperature cricket” whose song speeds up or +slows down in response to heat or cold. According to the field +manuals, you can divide the number of notes per minute by four +and then add forty, which will give you the approximate temperature +in degrees Fahrenheit.</p> + +<p>So this great scraping and fiddling perpetuates a dance. The +first frost will end the lives of most of these musicians. August’s +high sounding means a coming end, but all of its connections +and associations join in sending on the year. This is what the +month means, as well as the hum of tourists driving down the +Cape and back again. Listen to the chosen string.</p> + +<p>There is a miraculous sensitivity in the cricket that slows +down when the temperature begins to cool at night, or even +when a cloud passes over the sun by day. The male calls to +attract the female, though it is apparently not known whether +her arrival may not be the result of happenstance. His playing +is as much a part of general expression as individual intention +or reaction. In any case the eggs are laid, which will stay dormant +throughout the winter, to hatch in the spring. The organic cycle +continues, making an announcement, sending up a music whose +players are so attuned to light and dark, sunlit or clouded skies, +warm air or cold, day or night, that their existence depends upon +the slightest change.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>A Walk with an Oven Bird</i></h3> + +<p>The broader aspects of the weather are more apparent to +my kind of receptiveness, which is less mortally tuned to degrees +than a grasshopper. There is still an abnormal amount of rain +as the month goes on. Their sun blotted out, many tourists +have left the Cape earlier than usual. I notice that the days +are shorter and cooler. The prevailing wind, southwest in fair +weather, southeast before a storm, blows gently, or in gusts when +it rains. A big mud puddle on our wood road has collected a +whole population of green frogs. At night there is great frog +carnage on the wet highways. I have noticed in the past that this +is their season for traveling, whether it is wet or dry, but heavy +rains encourage their migration, sending them far and wide. There +is a multitude of garden toads around the house. One night +it cools down to about 50 degrees and in the dawn hour the +leaves are bluish gray with dew. A hurricane, spawned in the +Bahamas, is two hundred miles east of Florida, but beginning +to turn slightly to the north, away from the eastern seaboard. +High seas are predicted in three or four days’ time.</p> + +<p>I feel as though we were hesitating on the brink of new +necessities, swinging between one resolution and another not yet +found. The season is beginning to join the winds. Some migrant +birds have already flown away. Other birds fly through the leaf +canopy feeding seriously and silently. A warbler, a female yellow-throat, +skips lightly along a patch of briar and vines. A brilliant +oriole jumps into a patch of oaks and moves on down sunlight-yellow +ramps of leaves, and a black-billed cuckoo, a large brown<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> +bird with a handsome, long tail, stops in on a branch with a +look of eagerness and seeking, then flashes off again. There is a +change in their action and timing. The adults are long since +through with the claiming and proclaiming that rang in the woods +before they nested. The steady, constant business of feeding their +young is about over for most species, though I see a flicker, or +yellowhammer, come through the trees in diving, shooting flight, +with a young one following loudly after it. There are many +fledglings, but on the whole the birds, many of them starting +to molt, are silent compared with spring and early summer.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i036" style="max-width: 163.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i036.jpg" alt="Bird"> +</figure> + +<p>This wood road of ours, where the birds fly through, is used +every school-day morning by our children on their way to catch +the bus. It is a kind of open line through change. It rides the +side of a low ridge, and glacial hollows dip away from it. It once +served as a wagon road for woodcutters, and is still shaded by +the insistent, if none too “sturdy,” oaks, which come back again +and again, no matter how many times they are cut. They make +the road a green tunnel in summer, and their gray branches with +knotted fingers rattle and sway above it in the wintertime. It +receives many travelers by land and some by sea. (A few Januaries +ago I found a dovekie there, a little sea bird with the black back, +short black wings, and white breast of a penguin. It is one of the +members of the auk family, breeding in Greenland and migrating +down from the ice-locked waters of the Arctic Circle to feed in +the Atlantic during the winter. Its short wings are meant for +swimming, diving, and flying in and out of waves, so they are +not very effective when blown inland by a storm. The dovekie I +found was unable to take off, and in any case weak and hungry. +So after a futile effort to feed it, I took it back to Cape Cod +Bay, where it started to fly along the surface of the water, though +weakly, in short, floundering dashes.)</p> + +<p>With a half mile of concentrated road it is easier to take +cognizance of friends and strangers than when you are trying +to make California on the transcontinental highway. You can see +how it is used by skunk, squirrel, deer, and the hunters of deer.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> +I walk it in expectation. One of the animals that constantly +move across the road and live in the woods beside it is that +bird which looks like a tiny thrush but is classified as a wood +warbler, the oven bird. Its “Teacher! Teacher!” rings out in spring +and early summer. It was named after its leaf-hidden nest, made +on the ground, with a hole going in at the side like a Dutch +oven.</p> + +<p>Here is an oven bird, tail bobbing slightly, perched on the +lower branches of a red maple beside the road ... a little +more out in the open than usual, less concentrated on its earlier +nesting territory. It flutters down to the road. This is one of +those birds that have the distinction, if that is what it is, of being +able to walk, rather than hop or run. So it starts walking, through +the dappled shadows on the road, as I keep a respectable distance +behind it. Or perhaps I walk and it attends to business. The +oven bird goes back and forth, pecking insects, with a quick +meandering, interrupted by an occasional little jump at the leaves +of an overhanging shrub or plant. This is not a straight walker, +no Indian with a destination, but its body moves constantly from +left to right in purposeful flexibility.</p> + +<p>“How well you see!” I think to myself. I can see nothing +at my level but a tiny yellow caterpillar swinging through the air +on a silken thread. But it is clear to me that the oven bird +works the road with clear results. We keep going. We come to a +stretch in full sunlight where the trees stand off to the side, and +my companion keeps to the shadows with determination, pecking +away at insects along the few inches of shaded bank to one side. +A flicker bursts through, shouting: “Tawicka! Tawicka!” and the +oven bird flies ahead a few feet and then goes on walking.</p> + +<p>We have now traveled about an eighth of a mile. Under +a heavy weave of leaves the bird moves to left and right over the +road, pecking for insects, working, progressing. Olive brown; +capped with an orange stripe; with speckled breast and pale +pink legs ... a shadow bird, a leaf litter bird; and now a fellow +walker, that has made more use of this road than any of us<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> +and our omnivorous machines. At a sharp bend in the road where +it leads up to the house, the oven bird finally flies off and disappears +in the trees, in a southerly direction by coincidence. Our walk is +over, but the flight of birds will leave all cars behind.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Toward the Sea</i></h3> + +<p>There is “man” and there is “nature.” But do we really +know where the climate of existence starts, where its storms are +brewed? All weather is unexpected. Another variation in the known +routine, another change in use, and we may move, reluctantly, +into some new awareness while primal energy bowls on with +infinite capacity.</p> + +<p>Among the oaks the leaves on the top branches sway and +rustle, while those on the wood floor scarcely lift at all, but there +is a constant sound of air among them, and it might be possible +to hear a ferment in the ground. Small suns blaze through round +leaf lobes. Standing on a slope toward the north from which the +glaciers came, and the auroras crackle, shimmer, and flow, and +the cold from Canada will have its way, I have a feeling of portentous +motion, of being sledded out on a speeding globe.</p> + +<p>The hurricane veered off. There was rain, but no great winds. +The mud puddle in the road dried up after several sunny days, +and the green frogs left; but when it filled up again they had not +returned. The frogs have a different motion in them and will not +come back to suit my metronome.</p> + +<p>Many vacationers are going home. We can almost walk across +the highway without fear. There is still the press, the fevered demands +of summer in the air, but something else is going to have +its way.</p> + +<p>A changing light, a shifting wind, calls me out to meet more of +this earth than I know. Habit stifles me. My round needs to be +recharged. So I take a walk, like the oven bird, though not to gather<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span> +any more food than my senses and my spirit need. There is a lobe +of land a mile away, through the oaks, over the shore road, and +across to sea level, called the Crow Pasture. It is bordered by a +tidal inlet and marsh on one side and the sands of Cape Cod Bay +on the other. It is covered with low, wind-topped growth, blueberry +bushes, beach plums, stands of pitch pine, and stunted oak; +and it is flushed with moving light and shadow, hovered over and +hunted by great clouds. The Crow Pasture is without houses so +far, and it is a bare recipient of high events, the range of storms, +the distances that come in and declare themselves by wind or flight, +the summer vaunting of the sun, the cold appeal of the moon. Narrow, +rutted dirt roads lead into it and take you on.</p> + +<p>This land, once used for pasturing cows, now domesticated +only by sparrows, robins, and chickadees, has final summer abundance +in it. Locusts bound from dry land grasses with rattling +wings. Green head flies buzz in savage haste. A yellow and black +goldfinch flies over, bouncing along.</p> + +<p>There are ebony-beaded blackberries on the ground, and a few +dark berries left on high bush blueberries. A stiff wind from the +south shakes up the thickets and the wild indigo, a compact, light +bouquet of a plant with cloverlike leaves and yellow pea flowers. +Pointed cedars stir and writhe. The air rushes through the bayberries +with their glossy leaves, and it sweeps down across the +marshland ahead through purple and yellow grasses that plume +and sway, off to the white sands beyond.</p> + +<p>Open land, wild air, lead ahead until salt water appears, the +blue barrens that curve beyond sight. Stiff, stunted bushes are +backed up at the edge of the marsh, hideaways for sparrows, then +marsh rosemary, or sea lavender, shows in occasional clumps +through the eddying stalks of grass. One area is thick with mosquitoes, +sounding a low melody of harassment. In the bed of a +ditch, dotted with holes made by fiddler crabs, are the tracks of +a skunk. All that lives here permanently, not foraging like a skunk, +or migratory like most of the birds, has to stand strong light, +harsh winds, and salt spray, that dry, abrase, and burn.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p> + +<p>The marsh merges with the sand, back of low dunes covered +with stiff, sharp-tipped beach grass and seaside goldenrod, thick +stalked, with broad soft leaves, a succulent, related to cacti, made +to hold and retain moisture. The beach shelves down from the +dunes and meets the exposed tidal ground, ledges of dark peat +which is pitted like volcanic rock, and very slippery to walk on. +Beyond it at low tide the sand flats ease out, stretch and flow, +with aisles and purple fingers of water rippling, writhing, and +probing across them.</p> + +<p>Further along the shore a group of gray and white herring +gulls stand into the wind. Hiding in a clump of peat-rooted grasses +a few hundred feet from them is a gull in its first year. One of its +wings is broken, with the primary feathers dragging on the ground. +The bird stalks slowly along, tripping a little, isolated, a picture of +shame and loss. When I approach, it moves reluctantly toward the +other gulls, then stands into the wind slightly behind and to the +side of them. Suddenly the flock takes to the air, and the young +gull stays down, crippled, unable to forage for its food, and ultimately +doomed. There are various kinds of mutual assistance in +nature. Some species, like Canada geese, may help, or try to help +a fallen mate; but there are no hospitals. I am told that a sick bee +rolls out of a hive if it can, or is pushed out by the others. Animals +must be deeply aware of death, and they die alone, perhaps with +an instinctive understanding that they have to pay the price of a +health which nature ultimately requires.</p> + +<p>The landscape slopes on and out from life to life, swept by +the air, an earth, sand, water, run of interchanging light. Clouds +of white terns are hovering and diving over the waters of the bay. +Suddenly a dark-plumaged marsh hawk flies into the midst of +them. They harry it in the blue, heat-clouded sky. The hawk circles, +dodges, flaps on, while they dive on it continually. It twists +and rises higher and higher trying to shake them off, until it plummets +down and flies low over the surface of the water, making a +great round turn back to the shore.</p> + +<p>The crippled gull stands and waits with hurt patience. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> +hawk flies back to the marsh behind the beach and begins to beat +slowly over it, covering the ground methodically, hunting the unwary +shrew, mouse, or sparrow. The terns dive for fish. The tide +waters begin to slip in over the sand. Measure for measure. Necessity +keeps its component parts in order, as the light changes, and +the south wind keeps blowing.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Down the shore to the east is an inlet called Paine’s Creek, +which receives the inland migration of alewives in the spring, and +takes out their young, hatched in early spring and summer, as they +swim to salt water. The alewife fry, two or three inches long, attract +gulls and terns. During the month there has been a migratory +colony of terns in the vicinity, principally common terns, both +adult and immature.</p> + +<p>In the general Cape Cod area there are two principal nesting +places every year, at Tern Island, Chatham, and in Plymouth. +During the season—the birds arrive about the end of April—both +terneries have populations which number in the thousands. There +are in addition a few small islands off the Cape and a few comparatively +isolated areas where smaller groups nest successfully, although +terns are sociable birds, and breed best in large numbers. +In August, beginning with the arctic tern, which, I am told, is the +earliest to migrate, the birds begin to leave their nesting sites in +groups or small companies on their way south. They spend the +winter anywhere from Florida to the edge of the Antarctic ice.</p> + +<p>So the Paine’s Creek area, with its sand eels and alewife fry, +represents a way station, a stopping-off place, one leg of a migratory +journey ... the first for birds hatched during the late spring +or early summer. Terns reach flying age in a month, but their parents +go on feeding them for some time. They are slow to mature +and do not breed until they are about three years old.</p> + +<p>The young are not much smaller than their parents, and without +a close watch it might be hard to tell the difference at first; but +their heads are gray, as compared with the jet-black napes and +crowns on the adults. They still spend most of the time waiting to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> +be fed. Some make inexperienced, practice flights over the water, +plunging in and out in an almost kittenish, hit-or-miss way, while +their parents dive like arrows, pinpointing the surface with little +flashes of spray, from which they rise up with silver quarries in their +sharp bills. But as many more of the young terns stand along the +beach or on shoals at the mouth of the inlet, crying, begging to be +fed.</p> + +<p>Terns are intensely active and brilliant in performance. They +are comparatively small birds, but they are capable of migrating +over thousands of miles of ocean waters, and their long, angled +wings beat deep, low, and strong. They are all black and white +sharpness, flashing as bright as the gold circlets of water around +sharp grasses at the mouth of the inlet. They swing. They dart. +They winnow the air. Their lovely white shuttlecock tails spread +out and settle as they turn against the wind, crying: “Kierr! Kierr!”</p> + +<p>Two juveniles wait on a shoal, constantly calling in a high-pitched +tremolo, intensified when a parent bird flies over them. +The trim expert adult flies past, then swings back down the shore +and circles back, finally coming in to land between them. It has +no food in its bill, but stands there for a minute or so, and then begins +to move away from them, as they crouch and strut after it in +an almost elderly way, crying their protests. It signals departure +with a slight lift of its wings and in a few seconds flies up, the +thwarted young ones taking off behind it.</p> + +<p>In this behavior I see the play of learning, the many repetitions +that precede a balanced natural art. Other adults swing in +with sand eels or fish in their bills and hover, or circle back, avoiding +rivals, then drop down next to a twittering, beak-gaping child, +giving it the whole fish, or holding on to it and flying away, which +has the effect of teasing the young one to follow after. In this way +the fledgling terns, some still crouching down in a submissive +manner as they did in their nests, learn to fly up, to chase, dive, +and dodge, to breast the air, and beat their wings for all the long +voyages their lives may hold.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pgs 45-46]</span></p> + +<p>In a few weeks most of them will suddenly flock away and +migrate. In the meantime they practice the instinctive measures of +growth, training in the insistent, excitable ways of a tern, for air +and open waters over half the earth.</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pgs 47-48]</span></p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="September"><i>September</i></h2> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></p> + +<h3><i>Youth on the Move</i></h3> + +<p>The tourists and the summer residents begin to leave the +Cape. This is a visible exodus, with many more cars going out than +coming in. The people in charge of commerce count our summer +gains and our losses. Those of us who are year-round residents can +admit it in public, now that the representatives of the humming, +spreading urban world have departed. Here now is a half-populated +place, temporarily, perhaps shamefully, consigned to a dull +future. And yet, according to the practice I have begun to learn +by years of residence, I can now look around, with room to spare. +What fills this emptiness? What will I see when I take off my dark +glasses?</p> + +<p>I notice, by the way, that some of us are now predicting the +local future with more assurance. I hear a real Cape Codder (meaning +someone born here, preferably before 1900) pronouncing that +there will be a frost around the sixteenth, and that “We’ll have a +blow pretty soon.”</p> + +<p>The night heaves with heat. A half-clouded, half-misted sky +shows occasional stars. Then an onshore wind begins to blow and +the land stirs and frets in the darkness. I feel that new revolutions +are in order, earth-honored, momentous changes.</p> + +<p>In the morning the weather vane stands to the north. The +sea is kicked up, the trees are swaying, and the temperature has +dropped into the fifties. A new wind is getting in its licks, rolling +and lunging against us. The air above the sea meets the great air +masses from the land. Warm and cold, water and air, west and +south, north and east, join in a game of strength. The whole day<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span> +is a trial for the future, with the running clouds as its pawns. A +child asks her father: “Can the day blow away?”</p> + +<p>When the wind dies down and the clouds clear off, the air +has changed from a hazy warmth to clarity. The sea turns dark +blue, groined with white caps. The land seems strict and clean, +lifted into pure new skies and a new silence, although at night the +musical pulsing of the snowy tree crickets is still as shrill and loud +as spring peepers.</p> + +<p>This is a marginal season like the spring. It is full of new appearances, +as well as late fruitions. The goldenrod, strong flower of +the sun, still plumes its store of light, and represents me well +in my country, in spite of congressional inclination to award some +puffy, manufactured rose with the title of national flower.</p> + +<p>Asters, lilac and white, grow abundantly in the sandy soil. +Their little pin wheel flowers are as crisp and clean as the new +dresses of the girls when they go off for the first day of school. The +novelty, after the closed-in summer tempo, is an outwardness. +There are many immature birds that appear suddenly in various +untried places, and not necessarily because of the demands of a set +migration. Because of these fledglings the various bird populations +have so increased that they are pushed into looking for food beyond +their nesting areas.</p> + +<p>Immature hermit thrushes appear as if at random, and many +robins and towhees. The towhee, once called red-eyed, a name +that seems to have been changed to rufous-sided, is a handsome +black, white, and terra-cotta bird which likes scrubby areas, thickets, +and open woods. So we see it frequently. It has a black and white +tail with which it puts on a spectacular performance, flicking and +flashing its feathers like a gambler with a deck of cards; and it +floats over the brush and across the ground with its tail spread +wide behind it.</p> + +<p>Now the young towhees call “Twee! Twee!” not quite at +adult strength and clarity, but they are finding themselves. They +are on the move.</p> + +<p>A covey of young quail suddenly starts across the road, coming<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span> +out of a field still loud with insects. Heads and necks up, they run +almost trippingly forward with sweet, piping alarm.</p> + +<p>A young red-tailed hawk is brought into school by a boy +whose father found it trapped in his chicken yard and killed it ignominiously +with a baseball bat. Red tails are big beauties with a +thick supply of feathers. Their backs are brown, their white bellies +flecked with brown. The usual place to find them is high up, wheeling +around the sky on a watch for rodents; and occasionally they +fly out of pitch pine woods where they roost. The dead one has +lost its piercing cry and the electric glare in its eyes, but its talons +still look formidable. They are black, and as sharp-tipped, as wildly +curved, as hooks of steel, joined in power and flexibility.</p> + +<p>Bright days warm the surface of the inland ponds that have +their outlet in the waters of our local brook and estuary leading +through marshes to Cape Cod Bay. The sun’s radiance hurries up +the alewife fry in their ancient impulse to go down to salt water, +from which they will return in three or four years’ time to spawn +like their elders, usually in the same fresh-water system where they +were hatched. These little silver fish, with an unfathomed stare +in their big eyes, run out on an ebb tide from Paine’s Creek. They +attract gulls and terns, which hover in crowds against the west +wind.</p> + +<p>The plumage of the young terns still in the area now shows +a more definite contrast between black and white. They have become +more adept at flight. Many are still being fed ... almost +continuously during those hours of shallow water when fish are +easier to catch, so that the passivity of those still waiting on the +sands looks like a consequence of being overstuffed. I get the impression +that less food is being proffered by the parent birds, but +they have certainly not relinquished their responsibility. They +bring in small fish and their large children gulp them down and +wait for more. Other young birds are now flying readily—chasing +after their parents, beseeching attention, but more often trying to +fish for themselves. Little by little, by rewards and refusal, failure +and success, they are progressing toward the perfected action of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> +mature birds. They are becoming more aggressive, fighting for +space over a crowded channel, or protecting their catch. The +adults, whose success in fishing they are beginning to approximate, +hover over the water, beaks pointing down, then dive suddenly, +wings partly folded back. They hit the water like small stones, then +come up again, flying away fast if they have a fish in their bills, +chased by other birds that cry “Karr! Karr!” with a slightly growling +note. It is not so much that the young terns are taught, in our +sense of the word, as that they become more and more a part of +the communicable rhythm of the whole race of terns. Their circling, +diving, hovering, or racing downwind are common proficiencies +of motion, that fit the great environment of air and sea. +Growing up is rhythmic practice. There is not such a gap between +tutelage and its recipients as there might seem to be among human +beings.</p> + +<p>Terns seem involved in a ritualistic performance throughout +their lives. Much of the behavior they show in getting food as +nestlings and fledgling birds has its parallels in adulthood. There +is the “fish flight,” for example, which has its origins in the begging, +receiving, and then hunting food of a growing bird. (A +fish is a master image, a center of recognition and attachment, +with all the formality of action it entails.)</p> + +<p>The fish flight is a term which in its strict sense is applied to +the behavior of birds during pre-courtship. It involves emotional +display between pairs of birds, as distinct from their food-getting +habits in general. In detail it includes differences in calls, in the +relative positions of birds during flight, and in the way they carry +a fish. A fish in the bill not only represents the fulfillment of need. +It may also be an offering, a display, and perhaps the instrument +for a mutual awareness between male and female, even before sex +recognition occurs. But if the fish flight can be tied down to behavior +at a particular stage in their lives, the terns also show similar +reactions before and after it. Mated birds go on offering fish as +they fly by one another, or begging, so that feeding is used to +maintain a bond between them. And of course the fish is the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span> +basis of all the instinctive training of the young. The process of +begging and receiving, or offering for the uses of recognition, continues +on in many forms through their life stages. They pursue a +formality. Their flights show the grace in action of a whole society.</p> + +<p>At half tide, when the water recedes over the sand flats, the +terns flock there, preening and bathing in the tidal pools. Occasionally +one will lift its wings up beautifully into the wind, receiving +the wash of air. Some fly back to the inlet and drink the +brackish water. The community seems to gather more and more +closely together as time goes on. They all begin to roost densely +in one area. At times they take to the air, as if alarmed. They +rise and circle, crowds of white, crying shrilly, and then fly down +again. Or they spin like a larger flock of sandpipers, a white cloud +dancing with dizzy perfection over some fish weirs in the distance. +Perhaps it could be called communal practice for the next journey. +In their rhythms they are self-sustained, self-protective, like schools +of fish, but at the same time bound out, under the laws of the wild +air. One day soon I will go down to watch again, finding that +most of them have flown away.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>An Open Shore</i></h3> + +<p>We stay where we are, while the young migrant birds and the +men of the city leave us. But the days sharpen and change. The +nights grow longer and cooler. The westerly winds increase. +There is a brilliance in the air, and the sea makes a clean statement +to our senses. “Adjust your vision,” the sky seems to say, “to +a turn in height and depth and in a new area of relentless winds.”</p> + +<p>Those migratory birds that are still with us feed actively, fly +with restless energy, and collect in flocks. In many undisturbed +areas, down by the barrier beaches and through the salt marshes, +treeless, open to the sun, you can see a great number using their +special physical advantages to feed or fly, hide or attack, in the +patterns of environment.</p> + +<p>The U. S. Wildlife Refuge at Monomoy is on a long spit of +barrier beach and marsh extending south from the town of Chatham +ten miles into Nantucket Sound. It is wild, unadorned with +tourist cabins, and so an undisturbed refuge and resting place for +migratory birds. At first you find warblers, gnat-catchers, orioles, +vireos, and other land birds, working silently through low oaks, +pines, and stunted, salt-sprayed shrubbery. Then the marshland +sweeps ahead with open ground, and curving inlets behind a long +beach where the surf pounds endlessly, the sands inlaid with the +debris of the sea—whelks, surf clams, or scallops. Back in the marsh +where mud snails stream slowly ahead in a long procession, the +shore birds race in, or turn quickly in a shimmering flock, or settle +among the hummocks, and along sandy rims.</p> + +<p>Dowitchers stolidly probe the mud with their long bills. That<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span> +mottled, distinctive bird, the ruddy turnstone, pushes, or turns +over, pebbles and stones—thus proving its name—as it searches for +the worms and crustaceans underneath. Shy piping plovers, white +as oyster shells, stand by themselves behind a dune. Sanderlings +hurry back and forth with little twinkling legs. The yellowlegs fly +up and over with short, piercing cries, their wings curved like +sickles. Or a solitary marbled godwit flies by, handsomely patterned +on its wings with black and white. Least sandpipers, tiny animals +with greenish legs, hurry and flit along, feeding at the edge of the +tide pools and the rim of inlets.</p> + +<p>The terns—common, roseate, least—fly at a point where the +tide comes in through an opening in the beach. Sharp-cut divers, +they swoop low, dipping into the water again and again. A few +ring-billed gulls move among the shore birds. They are a little like +a small herring gull, but their heads are more rounded, like pigeons. +They have a lighter flight, and a softer look than their +raucous, flat-headed relatives. And over the ridge of the beach, +against up-dune horizons, is a long belt of great black-backed gulls, +large, proud, and with a look of supreme idleness and cruelty.