The Spring of the Year Part 11

About four o'clock that afternoon I was hurrying down to the station, and there was Will atop that same stump.

"Got him yet?" I called.

"No, dogs are fetching him over the Quarries now"--and I was out of hearing.

It was growing dark when I returned; but there was Will Hall atop the stump. I drew up in the road.

"Grown fast to that stump, Will?" I called. "Want me to try to pull you off?"

"No, not yet," he replied, jacking himself painfully to his feet.

"Chillin' up some, ain't it?" he added shaking himself. "Might's well go home, I guess"--when from the direction of Young's Meadows came the eager voice of his dogs; and, waving me on, he got quickly back atop the stump, his gun ready across his knees.

I was nearly home when, through the m.u.f.fle of the darkening woods, I heard the quick _bang! bang!_ of Will's gun.

Yes, he got him, a fine red fox. And speaking to me about it one day, he said,--

"There's a lot more to sittin' still than most folks thinks. The trouble is, most folks in the woods can't stand the monopoly of it."

Will's English needs touching up in spots; but he can show the professors a great many things about the ways of the woods.

And now what does the doctor mean by "No dreaming or thumb-twiddling"

in the woods? Just this: that not only must you be silent and motionless for hours at a time, but you must also be alert--watchful, keen, ready to take a hint, to question, guess, and interpret. The fields and woods are not full of life, but full only of the sounds, shadows, and signs of life.

You are atop of your stump, when over the ridge you hear a slow, quiet rustle in the dead leaves--a skunk; then a slow, _loud_ rustle--a turtle; then a _quick_, loud--_one-two-three_--rustle--a chewink; then a tiny, rapid rustle--a mouse; then a long, rasping rustle--a snake; then a measured, galloping rustle--a squirrel; then a light-heavy, hop-thump rustle--a rabbit; then--and not once have you seen the rustlers in the leaves beyond the ridge; and not once have you stirred from your stump.

Perhaps this understanding of the leaf-sounds might be called "interpretation"; but before you can interpret them, you must hear them; and no dozing, dreaming, fuddling sitter upon a stump has ears to hear.

As you sit there, you notice a blue jay perched silent and unafraid directly over you--not an ordinary, common way for a blue jay to act.

"Why?" you ask. Why, a nest, of course, somewhere near! Or, suddenly round and round the trunk of a large oak tree whirls a hummingbird.

"Queer," you say. Then up she goes--and throwing your eye ahead of her through the tree-tops you chance to intercept her bee-line flight--a hint! She is probably gathering lichens for a nest which she is building somewhere near, in the direction of her flight. A whirl! a flas.h.!.+--as quick as light! You have a wonderful story!

Now do not get the impression that all one needs to do in order to become acquainted with the life of the woods is to sit on a stump a long time, say nothing, and listen hard. All that is necessary--rather, the ability to do it is necessary; but in the woods or out it is also necessary to exercise common sense. Guess, for instance, when guessing is all that you can do. You will learn more, however, and learn it faster, generally, by following it up, than by sitting on a stump and guessing about it.

At twilight, in the late spring and early summer, we frequently hear a gentle, tremulous call from the woods or from below in the orchard.

"What is it?" I had been asked a hundred times, and as many times had guessed that it might be the hen partridge clucking to her brood; or else I had replied that it made me think of the mate-call of a c.o.o.n, or that I half inclined to believe it the cry of the woodchucks, or that possibly it might be made by the owls. In fact, I didn't know the peculiar call, and year after year I kept guessing at it.

We were seated one evening on the porch listening to the whip-poor-wills, when some one said, "There's your woodchuck singing again." Sure enough, there sounded the tremulous woodchuck-partridge-owl-c.o.o.n cry. I slipped down through the birches determined at last to know that cry and stop guessing about it, if I had to follow it all night.

The moon was high and full, the footing almost noiseless, and everything so quiet that I quickly located the clucking sounds as coming from the orchard. I came out of the birches into the wood-road, and was crossing the open field to the orchard, when something dropped with a swish and a vicious clacking close upon my head. I jumped from under my hat, almost,--and saw the screech owl swoop softly up into the nearest apple tree. Instantly she turned toward me and uttered the gentle purring cluck that I had been guessing at so hard for at least three years. And even while I looked at her, I saw in the tree beyond, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, two round bunches,--young owls evidently,--which were the explanation of the calls. These two, and another young one, were found in the orchard the following day.