</p> + +<p>Here is “function” in all variety, each life to its place, filling a +niche, with the special form and manner by which it feeds and +tries to survive. And every bird is a bird of the sun, adapted to this +treeless, narrow shore that blazes with cutting light, the light of +sand, or rock turned to sand, of water, roaring and moaning in the +sea, rushing back through a tidal cut on the ebb, then trickling, +evaporating, and swelling in again at the flood. Each animal works +an open coast, across its burning days. The fliers with wings so +sharp, energies of light, fit the high or low wants of the wind, the +curves and sweeps of the open marsh, the glaring sands. And they +hurry on stilts, or tiny short legs. They bob up and down. They +run trippingly along—all to the rhythm of the watered, indefinite +shore, looking for food that is rhythmic in myriad ways. Here is a +great tribe of searchers.</p> + +<p>The human race, as it climbs laughingly into motor boats +and roars down an inlet, or sits soberly baiting fish hooks in a row<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> +boat, or basks in the sun, is no less brought in, fitted to this region—for +all our autonomous great world of threats and shelters. +There is some compelling call, that springs its lives ahead, and +will not be talked away. Even the large, extraneous footmarks of +seventy male and female “birders”—a very special tribe—are evidence +of an omnivorousness, a searching, communicating, flocking +together, from which no animals are entirely exempt.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Chipmunks</i></h3> + +<p>As some of the inhabitants of sea and shore move on to the +south, inland life adjusts itself to local climate. The leaves on the +trees are still green, but the bracken, or dry land fern, has turned +brown, one of the early signs of autumn. My surroundings are +full of statements of this kind, an end result of preparation. I notice +one of them. I stop—pleased to be told—and then I wonder +what was silently going on in August to have placed us with such +definition in September. Plants and animals move into a new light, +a new scene, when I am merely groping with their names. Perhaps +because I have read too many newspapers, I am limited to what +we call events. I see some outward evidence, and am obliged to +go backward in order to reconstruct what might have been, when +the real show is already over.</p> + +<p>So all September’s reassociations and revolutions may just +end up for me as a clump of locust leaves tugged loose by the wind, +or the sudden opening in a milkweed pod, or a new chill in the air. +One day I notice that a milkweed pod—on the same plant where +I saw the butterflies—erect like a lamp on its bent stem, has developed +a dimpled line down the middle. The next day it has +cracked apart, and there in the sheath are the compact seeds, overlapping +like fish scales, making a kind of cone with a tail of soft +silk made up of myriads of threads. They are moist at first, in +their womb, then they dry out and each seed parachutes away, +the silky rays darting, swirling, racing high, subject to every turn +and twist of air. There will be new populations, out of old circumstances. +What happened to the milkweed before this culmination?<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> +How many hairstreak and monarch butterflies paid it a visit? +How did it change with change in temperature and moisture and +length of days? Where did it come from originally? Next year, if +I have not been sent ahead myself, I will stand watch over the +plant so as not to miss what might be the greatest show on earth.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i058" style="max-width: 102.3125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i058.jpg" alt="Milkweed"> +</figure> + +<p>We depend on all too occasional visits to understand other +modes and rhythms of existence with any depth, although there +are times when a chance sight goes deep enough to last. This season +of the year the chipmunks are very active, foraging for grains +and nuts to store in their hibernation chambers underground. Cats, +of which there are far too many loose on the Cape, kill so many +chipmunks that it is sometimes hard to see how the population +keeps up. (For one thing, these little “ground squirrels” only seem +to have one brood a year.) Cats bring them home almost daily, +teased into a terrible dance, spinning around like weary boxers on +a revolving stage. A chipmunk’s alert curiosity, or habit of freezing +into attention, may well be its most vulnerable point. Cats will get +them when they are out in the open filling their cheeks with food. +They will also come out of the shelter of a hole, or stone wall, to +investigate the source of some unusual noise or light tapping, or +a whistle, or just stay fixed when a man approaches, in a kind of +actively questioning mood.</p> + +<p>I hear a scattered dashing in the leaves, and there it is—a +striped, bright-looking little animal, tail twitching, arrested in +motion, quivering and throbbing, its throat pulsing at a furious +rate. We watch each other for three or four minutes. I too have +my share of curiosity. Gradually its quick pulsing dies down. It +turns its head slightly away, with those moist, black, intent little +eyes. With a quick flip it is around a tree, then drops down to +run along the leaves again and jump behind a boulder.</p> + +<p>It was in no mortal danger that time, but our two lives were +brought together into relationship by another danger—the dark +universe of chance. I felt it as almost a kind of love between strangers, +in which my mental being was in no way divorced from what +might lie behind a chipmunk’s eye.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pgs 59-60]</span></p> + +<p>I remember another chipmunk, in Vermont this time, whose +chosen ground was a hillside pasture. I came on the animal when +it was carrying part of an apple up a slope toward its hole, located +in the side of a ridge some twenty feet above an old apple tree. +When it saw me it dropped the apple, which promptly rolled +downhill. Then it watched me with that silent waiting on chance, +that throbbing look of expectation which they have, one paw +twitching slightly and clutched to its chest. I was quiet, and at a +respectable distance, so the chipmunk picked up its food again +and hurried back to the hole; but the apple was too big to go in, +and it rolled back downhill. This happened four times. The apple +rolled down. The chipmunk hauled it back up, turned it around, +put it up against the hole, a little like a man facing the problem +of moving a large bed through a narrow door. Finally it nibbled +bits off the edge, slipped sideways into the hole, and pulled the +apple in after it. I stole up as quietly as I could and saw that it was +eating away successfully with its food overhead. A problem had +been solved, and with a fair amount of intelligence.</p> + +<p>The illumination we find in nature does not necessarily come +from comparing degrees of intelligence, in which man always finds +himself the winner. The light goes deeper. Our analytical ways, +our methods of order, imitate an order which is indefinitely resourceful. +Sometimes it shows itself past explanation. It is like this +September evening after rain. For a short time, ten minutes perhaps, +not long before dark, the earth is colored with magic, shadowless +light. The grass is intensely green. The sky turns gray and +pink. Distant fields are red and astonishingly bright. All colors are +sure and strong, joining in pure gradations. The evening is full of +mystic peace. A kitten watches the light, transfixed in the doorway +(together, for all I know, with some chipmunk by the stone wall +outside), arrested by what I in my own silence can only think of +as an unmatchable glory, never to return in quite the same measure.</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pgs 61-62]</span></p> +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="October"><i>October</i></h2> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span></p> + +<h3><i>Where Is Home?</i></h3> + +<p>The ordered days wheel on and fall into patterns consistently +new. On further acquaintance, the place I live in seems to extend +its boundaries and add to its store of lives. I struggle to understand. +The more I add to my list of things as time goes on, the less +my crude interpretations fit the circumstances. I started here with +a tract of land. I built a house. I have a family. I am not yet sure +of my location. The kingfisher says one thing, and the frog another. +The snake travels a few thousand feet of home area, and the +tern thousands of miles. They are both on Cape Cod. Then one +leaves another. All action blows hot and cold with endless variations. +A little knowledge makes my center rock with uncertainty.</p> + +<p>I am not even a native in the strict sense, and cannot be said +to know my way around by feel, as a man might who was born +here. I had a talk the other day with a time-honored Cape Codder +on the subject of how fish or birds found their way. He was not +able to give me any illumination on the scientific aspects of the +subject, but when it came to human beings, he did give me some +tips on how to avoid getting lost. I had confessed that I once set +off in a rowboat and was lost in an offshore fog for the better part +of a morning, rowing steadily in the wrong direction.</p> + +<p>The next time that happened to me, he suggested, I should +drop anchor and wait for the fog to lift. In that dense shroud it +is also possible, if you happen to be wading in shallow water, to +lose sight of your boat when it is only a few yards away. Under +such circumstances he once used his fishing line to help him get<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> +back to the boat by using the lead sinker as the center of a compass, +playing out the line and circling until he reached it.</p> + +<p>The sea can be a trackless wilderness only a few yards offshore. +Natives have been lost in it as well as newcomers. Still, +there is no substitute for acquaintance, for knowing the sea’s look +and its ways. This man claimed he could feel his way in the fog. +In other words, taking in all factors, familiar or deducible, such as +the way the tide is running, whether it is ebbing or rising, how the +wind goes, and from what quarter, or even guessing direction by +the ridges on a sand bar, he could take the right course, without, +as he put it “letting my judgment interfere.”</p> + +<p>It took me a while just to learn the local compass directions, +but now that I have my north, south, east, and west inside me, I +am not sure, even walking through the trees, that I will not bump +into my old ignorance. It takes time to find your way. A man new +to the countryside might well be envious of some of the older +inhabitants that know where they are without trying—a turtle, for +example. A box turtle’s slow motion over the year seems like a true +measure of ancientness. While the birds, the fish, the men depart, +this dry land reptile seems to feel responsible for holding back, for +the weight of the earth itself. In the springtime I have seen a slow +pair approaching each other in a mood of affinity, while the rest +of the procreative world danced overhead, and I have seen a female +laying her eggs in a sand bank, covering them over with +a last shove of her hind legs, then moving away, a little more +quickly than usual, it seemed to me, as if to return to the more +agreeable task of waiting things out. When fall comes and their +cold blood slows, they grow torpid and finally dig out of sight into +the ground.</p> + +<p>On one of these warm days in early October I hear a slow +dragging in the leaves, and come upon a box turtle eating a mushroom. +They have beautifully patterned shells, ocher or yellow, +sometimes orange, and dusty black, almost batik in design, with +many variations. I stand about eight feet away, while it holds its +head and neck straight up, watching me. I guess it to be a male,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> +by the bright red little eyes. The eyes of a female are a darker reddish +brown.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i064" style="max-width: 102.6875em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i064.jpg" alt="Turtle and Mushrooms"> +</figure> + +<p>His wrinkled red neck pulses a little. His yellow beak and +curved mouth line are tight shut under his flat-topped head, with +bits of mushroom sticking out on either side. Very comical, he +looks; but he stares down any inclination in me to laugh out loud. +He watches me without moving for a full fifteen minutes before +I get tired of the experiment and go away. Nothing, he seems to +realize, can outlast a box turtle. This old male, with his wrinkled +red jowls, and his soft, puddled-looking feet, must represent some +antediluvian complacency, or, for all I know, a reasonable pride.</p> + +<p>In captivity box turtles have exceeded forty years before they +died, and some grow to be much older than that, if they avoid +being crushed on the highways or killed by forest fires, since they +are otherwise invulnerable to most predators, excepting man. This +year a box turtle was found locally by a man whose deceased relative +had carved his initials on its shell in 1889, making the turtle +seventy-one years old. How old the turtle was when so tagged is +not known.</p> + +<p>They are wanderers—more so, for example, than the water +turtles, and with a certain assurance. Within their chosen environment, +of open field, shrubby slope, or marsh periphery, they cover +a great deal of ground. They seem to carry a staying power with +them, and an ancient decorum. They are like old natives true to +ancestral places. There is something enviable about this fittingness +to home.</p> + +<p>Still, I have enough modern restlessness or rootlessness in me +to think that a home or piece of land probably has fewer boundaries +than ever before. We are going to have to know our location +“way out,” as some of the old Cape Codders used to say. I have +an equal envy of the terns that are flying toward the Caribbean or +the Antarctic. They are birds of the world, in which they know +their direction by markers that are light-years away, or so some +scientists believe after much investigation. The latest theory is that +migrating birds find their way by the sun’s changing position during<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> +daylight hours and by some of the constellations at night. They +have a built-in mastery of what it took many thousands of years +for man to learn, with his surpassing intellect. They are readers of +the stars. Their home is in the wide blind sky.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>The Field of Learning</i></h3> + +<p>We are committed far from home, but for a field of learning, +the start and the finish is still here, still in place, just as that unique +season of October, presaging a death in the glory of its color and +clouds, brings the first frost, as if to say: “Regard necessity, in all +its aspects. Look no further.”</p> + +<p>It never comes without warning. One night a thrashing, +thicket-tearing wind arrives with much greater cold. Two nights +later another wind blasts all warmth away, and when it dies down +the frost settles in, leaving a crisp whiteness on the grass at dawn, +and clouds of white vapor over the pond waters. The garden +beans go limp and the wild indigo turns black.</p> + +<p>In that wind the low trees are like a sea, pluming and foaming. +They are tossed and rocked, they pitch and writhe, while the +stars in ordered majesty stream overhead. When the temperature +starts to go down there is not a sound from the insect musicians +any more, not one pizzicato, nor audible dry pulsing in the trees. +You might think all breeding was over, though generation is latent +everywhere.</p> + +<p>Then it grows warm again. The insects sound in the grass and +in the trees, if to a diminished extent. Crows gather in the early +morning, and their various calls, synchronized in the open air, over +the treetops, sound highly melodious. I hear a robin caroling, but +very quietly, almost out of a playfulness, a musing. In spite of inexorable +change, there are false dawns, days, or hours of deceptive +warmth that set the long-horned grasshoppers to their buzzing and +clicking and the flickers to shouting with renewed energy. All<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span> +through the woods tiny tree frogs pipe at intervals from the cover +of damp leaves. The pools in the fishway at the Brewster Herring +Run are loaded with warm October sunlight and three-to four-inch +alewives going down to salt water. A kingfisher planes up +from branches above the stream with a rattling cry.</p> + +<p>The pattern is one of reduction, depopulation, cutting down +to size, but like all other shifts in a season, this one is manifested +as another angle of light, a different feel to the air, a new set of +circumstances, as much as a stop to all activity. When the fall +winds swish and swoop along the shore, and I walk the tidal flats, +a wide space played upon by light—gold, brown, and blue reflections +running through pools and across long ribs of sand—I am +regenerated by all the choices that are still ahead of me. Nothing +is fixed or finished. It seems to me that everything I encounter is +driven by indirection, like the waves and rivulets, sun tangled, that +are crossing each other and separating over sand bars during an +oncoming tide. Here is the ordered complexity which ensures that +our findings, or rather, our search, will never have an end.</p> + +<p>The finding-out process begins in childhood. That is why +teaching is so great a profession. We intellectual animals have a +long period in which to learn our wings. The teacher’s role is to +bring us toward our highest capacity, and the tortures of that are +immeasurable, on both sides. The field of learning is as wide as +the sand flats, and the results as hard to catch as the waves; but +a teacher has help from his pupils in ways over which they themselves +have little control. Children have new fingers and new eyes +and have to be coaxed into using them, but the touch and sight +they bring cannot be taught in the schools.</p> + +<p>I have found out lately, after some attempts at teaching natural +history, that nature springs in a child and a child in nature. +You learn that you are teaching both.</p> + +<p>Why is one so proud of ignorance, and another of hiding +what he knows? Some make a violent effort to be noticed; others, +to retreat from view. You have an ambivalent and groping world +to deal with, as hard to tape or tie as some of the phenomena<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span> +you lead it to. But life is present tense to them, neither past nor +future. They seem to pick up its manifestations not with adult +skill but on the fly, like a boy casually catching a ball after missing +ten, and then being surprised at himself. How did it happen? +Memories, complexities, prejudices, risks taken on behalf of the future +are largely unknown to them. It is enough to be new. There +is not even any choice, since all choices are open, being new. Children +are the unpredicting and the unpredictable. The one thing +in which they never fail is growth, like the natural environment +which never fails in its variations on the theme of fertility.</p> + +<p>One mild afternoon two of us take out a group of boys on a +field trip along the shore, a beginners collecting expedition. The +class runs ahead. They find a dead loon on the beach, with rove +beetles, lovers of carrion, roaming through its body. These beetles +have black and white stripes, suggesting a skunk to one boy, who +is still young enough to admit all affinities.</p> + +<p>They run on, with erratic energy. They lend a puzzled ear to +our explanations of how life forms are related to the places in +which we find them. They are not quite certain of our terms. +What is “environment?” What, for that matter, is “life?”</p> + +<p>Classifications come hard to them at first. Certain types of +recognition take a long time to learn. When I think that at the age +of thirty I didn’t know the difference between one gull and another, +not to speak of their different calls, I am hardly surprised.</p> + +<p>“What’s this?”: a dune-dwelling locust, an ichneumon fly; a +slipper shell, a shred of kelp, a spider, a scallop shell ... all parts +of a game, novelties. But when will we know how to fit them all +together? An impatient teacher might think from these boys, with +their degrees of inattention, that the game will never get under +way, that the preparation will never end. Yet their own lesson is +that readiness is all, and the outcome immaterial.</p> + +<p>I am only half acquainted with them, although some of their +native traits stand out plain to see. In one there is a shade of +melancholy transplanted from his father, in another courtesy and +gaiety. One is rough and full of the fever of unregulated competition.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span> +Another is quiet and slow, or quick and sensitive. Together +they share a mystery. They are in active flight like young birds, +and at this point, this moment of being, allowed its own growth +without real harm or hindrance, they give an offering. It is the act +of their unknown selves.</p> + +<p>They catch some more insects with their nets. They find the +bright yellow feathers of a flicker which had been caught and eaten +by fox or owl in the beach grass. They identify the remains of a +young herring gull washed onto the upper beach. The tide has +ebbed and the sands stretch off with glittering lanes and rivulets—gulls +stalking in the distance, or resting in white flotillas on the +water—and blue salt water curves beyond, over the earth’s perimeter. +The October shadows begin to stretch farther down the sands. +Light, smoky clouds drift over and a strange little shower of rain +comes down, running along the beach, disturbing no one. Then +the sun comes clear again, moving westward. Everything we collect, +all that we can say about it, is only a start, a suggestion, although +each sample leads to all others. We have left a great deal behind. +If the north wind roars in again tomorrow, sweeping all warmth +away, killing more of life’s visible evidence, or making it cower in +the earth, and causing colds and crabbedness in human society, we +will still be setting out.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Colors of the Season</i></h3> + +<p>There is yellow and peach pink on the leaves of the red +maples, and some of the oaks begin to show signs of changing, but +the most colorful plants are the mushrooms. The wet weather has +been providential for them, and they have come up in some areas +where I cannot remember having seen them before. They thrust +mysteriously but stubbornly through the grass in a wide semicircle +of white moons. They parade up the side of trees, and across the +wood floor their cups or parasols stand comfortably grounded in +dead leaves or decaying wood. (We see only the flower of the +mushroom protruding above the ground, while underneath lies the +complex mat of fine fibers from which they blossom, the mycelium.)</p> + +<p>For such pulpy, soft, almost immaterial-looking plants, mushrooms +show a strange power to lift, which is caused, in reality, by +hydraulic pressure within them, amounting to as much as six or +eight pounds per square inch. They come up through an inch or +two of concrete, or through the asphalt surface of a road. They +move the heavy bark of old logs aside. One of them puts up a scaly +dome under the edge of a pump house eave that almost touches +the ground, as if it intended to lift the roof off.</p> + +<p>When we think of fungi, we have a justifiable association with +rot and decay, mildew and mold. They lack chlorophyll, that famous +green substance by which other plants are able to absorb +the energy of the sunlight and through it convert carbon dioxide +and water into food. The mushrooms, like other fungi, get their +food directly from organic matter, rich soil, rotting wood, or leaf<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span> +mold. They reproduce by billions of tiny spores, each of which, +or rather, the comparatively few that catch, are started in such a +matrix. In a sense they are procreative flowers of the darkness, annuals +which the earth puts forth in its own teeming right, regardless +of the gay slaves of the sunlight. But they are colorful. They +wear the earth’s sulfurs, umbers, and ochers, its iron rusts, light +greens, grays, and whites, as well as some startling rose-reds and +vermilions.</p> + +<p>I find a small one in the wet leaves which is a lavender-blue, +named, according to my reference book, the violet cortinarius, and +good to eat—surprisingly enough. Color is no criterion of what is +poisonous. The deadly amanita does not have the flickering blue-green +color of something low and ominous, nor is it a dangerous +red, a signal for all but the most reckless to keep off. Some of the +reddest mushrooms, in point of fact, are the best to eat. But the +deadly amanita is almost tempting in appearance. It is white and +succulent-looking, and to eat enough of it means death.</p> + +<p>A strange thing, the mushroom, of short annual appearances +(though the roots, or mycelium, are perennial), of quick growth +and quick decay. Some of them are already turned into rotten +dark brown, nearly liquid heaps. Others will gradually dry up and +disappear, but now, on this tag end of a moist season, they are the +local bounty. They have curled edges like cabbage or dead oak +leaves. They take the form of single stems and fronds like seaweed. +They are fringed, scalloped, round or flat, thin or fat. They bunch +together at the base of an old stump, or they climb the side of a +tree in shelves. Their heads take the form of lima beans, or floppy +rabbit ears, fans, umbrellas, trumpets, shaggy hats, or cottage roofs. +They are scaly, rough, smooth, or silky. They have thin stems and +dainty heads like flowers; or both head and stem look like one +great overgrown protuberance. Here and there, coming through +the leaf litter, are yellow bunches of coral mushrooms, so called +because they have the look of branched coral; and in the deep +shade they seem almost luminous. In fact, whether or not any +mushrooms do have a luminosity, like some fungi, they have a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span> +glimmer of decay about them in our imagination. They are of +the earth unearthly, in spite of the fact that many of them provide +substantial beds for insect larvae, that they are good, if sometimes +treacherous food, and that they can raise the top off a road.</p> + +<p>This year has also been rich in Indian pipes. This is that unreal, +pure-white plant, which, in more mythical times, has been +called the corpse plant, or ghost flower. It blooms by itself, though +out of the moist woodland humus like the mushrooms, lacking +chlorophyll as they do. There is some dispute apparently, consistent +with the Indian pipe’s ghostly nature, about what it really is. +Some books refer to it as a “saprophyte,” which means a plant +that absorbs its nutrition from dead or decaying organic matter, +but in others it is called a “parasite.” A parasite gets its nourishment +from a living host. The Indian pipe has a very small mat of +rootlets where the thick stems join together at the base of the plant. +If you dig it out of the ground it looks as if it were resting on bare +knuckles. These roots, according to the botanists, have an outer +layer of funguslike tissue, which means that the fungus rather than +the roots has actual contact with the soil. So it sounds as though +the Indian pipe, being dependent for its food on the fungus and +not the soil or humus, were a parasite. Another alternative, if the +fungus gets any nourishment from the plant, is that they live in +a state of mutual association, or symbiosis. Thus science, still trying +for exactitude, and the Indian pipe, still unaccountable. It seems +to be on the verge of several worlds rather than an integral part of +one, a plant you might meet in a dream.</p> + +<p>Other old and once popular names for it are: Dutchman’s-pipe; +fairy smoke; convulsion weed; eyebright; bird’s nest; and +American ice plant. It was called ice plant, according to Alice O. +Albertson in her <i>Nantucket Wild Flowers</i> (1921), because “it resembles +frozen jelly and is juicy and tender and dissolves in the +hands like ice.” One contemporary authority calls it “clammy,” +which is accurate enough, and keeps it in the realm of ghosts and +chills, but I think it was an exaggeration to say that it dissolves in +the hands. I find it solid enough, not fragile or perishable to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span> +touch. Its stems have a fibrous, tough core, which is sometimes +hard to tear. It also has a pungent, woody smell, though this probably +comes from the soil it grows in.</p> + +<p>All the same, it is an elusive, beautiful flower, a miraculous +specialty. Coral pink shines almost translucently through the stems, +which are covered with tiny white bracts, or scales, taking the +place of leaves—scales of a tiny albino fish perhaps—and the bell-like +flowers hang their stiff white heads straight down, with pink +seed pods standing up between them, round, decoratively grooved +little crowns. When the plant dies, it stands for months as a thin, +brownish black string, having turned from beautiful ghost to lifeless +reality.</p> + +<p>Over the mushrooms and Indian pipes, in subtle relationship +to them, the leaves are losing their green chlorophyll and revealing +the other, more stable pigments that last out long enough to make +the familiar glory of the autumn. There is not so much a general +“dying” in the fall, as an adjustment. Insect eggs are in the bark or +ground, the mushroom spores are being carried through the air, +the grasses are heavy with seed, acorns drop to the ground. One +day last October I was hit with a shower of acorns from the white +oaks. This year, since oaks fruit heavily on different years, I notice +more acorns from the black oaks. How fast these acorns get to +work! A little curling, probing, adventurous sprout comes from the +nut, and in a short time has grown several inches. A few manage to +take hold before the ground is frozen. A multitude of others provide +food for squirrels, chipmunks, or blue jays. The measure of +these arrangements is complex and elaborate. Between the leaf of +a tree and a mushroom, worlds apart in function, there are connections +of rainfall, temperature, or sunlight, in a context continually +new, and though the ground colors fade, sunsets, seas, and inland +waters will take over their active play.</p> + +<p>That great bonfire of a maple tree—one special to my boyhood—that +I used to marvel at in the New Hampshire fall, is here +replaced by second-or third-growth oaks. I now live in a stunted +land; but as it is the sea which surrounds it, so, in its long low<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span> +stretches, its glacial hollows and running hills, it rides ahead like +open billows. The early splashes of color come from the red of the +sumac and the purple-reds of the huckleberries and blueberries. +Then color begins to spread through the oaks, that war with yellow-green +pitch pines for living space. Yellow or red streaks show +in the leaves of the white oak, orange in the waxy leaves of the +post oak, brilliant red in the scarlet oak. Then deep reds, maroons, +cowhide yellows and browns pervade them, and our woodland +surroundings seem full of a beautiful propriety, a beauty in necessity.</p> + +<p>Occasional copses of beech trees are shining with golden +bronze; and tupelo, or black gum, trees, with scraggy, undulant +branches, have little leaves that are a blazing, livid red. Over bare +hillsides the “hog cranberry,” or bearberry, a perennial ground +cover with shiny leaves, is hung with cherry-red fruit. The cultivated +cranberry bogs show broad stretches of purple-red, shaped, +depending on the area, in squares, circles, or oblongs, all, if well +cared for, neatly ditched. The tidal inlets and marshes run with +flaxen and gold, spotted at their edges with light festival red from +the berries of black alder, a form of holly.</p> + +<p>These flaming revelations signal the trees’ reaction to the decrease +in light’s intensity, or the colder temperature of the soil. +The leaf decomposes. The tree withdraws and makes ready for a +leaner season; but it is too big a display for mere “adjustment.” +You will not find the category of color in a historical dictionary +or the encyclopedia of social sciences, but in this temperate zone +at least, it is now an integral part of the history of change, and of +natural society.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>There is a deep little hollow nearby called Berry’s Hole. Many +years ago it contained a cranberry bog, and it is still wet bottom +land with water around its edge, and a center choked with moisture-loving +shrubs and reeds. Frogs take advantage of it, as well as +water insects and their larvae. Wood peewees nest around it in +the springtime. Now it is radiant with its special version of the fall.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> +In the middle of October, sheep laurel is still green on the surrounding +slopes, through the purple huckleberry bushes. I walk +down them into a raining screen of leaves. Berry’s Hole is circled +by red, also called swamp, maples, and their red and yellow leaves, +light and delicate compared to those of the oak trees on dry slopes +above them, slip down constantly through the bright air, drift, +eddy, and finally touch the ground, or fill the brown water with +loose-lying, sinking rafts of color.</p> + +<p>A green frog leaps into the water with a squeak. I notice +a box turtle on the bank, with its head determinedly locked in this +time. Its markings, on an almost black shell, are dashes of yellow, +and a rich reddish orange that reminds me of a Blackburnian +warbler.</p> + +<p>Response to color is response to energy, the radiance and the +reflection of light. I close my eyes after looking across the sun and +see red, the color of warmth and desire. Around the eye of Berry’s +Hole is the red of blood and the yellow of the sun.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>The Last Day in October</i></h3> + +<p>The night, after a deceptively bright and soothing day, seems +suddenly withdrawn. The wind has a hard feel to it, as if a northern +authority had come to stay. Heavy rolls of cumulus clouds hang in +the sky when morning breaks, and the Cape begins to look like my +winter image of it, dank and cold, with inert, slate-colored seas +investing its shores. The oak leaves have turned a darker, more +lifeless red, or they are light brown. I notice that the leaves of the +white oaks are among the first to die, beginning to curl up like +stiff, ancient hands, with an ashy pallor on them. The scarlet oaks +are the last to lose their color.</p> + +<p>As a result of their definite adjustment, insisting on certain +rules of change before many of the rest of us are quite ready, the +oak woods seem to have a dark, plenipotentiary look. The trees +stand in self-saved, stiff company, although the animals that +visit them are lively enough. I watch a gray squirrel burying acorns +in loose dirt at the edge of the road. He has that continually +twitching, starting and stopping, restless being of his rodent relatives +the red squirrels and the chipmunks. He runs back and forth +over the sandy earth burying the acorns, and then, as if unsatisfied +with the places he put them, bringing them out again.</p> + +<p>The squirrel’s gray, fur-clad body flows with suppleness. The +big gray tail is sudden too in its motion, stretching out behind, +or up, with curled tip when the animal stops to sit. He quits his +activity, and with a long bound and dive he is up a tree. Along +with its slapdash motion, but provident method, the gray squirrel +may also have a touch of foolhardiness in its nature, though even<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> +the most practiced make their slips. I have never seen it happen +myself, but a friend tells me that he has seen gray squirrels miss +their leap occasionally in high trees near his house and fall to +their death.</p> + +<p>The leaf litter still fairly jumps with mice and shrews. A little +blind shrew with dark gray pelt and pink nose slips out of a bank +of leaves where I walk. It swerves with astonishing speed and +squeaks angrily at me before it dives out of sight into the leaves. +This, in contrast to other members of the mouse family, is a +fighter.</p> + +<p>I go into a part of the oak wood which has been a little more +protected ... a hollow fenced in and fringed by strands of bull +briar. It is an open space where deer have come in to paw the +ground and settle down at night. Skunks have left little holes +where they clawed into the leaf mold on their hunt for grubs. +Towhees have scratched the leaves apart. Cottontails have stopped +here, hopped, nibbled, and jumped away.</p> + +<p>This land is mine. The deed is recorded in my name. But I +cannot claim to have put it to better use than the animals to whom +it is public property. It belongs to the deer, the skunk, the rabbit, +and the towhee, who eat, pass through, or take shelter there. With +my approach, of course, the whole question of tenure is rudely +solved, except for the countless stay-at-home organisms in the +ground beneath me. The deer turns once with a large gaze, then +bounds away with its white, electric brush of a tail flung up. +“Boom!” a partridge thunders up, cuffing leaves and twigs with its +wings, and hurtles off through the trees. A crow gives a warning +call as it flies overhead. I am allowed the land if I want it, though +not much trust is involved. But why should I expect comfort or +acceptance, in this open realm of risk? Neither man nor deer was +mother to the skunk. It knew its own. Chance meetings will do, +for the love I find in them.</p> + +<p>On the calendar this is the last day of October, and it has +some justice to the title. The lunar months mirror the general +character of the year’s transitions. In spite of the fact that all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pgs 79-80]</span> +single days are lost in the passage of light and we are left behind, this +one seems full of an end and a turn to something else. The local +life is making its last forays, before a time of dormancy, hibernation, +or struggle to survive. A mourning cloak butterfly beats +lightly by, with no other companions to be seen. I find some mud +dauber wasps, flies, and a cicada killer, all hibernating in a pile +of rotten logs. The woods are full of the intermittent beauty of the +last oak leaves, red, with a deep tone in the gray day, and the +sumacs still show their shining raspberry color on the surrounding +slopes.</p> + +<p>The late afternoon is cold and quiet. I regret the shorter day +and the need to leave the great air so soon. But underneath lowering +clouds is a growing gap of swirling orange toward the west. +As the light recedes around us, the sunset begins to show the +power and surge of pattern in the sky. Coils and whips of gold at +first—bold, bright, far away. Then spun gold behind dark barriers—the +ribs of whales, giant minnows, plumes tinted with salmon, +the curving timbers of ships, and all things rare and imaginary +plunging through an oceanic fire. Also I see golden October going, +in fields of last excitement. But what this and many other sunsets +say is “Come on!” However you use your days and nights, in +speed or muddled preoccupations, come. It will be too late soon +for the feast that is now, whose fires are always carrying over to the +other side of the world.</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pgs 81-82]</span></p> +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="November"><i>November</i></h2> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span></p> + +<h3><i>The Seed in the Season</i></h3> + +<p>The glory goes, and there comes the first sudden plucking out +of dead leaves. They scud and sail. They lift and fall to the ground, +where they sometimes scuttle unexpectedly like mice.</p> + +<p>November rolls into view with cool, solemn, formal consistency. +When it rains they say: “I’m glad it’s not that white stuff,” +although Cape Cod is not noted for its snow. There is no deep +and heavy frost as yet, no northeast gales driving wet flakes at +our eyes. A number of Cape Codders migrate to Florida for the +winter. Daylight diminishes. As the leaves drop off we begin to see +more distinctly between the trees. I find two spotted turtles moving +very slowly through the waters of a ditch at one side of an +abandoned cranberry bog. In one open field there are a few red-legged +grasshoppers, much less active than a few weeks before. +An occasional cricket, grasshopper, or spider is spotted and animated +by the rays of the sun when it bursts through drifting +clouds. Here and there a violet aster or late goldenrod stands in +bloom between innumerable plants that are fuzzy with seed. The +milkweed still sends crowds of little silk parachutes shining on the +wind.</p> + +<p>We are now in a genuine country state of which the urban +power talks with both scorn and ignorant nostalgia. The summer +no longer pounds at our temples. The fall color is gone. There is +nothing to look at, and very little to hear except the wind, or a +plane in the distance, a car on the highway. To a city lover it is +silent and deadly dull.</p> + +<p>As to the nostalgia, I doubt that there is much stress any more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span> +on the virtue implicit in country living. Since all men now dwell +in all places, they question virtue everywhere; but some still talk +as though the country were a place for that intangible peace and +moral order that they think is lacking in the world. The country, +however, is in the grip of a power that has no moral values and is +greater than morality. It is false and true. It is benign and it is +terrible. It cures and it kills. And I do not suppose that whether +or not the earth is made up of human cities can make much difference +to it. I am waiting for a deeper tone than hope.</p> + +<p>There is no noise or compelling distraction in a field or stand +of trees. Still, a forester suggested to me that if trees could make +themselves heard, in their internal growth and adjustments, the +roar would be deafening. The same thought has been applied to +life in the ground, with its countless microorganisms, in a state of +continual displacement and turmoil, growing and dying, consuming +and being consumed. They too might roar. We have enough +at hand and under our feet to make general tumult no surprise.</p> + +<p>The point about this countryside is not its isolation but its +potentiality. It is in charge of origins. What is more dramatic than +the production of seeds in plants and grasses over one small field? +The seeds are in uncountable numbers, and each one is a miniature +plant, an embryo, surrounded by food and a protective coating. +It is an embodiment of force. It eats and breathes, and now +goes into a period of dormancy like an animal, ready to germinate +in the spring when conditions are favorable. Such facts are part of +elementary biology, but they cover up the stir and momentum of +the globe.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i084" style="max-width: 98.3125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i084.jpg" alt="Tall Grass and Insect"> +</figure> + +<p>These seeds, on grass and weeds now growing thinner, drier, +more colorless, are not only rich in generation, on their own account, +but they provide beyond themselves. The juncos, or snow +birds, that come down from the north will survive on a seed diet +throughout the winter, with the sparrows, and that sustaining food +the mice, preyed upon by fox, weasel, or hawk. The simplest “food +chain” suggests the links in many others. In fact there is no fundamental +separation anywhere in this common world of life, despite<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span> +the greatly various environments of water and land that we +use to help us differentiate between the species. Winds blow +through. Tides lap over. Each plant and animal is proof of general +contact and association.</p> + +<p>The insignificant seed has energy and sustenance enough to +perpetuate many worlds. It makes me look at mere grass with more +interest than I did. I believe there are some fourteen hundred +species of grasses in the United States, of which I know less than +a dozen. There is one grass which grows in many areas of the +Cape, through open slopes, pine woods, sandy, run-down fields, +that I have heard called beard, or prairie grass. I have walked +by it, on it, and through it for years without knowing its name, +though its nameless, light-catching beauty often caught my attention. +It turns out to be broom sedge (<i>Andropogon scoparius</i>), +a plant that reaches from here and the Middle Atlantic States +south to Texas and across the southeast to California. It is a poor +soil, poor forage grass, appropriate to this nonagricultural region. +Its stems rise from a bunch of curving, rustling leaf blades, and +are covered with tiny florets that go to seed in the fall, little +feathery tufts. As the autumn months progress it grows more colorful, +deepening to tawny pink, with a touch of purple, before it +takes on its straw-colored midwinter hue. The little silky feathery +tufts shine in the sunlight like the slightest spits and sparkles on a +pool, or tiny plumes of frost, intangibly gentle, sustaining their +brightness as the winter comes on. The stems are two to three +feet tall, and with their delicate adornments, they stand the year +around, stirring, curving forward, nodding back, with the utmost +refinement. So I praise what is for me a new discovery, though it +has stood near me in its own praise for many years—a country +eloquence.</p> + +<p>Almost all local preparations are done. The seed is sown and +made ready. The time for persistence is coming, when those +grasses we take so much for granted will hold our earth together. +When the sun warms them, drying on slopes and through old +fields, they smell sweet underfoot, a natural, uncut hay.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>The Clouds</i></h3> + +<p>The power of sending on is latent in the seed, but the weather +itself is always openly manifest, and when the leaves fall, when +the summer nests begin to show up in unexpected places, then it +hits us even harder. The northeast winds are beginning to be +something to hide from. The sky stares with a wider, colder eye.</p> + +<p>When it is cloudy I hear the dull drone of unseen planes far +above me, and I think of a world at large that is teeming with +meetings and negotiations, losing decisions, waiting on results. +The immediate earth seems to shift, tack, and decide according to +its clouds, that slant up the sky in fibrous strands, hang deep and +low, or lift across the sunlight.</p> + +<p>The sun’s rays slant lower between the open aisles of the +trees, and there is a keener, icier edge to the light. I walk out +through a hollowed, dipping and waving landscape onto gray-green +lichens, and dry, sweet-smelling grasses of an old field laced with +briars, and the pale blue sky is on top of me with intoxicating +height. The vapor trail of a jet plane cuts across the sky for miles, +while slower clouds ease and change across the November blue, +allowing lazy time for the imagination.</p> + +<p>But if to imagine is a dispensation from nature that allows +us to take part in her intricate creativeness, then it is no idleness. +Rationally, a cloud, whether cumulus, stratus, cirrus, nimbus, or a +combination thereof, is what it is: a collection of drops of water, +or ice particles, suspended in the air. Meteorology as a science +must be one of the most intriguing, since its subjects never sit still. +I would, if I could, make an analysis of the clouds that are typical<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span> +of a season, the changes in pace that make themselves known +overhead; though the old maritime men of Cape Cod could do a +better job. They knew what they depended on, in the way of +calm or storm, and predicted what they felt. Subjective interpretation +is suspect these days, but it implies a common familiarity for +which objective analysis offers no substitute. The sensate imagination, +with its head in the clouds, finds interconnections past their +specialty and name.</p> + +<p>Clouds, collecting moisture from the ponds, lakes, or ocean +waters, have many of the shapes and patterns of the land, or +head, if you like, that they come from. We can find faces in +them, as well as in the dregs of a teacup; but they are the images +of an invention that is more fluid than our own. Their texture +may cause them to look like scratched, glacial rocks, or they are +wooly and fibrous at the same time. They might suggest cocoons +or the nest of fall webworms. They hang in snowy shoals or in +striated banks. They ripple like the sands at low tide. They look +like whitecaps on the sea. They move as slowly and inexorably as +fields of ice, or in quick bursts ahead of the wind. They roll in +mountainous abundance, or fan out like a river’s long fingers +stretching out across a delta.</p> + +<p>Clouds suggest seaweed, grasses, wings. Occasionally they +remind me of ferns, and of the fernlike patterns that the frost +makes on a window, or they resemble some basic structure of a +living thing. As plants and animals are united in fundamental +physical laws and in their chemical composition, so clouds, for +all their evanescence, cannot be separated from the world of life. +Clouds are announcements of progress and decline. They show the +sky’s adventures. There is more to them than my fancy. The light, +the wind, the altitude, temperature, time of day or year commit +them to a definite size, shape, and existence. They are images of +substance, in a motion which casts everything into its weather, +including that human sign on the sky, the jet’s trail, imposing +an abstract scar ten miles across.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>The Inconstant Land</i></h3> + +<p>When the clouds cover the sky like gun smoke and the air +feels cold and restricting, I am reminded that the character of +Cape Cod has nothing to offer an uncertain world except uncertainty. +Its trees are not of a size to hang on to, and its dunes +shift like the waves. It is a land that men have ravaged with fire, +not excluding the Indians who preceded us, and abused without +compunction. It is said there used to be great stands of trees +on the Cape, hardwoods, hemlocks and pine. The remnants of +submerged Atlantic white cedar forests have been found as far as +three miles out in Cape Cod Bay, and bog borings have revealed +the evidence of timber in some areas where trees now have only a +bare subsistence. But during the nineteenth century, judging by +photographs and local account, this peninsula was much poorer +in trees than it is now, even though our local woods cannot be +given credit for much height and dignity.</p> + +<p>A man from New Hampshire visited me briefly a few +years ago and said: “What in the world are you living here for? +There aren’t any trees!” I pointed out to him that we had the sea, +but the place seemed poor and flat to him, and he headed back +to the mountains and tall timber as fast as he could, though he +first chose to have a lunch of seafood, on his way out.</p> + +<p>When I bought the land I live on, it had a desolate appearance +aside from a long view of the water, but its high wildness appealed +to me. It was covered with dead oaks, standing everywhere like +stripped spars. They had been killed off by a severe infestation +of gypsy moths, and were, in any case, weak, cutover growth to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span> +begin with. The local landowners cut the woods down almost +completely, then waited, twenty-five years in many cases, to cut +them again. Others cut for firewood whenever they needed it. +This area is covered like a rabbit warren with tracks made by +wagons coming in to take out wood. I talked with a man recently +who used to ride on the wagon seat with his grandfather when he +was a boy. They liked to pull trees out when the frost was in +the ground. Even then the wagon would be so heavily loaded +that it sank in almost to the axles, with the horse pulling hard in +the middle. The deep ruts are still to be seen. Besides taking out +the wood for sale and for their own use, the owners would sell +it “on the stump,” letting individuals go on their land and cut.</p> + +<p>Since this was a country whose inhabitants often made a sparse +living out of livestock as well as fish, the land was also used for +grazing. Cattle and sheep kept the brush and ground cover down. +Many sandy hillsides were not only bare, but beginning to erode +badly.</p> + +<p>In his <i>Cape Cod</i>, Thoreau speaks of the country between +the towns of Barnstable and Orleans on the bay side as being +“bare, or with only a little scrubby wood left on the hills.” +“Generally,” he writes, “the ploughed fields of the Cape look white +and yellow, like a mixture of salt and Indian meal. This is called +soil. All an inlander’s notions of soil and fertility will be confounded +by a visit to these parts, and he will not be able, for some +time afterwards, to distinguish soil from sand.”</p> + +<p>Fire has tormented the Cape, ever since the Indians, who +used it to clear areas for corn, or to increase the visibility when +hunting game. When the humus on the woodland floor is thin, +and the trees not healthy or high enough to provide protective +shade, thus retaining moisture in the ground, a severe drought +may make them ripe for burning. I have heard it said that fires +used to be set deliberately in order to improve the blueberry crop. +And a neighbor tells me that he has seen thirty or more fires set +by the sparks from a train, chugging down the Cape, as he watched +from a bare hillside half a century ago.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span></p> + +<p>Oddly enough, the pitch pine owes a great deal of its present +prosperity to fire. It is one of the few trees whose roots stay +alive and which comes back after an area has been burned over. +Most of its competitors, except scrub oaks and black oaks, are +killed off. It is a tough tree, and when it grows to good height +with its rugged, wind-whisking look, a beautiful one; but it has +its vulnerable points. It is very greedy for light, being what the +tree experts call an “intolerant tree,” and it cannot stand competition. +Pitch pines that come up under the shade of oaks or +even of their own kind, soon die off. They demand their own +ground. The oaks, especially the white oak, are much more tolerant +of shade, and may in time push out the pitch pine, provided fires +are held to a minimum in the future.</p> + +<p>The oaks are monumentally persistent. Cut them down fifty +times and they will sprout back from the roots, which merely +spread out a little further and send out more shoots. These “sprout +hardwoods” have poor quality wood. They have fungus diseases, +and are subject to attack by insect borers. The general attitude +toward them is that they are worthless. Now that they are not +much in demand for firewood, the bulldozer, rather than the ax, is +their major enemy. But they deserve some admiration for holding +their own. The first year or two after cutting, a sprout oak will +grow very fast, but then it settles down for a long future, beginning +to grow at a slow, insistent rate, taking what comes. This is +a windy and salty land, where oaks may never grow to great +girth and height, but they seem eloquent about their right to +last out the next five thousand years on Cape Cod as well as we, +even though thirty feet, or in some areas five, may be the maximum +they reach. This is their chosen land.</p> + +<p>The late fall wind makes the brown oak leaves rustle and +stir or sound like hail, and it soughs through the pitch pines. +The whole year is full of the collaborative music of air and trees. +They may be poor trees, low and rangy, subject to great abuse, +but in their growth they make the land march between its +surrounding waters. The gray oak trunks go in ranks and tiers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span> +for mile after mile down the center of the Cape, interspersed by +individual pitch pines, or backed up and sided by pines in +independent woods that look rounded and bunched in the distance, +pocked with dark green shadows. The oak branches thrust up their +candelabras of branches and stiff twigs against the pale sky, ready +for next spring’s sunlight. The pitch pines stand with scaly, dark +brown trunks and thick needles rocking and switching around, +authorities on wind, and sandy soil, on impermanence, on taking +your chances when and where you can.</p> + +<p>Geologists say that this truly “narrow land,” no more than a +mile wide in some sections, seven or eight in others, may vanish +under the sea in five or six thousand years. Its border of sands +is always in the process of roaming and shifting. The Cape has +no bedrock. Its rocks are migrants, brought down from the north +by moving ice. In spite of the evidence of some once fairly +rich timberland and deep topsoil, the Cape does not convince +you of any depth and permanence other than its alliance with +salt water.</p> + +<p>The sea gives and the sea takes away, breaking through a +barrier beach during winter storms and roaring into the marsh +and sheltered inlet behind, cutting down cliffs a foot or two a +year, or imperceptibly stealing inches from a low-lying shore; while +it adds new beaches, packs new tons of sand around an outlying +spit or shoal. Last year, when I accompanied a group of children +on their geology class, we uncovered a burying pit for horses +and cows in the sandbank at the head of one of the bay beaches. +If there had been a farm in the vicinity, a hundred years or more +ago, the sea may well have cut in over half a mile to reach these +bones.</p> + +<p>The winds sweep overhead, or merely threaten, the beach +waters lap gently, or bridle and roar, and the only stability I feel +is that of the tides, a lasting balance between the give-and-take +of water and land. The Cape’s ravaged past and stunted present +seems transmuted into motion. What this spit of land has taught +me is an altered sense of the context of time. I once saw a tree<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span> +either as material for the woodpile, or something with a growth +so slow as to pass notice. Now I have begun to see trees moving +by the million in a million varied places. Natural change is +made up of so many circumstances, the continuum of life in its +vast order is so far from being held down by history, that everything +requires us to move on into the distance. It may well be regretted, +but Cape Cod is not so much a place for traditionalism as a +victim of the beautiful and impatient earth.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>The Dead and the Living</i></h3> + +<p>A cautious solemnity is beginning to take hold, although +the weather plays new tricks as it alternates between the influences +of north and south, east and west. Rain pours over the land. +Then, on a warm day, there is thunder and lightning at noon, +succeeded by a furious northwest wind after dark, bringing in a +deeper cold. The wind hums and roars during the night, and with +the sky clear and the stars out, the Cape has a new swept and +running feel to it.</p> + +<p>On a night of full moonlight, there are glassy shadows between +the trees, with a dry surf of air; and if sight brings sound, almost +tinkling beams of light from the low moon. New stations, new +harmonies of cold are suggested by stiff trees on their low hills +and hummocks, standing against persimmon and topaz sunsets, +or by a crystal edge on the sunlight.</p> + +<p>We have had light frosts, but by the end of the month no +consistent, freezing weather has been reached. Then on the +thirtieth the temperature drops to 20 degrees. I notice a flower, +Queen Anne’s lace, still blooming, all by itself in a field of +matted grass. During the night the surface of the ground is +frozen hard ... a cap of reality at last, with no more lingering. +There is a genuine glittering clarity of cold, in cloud, and branch +and stone. Out on the bay the low waves look as if they had a +harder push and pull to make, imbued with new heaviness. A +boy shows me the frozen body of a red-legged grasshopper, perfectly +preserved for a little while by a power to which its only<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span> +adaptation is death. What still stands above ground now faces +poverty, and primitive recalcitrance.</p> + +<p>There is a kind of ice sludge being nudged in by the tides +along the shore and through rippling purple waters of tidal +inlets. There are ice circlets around the marsh grass. Thin ice +sheets form at the rim of fresh-water ponds.</p> + +<p>The inland world seems either subdued or facing survival’s +icy stare, and even self-sufficient human society looks ready to +draw in and hole up for the winter. But since Cape Cod is +surrounded by the sea, it has another depth, another range, where +other populations roam while the rest of us wait and shiver. Above +water, the more visible migrants are those wintering sea birds—auks, +scoters, black ducks, eiders, old squaws, brant and Canada +geese—that feed along the shore, in sheltered inlets, or in waters +farther out, depending on their habit.</p> + +<p>In my locality Canada geese and black ducks are swimming +through peat-rooted grasses off Paine’s Creek where the terns +were fishing two months ago. A line of white-winged scoters flies +low over the heaving waters of the bay. I watch two black ducks in +the sky, approaching from the north. They are coming over at high +speed downwind with wings beating hard. Then more ducks fly up +across inlet and marsh, taking off to windward. They swing back +for a short stretch, then up again, as if to hold position, like +travelers reconnoitering, then fly on and out of sight.</p> + +<p>Two miles or more from shore I see points of spray going +up from the surface of the water, and above them many large +white birds continually turning and diving, from a considerable +height. These are the gannets, that appear off Cape waters in +the autumn after they have nested on their island territories in +the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The immature, first-year birds, which +can also be seen diving for fish, are almost totally black. They +are usually not with us for long, since they pass to winter feeding +grounds, which may be as far south as the Caribbean.</p> + +<p>Anyone who has seen them crowding their nesting grounds +on Bonaventure Island off the Gaspé Peninsula, will know, from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span> +close observation, how spectacular these birds are. They allow +tourists to come almost as close to them as chickens in a yard. +Thousands of pairs nest at the top of high cliffs or along their +ledges above the water, each with its established square foot or two +of nesting territory. A loud, rattling cry goes up, out of a multitude +of hoarse croaks and groans. I felt a great sense of pressure +and establishment in this bird city, this singular society with its +consistent behavior and ceremony. The pairs greet one another +bowing, or with heads raised and the long thick bills fencing. +Their stiff carved heads are always in motion, always in response +to one another. It is a pressing, elaborate spectacle, ancient and +authoritative.</p> + +<p>Gannets are awkward landers. They come in stiffly and do a +kind of top-heavy tumble when they hit the ground; but as ocean +flyers they have no superiors. When I see them again silently +gliding over the waters off the Cape, I greet them for their +earth-honored mastery. At a distance they might be mistaken for +herring gulls, but they are much larger, and their long black-ended +wings are typical. When you see points of spray going up +far out on the water, and white birds diving, you have unmistakably +seen the gannets.</p> + +<p>Earlier this month, during an easterly storm, with pouring, +blinding, deafening wind and rain, a few gannets were flying +close to the shore off Paine’s Creek where the water was a little +calmer and the atmosphere less overcast than farther out in the +bay. The birds flew low, since the fish they were hunting were +in shallow water and presumably close to the surface. On this +stormy morning they flew in an almost leisurely way over the +surface, flapping their wings and gliding. They would turn casually +and dive, their wings half spread. Then they rose and flew +steadily on with power and ease, their wings feeling the stiff wind, +using it like the ancient professionals they were.