I rejoined the guessers on the porch and gave them the satisfying fact, but only after two or three years of guessing about it. I had laughed once at some of my friends over on the other road who had bolted their front door and had gone out of the door at the side of the house for precisely twenty-one years because the key in the front-door lock wouldn't work. They were intending to have it fixed, but the children being little kept them busy; then the children grew up, and of course kept them busier; got married at last and left home--all but one daughter. Still the locksmith was not called to fix that front door. One day this unmarried daughter, in a fit of impatience, got at that door herself, and found that the key had been inserted just twenty-one years before--_upside down_!

There I had sat on the porch--on a stump, let us say, and guessed about it. Truly, my key to this mystery had been left long in the lock, upside down, while I had been going in and out by the side door.

No, you must _go_ into the fields and woods, go deep and far and frequently, with eyes and ears and all your souls alert!

NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS

CHAPTER I

TO THE TEACHER

Put the question to your scholars individually: Who is _your_ messenger of spring? Make the reading of this book not an end in itself, but only a means toward getting the pupils out of doors.

Never let the reading stop with the end of the chapter, any more than you would let your garden stop with the buying of the seeds. And how eager and restless a healthy child is for the fields and woods with the coming of spring! Do not let your opportunity slip. Go with them after reading this chapter (re-reading if you can the first chapter in "The Fall of the Year") out to some meadow stream where they can see the fallen stalks and brown matted growths of the autumn through which the new spring shoots are pus.h.i.+ng, green with vigor and promise. The seal of winter has been broken; the pledge of autumn has been kept; the life of a new summer has started up from the grave of the summer past. Here by the stream under your feet is the whole cycle of the seasons--the dead stalks, the empty seed-vessels, the starting life.

Let the children watch for the returning birds and report to you; have them bring in the opening flowers, giving them credit (on the blackboard) for each _new_ flower found; go with them (so that they will not _bring_ the eggs to you) to see the new nests discovered, teaching them by every possible means the folly and cruelty of robbing birds' nests, of taking life; while at the same time you show them the beauty of life, its sacredness, and manifold interests.

FOR THE PUPIL

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Have you ever _seen_ a "spring peeper" peeping? You will hear, these spring nights, many distinct notes in the marshes, and when you have seen all of the lowly musicians you will be a fairly accomplished naturalist. Let the discovery of "Who's Who among the Frogs" this spring be one of your first outdoor studies. The picture shows you Pickering's hyla, blowing his bagpipe. _Arbutus_: trailing arbutus (_Epigaea repens_), sometimes called ground-laurel, and mayflower, fishflower (in New Jersey).

_hepatica_: liver-leaf (_Hepatica triloba_).

_Spice-bush_: wild allspice, fever-bush, Benjamin-bush (_Benzoin aestivale_).

_Wood-p.u.s.s.y_: the skunk, who comes out of his winter den very early in spring, and whose scent is one of the characteristic odors of a New England spring.

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_All white and still_: The whole poem will be found on the last page of "Winter," the second book in this series.

_trillium_: the wake-robin. Read Mr. Burroughs's book "Wake-Robin,"--the first of his outdoor books.

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_phbe_: See the chapter called "The Palace in the Pig-Pen."

_bloodroot_: _Sanguinaria canadensis_. See the picture on this page. So named because of the red-orange juice in the root-stalks, used by the Indians as a stain.

_marsh-marigolds_: The more common but _incorrect_ name is "cowslip." The marsh-marigold is _Caltha pal.u.s.tris_ and belongs with the b.u.t.tercup and wind-flower to the Crowfoot Family. The cowslip, a species of primrose, is a European plant and belongs to the Primrose Family.

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_woolly-bear_: caterpillar of the isabella tiger moth, the common caterpillar, brown in the middle with black ends, whose hairs look as if they had been clipped, so even are they.

_mourning-cloak_: See picture, page 77 of "Winter," the second book of this series. The antiopa b.u.t.terfly.

_juncos_: the common slate-colored "s...o...b..rds."

_witch-hazel_: See picture, page 28 of "The Fall of the Year"; read description of it on