</p> + +<p>Now the north wind is blowing hard in the late afternoon. +There are slate-gray cloud masses in the sky, with a steely light +where the sun rays through, and the temperature has dropped<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span> +to about 40 degrees. Offshore over rocking, ponderous, gray waters, +I can see the crowds of gannets following a shoal line in the +distance. They catch the light from the sun when it strikes +occasionally through the clouds, intensifying their whiteness and +turning the water green. They seem to drift and turn continually, +their arrowed bodies plummeting down, the splashes appearing +against white bordered waves. As I walk inland the sun goes +westward behind massive clouds and the gannets, far out, high +and white, keep diving with exact abandon.</p> + +<p>The intermittent sunlight wheels in to brighten the yellow +grasses and make the sand sparkle. To the north it is as if the +sky were moving down from its Arctic limits and announcing +new themes, with iceberg clouds, and high walls of cold against +which the sun strikes new fire, while the wind rushes down to +make the message felt. A flock of sharp-tailed sparrows lands on +the sand, the marsh-side of a dune. They fly up into the stiff, +cold air, and then drop down into a small hollow for protection. +They stay there for a while under the great force of wind and +blown sand, not closely knit so much as spread out in what looks +like a perilous unanimity. If one sparrow should stray even a foot +away from the rest, in their over-all, though loose, pattern, I feel +as if it must be irretrievably lost, blown off, and separated. That +which holds the sharp-beaked, yellow-headed little birds together +is in their senses. They intercommunicate as one flock and form. +It is a control—as lightly manifested as the sparrows themselves, +but as powerful as the elements against which they stand.</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pgs 97-98]</span></p> +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="December"><i>December</i></h2> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span></p> +<h3><i>An Old Place, an Old Man</i></h3> + +<p>When the feel of winter comes, in November or early +December—though by astronomical calculation winter does not +start until December twenty-second—when the first hard seal +is set on the ground, and we are settled in with a new plainness, +then it is not difficult to bring back yesterday and its country +living. Winter’s role in the year’s wheel is an arresting, for the +sake of renewal, a sleep, or half sleep, for later waking. It has +its own suspense and violence, its roars and silences, like the +other seasons, but in general its order is of a different quality, +having an inwardness and resistance, a bare, gray need to keep +things inside and hidden down. This is the time of year that +shows a plain connection between human beings and their land.</p> + +<p>I see last leaves whipping around the hollows off an old +Cape road, or walk through the now more oblique rays of the +sun that yellow the sandy ground held by thin, waving grasses, +gray beach plum or bayberry bushes, and I recognize what has +been left behind.</p> + +<p>Here, surrounded by open slopes, is an abandoned house +site, now a cellar hole, walled by square blocks of glacial granite. +Orchard grass, timothy, and redtop still engage the old domesticity. +Inside their circle you can see where children played, water was +fetched and carried, chickens fed, and voices raised. There are +yucca plants close to the foundations, and a rose or two. I +transplanted such a rose a few years ago, and with added nourishment +it turned from a slight, single-petaled flower to a great bunch +of pinkish-purple fragrance.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span></p> + +<p>Unlike some abandoned farm sites in other parts of New +England, there is nothing left here to show what the inhabitants +did. There are no harrows, stone bolts, yokes, or farm implements, +not even any pots and pans. The stones are left, and the faithful +grasses, and beyond them the crunchy, gray deer moss, and +beard grass of indigenous fields. It was a small place, of bare +subsistence. Whatever the qualities of the people who lived there, +they left simplicity behind them. Not too far away, a bulldozer +is making a desert with giant scoops, high-tension wires are +marching by, and a plane rips the air overhead. We are encroaching +in our oblivious fashion, without delay. The new domesticities +may occupy only a tenth of an acre each, but they engage all +lands. The old domestic wildness cannot be replaced. It was a +lodgment limited by need, gray outside and dark within, perhaps +unbearably close and confined at times, but with a knowledge +of its earth.</p> + +<p>It seems to me that as the world has grown outward in +recent years, even I, a comparative newcomer to Cape Cod, +have lost some local life to memory. When you live in a place +for the first time you see behind it to its roots and grain, before +the storms of circumstance blow you away from it. I remember +a few old men who seemed so representative of the old Cape +that it will never be the same now that they are gone. The loss +is of a country speech, the flavor of a flesh and blood nurtured +on locality. What has replaced them can be defined in terms +of California as well as Cape Cod, which means no detriment +to either, for what we are now obliged to consider is locality in +a wider field. But those old men were born as we may not yet +be born, sturdily, in custom and resignation.</p> + +<p>Nathan Black died in October 1957, at the age of ninety-two. +He was born in 1865, the year Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. +He was a near neighbor. His land abutted mine, and since he was +the proprietor of the Black Hills Barber Shop, I could walk down +through the woods to get my hair cut, for the price, in a trillion-dollar +world, of fifty cents. He was a heavy man, with bright<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span> +brown eyes, and a head of curly white hair. He fitted the open +Cape Cod weather, or the weather fitted him. I am not sure +of the distinction. Nearly ninety years of change, of natural +cataclysm, of both peace and abysmal war in the human world, +had left him in the same place, with the same measure, outwardly +at least, of stability.</p> + +<p>When he left his place, or the customary orbit of work and +old friends that constituted his life, perhaps to drive out on a +new highway or to the chain store, he may never have stopped +being surprised. I remember his looking at me with a kind of +amused questioning—but no alarm—and saying something about +no one belonging here any more. The new population didn’t +quite make sense to him.</p> + +<p>In the way of old countrymen who knew their boundaries, +he was tough and unforgiving in his role of landowner. He had +his rights, “By gawly!” and he would know when someone did +him wrong. He held on hard, and I suspect there were neighbors +who felt the possessiveness too strongly, but this being none of +my business, I will go in and get my hair cut.</p> + +<p>The shop, with a tool shed under the same roof, where +“Nate” used to grind knives and axes, stood, and still stands, +across the yard from the house where he was born. There are +some other gray-shingled, outlying buildings on both sides of a +dirt road that runs through scrubby woods and hollows, dry hills +sloping down to marshy bottom land ... wood-lot country. One +December day I rapped at the door, and he put his jacket on +and walked across the yard with me, where two white ducks +were parading and some red chickens giving the frozen ground a +going over. The old man bent down a little and spoke to his dog +Bonnie, a cream-colored spaniel, which had just wagged up to him: +“Did you get it?”</p> + +<p>Then, to me: “I lost an egg. Picked up five eggs, out of +the hen yard this mornin’, and came back with four. Maybe +there was a hole in these old pants of mine.”</p> + +<p>The barber shop was small, long and narrow, but he had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span> +a stove in there that kept it warm. There were some old magazines +on a bench against the wall, with a black Homburg hat hanging +on a peg. It had been given him by an old customer, a wealthy +man who had lived on the Cape during the summer and had +come in to have his hair cut for many years before he died. There +was a photograph on the wall of the two of them with an +inscription underneath that read: “Established 1884. A satisfied +customer is our best advertisement.” They were standing out in +front of the shop, smiling in the sun.</p> + +<p>“Feller came here yesterday and I had to clip him in the +kitchen. Shop was too cold,” Nate said.</p> + +<p>The calm of the place was comforting. It came, I suppose, +from an acceptance that emanated from him, and brought in +many old friends, who would sit down to say: “Nate, just +thought I’d come over and pass the time of day.”</p> + +<p>Whatever he had to say about other people never left them +without the honor of human circumstances. “Pretty close, he is,” +he would say with a little laugh, or “I guess he had a shade on” +(a Cape Cod expression for being drunk). “Guess you can’t +hold on to nothin’,” he said about some local theft, in a way that +insisted on not being roused beyond necessity.</p> + +<p>His origins were out of a kind of history of which there was +very little left intact except himself. He once showed me a tintype +of his mother, a handsome girl named Bridget Malady, who had +emigrated from Ireland in 1862. His father, Timothy Black, +was born in Yarmouth, on the Cape. At the age of ten he signed +on as a cook aboard the packet which sailed between East +Dennis and Boston, and seems to have spent a good deal of +his life on intermittent voyages at sea. He was also in the butchering +and slaughtering business with his two sons. In the autumn +they used to butcher eighty-five hogs or more, at the rate of three +a day. And in some rough but related way, Timothy Black started +his son in the barbering business. Nate remembered how his +father used to cut his hair in the kitchen, long before the Black +Hills emporium was established: “I used to sit there while he was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span> +sort of pummeling at me on the back of the neck. By gol! I sure +did cringe when he was chopping me with those women’s scissors.”</p> + +<p>While I, seventy or eighty years later, was sitting in the +barber’s chair, getting more expert and calmer work done on me, +I assembled a little of the past. In the nineteenth and early +twentieth centuries an expedition to the post office or the store +took up a large part of the day. That was the time when you +could hitch the horse up to a post and stop for a long chat, +“having the capacity to waste time” as I heard a Texan phrase +it about some of his countrymen in the western part of the state. +People walked between their houses—there are foot paths still +showing—on barren hills. They had small herds of cows that +foraged on the sloping fields. Families used to picnic together +by the ponds, and there were barn dances on Saturday nights, +which were sometimes the occasion for a rip-roaring fight. I +have heard it said that Nate Black was the strongest fighter in the +region, when outraged beyond his normal patience, but he would +reveal none of this prowess to me.</p> + +<p>The Black family also held dances in their kitchen. The +father of the house played the violin. On such occasions they +would have plum porridge suppers, or they served crackers, milk, +and raisins, and sometimes hulled corn.</p> + +<p>He was of a piece with his surroundings. I think of many +things he talked about while I was having my hair cut and they +all meant the gray, sea-girded land, and a human closeness to it. +I think of the deer that ate his beans, of his duck that was +carried off by a fox, of foxes being reduced in population by the +mange, of a watering place for horses by Cedar Pond in East +Dennis (a beautiful pond with ranks of dark cedars backing +it up, and now being encroached upon by house lots); and he +talked about the big eels waiting to eat young herrin’ (or alewives) +at the mouth of a pond, and of sounding the depths of Round +Pond here in West Brewster.</p> + +<p>And then there was his dog which had to be chained up +because it got so wildly excited chasing rabbits through the woods<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span> +that it was constantly lost, having once been picked up nearly +ten miles away; and the coon that climbed a tree after a hen; +and his little granddaughter wanting to shine a flashlight through +the window one night and take a picture of a coon she saw +outdoors, because it was “such a pretty-looking animal.”</p> + +<p>There also come to mind the fishing boats all-over white +with screaming gulls, that he once spoke about with real +excitement, and, of course, the yearly work on his cranberry +bogs ... he and his tart and lively wife used to pick them +together; and the shifting price of cranberries, and his wood lots, +and who was after him to buy some of his land.</p> + +<p>“Yes yes” he would say, in the Cape Cod fashion, and always, +when a customer was leaving the shop: “Come again.”</p> + +<p>His wife Emily died two years before him. Some time before +that I stopped to talk with him when he was scything the family +plot in Red Top Cemetery, which lies at the junction of two +country roads, on a little hill or high knoll up in the sky and the +ocean winds. He told me two women had come up one day while +he was there and said: “What a nice place!” He and his wife are +buried there, in a place which has no more permanence than any +other, but for them and by them had the simple power of +acquaintance.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i104" style="max-width: 102.5625em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i104.jpg" alt="Cemetery"> +</figure> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Night in the Afternoon</i></h3> + +<p>If I have left Nathan Black in the nineteenth century (although +when I last saw him he was deeply involved with a +television set) or at least in a tradition which no longer appears +to sustain us, it is not to emphasize that all continuity is lost. +He has left us transients to make what we can of the Cape Cod +weather, without assistance, but the examples it still offers are +both patient and surprising. Storms and stars never fail us.</p> + +<p>The theme this month is a growing cold, but whether we +are to have rain or snow, hard frosts, or comparative mildness +is not known. If you listen to what people say about the weather +you go from apprehension to apprehension. It is as though we +were already working to keep our lives open until spring. I suspect +that by March we get tired of comment. In any case it represents +a communication with the forces around us, and I am not one +to disparage such banalities.</p> + +<p>“Good morning.” “What’s good about it?” Dead oak leaves +hang like wet rags in the cold rain. After the rain stops there +is a cold moisture suspended in the air with its own whiteness. +There is a silence everywhere, except for a chickadee’s harsh split +trills nearby, the low tone of offshore waters, and the indiscriminate +sound of engines on roads or in the sky. The woodchuck, +the box turtle, and the chipmunk are asleep. There are no insects +above ground to catch the eye. The day shortens, and we who are +always calling for more sunshine, pleased at the idea of some +perpetual, impossible comfort, are obliged to confront night in +the afternoon. Life is quiet, stripped of redundancy. There is a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span> +new restraint about our depopulated local world, and at the +same time new openings afforded. At least the season seems +to offer another quality for interpretation. Perhaps, for example, +because the trees are bare and the ground devitalized, we are +to look up and find the sky.</p> + +<p>I come home one night under vast black reaches full of +stars, almost as thick as wet snowflakes. It is very still around me, +a cold stillness through the ground, but overhead the infinite +dome almost resounds. It is blazing, bounding, soaring with the +means and light of existence. I am not troubled at all that I look +out from an unimportant planet dependent on a common star, +and am only able to see a few light-years away, each light-year +being a distance of six million million miles. There is sight +past sight. The strongest telescope is still an extension of the +human eye. Our measurements themselves are a form of participation +in that fantastic distance, which may not make us any less +lonely, but we have a mind in space; and since men calculate, +by observation of the heavens and of their earth, that the laws +of life are the same as far and farther than they can see, then +they have hearts and blood there too. I stand here on the cold +ground, and take sensual note of the universe.</p> + +<p>Then I move back into my domestic hole to do a little +hibernating of my own. A winter withdrawal sets in, when outer +resources escape me. I am drawn inward to human want and its +frustrations, to common egotism or inertia. The December days +progress almost remotely. Who cares about the secrets of that +cold and darkening earth outside? Our problems are sufficient unto +themselves.</p> + +<p>But there is a natural complex of greed, a provision for +appetite, that brings men and earth to mutuality. Manifested by +the weather, it sometimes puts us out of doors to understand real +fortitude. Instead of easing on toward January, December begins +to tug and roar. It snows all day and there are north winds of +from thirty to forty miles an hour driving the snow against +our houses, suggesting an extra struggle we might not be quite<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span> +ready for. Then it warms up to 2 or 4 degrees above freezing, and +the following morning begins with a cold rain and sleet falling +down with hissing, disheartening force. The temperature drops. +The sleet turns to snow, driving in violently from the north, +hitting the trees like bullets. The sky closes in. There is no +horizon. The wind swirls. Trees rock and bend. This is a storm +with a great rush of savagery, setting wild, grim traps for the +unprotected. “Now,” it says, “I have you. Try some adventures +in this.”</p> + +<p>There is ice or cemented snow along the tree trunks in the +direction of the storm, so that by sight and feel I know the wind +is from the northeast quarter, without need of instruments. My +hand tells me where the present power is coming from.</p> + +<p>When the snow and wind let up a little, I head for the +shore and find signs down, gutters yanked out, and telegraph +wires dangling across the road. Salt water ahead of me is +churning, tossing white spume against the open shore, while +the wind seethes, whines, and howls with growing intensity. The +feeling of conflict is everywhere around me—a hurling and letting +go, a bend and give, a clash, a holding against insufferable strain. +The sand on the upper beach is whipped into stinging strength. +The sea is almost boiling, its racing, conflicting edges spray-lined. +On top of an exceptionally high tide, great waves run in over a +sheltered inlet, sending their combers farther toward the land. All +points of contact and withdrawal, rise and fall, seem to be +concentrated in this monumental turbulence, a force that is +almost uncontained. Is it a replica in violence of the normally +unseen stresses and strains lying under a peaceful season, or a +life? Our bodies are made of air and salt water, in their components +of hydrogen and oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. A storm should be +our organic companion. But this cold screaming fury makes me +take refuge behind a wall. Man may have overcome the elements, +but not his elemental frailty.</p> + +<p>Out over the gray and white waters, hovering against the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span> +wind in an almost idle way, are several herring gulls. And, at the +mouth of the inlet, riding calmly on the roaring, running tide, +facing up against a thirty-five-mile-an-hour wind, is a loon—close-reefed, +well fitted in all respects to weather the worst.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Two Encounters</i></h3> + +<p>After the storm a hard cold sets in for many days. As a rule +our Decembers are comparatively mild, with the days alternating +between light rain and cool sunshine. Now the very great plunges +of the cold, driving the frost deep into the ground, freezing the +pond waters, starting a rim of pack ice around Cape Cod +Bay, comes as a surprise, something not known before. The +weather bureau, explaining the cold as being the result of a +vast Canadian high-pressure system, speaks of its unusual “fetch +and intensity.” Ten degrees above zero is not severe as compared +with conditions in other parts of the world, but this unseasonal +extreme is a local reminder of the earth’s potential, and just +how much we depend on the normal rhythms of the year. We +gasp with cold, turn up the heat, and think that cataclysm is a +small thing to the universe.</p> + +<p>The cold around us creates a different earth. It demands +a readjustment of the senses, as though it were ready with amazing +new suggestions. One sharply cold morning when snow lies +fresh on the ground I stop by the cemetery where the Blacks +are buried, on my way to town. There is something about this +day that asks attention. It sings. Pure crystalline masses creak +underfoot. The tune of the cold finds an edge on my bones. +Pines, stiff cedars, locust trees, hard ground and stone, all share +in resonance, being forged and tempered by the cold. The little +graveyard hill is a tympanum, or sounding board, very highly +pitched, so powerfully taut, being plucked very lightly by the air +with sharp whispers and twanging sounds being sent across the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span> +snow, that it might be ready to send one chord, incomparably +new, into the whole sky.</p> + +<p>I start to go away, but a tiny, almost casual trill separates +itself from the vibrations of the cold. I keep listening and in +a few seconds see a bird rounding the branch of a cedar tree, +not twenty feet away. Working in and out of the branches, +coming in to view and then disappearing again, is a flock of +purple finches, eating cedar berries. The males are washed with a +raspberry color that keeps appearing through the dark green masses +of the tree like intermittent lights, hints of fruitfulness in the +winter’s containment.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, surprisingly, a light brown, speckled veery appears +on the open branch of a locust. This summer bird, out in the +glittering cold, seems to have a startled, wildly timid look in its +eyes. Its slim body hesitates, with the problem of aloneness +perhaps, or direction, or food in this white earth that has cut +so cruelly into its subsistence. Then it flies off into a wood of +pitch pines, and I hear a low sound, the mere snatch of a thrush’s +warbling.</p> + +<p>Just by stopping for ten minutes instead of hurrying on, I +have been put into a new relation with the morning, and have +seen a singularity and sacredness to all its parts. It could happen +in Moscow or New York.</p> + +<p>A day or two later I am in the city, just before Christmas, +when the stores are rushed and jammed with shoppers. It is late +afternoon and yellow lights flood out of great glass windows +and crowded doors. There is a tinkling of bells, cups, and tambourines, +a tooting of horns through the general confused roaring +of the streets. Just as I pass a huge department store, I hear an +odd, disassociated center of pipings and cries. I can connect it +with none of the turmoil around me.</p> + +<p>I stand and listen. There, across the street, like a theatrical +backdrop, is an abandoned brownstone building, four or five +stories high, with a grimy, ponderous façade. It is covered with +ledges and its dark, empty windows reflect the pond-dark evening +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pgs 111-112]</span> +skies ... every now and then a white cloud moves across them +with disembodied calm. On the ledges are hundreds of starlings, +pushing, crowding, hopping, flying up against the windows, +perched all along the heavy front of the building—dingy birds, +with their lost Christmas cries. There they are, adapted almost +domestically to man’s world, tough in a way that a purple finch +or a veery cannot be, but still a race apart.</p> + +<p>Then I am back down the street again with my own tribe +that teems with general might and inner purposes of its own, going +and returning—out continually—representatives of a force of mind +that can gauge the mechanics of the universe, and in animal +power overrunning the earth. I see in these shoppers an evolutionary +line of vision never satisfied, a history of cities, ledges of light +running to unknown futures. The world is in the hands of these +omnipresent and familiar beings, the young and the old, black-haired, +brown, yellow, or gray, in the indefinite shapes and interchanges +of their lives—the human race hurrying through its own +lighted ways. And if I shouted: “Stop! Look away from yourselves. +Consider the starlings!” with what sort of mild madness would +I be credited?</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pgs 113-114]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="January"><i>January</i></h2> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span></p> + +<h3><i>Exposure</i></h3> + +<p>It is said that winter, being the season when the sun shines +on us obliquely, is a period of death, or, as the dictionary puts +it, of “dreariness, old age and decay.” We are being deprived of a +portion of original energy, and recognize occasionally that if +we were out far enough, in as extreme and bare a relationship +to the cold as the birds, but without their equivalent in insulation, +we would have a hard time surviving (though birds are also +perishable and have their share of disease and death from starvation). +But we take care of ourselves, in such an elaborate and +consuming way, that the grand extremes of weather may only +succeed in being a nuisance. The freezing weather deepens this +month, after a few days of moderate warmth at the start, and I +am free to complain about the heat bills. The car skids and +turns a half circle on the highway, which is covered with glare +ice one morning, and I am afraid, not for myself so much as for +my new car. How could I manage that ten miles back without +it? Self-protection may be all that winter means to us, though +it is a term that can only be comparative in an age of manufactured +violence.</p> + +<p>Suddenly there is a tremendous thud above us that jars and +rocks the house. It seems to tug at the vitals of the earth and +would cause us more than mere shock if we were not aware +that it is a plane breaking the sound barrier, thousands of feet +in the air. A minute or two later I hear a familiar gabbling, a +mixed bugling, overhead, and run out to see twenty Canada +geese, hurrying fast down the north wind in four separate flocks<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span> +aligned in flight. With their long necks stretched out and strong +wings beating they are fleeing for their lives, frightened up from +winter feeding grounds along the shores of Cape Cod Bay. The +earth, for the time being at least, is committed to mankind. The +geese cannot so frighten <i>us</i>. They are innocent of ways to “control +their environment.”</p> + +<p>Then there is almost complete silence again, and I understand +what is meant by the “dead of winter.” Under the cold +blue stare of the sky nothing seems to be happening. Each sound—a +crow cawing, a car on the road, the rustle and clink of a +clump of dead oak leaves—is by itself, occupying wide, unpopulated +plains. Without the wind, the air too presses on me, with a cold +weight. I walk through its depths, feeling it against my face, and +suddenly realize that limited sea of oxygen in which we live, +this side of outer space and its violet darkness.</p> + +<p>This silence may be just as alarming to some people as a +“sonic boom.” Nothing seems to be going on. There is an intensity +of rest. The demand for something new is unsatisfied. There +are men who stray into nature from a city’s booming, reassuring +hive, and are frightened by being caught in necessity—one of the +year’s cold, unspeaking tides. Perhaps they also recognize how +much the sun provides us with other than pleasant company. There +is a winter in us from which we will not soon escape into warmth +and joy.</p> + +<p>Still, this frozen land contributes to a global art. It is cold +and silent here because it is hot and loud in India. And how can +we spread our wings without a knowledge of deprivation? While +I am closed in I know there are redstarts wintering in Mexico +and arctic terns in the Antarctic, and when I greet them on +their return it will not be only because they have come home +(a bird’s nest is not a house but a platform from which to start), +but because home comprises so large an area. Some birds, if they +survive their first year, will reappear in the vicinity of the place +where they were reared. So will salmon, shad, and alewives, returning +to their parent stream after years of absence. We are conscious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span> +of the great amount of space their journeying requires. Species +of fish or birds show great variation in the extent of their +migrations, and the whole pattern is wider than a continent. +Their movements are not only consistent with periodic motions +of climate, weather, the tides, but may be visible evidence of +earth changes that go back for incredible lengths of time. They +require an unrestricted measure for their lives and deaths. Men +alter, restrict, or use up, to suit their needs and fancy. Then they +move elsewhere. I see that one of the young men who has been +designated for training in space flight, an “Astronaut,” says he +accepted the challenge of being sent aloft in a capsule because +we were “running out of interesting things to do down here.” +The destruction and denial of earth’s resources must have gone +farther than we realize. But the life journeys continue, from +one sunny round to another, over the earth and its wide-ranging +waters. How much we must be missing, even in the wintertime!</p> + +<p>Before dawn, after the windless day, the temperature drops +to 10 degrees. A walloping, tugging, brutal wind sets in. The +frost so rigidifies the needles of the pines, burning into their +cells, that they look dark and scorched. I feel as if the rigid and +dizzy earth were being kicked around, rocked like a topheavy +boat—the trees its masts. The wind cries: “Remember poverty!” +and I go gasping for breath through the fierce air, feeling as +perishable as a moth. We may be having the mere taste of an +extreme, but this penury weather is huge and mighty all the same. +It is the result of a Labrador storm one thousand to two thousand +miles in extent. Its balanced fury tests all it meets.</p> + +<p>On this kind of day I am an inland lover. To be wind-cut +and sandblasted serves no good human end. As if in general +proof of that, I meet no more than a car or two on the highway, +and see no one on the streets of the town. The shore is desolate, +hissing with driven sand. On the surface the bay waters in the +distance are being stiff-armed and flung away. New ice, morose +and slow, is nudged by an outgoing tide in the inlet at Paine’s +Creek. Gulls drift slowly upwind like clouds. And on the wide<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span> +tidal flats—the searing, biting, turbulent grounds—groups of +Canada geese are stalking through shallow purple waters that +reach, wind-scudded, over shoals of peat. Then a new group wheels +in low and settles down with the rest. I can hear their honking +under the sound of wind and sand. Beyond them, in steely waters +speckled green, is a small flock of black ducks.</p> + +<p>This is no inanimate landscape. Under the given power, +the abandon of the wind, the restrictiveness of the cold, is still +an all-containing balance. I listen to those famous travelers the +geese as they communicate and am taken a little further out on +violent and unreceptive grounds, past my own shivering.</p> + +<p>Inland again, listening, taking shelter in the lee of the wind, +just as a rabbit jumps away from me and runs under a tangle of +bull briar, I am conscious of all the unseen hiding and endurance +around me. What else moves here, beside the wind that suddenly +rushes in and roars so loud that it makes the trees groan and the +large round clouds hurry on? The trees, swaying and creaking, are +the most obvious, the most exposed. They are half dead, rigid, +hard, inert. The sap coagulates in the extreme cold. I cut a twig +with my knife and the pitch is dark and frozen. The trees in their +containment, adapted to less water and light, getting scarcely any +nutriment, are able to make their stand in the open while other +lives must hide.</p> + +<p>In the late afternoon the ground stirs harshly. Leaves run in +dead abandon. The wind seems to sound a burst of doom, and +then seethes in lively rage. A dead limb cracks. I am on the trigger +edge of ultimate need. Blue-gray clouds hang over the shaking fingers +of the trees. There is a collective power that flays us all, without +discrimination.</p> + +<p>The shadows have left the earth. Light stays in the sky, and +then begins to go. There are rims of pale electric light in the +west. Long cloud shoals, now white and pearly gray, stand against +wide bands of blue and mauve and pink, like the baked desert cliffs +of the Southwest. Finally, and I feel all finality, as the ringing +air sheds down enormous heavy cold, received numbly by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> +earth, the sky turns a startling gemlike blue. We are turned into +night. The sky’s mineral beauty shifts to pure blackness lighted +by the stars. There is an almost shrilling intensity in the air +above the earth-binding wind, and I am conscious of nothing +but height, height beyond reach.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Ice on the Ponds</i></h3> + +<p>The air is crystalline and the sunlight through the pitch pine +needles gives them a glassy sheen. This is one of those rare times +when almost all of Cape Cod’s innumerable ponds are iced over +and the children can go skating after school. It has been consistently +cold for weeks, with comparatively little snow, and the pond +surfaces tempt all skaters to soar.</p> + +<p>But we have had a day and a half of thawing weather. When +my young daughter and I go to a pond to skate, we hear its fine +whomping sound as it expands under the sun’s warmth. What +looks like jagged broken bits of crystal, catching light on the surface, +turn out to be part of the ice structure, thawing ice refrozen. +We find hundreds of water spiders frozen in around the edge where +yesterday they had been brought out into the water by rain and +comparative warmth, and on the way we found a dead worm on +top of frozen ground. So some animals are flung around with the +season and respond fatally to chance. They belong to an allowance +left over from December. Then it ends, and the day hardens like +the ice. It is as though the helpless were not to be allowed their +helplessness for some time to come.</p> + +<p>To skate on a long stretch of unmarked ice, over green reflected +clouds, with the sound of clear air swishing past your face, +is to voyage, full sail. It is a shining freedom, and our only competition +is in play, to skid and turn and rush like water birds in the +springtime—the only hardship a bruising fall. Under black holes +we can see down to the bottom of the pond, where there are little +forests of green moss and water plants, very still and soft.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span> +Suddenly a diving beetle swims quickly and erratically across and then +a slow tadpole moves into sight. There is enough sun-induced +warmth in the shallow water at the pond’s edge to allow life more +play, though in that respect a pond is easier on its inhabitants +than the land. With its cover of ice it is now in a state of “winter +stagnation.” There are frogs buried in the mud and fish moving +sluggishly in cold, stabilized waters. But this is an environment +which always allows activity in at least some of its inhabitants +throughout the year. Its extremes and revolutions of temperature +bear little comparison with those of the land. Our hazards are of +a sterner kind.</p> + +<p>When we kneel on the ice, where the mobile sky is reflected, +and look down in, the water world seems half awake and half +asleep, half tropical and half glacial. The waters are almost motionless +over intermittent green carpets and through their black depths. +The whole being of the pond seems to move independently of our +surface storms. It has a heart of its own.</p> + +<p>The winter land is a harder environment, though we sometimes +make more of its rigidity than we need to. At the pond’s +edge I brush past a bayberry bush, and its dried, dark gray berries +smell as pungently and herbaceously as they did when ripe—waxen +and pewter colored—in the fall. There are checkerberry or partridgeberry +plants rimming the pond. In fact they grow well +through the acid earth of these woodlands, and their shiny leaves +stay green throughout the winter. They are also called wintergreen, +or mountain tea, and their leaves taste spicy and aromatic. +Are we still common enough to make new names instead of numbers, +implying that familiarity, touch, and association have not +been left behind?</p> + +<p>You know the checkerberry, hugging the ground with shiny, +flavored leaves, tiny bell-like flowers pure white in the late spring, +bright red berries in the autumn. Something to say hello to, and +not merely to recognize as <i>Gaultheria procumbens</i> and pass by. +To name means to know, love—perhaps even to laugh at. The fact +that the checkerberry has so many other common names is a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span> +human distinction. Consider: grouseberry, spiceberry, oneberry, +chicken-berry, deerberry, groundberry, hillberry, ivyberry, boxberry, +teaberry, greenberry, ivy-plum, chinks, drunkards, red pollen, rapper-dandies, +wax cluster, redberry tea, Canadian tea. They dance +in friendship. I have been told that the name “Drunkards” comes +from the use of checkerberry tea as a remedy for a hangover, but +am unable to corroborate it.</p> + +<p>While I am pulling off my skates and chewing on a spicy +leaf, a trim, round little chickadee comes within four feet of me +and twitters and scolds. Then two warier golden-crowned kinglets +show up suddenly in a nearby shrub, crying: “Tseet! Tseet!” +and flit away. We climb up the steep sides of the pond and face +the slopes toward the north. Bold gusts of wind strike us. Stiff +briars and branches whip us as we walk along a narrow path, and +the play of winter sunlight through the clouds goes lively across +the grasses and through the gray trees.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Contrast and Response</i></h3> + +<p>January seems grim and contained. This is not the time to +expect life to declare itself. Even local human circumstances are +such as to prove a kind of gray waiting. While the rest of the +world retires in Florida, counts change in New York, or struggles +with vast new shifts and divided aims, Cape Cod stays down, and +holds on. The population is five times less than that of the summer. +It is the barren, exposed peninsula it used to be, with the +exception of the new woodlands and all the cottages. We are +linked by highway and modern communicatory apparatus with the +rest of the continent, but in this season there is a feeling of diminished +wants. The human pulse begins to rise in April or May, +when people paint and refurbish their motels and cottages in preparation +for the great migration of vacationists. Now the economy +subsists more on expectation than fulfillment. The human squirrels +have stored away their acorns. The forage is thin in January for +all inhabitants.</p> + +<p>The weather roams still, with our surrounding waters. Why +live here but for the reason that there is always an element of +sufficient grandeur? Although the sea might not be visible for the +motels and trailers before your eyes, a few miles, or a few yards, +brings its untouched enormity into view. The sky is wide, and the +ocean waters are still breathing loud or low with fruitful magnitude. +They are at the end of every road. And when the foghorn +bawls from Chatham like a lost cow, we know that there are still +headlands and ships, the uncalculated and the unknown.</p> + +<p>On the Cape’s south side, facing the heavy Atlantic swells and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span> +breakers, the high cliffs are often covered with miniature scrub +oak forests, or thickets—they are scarcely more than two feet high, +as well as stunted pitch pine with a mustard tinge to their needles. +Dark clumps of hudsonia, a heath, resembling heather, cover the +hollows and slopes, the billowing mounds on cliff tops above the +beach. The vegetation lies low against wind and salt spray. It looks +rusty and tormented. On the steep slopes to the beach there are +milky films of snow, and then patches of white foam at the bottom. +The surf roars in, sidling with great licks and washes along the +sands.</p> + +<p>The sea beyond is full of long waves that take the low sunlight +of late afternoon and swoop and fall with it. They come in +from the distance and then rise as they approach the shore, showing +their marbled, curved surfaces, to pause at the crest and plunge +down. A stiff north wind holds them back a little. Manes of spray +whip back at their cresting and when they fall the spray rises up +almost vertically. Just inshore, where the breakers fling in their +prows along the sloping beach, the waters foam with constant +movement, in and out, all bubbling and shifting with a turbulent +milk, whose surface looks opalescent—colors of blue, green, and +pink bordered by heavy pearl. And what a sound! A thundering, +a loud fermentation, with an occasional great soft clash of waves +like cymbals, the long surf roaming and lunging in the evening +light for miles and miles. From where I stand on the cliff top I +can see a little group of men and children jumping and throwing +sticks and stones into the surf. They run back and forth with its +rhythm, playing touch and go with it, running to keep warm in +the wind, playing as if they had to, dancing for the surf’s thunder. +They laugh, shout, hurl driftwood into it. They jump and wave +their arms as the water reflects their images, just on the fringe of +an immense, terrible beauty, responding with an antic kind of +love.</p> + +<p>The sea provides a cold, unfathomed latitude in the tightness +of January. On land too there is a kind of under-rhythm of things +allowed, or rather a special winter pace and timing, each life with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span> +its relation to the cold. The thin light and air seem to define the +leeway. Thick snow showers slant in. Sky, hills, and shore are +blotted out. There is nothing to be seen but the naked trees, the +oak leaves like tattered old flags holding against the wind that +kicks the flakes ahead. The storm abates into gusts, and occasional +sweeps of snow with blue patches blown clear in the sky. +At each advent of this blue clarity, with sharp spun strands of light +coming in from the sun, the birds respond. Snow swirls. Wind +seethes. There is nothing to be seen but a tree sparrow or a chickadee +at the bird feeder. Then the blue patches show again and the +earth clears to vision. A flock of juncos fly in, or a blue jay glides +through; a red-tailed hawk screams in the sky. It is as if they were +all puppets dancing for their master light.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i124" style="max-width: 102.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i124.jpg" alt="Snow in Bare trees"> +</figure> + +<p>Special response is as much a part of winter as extreme reaction +or withdrawal. I see this in the birds. I hear it in the yawing +creaks of a pine, in dead leaf stir, wind speech, in their collaboration. +I feel it in the quality of the season, its rigid shocks, its holding +hard and letting go, its suspense and trigger edges, the obedience +it calls for, the inertness and tight compliance.</p> + +<p>Within the temperature range permitted it, life now shows +many hairbreadth balances. Some marine animals “deactivate” during +the winter—the equivalent of that coma and lowered metabolism +which is called hibernation in the woodchuck or the chipmunk. +If no ice blocks are in the way, and I can walk out over the +offshore flats, I find periwinkles still holding on to rocks or driftwood, +but obviously slowed down almost to a stop. On the other +hand, common rock barnacles breed during the winter months +as far north as Delaware and New Jersey, sending out eggs which +will hatch in cold sea water into free-swimming larvae. And there +is a red crab in Boston Harbor which stays active throughout the +winter.</p> + +<p>When it gets abnormally cold, shellfish “supercool.” They have +a freezing nucleus and will survive if not suddenly jarred.</p> + +<p>Adaptation to ranges in temperature varies enormously. +Some plants and animals die when the temperature drops beyond<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span> +a certain point, and others when they are released too quickly +from freezing temperatures. Some animals avoid the cold by migrating, +or they are able by specialized habits to eat and survive +as permanent residents.</p> + +<p>The conditions of life in its natural environment, whether +land or water, vary from place to place, although the sea, for example, +is less extreme and difficult than is the land. Such conditions +may show dramatic contrasts in areas that are fairly close together. +Because of the influence of the Labrador Current, the +waters to the north of Cape Cod are colder than those to the +south, where they are influenced by the Gulf Stream. As a result, +there are some species of marine invertebrates which exist on one +side of the Cape but not the other.</p> + +<p>The frog, a cold-blooded animal whose tissues approximate +the temperature around it, lies in the cold mud, sometimes in +blocks of ice, an intrinsic part of winter. The blue jay, on the +other hand, is less helpless, and is able to forage above the ice and +snow. Like man, it has an internal temperature of its own, regardless +of the weather; although man is without the insulation of +feathers or fur. A thing apart, I run to my house, my city, the +tunnels of my society, in order to escape the cold. I wonder, +though, whether this mental animal, a great experiment in complexity, +is not as perilously balanced as any simple organism, a +mussel or a clam, in the extremes of temperature and environment.</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pgs 127-128]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="February"><i>February</i></h2> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span></p> +<h3><i>Secrets in the Open</i></h3> + +<p>Rain comes, heavy, cold, inert. Dirt roads begin to turn to +mud. Then the vice tightens again. Below freezing temperatures +take hold, putting a new strain on plants and trees lately thawed. +It is not steady, continuous cold that now threatens life, but the +shifts between freezing and thawing—alternates in the caprices of +energy. We are not allowed to open our pores and eyes too much, +lest we be taken unawares, stopped as we try to start again.</p> + +<p>I am hungry for release from winter’s power. I imagine, hopefully, +that the buds on the oak trees are a little fatter and the pine +needles greener. If everything is ready to bloom when permitted, +I am ready to say the word. But in fact the earth turns, and there +has been a gradual increase in daylight for two months. The skunk +cabbage has already reacted. The conical tips of its buds are pushing +through frozen ground, showing that all life is not confined +to pumping hearts. The ferment goes on in many ways, although +the imperturbable action of a skunk cabbage, following the global +year’s own pace, is not something to give me as much cheer as a +blue bird’s song.</p> + +<p>Zero and subzero weather is unfamiliar on the Cape and when +it comes it feels incalculably cold. It is face-burning, dry, and +piercing. Icy, crackling abysses hang in the air. There is a fire in +a neighboring town. A small clothing store has caught fire in the +early morning when the proprietor was away. Leaden gray smoke +lifts above it through heavy walls and winds of cold into the sky. +A small crowd gathers on the other side of the street. They stamp +hard, hold on to their ears, and watch the fire truck hurling tons of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span> +water into the black interior of the store, a little yellow frame building +with nothing left to it but its name—the letters still showing +on a dirty sign above the door.</p> + +<p>A stove caused it, they say. They wonder whether the man +had any insurance. Was this all he had? They watch in sympathy. +They walk away saying: “Who cares!” They laugh, and as the fires +show signs of going out, they cry for more. What is there in us +that cries out for disaster and responds so readily to accidents?</p> + +<p>I hear brutality and kindness, all in the same crowd, cold +laughter and silent sympathy. Here are our meetings, all in the one +extreme of a winter day, showing the allowances and shifts in human +weather ... hidden fires almost seen.</p> + +<p>In a day’s time the great cold is gone. Frost still lies deep in +the ground. The twigs of shrubs and trees shiver wildly and delicately. +The sun strikes us more directly. It sheathes the tree tops +and a running slate-blue sea, and the day seems more open, receptive +to that release I look for; but there might be a magic there +that will pass before I find it. I spend as much time stumbling as +in discovery, stumbling over debris, cans, and broken glass, like +this stretch of drab ground just off the highway, bordering a salt +marsh. It has the grim look of scalped ground, having been robbed +of its topsoil. The only life is a starling, perched on a bare sumac. +At the edge of the marsh I clamber over colorless litter, logs, +branches, piles of thatch shoved in and rocked by the tides. Things +seem tediously dead.</p> + +<p>Something says stand and wait, look out and over; and when +I do life stirs, assembles, and flies. The yellow marsh grasses sway +beyond me. Ice shines white in the drainage ditches. A flicker, +sun loaded, flies over to the far side. Tall dry reeds rattle together.</p> + +<p>In silence, a female purple finch lands on a tree facing the +wind, its breast shining in the light. I hear the dry “tik” of a myrtle +warbler. Then a chickadee swings and loops out of a wind-washed +pitch pine above me.</p> + +<p>Through the thickets of alder, shad, blueberry, and sumac on +the surrounding banks, I become aware of a sweet spring voice,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span> +then of small singings here and there, and when I follow them up +I realize they come from the shrubs themselves. Twigs rustle and +touch. Gray branches out of frozen ground sing in contact. Even +the marsh reeds make occasional sharp, squeaking twangs. There +is no melody among the birds. A robin, although it is as red as it +will ever be in spring, and fatter, with feathers puffed out on the +cold, flies to an alder bush, where a few dried berries are still hanging, +to perch without a sound.</p> + +<p>The music is there, though it may become louder and richer +in a later context. Musical capacity is not confined to a few animals, +or to spring and summer. Cold air and frost rehearse with +plants as well, under the changing sun. The song of light is played +in many ways.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>The Sea in the Ground</i></h3> + +<p>It is on just such a day, when hope, interest, renewal seem to +be afforded, though held in check, that I find other local residents—other +people, other customs—that are not only in readiness, but +blooming with color as though it were summertime. The temperature +is barely at the freezing point. The air is bright and clear, +and the top of the ground is played over by sunny warmth. In +flowing fields that skirt the oaks, the reindeer moss, with many +branches, perhaps suggestive of antlers (though it gets its name +because it provides food for reindeer and musk oxen in the frozen +tundras of the Arctic), is gray like dawn dew, or an almost luminous +gray-green. Light nests of snow with sparkling hexagonal +flakes rest between its curly fronds.</p> + +<p>The reindeer moss is one of the lichens. A lichen, each separate +plant, multitudes of which compose the visible growth, is a +composite of a fungus and an alga, seen only through a microscope. +The alga contains the coloring matter, or chlorophyll, and can +therefore carry out the process of photosynthesis, manufacturing +food with water and sunlight. The fungus, which has no such +ability, wraps its threads around the alga, protects it from the sun, +and stores the moisture for their partnership; and, if they are of +the rock-growing variety, anchors them both securely.</p> + +<p>The lichens are tough. They can endure extreme contrasts in +temperature, and hang on in barren areas where other plants +could not get a foothold. In fact, they are pioneers of millions of +years’ service. They prepared the way for all the changing elaboration +of plants with leaves and stems that followed them, after they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span> +had broken down bare rock with their acids, dissolved it, cracked +it, and combined their own dead materials with the rock particles +to form soil.</p> + +<p>In these round-edged plates of lichen that cover rocks or tree +trunks in the bare February woods, I see a life that is almost independent +of the season. It goes beyond or behind our immediate +knowledge of it into a kind of primal security, settling in where +little else is possible.</p> + +<p>The color of lichens is the color of the green algae of the +sea and of fresh-water ponds. If their blue-grays, gray-greens, or +yellows, bring up the cast-steel color of ocean barrens to my +imagination, or green water lolling at the sand’s edge, or underwater +depths running with fish and shafts of light, there is knowledge +to back me up. The progenitors of the lichens and their relatives +the mosses—this richly green hair-capped moss that soaks up +melting snow in the sunlight—were unicellular organisms that +formed in the sea. The line is direct. The algae in lichens need +water. Without it they would not be able to make food or reproduce.</p> + +<p>(The blue-green algae, which as a species is abundant in both +marine and fresh waters, as well as in the soil, has the ability of +lichens to endure very difficult environments. It can exist in icy +pools or hot springs. The latter extreme was brought home very +forcibly to me not long ago in Nevada, when I saw this plant +growing at the edge of a fissure from which hydrogen sulphide gas +was puffing out. The algae was growing where steam condensed +near the surface and must have been thriving in temperatures of +nearly 200 degrees Fahrenheit.)</p> + +<p>The color of our inland lichens and mosses changes with the +rate of moisture. Reindeer moss withdraws in dry months as a +method of coping with a disadvantageous season, instead of trying +to carry on an uncertain battle for existence. It shrinks, in +other words, turning dry and crunchy underfoot, but in wet weather +it absorbs, almost drinks up, water, and then turns spongelike and +its color gleams more richly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span></p> + +<p>In the absence of leaves filtering the sunlight, the trunks of +the larger oaks are dappled and spotted with these colors of watery +origin. I say the larger oaks because the lichens once started may +take a long time to spread. The golden lichen is a very slow-growing +species, although there are many stone walls in this region +that are covered with it. I have watched one spot of golden lichen +for two years or more. No bigger than a fifty-cent piece, it grows +on a stone step outside the house, and has hardly expanded at +all.</p> + +<p>So it is an enduring kind of fertility that shines here, as the +gray sea waters rock in the distance. And when I turn over a log, +or take up a handful of spongy oak leaf humus, half thawed in +the sunlight, there is visible evidence of the life now arrested in +the frozen soil. I find a millipede, curled up like the shell of a +chambered nautilus. I hold it in my hand and keep breathing on +it, until it comes to life and starts moving around, stretching out, +its myriad legs moving with fantastic synchronization, ready to be +busy again, traveling seriously with the given purpose of eating +bits of leaves, breaking down organic matter in the earth. It is suggested +that the millipede may have been one of the earliest animals +to leave the ocean, where all life presumably began, and take to the +land—one of those statements, of course, that leaves millions of +years in the balance of human guesses, but gives me another approach +to ageless tenacity in this ocean-bordered wood.</p> + +<p>There is another ancient animal, the pill bug, damp bug, or +armadillo, which I find in semihibernation in the middle of a rotten +log. Pill bug because it can roll up into a perfect little ball; +damp bug for its choice of environment; wood louse for its habitat +and general appearance, although it is no louse but a crustacean, +not an insect but related to brine shrimp, water fleas, lobsters +and crabs. It is one of the few members of this family that have +become adapted to life on land, but it retains a set of gills, or at +least respiratory tubes with some functional equivalence to gills. +It also retains an organic affinity for wetness, needing constant +moisture in order to breathe, and will invariably direct itself to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span> +dampest environment it can find. One dry summer day I uncovered +a bunch of wood lice way out in the middle of a dusty patch +of ground that looked like a miniature desert. They had taken advantage +of the only shelter available, an old fragment of a board +that held some shade and moisture under it.</p> + +<p>In terms of millions of years the development of millipede, +or pill bug, becomes extremely complex and partly unknown. +When did the pill bug leave the sea? How did its special breathing +apparatus evolve? How, in other words, did it gradually adapt itself +to life as a land animal? The problems of science are manifold. +For an observer the very sense of a link between primal sea +and primal earth embodied in this half-bug, half-marine crustacean, +gives it great stature. There is thunder and depth in the pill bug.</p> + +<p>I suddenly feel lost in a wood which does not speak of calendar +days or the month of February, but endless projection and development.</p> + +<p>Not lost too long—because the cold deepens and bites in the +late afternoon and gray clouds begin to spread and darken, as a +raw wind rises and shoves at the trees. I am caught again in the +immediate. It feels like snow.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Need</i></h3> + +<p>Early next morning the snow begins to fall, thin and glassy, +bringing in a new kind of quiet, unpredictable intent, spotting +the thawed surface of the earth. After a few hours the flakes are +heavier, and their momentum increases. They run down dizzily, +with a ticking sound, shrouding the distance, pelting dead leaves, +collecting in clumps between the needles of the pitch pines, coming +down steadily and fast. The temperature drops quite suddenly, +and the snow flakes grow lighter again. The wind sharpens, sending +them ahead of it, lancing toward the south.</p> + +<p>Hour after hour the snow collects with mesmerizing totality, +and in the colder evening the wind drives in with great fury and +drifts pile up. Dry snow whirls in and races around the windows, +scouring them like a dust storm. The wind molds a long drift on +the north side of the house, like flesh over bone, hip edge out and +curving in, a woman’s shape, an inanimate body molded by violence +into classic beauty, hollowed, not for love unless the wind +is love, carved, marked down and conquered by everything that is +latent and unconquered in the storm.</p> + +<p>For many days afterward the arctic air reigns over us, and +the snow is crusted, blindingly white in the sun, a mortal danger +to animals whose food supply it covers. A long sickle, a new moon, +of ice begins to appear along the rim of Cape Cod Bay. There is +crackling, grinding cold, in a day when we rise a little past the sun +instead of ahead of it. The freezing nights, for some of the animals +that have endured the winter so far, must be interminable, except +for the rabbit, caught suddenly in the open by a great-horned owl.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> +I found what was left of it in the woods—a burst of little bits of +fur in the snow; the owl’s tracks; a mold left by the rabbit’s body.</p> + +<p>A hermit thrush dies of starvation, all its remnant food at +winter’s end cut off by the snow. It is pathetically light, held in +the hand, and when it is dissected only the tiniest patches of red +meat show on either side of the breast bone.</p> + +<p>I find a dead eider duck on the shore. It may have been +blown against a tree in the storm. One wing is broken, and the +feathers buffed and thin from beating. After its feeding grounds +are frozen over in an inlet farther down the Cape, a great blue +heron dies on the snow-covered shores, wounding its neck in the +last throes.</p> + +<p>The bird feeder is crowded with intermittent flocks of chickadees, +juncos, and sparrows, all the ever present winter birds, pecking +at seed, flying off, hopping on the snow, each with intense, +nervous, active habits, keeping their wild, interrelated ways, entering +in, displacing each other, disappearing and returning. A bolt +of a bird suddenly tears in from nowhere and all the little ones +are gone in a burst. A sharp-shinned hawk, a small hawk with +an appetite for songbirds, has attacked in hunger and desperation, +but it swerves when it reaches the feeder—its aim disturbed by +fear as it approaches the house—and crashes into the window. +It sits on the snow, terribly stunned, its head drooping. The body +is the light umber of an immature bird, the breast streaked red. +After a few minutes it stirs a little, wing shoulders twitching, head +up, and yellow eyes glaring with the pure wild look of a hawk. Finally +it lifts up quickly and beats away toward a line of trees in the +distance.</p> + +<p>The chickadees are soon back, jumping down to the feeder +from an overhanging pitch pine and bouncing back up like +small puffs of snow, having left danger behind with their usual +vibrant but sturdy acceptance. They are businesslike, determined +little birds. If I could only get inside that head behind the tiny +black eyes, and follow. I could swear it has the quickest perception +of things. In any case it acts as if there were no time for leisure.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span> +Its whole body is tripped constantly at a staccato rate. The head +moves up, down, sideways, in the needs of sight and utility. It +poises to hammer a seed held between its tiny black toes and +claws. It rounds the branch of a pine, ready for the next find, wonderfully +resourceful in the game of survival; with a serious intent, +gay in action, employing every second with such thoroughness as +to be completely careless of the outcome of life, and so perhaps to +surpass it.</p> + +<p>The mourning doves, whose low coos I mistook for an owl’s +when I first heard them, are another of our permanent residents, +not often at the bird feeder, but fairly ready visitors when they +overcome their initial fear. One flies in, wings whistling wildly, +hesitates, turns back, makes another foray, then waits in a shad +tree thirty feet away, head bobbing, eyes blinking against the +sharp sunlight. When a mourning dove flies up it shows a blue in +its generally buff-colored feathers like a blue evening mist after +winter rain. It walks with pigeonlike head bobbing back and forth, +its thin tail standing out behind a tear-shaped body like the shaft +of a cart, then spreading round and wide at the tip when the bird +flies off.</p> + +<p>While the sturdy chickadees carry on business as usual, the +dove, in gentle alarm, waits for an hour or two before hunger +drives it back to stay and feed; and not long after that another +dove flies in to join it.</p> + +<p>On the south side of the Cape where the open Atlantic surf +keeps the shore waters fairly free of ice, there are sea ducks, eiders, +baldpates, mergansers, blacks, or scoters, flying over the sea, or settling +down on its shifting surfaces. Tiny white buffleheads, which +make ducking dives into the water, show brilliantly against gray +ice on the banks of an inlet at Monomoy. A tornado-shaped formation +of red-backed sandpipers stands over the gun-metal sea. Patterns +of wings and water run together, while the land is still not +broken out of its frozen gravity.</p> + +<p>For life on land the power of the moment lies in a suspense +which can kill. Another week of cold, with snow on the ground,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span> +and many more birds will die. Because this Temperate Zone, influenced +by oceanic weather, attracts more land birds than otherwise +might stay, there is a greater margin of arbitrary risk. The +weaker individuals will die first, by a natural law, but all are subject +to unusual violence. The comparatively mild coastal climate +does not normally have a winter as bad as this one, although extreme +conditions are no surprise in North America, and the risks +vary for the lives exposed to them. One winter with exceptionally +deep frost in the ground, hard winds, and little snow cover, is as +dangerous to plants as a month of snow would be to the birds. +And a mild winter may result in death or damage from belated +storms and cold.</p> + +<p>We talk of storms and the hazards of temperature as though +nature were merely arbitrary, and inconvenience the essence of +her plans. Being less self-sheltered, life subject to wild nature knows +the extremes as standards of action. Living things are continually +balanced between a bold summer and a demanding winter, where +storms are the rule and risk is constant. They are unable to accept +less. This terror has its pride.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Death, Man Made</i></h3> + +<p>Perhaps winter and death are complimentary, but the other +seasons kill too, in their degrees of need and fulfillment. General +association with death is so constant in nature that we could almost +deny the validity of the word. Death, if it is essential to the +consumption of energy, is at the least fuel for the fire of life and +more likely an inseparable part of the fire itself. In the natural +year it is all-pervasive and yet discreet and nearly invisible to us. +We hardly pause on its behalf unless its presence becomes spectacular. +To see a dead animal on the highway, whether or not it +was killed by human agency, is not something most human beings +care about, one way or another. This is not necessarily due to wanton +disregard of life, or inhumane feelings, but because we retain +an unconscious acceptance of death, as well as a natural ferocity—it +is what is left of the animal predator in us that beats the +stranded fish with a stick, or shoots at a bird simply because it is +new to us. And yet, that death, which is so constant a part of the +natural rhythm that we disregard it when we pass its evidence, +may also become an obtrusive, isolated, and even obscene element +when caused by human agency. Our technology does not +represent such a mastery over nature that it is able to replace or +assume nature’s ascendant ordering of things. We employ the +methods of disaster with a heavier hand. Grace and accuracy of +invention, abundance of means, are accompanied by an inordinate +amount of plunder and pollution. In our power we are weak.</p> + +<p>I think of the hundreds of water birds that I have seen this +winter dying, starving, poisoned, or freezing to death, as a result<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span> +of having their plumage soaked by waste oil from ships. Tankers, +merchant vessels of all kinds, cause drifting oil slicks on the surface +of the ocean waters when their bilges are dumped at sea, or when +their tanks are washed out when approaching port. Oil wastes +seem to have made serious inroads on some forms of marine life +in some areas, not to mention their soiling of beaches and shore +waters. The sea birds drift into oil slicks at night when sleeping, +or may even seek them out, mistaking them for plankton slicks. +Eiders, old squaws, scoters, loons, brant, auks, all birds of our +winter waters, come by immemorial habit to these feeding grounds +for fish, plankton, or water plants. And because of the enormous +and growing human traffic in ships and machines they have become +endangered by something for which nothing in evolution has ever +prepared them. Their feathers are tarred by an enormous brush, +wielded at random.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i140" style="max-width: 101.9375em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i140.jpg" alt="Tanker Ship and Oiled Duck"> +</figure> + +<p>Almost any day that I visit the shore I find a victim. Out on +the sand flats at low tide is a female eider duck, crouched down in +such a way as to make me mistake her at first for a dark brown +chunk of driftwood. When I walk up she stays there without moving, +but her eyes are alive, out of an unknown depth of helplessness +and misery. The bird is dying. Her feathers, which in the +female eider, are a handsome reddish brown, are not naturally +glossy any more, but they shine, sickeningly, with a heavy coating +of oil.</p> + +<p>Some black and white males, whose necks are beautifully +tinted, or washed with green, as though they had taken it from +some of the northern sunsets from which they came, are swimming +out over the water. I see others, both male and female, scattered +along the shore. They have come on land, pathetically +enough, to get warmer, in the sunny but freezing winter air. Birds +affected by oil pollution have their feathers so matted together +that they no longer serve as insulation, and the cold strikes directly +to their skins. Even a spot of oil no bigger than a fifty-cent piece +may expose them and cause pneumonia. So the doomed sea birds +huddle up against a sandbank, out of the wind, or they waddle<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span> +into the water when I approach, or stand on rocks just offshore, +vainly trying to preen dark smudges out of their feathers. Another +effect of oil on plumage is to make the birds lose their buoyancy +in the water, so that they swim half submerged, and when alarmed +they are unable to take off but beat their wings and splash ahead +with no result but further exhaustion. If the oil invades their digestive +system, as they feed or preen, they are poisoned by it.</p> + +<p>This winter the dying birds have been so conspicuous that +many local residents have become aware of a situation which +might otherwise escape their notice, although when it becomes +really acute we may only recognize it by deduction, because some +species of birds will be gone. It is reported that oil pollution has +killed some 250,000 birds off Newfoundland this winter. The razor-billed +auk is now thought to be virtually wiped out as a breeding +bird in that area.</p> + +<p>Some families in this area have tried to rescue a duck or an +auk, having good feelings and a sense of responsibility. Success is +none too frequent, since it depends on experience and great care +in handling. It may take weeks to bring a bird back to normal vigor +after it has been oiled. But the fact that a few individuals care +enough to try is worth a thousand ships.</p> + +<p>“Whoever deals you this death,” I think, looking at some +shivering eider on the sands or finding its soiled remains, “cannot +get by with saying: ‘This is just a bird.’” The bird retains that +wild distance which always seems just beyond our grasp, and it is +intrinsically wise. Nothing we do to it can alter its original kinship +with nature. It is in harmonious balance with a complexity of +which we are greatly in envy and to which our carelessness only +makes us strangers.</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pgs 143-144]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="March"><i>March</i></h2> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span></p> + +<h3><i>Restless Days</i></h3> + +<p>Dormant vegetation is supposed to start awakening when the +average mean temperature rises to 43 degrees, normally occurring +in the northeast between April 1 and 15. Under unusually mild +conditions, with the average minimum temperature lingering for +some length of time above 32 degrees, growth begins sooner. This +is of course a generality, a law of likelihood, which may be applied +to an indefinite number of conditions. Spring may be spring, and +winter winter, but March is a part of both February and April. +During the warm days in February, the buds of the Mayflower +or trailing arbutus begin to swell, while the skunk cabbage is +steadily pushing up through frozen, marshy ground. Life does not +recur after death so much as show its readiness; but in March the +first obvious bursts of change begin to show, like those mountainous +clouds coming up out of the west, with a fresh warm wind.</p> + +<p>The huge clouds roll loose and fan upwards in the gold afternoon. +Then the wind changes. A blowing, whispering snow comes +out of the southeast, cruel to promise, blotting out the swelling +buds, the feeling of release in the air, as if to say promise is nothing +without what is not promised. Nothing is realized without +the possibility of disaster.</p> + +<p>“Ahh!” the indrawn breath of a storm, a swirling and seething +to make life hide. The snow hisses incessantly into every corner +and crevice. High-rolling, roaring tides push in. The storm rises to +a mountainous capacity. The sea is fulsomely moaning, running +under a white darkness. Comber after comber curls over, spills +and plunges down, pounding the sands.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span></p> + +<p>The wind seems to pause. It races violently as if to have another +try at climactical energy. Then hail clicks down, spattering +tree trunks and ground. The snow is turning to cold rain. We are +getting “dirty weather.” I feel a load of anger and disgust in me +that rivals the storm.</p> + +<p>I am, to some degree, a subject of these changing days. I +come out of a kind of hibernation of my own that might not be +connected with the actual state of the weather, but it has its +parallels. It is so with my own temper. I hold it for fear of being +overwild, and then some outer wildness, a change of air, an adjustment +to open sunlight, brings me to a free delight, a sense of opportunity +that I thought was gone.</p> + +<p>March may seem cold, raw, and gloomy for most of its duration, +but it begins consistently to offer evidence of new things. A +white moth flies up in the headlights of my car one night. A robin +jumps down to the wet, matted grass of the lawn. I seem to catch +a new note of triumph in a crow. The chickadees are playing, +chasing, constantly flitting from tree to tree. They call and answer +one another like so many bells. They have a call that is sometimes +mistaken for a phoebe’s, but with three notes: “Fee-a-bee.” And +their song has a single phrase: “Here pretty” with an occasional +syncopated pause followed by: “Pretty, pretty.” Sometimes two of +them sing at the same time, one on an upper and the other on a +lower key.</p> + +<p>A male blue bird, rare these days, perches on a wire, singing +in sweet querulous tones, and I hear the continuous, talkative trill +of a purple finch, a lovely casual song that comes from its throat +like fast-dripping water.</p> + +<p>Snow falls, or sleet, and the songs stop. The weather clears +and the birds begin again, like chronometers of an underlying +spring music. The sunlight glitters and I hear them again, just as +I notice that the waters in the distance have changed from the hard +blue of the winter and are streaked with green, as if filled with +new veins of life. Color and music spring and change along with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span> +new numbers and demands, part of nature’s structure of love, a +slowly increasing force, spreading out like a fan.</p> + +<p>There is a reddening in knotty oak twigs. I notice the leaves +on a dwarf clover plant, tentatively but surely uncurling. Small +eels are dashing back and forth in an aquarium with a new excitement, +nipping at their fellow inmates, a sunfish and a minnow.</p> + +<p>This is the time of year that many animals start moving out +of winter quarters, changing their range. On the highway I see +dead muskrats that have been hit by cars, as well as some male +gray squirrels. The squirrels sometimes dash back and forth across +the road in a frantic kind of dance.</p> + +<p>Frost still lies deep in the ground. As they have done throughout +the winter, quail pipe high, across the swishing, roaring wind. +But there is a new restlessness abroad. The air itself seems to +change now and then to an easier, looser abandon. Cold days, +arrestations, come, but in counterbalance to surges of allowance +and release. Life is beginning to seek its opportunities.</p> + +<p>I am impatient for spring, as raw, unseasonably cold weather +continues, and then I see a dark little caterpillar on the road, or +a mourning cloak butterfly, sprung out of hibernation. I hear a +pair of mourning doves, cooing with slow measure and deliberation, +long silences between. They seem to say something to me +about attention. “What will come may not be, as yet. But we +know when. And you might if you listened.”</p> + +<p>If I listened, and if I watched, found each insect as it came +out of hibernation, comprehended a tree as a living thing, beginning +to stir and seek, followed the development of buds and roots, +the unseen life that stirs in egg or chrysalis through every inch of +ground.</p> + +<p>There is, in common with the rest of the year’s revolutions, +nothing neat or simple about the process of reawakening. It has +started already. Raccoons in this area begin to breed in February +and start foraging for their young in March. The great horned +owl nests in January and February. During the dead of winter a +few animals such as skates and barnacles start breeding in offshore<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> +waters. Variable reaction in this time of change is as complex +as the order which controls it.</p> + +<p>Hibernation itself, that mysterious state which is somewhere +between death and sleep, differs in various species. Some mammals +hibernate not because of outside conditions but because of internal +changes in their blood stream, as if timed not to the weather but +the year. Each life is cyclical, corresponding accurately to the circling +of the globe, but in mode and terms it differs vastly. When +the frogs begin to stir around a local pond, birds, independent of +hibernation, move back from other climates. Late in March a few +alewives swim into fresh water from the sea. Late in April large +numbers begin to show up, at a time which only varies by a few +days, year after year. Yet their arrival, like their growth and responses, +is conditioned by any number of circumstances that are +not only physically distant from us but may be remote as yet from +scientific scrutiny. To realize that the slightest changes in temperature +can affect whole worlds of life, and that this factor is only +one of many, can make a man feel hopelessly inept.</p> + +<p>So spring is not to come now, nor tomorrow, suddenly complete +with shy warmth and flowers according to our expectations, +but will take its periodic time, within a wide range and with enormous +resources. By the same token, no spring comes pleasantly, +without a certain amount of doom in its wake. A flock of male +blue birds flies north too soon. They die during a severe snow +storm or a week of extreme cold. Thawing takes place too suddenly +for one form of life, and too quick a drop in temperature +will kill another.</p> + +<p>March is complex and March is in a rage, though I begin to +feel a universal response, a gradual turn, in the ground, through +the trees, down by the shore as the wind changes from tearing +things loose to a peaceful low breathing. I smell salt things on the +edge of motion, balanced on a tip of allowance. I hear what I am +unable to see, stirring, tuning up across the land. The response +may be hesitant or bold, delayed or premature, but it is coming. +There is knowledge around me, even purpose, whether or not it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span> +is working in mindless ways. When I see sunlight playing on a +blade of grass, I see the component parts of wisdom. Then the +grass joins the squirrel in its dance. Eels join men in restlessness +and speculation.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>An Extravagance</i></h3> + +<p>We built a small concrete pool on our place, which is locally +known as Dry Hill, and so brought the life of water a little closer +to us. In the summertime the pool nurtures a migrant population +of green frogs. I have put nothing in it except some sunfish that +subsequently died, so that the occasional signs of new life it shows, +like a water strider, or some nymph or larva of an insect that +flew by and deposited its eggs, always strikes me as a dispensation +from the sky. It is a proof of life’s pressing, inescapable need to +drive into every opening.</p> + +<p>Thinking of draining the pool and cleaning it out for the approach +of spring, I find a life so surprising and sudden as to take +all human propriety out of my system. There, on the brown, algae-fringed +edge of the pool, something moves, telling me that this +well of water is more than ornamental. Light olive-colored insects, +scum-covered, goggle-eyed, stalk on the edge, or skate very slowly +through the water—the strangest kind of revelation. What could +I clean up now without a sense of shame?</p> + +<p>The dragonfly larva, or nymph, which turns into an adult +after a series of molts, is a fantastic-looking creature. I take one +out of the pool and put it in a jar for observation. What I observe +has no familiar meaning for me. It stays motionless, except when +the jar is moved. I wonder again, as I did with a robber fly in the +summer, what an insect is. Is it only a stereotyped pattern on the +changing screen of nature? This one exhibits itself as a sort of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span> +embodied suspension, careless of death or time, like the process of +evolution itself. There is no hurry.</p> + +<p>The nymph lives for more than a week without food. Through +a magnifying glass, I look at the flat-bottomed, skiff-shaped body +made shaggy by algae-covered hair, the jointed legs, the upended +tail. It is striped, and there are brown markings over and across its +goggle eyes, and brown on its strange mouth part, which sits in +front of its face like a catchers mask. This part, or device, is called +the labrum. It is hinged, equipped with hooks, and can be shot +forward rapidly to grab and hold the animal’s prey. In the nymph’s +case, as with so many other things in nature, seemingly endless +waiting and suspense precedes occasional spurts of lightning rapidity.</p> + +<p>As I peer at it, greatly enlarged behind my magnifying glass, +its jointed legs suddenly flail up in front of me, and I actually feel +a tremor of alarm—which might be humorous, except for my +sense that this small dragon is timeless in some awesome way.</p> + +<p>As March is proving a seasonal release, at least in starting, so +it also reveals an extravagance in the form of a dragonfly nymph, +and what will come from that little insect shows that extravagance +may have no end. After a series of molts, the number and duration +of which depends on the species, a nymph will climb up on some +green stalk spiking out of the water, the skin on its back will +crack, and it will emerge from a sheath which it leaves behind, a +dry, empty counterpart, and turn into a big, gauzy-winged dragonfly. +It is given two worlds, water and air. Its embodied transformation +from one into another is as rare a thing as the transformation +of a caterpillar into a butterfly; and is evidence of a daring like the +flight of Icarus toward the sun, but more successful.</p> + +<p>Nature takes the nymph out of itself. It is no goggle-eyed +inhabitant of some other planet, no knight doomed to expire by +weight of armor. I see the fantastic in it and also a miraculous +reality, which will not rest with own products. This water predator +will turn into a brightly colored, great-eyed hunter, skimming +everywhere over land and water, darting across the roaring<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span> +traffic of a city, flying over the surface of the ocean miles from +land. Time seems suspended in the nymph; and this may be appropriate +enough. It is the result of ages; but its metamorphosis +is fresh and new, a successful act of endless creativity.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Interpretation</i></h3> + +<p>It is in the nature of things to surprise, after temporary imprisonments. +Surprise is what men look for. It is a need. And this +puts us somewhat in the position of a dragonfly larva, suspended, +until sprung out. Since we are not as rigidly and instinctively stuck +as the insects, relief from our often unblessed condition may come +simply because we get a chance to look around. Freshness of act, +unfailing originality, is here, but it takes time to see. After an age +of inattention it comes like a red squirrel, which I meet unexpectedly +one raw March morning. Its whole body twitches and +shakes. It jumps with an extraordinary series of halts and starts; +then, like a boy playing Indian, it leaps behind a rock as I walk by.</p> + +<p>If there is any spare time in a harried world, perhaps it should +be used in cultivating habits of attention, learning how to keep +open for possibility, instead of inventing distractions that provide +for nothing. What is loosely called “nature study” requires discipline +like any other area of knowledge, and acquaintance with its +subjects, their names, their habits, their place and performance, +may encourage extremes of refinement; but it is one good way +to begin. It takes you out. It shows you what else can be done. +By example it may spring you into a new mood of action. It provides +new acquaintances, showing you life, the surprise, where there +used to be a wall.</p> + +<p>I, as well as my children, am still learning to read. I am still +making a collection of terms, in order to attempt a rudimentary +analysis of what I find. First in importance, though, comes an admission +that what I am considering is not so strangled by human<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span> +terminology that it does not have an identity, a sacredness even, of +its own. Discovery gets its worth from what it pursues.</p> + +<p>I see a pitch pine with different eyes, not because I have +learned that its clusters have three needles, but because I recognize +its independent existence. I know that it has needs, and a +history, that it is not divorced from an infinity of circumstances +just because I can identify it. We do not need to be vain about +our name grubbing, our scientific nomenclature; it is only the beginning.</p> + +<p>When I go to the edge of a pond I have a pleasurable sense +of excitement, not only because I have been there before, finding +the good old tadpoles and water striders, but because I know that +I will find something unexplained, the same life perhaps, but in +new relationships.</p> + +<p>There is a swarm of thin little flies dancing in the warm sunlight +on a March afternoon. They not only tell me something +about the lengthening days, but the light seems to sit differently +on their wings. They are a revelation, materializing out of a distance, +hovering near.</p> + +<p>In the game of identification we have to admit that nature +is not an exclusively human province. Then we can be led by it, +like this class of children, boys and girls on file through the woods, +exploring new land, in expectation.</p> + +<p>There has been a light fall of snow, and a cold wind blows +off the tidal marshes on the north side of the woods, but a warm +wind is out and it is only half-winter. There is a cover of unmelted +snow in shaded slopes and hollows. The buds are glassy and on +twigs and branches small ice capsules reflect the light. Snow blankets +the tangles of briar where rabbits have their runs. Tiny +upmounded tunnels show where mice scuttle through the snow’s +protection. Pheasant tracks are found on the way, and then the +odd, creaky, fowl-like call of a pheasant sounds in the near distance. +Several myrtle warblers are seen in a clearing on the south side +of the woods, a sheltered area bordering on a tidal creek. In a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span> +marsh beyond the creek, which is running backwards because of +the tide, cattails stand with a half cap of snow on their brown +shako heads, on the side facing away from the sun. There is an icy +glaze on the buds of a pussy willow. We are between north and +south, winter and spring, snow and melted snow, arrested in clear +parallels of beauty, turned toward the willingness of spring. Something +calls to a slow and gentle attention that has been waiting in +us. I wonder whether it is the identification of a pheasant’s tracks, +or of a myrtle warbler, that they will remember in the future, or +the special character of this day.</p> + +<p>It is hard to know what children perceive or retain. Suddenness, +spontaneity, silence covers an untold number of impressions. +Weeks, months, years later, they come out with something +learned that a teacher could not have suspected. Occasionally they +reveal an exactness which is innately theirs, quite apart from a +classroom. I remember a little redheaded girl trying to tell us +about a big white bird she had seen on the Chatham shore of the +Cape. All description failed until she wagged her head back and +forth in a special way, and we realized she had seen a snowy owl.</p> + +<p>Then there was a boy who characterized the blue jay as being +“the loudest bird in the East,” which may have brought the jay +out of the realm of science but not accuracy.</p> + +<p>But we lead in to nature through names as well as our senses, +and then by familiarity with habits, size, shape, color, the order of +change, the ways of dying out and returning with plants and animals. +Knowledge is our medium, and we are obliged to question.</p> + +<p>What is that tree, strangely bent over along the snowy ground? +A wild cherry? What happened to it? What is the evidence? Did +another tree fall on it when it was a sapling, bend it down and +force it to grow out horizontally? Its thick trunk stretches for six +feet parallel to the ground, only a few inches above it, then turns +and starts up into a sky-opening between the thickets beside it, +sending up a wild array of branches. What else can we say about +it?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span></p> + +<p>Then one boy, putting things together, hearing how the tree +compensated for its difficulties, needed light, and thrusted after +it, cries out: “Why that sounds as if the tree was alive!” That is +what we have been looking for. He is well started.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Response</i></h3> + +<p>March progresses toward its end, gradually adding to the population. +Dark-headed, deep-colored male robins tug at worms on +the lawn. Red-winged blackbirds sail low over marshes, or take +stations by the edge of a pond, with reedy cries. The purple finches +sing, along with the shrill braying of the blue jays. White-throated +sparrows, quail, jays, and partridges that have been here all winter +are more in evidence, especially on sunny days, and begin to be +accompanied by newcomers, like the grackles. Myrtle warblers +flutter up into the air and down again, catching insects. But the +wind blows. It backs and fills. The rain is cold. The turn toward +spring is very gradual, hardly perceptible at times.</p> + +<p>Then a few alewives, a dozen or so, come in out of salt water +and show up in Stony Brook, familiar strangers, large, pale fish +weaving slowly up through the narrow stream. It has begun to be +a time of declaration. New patterns, new arrangements are taking +place, however much the season seems to lag.</p> + +<p>On the evening of the twenty-sixth I hear a high, shrill sound, +whirring and spinning, suggesting proud activity, presence set free. +The spring peepers are making it known that a time has arrived, +and I take joy in the news, having failed to make any definite +assurance of it myself. Their sound embraces all this changing +land, rising above the whispered roars of the sea.</p> + +<p>Now the perpetrator of this chorus is a tiny tan frog with a +smudged cross or X on its back, named <i>Hyla Crucifer</i>. The male +of the species has been speaking up on behalf of spring openings +for millions of years. In that capacity it is authoritative enough.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span> +Its voice, almost incredibly loud and shrill for an animal that is +not much over an inch long, is amplified by means of a large bubblelike +pouch which acts as a resonator. This mechanism is put to +use after the animal comes out of winter torpor, after warm rain, +and as the season itself breathes and sounds more freely. The +peeper moves around with the earth itself and makes a declaration +which, it seems to me, does not deserve the term automatic any +more than the fiddling of grasshoppers in August. Both are part +of the deep and various play of the year. In any case this specialty +of voice is something of a marvel in itself. It is not like the eyes of +an owl that are so made as to make maximum use of dim light, +or the wings of a herring gull that can ride turbulent air currents +above the water, or like the fins of a fish, the sensitive nose of a +dog. The peeper’s vocal parts are not specialized for environmental +use to that degree. Their primary, specific function is to attract the +female. Mating and voice are synonymous. But perhaps we could +also say that this mating cry, this sometimes bell-like sound, is fitted +to the whole environment, that it belongs unerringly to a new +earth and a new season. It seems to bring life and place, function +and expression together. It is unequivocal. It is perfect. It speaks +up reliably on behalf of everything now springing or about to +spring.</p> + +<p>For all their vast population in the bogs, ponds, edges, swamps, +and other wet areas of the Cape, individual spring peepers are very +hard to find. During a cool evening, as the stars begin to declare +themselves, I hear the peepers’ collective voice rising up around me, +passing into the sky. On the banks of Berry’s Hole, that deep, +swampy hollow nearby, there is a pulsing, piercing, deafening +chorus. The wind suddenly blows over in a loud torrent, but the +peepers keep on. I walk farther down and they stop; then they begin +again, after I sit still for a minute or two. The banks are wet, +after a light afternoon rain, and they must be covered by frogs, +judging by the sound; but I search every bit of ground with a flashlight +and am unable to find a single one.</p> + +<p>A wild, moist spring wind flings around the rim of the hollow,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pgs 159-160]</span> +which is gray, dusted with fog, and in the clear opening overhead +the stars fling out and away. Water stands dark and still where the +banks end. Grass hummocks and shrubs choke the wet areas beyond. +I sit for many minutes concentrating on one area with my +flashlight. The peepers’ cry is deafening. Then at last, I see one. +It jumps onto my shoes. And then another, on a low lying branch, +moving along in the light—it displaces a third, which is toppled +down into the leaves. They seem limp in action. A peeper is minute, +almost weightless in my hand.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i158" style="max-width: 100.5em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i158.jpg" alt="Peeper on Shoe"> +</figure> + +<p>Nearby footsteps will silence them. They react spontaneously +like tadpoles and minnows that dart off into deep water from a +pond’s edge when you approach. Yet they are not bothered by +the beam of a flashlight.</p> + +<p>Such a tiny thing, this animal, this cool, moist, anonymous +amphibian, for so proud a message! I can see that a peeper’s +whole body pumps as it calls. It is like a bellows, and the vocal sac +blows out like a blister, bluish-green in the light. “Peep-peep-peep,” +and the whole night is filled with an insistent, stirring cry. No human +statement can rival this simple, triumphant mode of revelation. +The earth begins again.</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pgs 161-162]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="April"><i>April</i></h2> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span></p> +<h3><i>Deeper News</i></h3> + +<p>I read in the papers that spring is beginning to show its vast +capacity in the nation behind us, with tornadoes in the west, and +floods to the south. The way is being cleared with a violence.</p> + +<p>And here, heavy fogs invest the Cape during the early morning +and at night. On the night of the second we are lashed by a +savage gale, carrying wet snow and rain, and feel a searching, bitter +dampness. The next morning the sun comes out with promise +and radiance. There is a faint new fragrance in the air. It would +have been nothing but that—a sense of mild relief after the pressure +of a storm, but for another piece of news. At 1 <span class="allsmcap">A.M.</span> the Coast +Guard had received an “incoherent” distress signal, though without +exact location, from a vessel somewhere on a twenty-five-mile +stretch of shore between Cape Cod light in Truro and Nauset +light in Orleans. It was found before dawn, an eighty-three-foot +trawler, which had run aground off South Wellfleet. Out of a crew +of seven, the reports say, two are drowned, four survived, and one +is missing.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i164" style="max-width: 102.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i164.jpg" alt="Large Ocean Waves"> +</figure> + +<p>They were returning to Boston with 38,000 pounds of fish, +after fishing west of Georges Banks. During the night, through a +thick fog, a thirty- to forty-mile-an-hour wind, high waves, and +heavy rain, the radar stopped working and the crewmen were unable +to see. The “Back Shore” bar, on which the trawler ran +aground, is an old graveyard for ships. Modern equipment has cut +down greatly on losses, along with some of the old safeguards +against them. Many lighthouses are no longer manned by lighthouse +keepers and their families. Great beams of light swing out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span> +over the dark sea and back again with inanimate, unmanned +precision. Members of Coast Guard rescue crews may no longer be +men born and bred here who know every inch of their beaches. +In fact, they are more likely to come from a different state, and +to be stationed temporarily on the Cape, so that a man hunting +for a wreck may not have too exact an idea of his location.</p> + +<p>During the afternoon, after I hear the news and drive to +see the wreck, a southwest wind blows over the cliffs that stand +above the Wellfleet beach, and clouds swirl up across the blue +emptiness. Cars line both sides of the road. A thin trickle of +people walk along the heights, sands held by yellow grass and +purple patches of bearberry, and there are others far down the +long beach where the trawler lies, heaved over to starboard.</p> + +<p>From morning news accounts and a scatter of talk the story +of the doomed ship and the rescue comes to me a little, from +under its nighttime shroud of fog and heaving waves. After the +radar quit and the vessel ran aground on the sand bar, the crew +made a futile effort to get her off. Then the radio failed. The +ship was being knocked around in the thrashing darkness. All +attempts failed to put dories overboard. And the seven men went +into the pilothouse, where they stayed for some five hours. When +day broke, the tide was changing and the seas seemed bigger than +ever. The men were battered and exhausted. The trawler’s decks +were awash, and they thought she was beginning to break up. +The captain then ordered the crew over the sides, at which +time the ship was some 600 to 700 yards offshore.</p> + +<p>A local family, a man, his wife, and twelve-year-old daughter, +proprietors of summer cottages above the beach, were wakened +at four forty-five in the morning by two coastguardmen who had +seen the wreck and stopped in to use the phone. While one of +the men drove along the heights and trained the spotlights of his +jeep on the wreck, the other, accompanied by the family, walked +down to the shore. The fog had lifted a little and they could see +white spars rocking above the water, and what looked at first like +debris, being washed back and forth against the shore. Forming<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span> +a hand-to-hand chain, the four rescuers then managed by just +standing out far enough in the icy water to pull three men in. +More Coast Guard personnel came later and rescued the fourth. +The survivors were terribly numbed by the cold. One of them had +to be forced into walking so as to save his life. “How much +further?” he kept mumbling, as he stumbled around in the sands, +held up by the mother and daughter. Later, the flesh of these +survivors was found to be black and blue from the pounding +they had taken on board the ship and in the surf, flung against +the sands.</p> + +<p>Two other crewmen were found dead on the beach. Another +local resident saw one of them where he lay at the bottom of a +ladder that reached down the cliff: “A big man, between thirty +and forty. He had coveralls on, but no shirt.”</p> + +<p>His wife says: “I’ll never complain about the price of fish +again!”</p> + +<p>There are plenty of fish in evidence, all for free, although +not a single one is taken away. The boat’s catch must have been +broken into and scattered by the surf. Every ten yards or so +along the wide, shelving beach are dead fish, lined up as if they +had been placed there—a market display, for no taste but dissolution. +Gray haddock cleaned by the fishermen’s knives. Rose +fish, pinkish, orange-red, a sunset color, with fringed fins, and +enormous jellied eyes rimmed with white, like goggles.</p> + +<p>A hatch cover floats loose in the water, and a pair of yellow, +oiled fisherman’s overalls lies on the sand.</p> + +<p>The boat, which was shoved and lifted by the seas until it +now lies a few yards off the beach, is just ahead. We curious +onlookers walk toward it in growing silence. The surf waters +are breaking on the beach beside the strong, humble craft, inactive, +done, pounded down. I can make out her name, <i>Paulmino</i>, along +the bow. She is banked over hard, and the waves, still fairly high, +back and fill around the stern. They well up, then ease away again. +Where water sloshes amidships there are tattered nets and bobbing +cork floats. The steel masts stand with ropes and stays unbroken,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span> +and the high, white pilothouse is intact, where they spent their +terrible night.</p> + +<p>I walk away from that scene with a question. Surely they +could have stayed on board and survived? But time is not waiting +for could-have-beens. The sea rolls by. The stars burn and roar +in their distances. Immortal death, an ending, but the source +of all questions and the answer to them, roars on too without +reply. Men in their death, or fish, or birds, are the same. They +share in universal soundings that no mortal fear escapes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>April Light</i></h3> + +<p>One evening, about nine o’clock, I walk out to listen to the +peepers again. Their chorus comes up to the hill from all the +watery lows around it, and through a fog-muffled distance I hear +the scrambled yelping of herring gulls. It means a run of alewives +swimming in to Paine’s Creek from the bay, on an incoming +tide, two hours before the turn. The gulls can get at this feast +more easily when the fish are crowded and not too far from the +surface before complete darkness sets in. When I reach the +shore, curls and wisps of fog show up in the headlights of my +car. Gulls cry in alarm and fly back over the water. There is hardly +any wind. The low, bull-like tones of a foghorn sound in the +distance. But the stars shine out overhead.</p> + +<p>Long semicircular wavelets lap over the wide mouth of the +creek where it enters the bay, and where the channel curves inland +I can hear the fish slapping in the water as they swim in, making +an occasional splash as they rush to the surface. Out in the middle +of the stream, some twenty feet wide, I can dimly make out the +head of an animal—probably a harbor seal that has been making +a foray after fish in the channel—swimming steadily in the direction +of the bay. I greet it with a yell as its head slips by and out of +sight.</p> + +<p>A black-crowned night heron starts up with a low harsh +“Quok!” where I startle it from its fishing stance along the water’s +edge. The stars are brilliant, the sky above the low fog and bold +emptiness of the shore is a vast cavern throbbing with light. Cold +sea water, high spring night—life around me takes its antediluvian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span> +chances. The fish come on with a proud mission, deliberate in +its age, secure in its origins.</p> + +<p>Then I notice that there are stars underfoot as well. My feet +strike stars in the damp sand. Everywhere I walk I am shod with +light. Now it comes to me that these may be some light-emitting +marine animals that I have read about, a family of protozoa called +noctiluca. They are microorganisms, and although the sand gleams +in my hand, they are not to be found or seen with the naked eye. +What kind of “phenomenon” is this? At once a chemical reaction +and a living thing? This illumination from mindless lives seems to +me to have an incredible vitality. When I stamp brutally on the +ground the prickly squares of light dim a little, but nothing I do +can put them out or alter their abundance. The sea’s riches +touch the shore and leave their fire. I may be in the presence of +something that is nearly indecipherable, neither matter nor antimatter, +neither the animate nor the inanimate, but a true +representative of the sun, and more than the moon, a life in +light.</p> + +<p>There are these night lights; and the lights of day, like the +newly arrived tree swallows that shuttle across a stream dipping +and diving in the air after insects. They have lovely white bellies, +backs of a beetle’s iridescent green.</p> + +<p>Because there is still a tight residue of winter left in the +air, the warm days when they come seem to promise everything. +They come to us like a story to a child: “What happens next?” As +I look through the novel glassy stillness outside the house I can +hear the click of a bird’s bill as it chases a fly to the ground. It +almost seems possible to see the grass growing.</p> + +<p>There is a rich salt smell coming from tidal marshes, a bolder +light on their hummocks and stretches of oaten thatch. The +sea breeze sounds, making the distance stretch with music in the +light’s new allowance.</p> + +<p>In these opening stages, spring feels to me like a bird settling +on the water, like a herring gull that drops down to the surface, +spins a graceful half circle when it lands, adjusts its wings,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span> +and settles down to rest. Life begins to show easier, freer ways +of action which it had almost forgotten in the cold and dark. +It displays itself, like the soft red flowers that hang from the maple +trees, or the mourning cloak butterfly, come out of hibernation, +stretching its wings in the yellow sunlight of a path where I am +walking.</p> + +<p>These are the signs of spring, the illuminations I have been +waiting for. And its fresh, cool wind, striking my face, seems to +carry new senses with it. It is beginning to be fragrant and full. +It calls up in me a new alertness along with a new contentment. +But underneath all these pleasant surfaces and scattered events, +I feel the power of their origins. For all I can find and associate +with spring, the romantic, welcome season, there are vastly more +uncounted changes, unrealized ways of reaching up and out, responding +to a new range of light and darkness. The protozoa tell +me I have seen nothing yet as to fire. The migrant herring +coming in at night say this April is ageless and dark. Everywhere +around me, things deeply silent and unseen begin to share a +proximity. They move in the waters, while they shoulder the dirt +below ground. In the structure of their alliances, developed in +measure and with appropriateness, is the co-ordination of the great +globe as it spins in space. They respond to a power which not +only defines the “spring” but will transform it and send it on its +way.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span></p> + + +<h3>“<i>Frightened Away</i>”</h3> + +<p>The swallows freely dip and fall and sail in high wild air, +and as a southern surprise two adult turkey vultures soar low over +the land, their wings like great flags, frayed at the tips. The +cattail seeds begin to fly. Part of April’s cool progression, the +tough-leaved Mayflowers blossom out of banks and brown leaf +litter, with tiny pink and white flowers, deep cupped, strong +and sweet of scent.</p> + +<p>On the twenty-fifth there is a big run of alewives in the brook. +It is an event that attracts attention. Cars stop by. Small crowds +gather and walk down to see the fish. This is not as great a day +as it used to be, when salt herring counted heavily in the economic +livelihood of Cape Cod, but it brings up remnant feelings. And +the fish, after all, provide an open ceremony, even though the +details of their natural or economic history may not be known to +everyone. It is a spectacle worth leaving a car for, and might +even tempt someone to leave his car for good, suggesting new +roads and means of locomotion not yet considered.</p> + +<p>They mass in the shallow water of the brook, with flinty +gleams showing on their backs and dorsal fins. Eyes staring, +mouths gaping, turning and wheeling, the foot-long alewives move +up through the fishways, obeying their great drive for fulfillment. +Herring gulls gather above the water course by which the fish +ascend through marshes and then fresh water to their spawning +areas in the ponds. They circle overhead in the blinding sky, like +a prodigal crown.</p> + +<p>The alewife multitude always draws a “why” from some<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span> +visitor. Their force is so obvious and yet not quite to be explained +by referring to them as “poor fish.” Huge numbers are caught +in nets where they die in a shining, gasping, shivering mass, +and then are hauled away in barrels for the purposes of bait +or cat food. Others attempt impossible rocky barriers and die of +wounds or exhaustion, and a certain percentage have fallen prey +to gulls before they arrive. They encounter enormous hazards, +and the alewives, unlike men, or as men think of themselves, are +unable to turn back. The plan that put them here seems wasteful +and even too bold for those who see life in terms of human +ascendancy, where all problems are subordinate to our conscious +attempt to use the earth and save ourselves. But there they are, +back again so committedly as to make the most self-enclosed +glimpse something of the primal energy that makes all life insist on +renewal and advance. Even the children who jump down to the +water’s edge and try to flip the fish out with their hands, treating +them sometimes with extraordinary cruelty, must feel some attachment +to this force, or perhaps they feel it more than the rest of us.</p> + +<p>After trying to explain the habits of alewives to a group of +children one day, I asked them why, if all the fish were taken out +of the brook every day in the week, there would be hardly any +fish returning in a few years’ time.</p> + +<p>I don’t excuse my lack of clarity. In any case, one boy +answered: “Because they would get so frightened they would all +go away and not come back.”</p> + +<p>Wrong, of course. Someone might even be tempted to cry: +“Ridiculous!” The answer to the question is that most of the +alewives return to the stream in whose headwaters they were +hatched and where they grew up for a few weeks or months of +their lives before returning to salt water. They then continue to +grow in the sea, returning at sexual maturity in three or four +years’ time. So if all the spawning fish are taken out of the brook +every day in the week there would be no eggs to hatch out in the +ponds above the stream, and the population would be decimated.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span></p> + +<p>“No,” you say to the child, “you don’t understand. Let me +explain this again.”</p> + +<p>That the fish are “frightened” does not come into the +picture at all, aside from the facts, and it is blatant anthropomorphism +to try and read human response or attributes into a fish. +Does a fish take fright? Perhaps, although it might be more accurate +to call it an alarm, or flight reaction, an automatic nerve response +inherent in the whole race.</p> + +<p>Trying to talk like an adult, I describe the alewives’ running +in to spawn as “slavery to the reproductive urge.” What happens +to them on the way is immaterial to this unconscious necessity. +Fish that commit suicide do not do so out of choice.</p> + +<p>And yet, when these fish swing away from me, as my shadow +comes over them, when they try time after time, sometimes +frantically, to climb a mound of rocks or a head of water, I +wonder about being “frightened,” or the noun “fear.” Is this +spring stream of life without it? A bird trips off a branch in +sudden alarm, cries out, and then forgets, to start in on a singing +joy all over again. Birds are more emotional than cold-blooded +fish, but if fear is a protective, lifesaving reaction inherent in a +great many animals, then the fish may not be devoid of it. They +are one of the foods of the universe, and in balance with that +function, it is not just that their glands stimulate them to momentary +activity, or that they flinch before disaster, but that they +express in their bodies the wild need for freedom to act, to find, +to run, to be, that manifests itself in highly developed animals, +and to some degree in the lesser ones. They are in a sense +compensating for the uses to which they are put as a prey, or +element, of universal appetite.</p> + +<p>The alewives will not be frightened away, but they will come +back with fear. It is not wise to be too impatient with a child.</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pgs 173-174]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="May"><i>May</i></h2> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span></p> +<h3><i>Declarations</i></h3> + +<p>The colder, and still relatively silent world of April is past. +Warm sunlight runs across trees, sharp shadows, water and sand, +with a penetrating radiance. The alewives now come up the +inland stream day after day. Pale, sun laden, they move against +the fast-rushing current, arousing great excitement in the gulls. +The big white and gray birds hover over, then dive down in a +flock where the fish crowd in shallow water on their way up. +The valley is full of marauding and assemblies and crying out +as the fish keep on, rushing and weaving with the stream flowing +over their backs.</p> + +<p>And now the shad blow blooms. Thousands and thousands +of these little trees are laden, but lightly, with lacy white flowers, +looking like standing clouds in open woods and valleys throughout +the Cape. Pink and yellow and silvery-green colors begin to appear +on the oaks. Anthers are hanging conspicuously from the pitch +pines.</p> + +<p>Fish, insects, plants, birds are all, if I can personify them so, +in close and obedient relationship to nature. They count on +strength and protection when they sing or flower out above the +ground. They are in confident relationship to the general +being. And so they act with confidence. They have come. They +will be. They declare themselves. The birds make the dawns sound +with a silvery rain of music. On the morning when a thrush wakes +me up, its rippling and melodious peals lifting and diving through +the air, I have an incalculable urge to migrate outward and +claim new territory. Spring tells me I have not had enough.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span></p> + +<p>The shore birds appear in new flocks all the time, skimming +and crying along a once empty shore. Colorful little warblers +populate the woods, each with so mature and particular a color +and set of ways. Now, I think, they are all back from Mexico +or Florida or Patagonia, to help us not only in our geography +but to extend our senses.</p> + +<p>Motion and change of place are a bird’s necessity. Wings +insist on flight. Yet their recognition of that part of the land or +length of shore they come to in spring seems as positive as that +of any home builder on a numbered lot. When they arrive, a +large majority claim a place with all the resources at their command. +In the science of ornithology this is called “territorialism.” +Male birds, which often arrive some days or weeks before the +females, select an area of land as a nesting site, which they defend +against all intruders. Most of the songs of spring are advertisements +by male birds of the fact of land possession.</p> + +<p>The towhees are more insistent and vociferous in their +claiming than most. I hear two males, both perched on low trees, +perhaps a hundred yards apart, that keep at their singing as if +they had a rivalry that would never end. Each declares. Each +holds its own, as if song is an anchor to the earth. They stop me +in my tracks. A human being is a clumsy, noisy, obstreperous +animal. When I walk down a slope or through the level fields, +I find myself so involved with my own racket as to lose all sense +of what it was I set out to look for. Where is peace if you yourself +destroy it? These birds help me to command it. I stop and +listen to them, squaring off the limits they declare.</p> + +<p>“Air<i>tree</i>!” the towhees call, and “Tip-your-<i>tree</i>!” continually, +inexhaustibly. There is probably little point in using words like +pride, challenge, or anticipation in terms of these singers. Who +in the nonhuman world knows but they? Our music is not theirs, +however much we have borrowed from them. Still, what I catch +at, and what starts in me, is feeling. Their songs are an expression +of it. The towhees are here to establish themselves. Their future +is in direct relation to the place they have chosen for it, which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span> +may also be the general area where they were born. Their voices +measure place, a real and powerful thing to them. Song insists. +Song makes known. Song is a self-assurance. Since this singing is +done in collaboration with the arousing, fecund world of spring, it +may in its own way be true awareness.</p> + +<p>In the newly unfolding regions of delicate leaves a prairie +warbler sings “Tsee-tsee-tsee-tsee-tsee-tsee” very rapidly, on an +upward crescendo. A slim little bird, with a yellow breast streaked +with black, its sharp trim beak opens wide as the notes swell +out of its throat, and it seems to send song as far as it can. +I think of constant effort, constant quick hearts. It picks up a +light green caterpillar from the oak leaves and sings as it holds +it in its beak. Then the warbler beats at the insect a little, +pecks and shakes it, then swallows it down; and goes on singing.</p> + +<p>An oven bird perches on the oaks and sings, with breast +uplifted, tail shaking, making a glorious effort. How could I +dare say that this bird or another down the road, which accompanies +it, is only singing something that sounds to our ears like +“Teacher-teacher-teacher”? No bird song is alike, even in members +of the same species. Each individual has its variation and seems +to derive strength and pleasure from it. And it seems to me that +they not only declare their rights and titles but are expressing +something on behalf of spring. It is as if they sang: “It is not I. +It is not I” but rather, all flowering, crossing, taking or accumulating, +all growth. The song is a part of earth.</p> + +<p>Then there is that bird, a member of the family of mimics, +the brown thrasher, which seems to make a mockery of the whole +business. It is a cinnamon-winged, speckled-breasted, long-tailed +bird, with a long bill and sharp, quick yellow eyes. The male +thrasher is certainly as intense and serious about the duty of +staking out his territory as any other species, but what issues +loudly from his open bill seems like the most comical sort of +parody. He may not be as good a mimic as the mocking bird—which +has been known to imitate a flock of blue jays—but he +manages a wonderful take-off on the whole race of birds. He is a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span> +master of a grab bag of trills, chatters, pips and cries, of rasps and +sweetnesses, of sudden blurts, and obvious pauses as if for effect.</p> + +<p>Translated into a rapid tempo of words, his song might sound +like this: “Jeremy! Jeremy! Ready here. Right here. Wide awake. +Wide awake. Chipper! Chipper! Shake a leg. Up! Up! Here’s +a joker. This way. This way.” ... an interpretation which +probably makes me as ridiculous as he intended, if he is a serious +humorist. In the middle of this exhortation I hear a comic little +“Cucaracha!” or quite a good imitation of a whippoorwill, as +if he saved his more exact skills for a casual moment.</p> + +<p>The thrasher may be just as conditioned in his joy and +utterances as any other bird. His variations on the general bird +theme may come out abstractly, without any attempt at parody, +a limited kind of talent, and yet when I listen to it, it seems +to me that the bounds of song are being just a bit extended. As +compared with other birds, the blackpoll warbler for example, +with only a thin, high note, reminiscent of insect sounds in the +summer, the thrasher has range and repertoire. He is vocal and +conversational, even to the extent of tempting at least one human +animal into reading words and intentions into his performance; +and this, from a bird’s point of view, might mean that I was +extending my limits too.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Facets of Expression</i></h3> + +<p>I make a foolish game out of attaching words to a bird’s +song. Perhaps it is a way of trying to bring the two of us together +in familiarity, but to give nature its true respect, every song, color, +and action is its own master. Understanding, the best human +means of communicating with other lives, might be most effectively +attained by keeping a certain distance.</p> + +<p>That is the way I feel when I see the alert, tough little +chickadees coming up to the house and picking up tufts of hair, +rope, or wool, to use as nesting material. They set to work carding +it so busily and self-sufficiently that I am restrained from an +impulse to join in and look things over. I walk off to my own +business.</p> + +<p>A pair of tree swallows is trying out a birdhouse, and when I +stay too long in the vicinity, they are given an extra reason for +a negative decision as to its merits and fly into the distance. This +is a time not to meddle, tease, interfere, or try to imitate what +cannot be imitated.</p> + +<p>From that point of view the life of May, free of human +embrace, seems full of wonderful languages, still to be learned, +and they are not confined to the uses of sound. Isn’t a flower +or wing or new leaf articulate? I watch a mourning cloak +butterfly that flits and floats overhead and then lands on a bare +patch of ground in the sunlight. The broad wings fold and show +their dark, woody, shadow side, with little white circles on them, +their pattern and texture a blend of weather-beaten, drab forest +floors, suggestive of niches and corners of leaf-decaying darkness.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span> +Then the wings spread out again. They are a light mahogany-red +with shades of brown, bordered by black lines, and on their +bottom edge they are rimmed with little round dashes of purplish +blue, like small windows into the sky, and the body is green. +The butterfly’s antennae have white tips. It has fine hairs on its +back. Then, with a papery, fluttering sound, it is up with startling +quickness from the ground; just out of reach, in the frequent +manner of butterflies, as many a boy with a net has learned +from hard experience.</p> + +<p>What can we say about the American robin that has not already +been said? All the same, I know him not. He still appears on +the spring grass like a stranger. He lands there, then pauses, holding +up his head for a long time. No worms? Then he runs off on his +robin procedure, abandoning one area for another, where he pauses +rigidly again, then cocks his head. The worm is found. This is +assessable behavior. By this stiff pausing and then tripping ahead, +a robin is apparently able to detect the slightest motion on the +ground. We don’t need to look for the emotion or consciousness +of a robin beyond the actions to which it is stimulated by the +immediate need for food. Utility is all. Or so I have been told. +But the robin, like other birds, expresses its relation to the earth +in terms of a set of responses which come from a head I know +nothing about. It is an organism with much higher bodily temperatures +than ours, with a much faster heart beat, burning up energy +at a faster rate. Its experiences are entirely different. Down there, +on that bird level, what is happening? What kind of awareness does +it have, what kind of close, felt proximity to the stirring ground, +the shadows, the lightly running wind?</p> + +<p>Even the flowers, as if they were special custodians of those +fires of light that run through May, seem to express more than +the value we have given them. Trim little violets, white, pale blue, +or lilac in color, or pink lady’s-slippers blossom out and mark their +separate places in the sun with beautiful emphasis. Each is significant. +Each is inviolate. And, in a sense, are they not full of motion? +In their growth, their seeding, their provision for continuity and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span> +change of place, are they not free to run away? They fly in the +winds. They grow and they fight for life.</p> + +<p>Tiny white chickweed flowers begin to mantle some of our barren +areas, and the plants are so quick and strong in growth, establishing +themselves as if they had too little time, that they seem to +be partners with fish that school and spawn in the sea, or nesting +birds.</p> + +<p>All the new tumult and excitement combines in what we call +spring. Each facet of it, each life in its own right contributes +originality, and there are communications between them which +surprise us—distant, true, and unerring. I bear witness to them, +without quite understanding. One late evening on the shore, the +tide pools stand out like mirrors along dark sands. The air is cool. +Light sparkles over the receding tide. The distances there, as always, +seem sparse and immeasurable. I hear a sharp, wild cry, and then +another, perhaps a quarter of a mile farther on. Two yellowlegs, I +should judge. Theirs are the only sounds, besides the continuous +breathing of the sea. Did one respond to the other? Whether it did +or not, they are linked. The curved coast line is their orientation, +and the wide evening a plane for their cries, and in the play of +spring’s advance it is a recognition, vibrant and unique.</p> + +<p>Perhaps we come to some such realization of the greatness of +nature’s expression in spite of ourselves. We measure natural +phenomenon with marvelous accuracy. We are always busy at it, +cropping or adding names, readjusting interpretations, adding, subtracting, +multiplying, and dividing. The miracle is still untouched. +Why is the mindless flower less than ourselves and our assessments, +or the bird’s reaction less remarkable? That which is without mind +is not necessarily heedless. Perhaps spring is a manifestation of +mind; and its lives, all those facets of motion and beauty, behave in +its context as familiars. Each responds in terms of an alliance intrinsically +known, as with the birds along their shore.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Travel</i></h3> + +<p>For all my wonder at it, spring brings me into direct and +close enjoyment. Down the distance to blue water, the young oak +leaves in delicate silvery greens and pinks, swing in the full south +wind. There is a wave of baltimore orioles. They seem to have +arrived all at once. They dive through the tree tops and chase +each other, living jubilations in orange and black, shouting out +what sounds to me like: “This is the birthday of the Lord, Oh +Joy!” Then a scarlet tanager appears, silently perching on a +pink-leaved oak. It has so blinding and brilliant a color as to make +no sense in terms of camouflage, or environmental adaptation, +unless like the oriole, it is a treetop, sun-high bird, fitted to the +colors of the sun, half tropical. Now it seems like a gift of extravagance.</p> + +<p>Crane flies and gnats are swarming. Moths crowd the windows +at night. The ground stirs with beetles and spiders. I watch a +bumblebee digging a tunnel. Every minute or so a tiny yellow pile +of sand appears at the surface and then tumbles down, pushed +back by the bee, which half emerges, giving a little whining buzz, +like a grunt of exertion, and then disappears down its hole again.</p> + +<p>Toward evening I see a red-wing blackbird on the far side of +a cranberry bog, epaulets ablaze against the low sun. It is attacking +two impervious crows sitting on a tree, who must have just made a +meal of red-wing eggs. It flies over and around them, back and +forth, vainly, hopelessly.</p> + +<p>A few terns, newly arrived, are courting on the sand flats +beyond the shore. With light, airy grace, a male flies above a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span> +female waiting on the sand, offering her a silvery fish. Then they +both fly up and glide together across the blue and white reaches +below them. Inland, two iridescent tree swallows go through similar +formalities. A female perches on an oak post and the male +constantly dips down and flutters above her, barely touching, performing +a kind of aerial caress. Then he flies up and around her, +with a chittering, trilling, clicking kind of sound. She flies down +and pecks at the ground. Then both of them, in the growing darkness +limber with new green and shimmering silver, wheel low +together, in wide circles against the dying sun.</p> + +<p>What I see, what becomes easy to see for any eyes, in the gentle +month of May, is an approach to prodigality. We are not yet bitten, +dulled, and pounded down by population, of insects or men. Blistering +droughts have not come yet, nor excessive rain; but all the +component parts of nature run ahead. Through the alternately +warm and cool sweeps of weather, there is a steady pattern of +growth. This is the season of progression, of fanning out, and as +with the trees that have formed next year’s buds, of provision for +the future. The oak leaves which are limp and tiny to begin with, +develop gradually. They toughen and mature toward their summer +function of receiving and storing. They stretch, darken, and +shine, turning from tenderness to ability. So it is with the fish +hatched from the egg, or nesting birds, or the grass in the ground. +To have had a son born this month, as we did, is much in keeping.</p> + +<p>Birth is now the rule. I smell a sweet salt air. White petals +drop gently to the ground. Birds, trees, and plants, life in the +ground below them, are sprung by a constructive light. To follow +spring is to make use of yourself. Join and be. Here is as much +expanding energy as the human spirit could desire. Aspiration +meets its counterparts, on all sides. If, as man says, he represents +a climax of sensitivity in the evolutionary sense, then let him +now employ his consciousness for all it is worth, and not delay.</p> + +<p>Spring is loud and rich in its coming, but it is exact too, with +a sustained propriety. Each life is in its place, its shade or full +light. Each, held in the general change and roaming, to its necessity.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span> +Fragile star flowers and wind flowers bloom in the shade of +a wood of beech trees, while out on the open slopes and fields +the beach plum bushes are heavy with fat white blossoms, inviting +the sun’s full strength.</p> + +<p>In that valley where the alewives run, a narrow cut between +low hills once made by melt waters from a glacier, and joining +fresh-water ponds to Cape Cod Bay, there is now such a variety +of life in such a variety of places as to challenge travel in all the +senses. It reaches from the fresh-water ponds with their muddy +shallows where pickerel weed begins to put up its stalks, painted +turtles sun themselves on rocks out of the water, and sunfish make +their nests along the sandy edges—from the pond waters gently +lapping and smooth surfaces skidded by the wind—all the way +through tidal marshes to the sea whose massive motion stands +beyond us. Each area, first the ponds, then the brook, as it cascades +down rocky slopes, turning as it winds through valley reaches into a +creek, and then a tidal estuary, meeting the sand flats on the bay +shore, each definite part of land or shore, has its newly active, +co-ordinated riches. In the upper end of the valley, just below the +pond outlet where fish ladders are crowded with migrating alewives, +there is a wild and loud screaming of gulls. They wheel +constantly over the stream, and crowds of them settle down on +the water, quarreling over feasts of fish. Below them, black-crowned +night herons bob and stand tall in a grove of pitch pines. When +startled, they cluck and squawk like so many women over a +scandal. When one of them flies too close to the herring gulls, it +is chased away.</p> + +<p>Two upland plovers skim in fast, crying high. A black duck +whirs up, showing the white under its wings. The land at the +edge of the marsh is full of yellowthroats, warblers with a quick, +slurred call: “Weewiticha, weewiticha, weewiticha,” as it sounds to +me, and sometimes a softer “Chichibee, chichibee, chichibee.” I +watch one of these trim birds. It has a yellow breast and yellow +head masked distinctively with black. It lands in the leaves, whips +around, flits, quick and alert. Its colors fit with shade and sunlight<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span> +as though it had been conceived with them—a definite dash of +light. In the stream, as it winds down toward salt water, subject to +the rise and fall of the tide, small groups of alewives run quickly +and persistently through the weaving currents, heading up toward +gulls and then the nets and fishways beyond. I feel energy and +motion demanding me. Seen or unseen, a flying, starting, striding, +swimming, and inviting, makes of the present and its short lives +an endlessness.</p> + +<p>It is low tide where the channel meets the shore. Warm, hazy +air rises over the bare landscape into an empty, chalky-blue sky. +But the wide-ribbed sands are run over lightly by gold braided +waters, light catchers full of motion, flexing and rippling. Crustaceans +dart through them. Periwinkle tracks straggle across the +sands, and the empty shells of razor clams litter the surface, along +with the worm cases stuck with shells, seaweed and grains of sand, +protruding above it; and there are black horseshoe crabs partly +dug in, waiting for the tide to turn. The three-toed tracks of shore +birds are everywhere, and farther out, through a light wind, a +rushing sea sound, I can hear gulls calling low, muttering among +themselves, and the unmistakable harsh cry of a tern.</p> + +<p>Sanderlings, black-bellied plovers, ruddy turnstones, are dipping +up and down, scuttling, or tripping ahead as they feed. In +the distance the turnstones, mottled black and brown, with short +red legs, look a little like quail.</p> + +<p>Two herring gulls are pulling hard at a sand shark, stranded +by a tide, or perhaps killed by some fishing boat when it was +brought up in the nets. They work at it furiously, tugging and +tearing from both sides, since the sand shark’s hide is like sandpaper +and many times as thick and tough. When I come up, I can +see that they have not managed to do much more than tear out +some of the flesh from its head and neck. Judging by the tracks +on the sand, they must have been hauling it around for some time.</p> + +<p>Far far out, I thought I saw a man digging for clams on the +flats, but after walking for half a mile in that direction, I am +astonished to see a yearling deer starting in a leisurely way toward<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span> +the land. It had probably browsed its way out, nibbling at bits of +tender seaweed, licking salt, encountering no danger in the expansive +room that borders land and sea. Now, with the motion of +its long legs showing in all detail as I have never seen them in +fields or woods, the deer starts to run slowly, with an almost loose +loping. It stops, looks around uneasily, and then the legs unlimber +again, but hesitantly. It looks suddenly in my direction; and +bounds and bucks away, its legs now working with tense speed. +Through my field glasses I find a man and a boy on the beach. +Seeing them, the animal changes course, gathers more speed, and +when it reaches the shore, dashes up the sloping beach and disappears +into a green line of shrubs and low trees.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i184" style="max-width: 102.25em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i184.jpg" alt="Deer"> +</figure> + +<p>The separations on these sand flats are vast. Where the narrow +inland water course issues out, nothing is so well defined as space. +For the variety of action here and in thousands of miles of deep +water beyond, range is the rule, and the brook leads to the sea as +all things lead to each other. Our meetings have scarcely begun.</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pgs 187-188]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="June"><i>June</i></h2> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span></p> +<h3><i>The Garden</i></h3> + +<p>“June, June, I beg your pardon, for walking in your garden” +is a phrase from an old song, which expresses the delicacy you +might feel on some moonlit night about treading a path through +fragile shadows and flowers, or intruding by day on their young +beauty. The song expresses it succinctly; but the fact of the matter +is that the June garden is suddenly so rich and widespread that +there are no paths to walk on. It is unavoidable. I find myself +wondering how it happened—how it happened that I now take it +for granted. My small daughter asked me the other day whether or +not the trees wore leaves in the wintertime. She was not quite +sure. We have come back to fruition unawares.</p> + +<p>The effort has been made, the strength achieved. In the past +three months we have gone from death to birth, to unfettered +growth, and have already forgotten what a great and elaborate +process it was. I can remember—or I have it in writing (the aid to +memory)—that on the twenty-fifth of March there was a light +snow in the morning, and that the temperature was well below +freezing, with strong north winds all day. The significance of the +twenty-fifth comes from its often being used as an average date +for the first sound of the spring peepers. That day the whole idea +seemed impossible. And yet they sang, two evenings later. Of +course the whole year is the scene of birth and growth. Spring is +not the sole custodian of arrival. There are flowers that bloom in +the autumn. But that was our last beginning, in immediate terms. +We have lived through what followed with only the scantiest kind +of recognition, to arrive now with a great new crowd of shapes and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span> +sounds filling the distance, in the muscular swing of light. Flowery +grasses, wild flowers like vetch, daisies, coreopsis, buttercups, and +hundreds of others, head up, shoot forth, dance in the sun and +compete with one another for living space—part of the rush and +race of life we take for granted. The fact that we do take it for +granted may be the best proof of our deep connection with it, +as with all the natural rounds of the year. We breathe and give +birth and die in terms of the same force as these surroundings. It is +less articulate with us than realized. The new measures have a +steady underlying order which pulses in us like the tides. So I suddenly +look around me and find the whole earth peopled with motion +and quantity, searching and adjustments, and I find it familiar.</p> + +<p>In the warm air the land seems bound together by a whir +ticked off in the grass by field crickets, lighted at night by the slow-dancing +fireflies, intensified on the millions of new leaf surfaces, +petals, and stems, where insects alight, crawl, and eat, many races +pursuing their separate ways, aligned with thousands of life communities +in function and in act.</p> + +<p>June has gone green, with a staggering assumption of authority. +The dry land ferns stretch stiff and wide like fans. The huckleberry +bushes are springing with light green. The oaks heave and +rise with their bounty of fresh leaves. Meadows along the shore +are green with samphire; and marsh grasses, still low, looking close-cropped +above the dark peat or through rushing waves at high tide.</p> + +<p>On the lee side of a stone jetty thrusting out from the shore +the water is full of plankton. Tiny marine animals, like barnacle +larvae, copepods, baby jellyfish, are being gently carried and +lifted by the surf. They are whirled and drifted in the water as it +swells and ebbs. There is a beautiful symmetry in these fragile, +transparent animals. I notice tiny beads of air along the sides of +some of the jellyfish.</p> + +<p>In some inland waters joined by inlets to the sea, there are +massive numbers of adult jellyfish at this time of year, pulsing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span> +slowly through green waters, like transparent animal flowers. The +riches of the water, fresh or salt, are immeasurable.</p> + +<p>More and more adult alewives are returning to the sea after +spawning in ponds and lakes, running back through marsh lands +filled with cattails, wild iris, rushes, and arrowheads. Behind them +they leave their progeny, which have in fact been hatching out for +the past two months, and are gradually becoming so numerous as +to interfere with the sport of fishing. These “bait fish” feed bass, +pickerel, and perch, which now refuse to react to a mere fly or +worm, having more than enough to eat.</p> + +<p>There are no waters, no wood or square yard of ground not +sounding and moving with new life. A wild readiness, a fluency is +here. Within its terrestrial order and confinement everything seems +incalculably bold. Now is the time to run ahead. Now, even for +our special race, is the time to take the necessary risk of new connections, +new affinities. This is a world of alliances.</p> + +<p>I walk through a wood of trees—which might be in Cape +Cod, Japan, or Siberia—their gray trunks spotted with dancing +shadows, a naked wealth in motion, thinking that a man might +find himself for the first time in this company, not because of +would-be similarities—sap and blood, branches and arms—but because +of a context which they share. I am an organism that can +make a choice. The tree is not; nor can it suffer. To simplify the +matter too much, I am an animal. The tree is a plant. But in the +whole environment, with its intertwining events, its varying energies, +each form of life joins and takes part. In this wood, while the +wind blows across us and yellow light dances through, I think that +even a man and trees, with their vastly different responses, may be +together, players in a sunlight game.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp45" id="i190" style="max-width: 105.0625em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i190.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Room to Spare</i></h3> + +<p>June is a fullness. There is no part of land and shore not +imbued with warmth and covered with manifestations of strength +and capacity, but the season moves on. It changes to new measures +continually, beautiful in substance but hard to grasp, like a flock +of sanderlings swinging and spinning in unison along the bright +sands, or a school of fish. How do they keep together? What is +their communication? Even a forest of apparently rigid trees has +a coherence and order of its own, perhaps a sensibility, since it +goes through all periods of existence. Everywhere I look there is +spacing, and at the same time mutual attraction, in rhythmic +display, as though the laws of space were inherent in every action +and bound in every organism. The play of the universe is what I +sense in its living instruments, and my own, often borrowed, interpretations +stop far short of its magnitude.</p> + +<p>Out of the whole possible range of communication (and it +seems to me to go beyond possibility) each species embodies a +special response. Its senses react in a unique and selective way toward +its surroundings. It is true of the frog. What does it hear +that we cannot? It is true of the fish. How does it orient itself in +the water? What does it feel? What explains the sensitivity of some +plants to touch? Each have motions, and in a sense languages, of +their own.</p> + +<p>How can I understand the hundreds of moths that crowd the +screen door at night? They have all manner of shapes. When I +shine my flashlight on them their eyes glow with an amber fire. +They flutter against the screen, and when I turn the inside light<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span> +off, fly away immediately. This is a sensitivity to light and darkness +that has its parallels in the butterflies attracted to flowers of a +particular color. They are selective in their behavior and perhaps +restricted at the same time. And yet, huddled, crawling, landing, +and flying off, concentrated in numbers as they are, they suggest a +dark realm of action and context to me. In spite of their reactions +their terms are unknown. It is these untouched areas which must +attract any man who begins to be aware of them—as though we +ourselves had something in us not yet understood. Where the +mystery is, may be the reality.</p> + +<p>What we see, even from the outside looking in, is rhythmic +performance, not a series of static events. Balance and rhythm are +the rules of action, understood in depth by moth or fish. Each +race, unknown to the other, plays its own game, follows its own +senses, and yet is in balance with the rest of life. The rules of +natural abundance are the rules of space—not almost constant +destruction and collision between living things but obedience to +their given orbits.</p> + +<p>Many people have the idea, perhaps because of a human fascination +with violent events, that nature is compounded of just such +rigidities—dog eat dog, or tiger eat horse—or obversely, that nothing +happens at all. Nature is either a menace or a great bore. Could +I expect, going to some pond or water hole concentrated with life +to find all kinds of mutual slaughter going on? At the edge of any +small pond I see action enough this time of year. Many tadpoles +hurry off in all directions at my footfall. I hear a bullfrog’s noble +plucked bass sounding among the pickerel weed, while dark gray +catbirds cry in thickets along the shore. A great antediluvian animal, +a snapping turtle, with a fat black shell, a thick, fat head and +neck, and large lidded eyes like a dog, climbs out of the water to +lay its eggs on a sandy bank above. Its movements are slow and +massive, each leg lifted as it goes. Only a sudden, lunging, upward +snap as I tease it with a stick, shows what quick ferocity it is capable +of. In the still pond waters there are schools of tiny, newly hatched +fish, big-eyed, big-headed, with minute pin-sized bodies, running<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span> +and twitching in rhythmic solidarity. A yellow perch runs by, and +then a horned pout roves through the fry with apparent disregard. +It passes near a sunfish nest, a little round, cleared depression on +the bottom. The sunfish sallies after it in a short dash and then +returns to hover over its nest, its fringed tail waving gently. In +spite of our expectations, any aggression here is latent rather than +actual, and need, it is clear, has room and time to spare.</p> + +<p>Co-ordination is intrinsic to the life of an environment, acted +upon by every predator. There will be no fight between the sunfish +and the horned pout, but the sunfish has affirmed its ancient rights +to the territory that comprises its nest. It is bold in defense of its +home, up to the point, presumably, that it goes beyond a boundary +which its feelings establish for it. I am reminded of those birds, +like the herring gulls and their “threat postures” (described by +N. K. Tinbergen in <i>The Herring Gull’s World</i>, 1954) assumed +when two birds defend their respective positions on either side of +a boundary invisible to us but strongly felt by them. In these cases +a fight may never result, because the two alternate drives of defense +and aggression cancel each other out. What the trained observer +sees as an indication of what is going on are “behavior patterns,” +types of physical action that show him what this gull communication +might mean. In any case, up and down the scale of life is +force and counterforce, action and reaction, in a balance that is +understood in as many ways as there are species.</p> + +<p>The lusty month of June is made up of all its encounters, +many of them savage in isolation; but we may look for Roman +circuses in vain. Wait all day and no life seems to devour another. +Wait all year and you may never see the fight you are looking for. +Now and then to be sure, as with an abundance of fish and +their marauding predators, you can see savagery and greed confined, +but even so the lesson is the same. It is not killing, eating, +and aggression which seem paramount but an over-all rhythm and +balance in which they are only elements. Later on, between July +and December, the young alewives hatched out this spring in +pond waters will start returning to the sea. I have often seen them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span> +as they go down the fish ladders by which their spawning parents +came up. Perhaps through some attraction to the water’s force +where it spills down hard over the concrete rims of each pool in the +ladder, the fingerlings mass and circle before dropping back downstream. +It is here that a number of eels, some of them of large size, +coil and slither through the water, and eat large quantities of fish. +Eels are largely nocturnal in habit, but they do go through periods +of feeding by day. Sometimes they act like eating machines, methodically +grabbing one little fish after another; but the alewives +continually swim over them, unregarding. Where the fish idle +in the stream below, in less turbulent, clearer water, perfectly +capable of seeing any eels lying in wait for them, they are in no +way affected, so far as I can see. The eels themselves, lying on +the stream bottom for long periods after eating, pay no attention +while the little alewives swim over them. Here is a strange relation +between enemies.</p> + +<p>It is perfectly true that a young alewife may not know an eel +from a stick unless it is directly attacked, being in some respects +oblivious to much of anything except the need to migrate to salt +water. And yet the point is not that they are “stupid,” but that +their crowd lives demand a cohesive rhythm, sensitive enough in +action, which is paramount to all risks they encounter. It is in fact +their main protection. They school and eat. They school and escape. +They school and perpetuate themselves. The solitary alewife +is lost. These fish move and intercommunicate in a frame of continuity +to which they are forever held. But can we call it a restriction? +Its terms may be quite invisible to us.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>The Binding Rain</i></h3> + +<p>So this is, or was, Cape Cod, as June booms with fruition. The +nights throb; and on a clear one how the long frames of the stars +line up overhead! There is no end of internment, no end of use +and opening out.</p> + +<p>It is not the place I came to, out of the city, though its shape, +like a giant curved arm, or fish hook lying out in the Atlantic, is +the same. Its oak trees have grown, even in the comparatively +few years I have lived here. The old, gray-shingled houses are still +in evidence, but there are many more new ones, seemingly temporary +as this age goes. The shores are crowded, beginning toward +the end of June. We are scrambling to take advantage of our +summer economy while it lasts, although the buzz saw sounds the +year through, as well as the chickadees, building motels, summer +cottages, gas stations, houses for the retired. Cape Cod still has a +certain itinerant quality, which may ally it to its more seagoing +past.</p> + +<p>In my own terms the Cape is not the same. I have outlived +my dependence on its past. I go by the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century +gravestones with less interest. The “old characters” +are not around to talk to any more. I am not quite so fascinated by +grown-over wagon tracks as I used to be. Something pleasant is +lost—even a blessed continuity. Still, I have learned to look for +another, which has no particular choice as to place, joining them +all.</p> + +<p>This is not just “natural history” I have found, unless you are +also willing to call it “natural mystery.” This is life, or death-in-life,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span> +as well as “nature.” In any case it is bountiful, or niggardly, +relentless, terrible, but always at hand. Only walk out and see. +Cape Cod is rife with unknown lives (and what I know about +its ocean waters is not worth mentioning). Where do we begin? +With a first question perhaps. To make it is to recover from being +afraid of getting or giving the wrong answer, a step toward knowledge.</p> + +<p>I have not learned much about cell structure, or the delicate +co-ordination of organisms in their environment, or some of those +remarkable mechanisms that trigger action in certain plants or animals +of land and sea; but I have made that first step.</p> + +<p>I stand by some pond, wondering how deep it is. Everything +around me says, in comparative silence: “As deep as you make it,” +and I have no need to think my questions will delay the source +that leads them on.</p> + +<p>The rolling energies of nature remind us of our own potentialities. +In a small country field is all existence and its hazards. +Ponderous storms, killing balances of cold and heat, great rains or +droughts, hang over the needs of its competitive inhabitants. A +natural, unimpeachable violence wipes out untold numbers, or +holds them to its order. And yet the plants and animals themselves +that endure, survive, and die prove an essential vigor in the +process. It is not only a matter of “food gathering” and “competition” +for them. They fight the winds, in rhythmic unity. They +are made to face the universe, with the universe inside them. +Their motions, their changing adaptation to circumstance, are also +their great self-expenditure. Live and be finished off, but above all +live!</p> + +<p>This Cape Cod, this special piece of America, has its unexampled +strength and a “progress” which will not take second +place to our own. Sun and rain, the capacities of earth, the mindless +ways of the flower, the strange and short sensitivities of the +insects in their other world, the brooding sea in its ominous tidal +balance held by moon and turning globe, all this matrix of energy +has its standards and its abiding needs.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span></p> + +<p>It rains steadily as the tourists begin to drive down the Cape +in ever increasing numbers, thus abashing their spirits. Rain is a +nuisance. It keeps us in and deprives us of perpetual warmth and +light. If there were no rain? Drought is only on the surface. Water +comes from pipes, the way milk comes from refrigerator cars.</p> + +<p>But the rain will not be stopped. Clean, cool, straight falling, +pattering on multitudinous leaves, it insists on its own power and +propriety. There is no wind. The calm gray sky is gently, loosely +moving, but held dead center with its riches of rain. The fall is +steady and fast above the treetops, with single drops ticking off +from each waxen leaf, sliding down the pine needles to end at their +tips in brilliant crystal eyes. With a thin long seething it spits and +spats and trickles on, pausing occasionally, then putting forth +again. The water lands on the dead leaf floor under the trees, or +thick beds of needles, sliding and soaking through, making gradual +displacements between litter and soil, stirring gently, providing +the life of earth its refreshment and guaranteeing its sustenance.</p> + +<p>Between pond lilies and reeds the rain spatters the fresh water. +It changes the lakes and ponds as it changes the earth. The +water level moves up and down from year to year depending on +the rainfall. In a pond it will move up the rim and cover the roots +of overhanging shrubs—blueberries, alders, or swamp azaleas—then, +after a year or two, it will recede again, revealing a narrow beach. +During the years there will be continual, subtle alterations in the +nature of plants around the pond, and in the habits of the animals +dependent on them.</p> + +<p>The rain falls through woodland bogs, and open swamps. It +trickles down bare slopes and thicket-studded valleys. It runs over +incessantly moving brooks and streams that bear it toward the sea. +Its drops bounce with silvery emphasis across the waters of the +slow, gray tidal inlets. They sound like a breath along the sands, +and while arrowlike terns are excitedly diving for fish, they pock +the silver-streaked levels of the bay, and then are lost to sight, +pattering out over massive waters.</p> + +<p>Even and sweet the descent, calm and clean its provision. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span> +rain thrusts in and guarantees immediate growth. It binds the +birds to the insects to the plants, to sun and air, breaking down +elements in the soil, loosening it for billions of its travelers, making +sure of sustenance in that release. Rain sound in June, which at +other seasons may cut like a knife, is one of beatitude. I listen. I +accept. It carries me on. Out of the hollow mind of the universe +what conceptions may come in the millions and millions of years +ahead? How many, in the next spit of timelessness, will fall prey +to disaster? Both calm and calamity are in the cards. This is +acceptable enough to life in nature. And who am I to claim some +vain detachment?</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="transnote"> +<p class="center"><b>Transcriber’s Notes</b></p> +<p>New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.</p> +<p>Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.</p> + +<p>Illustrations have been moved nearer to the text to which they refer.</p> +</div> + + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76613 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + |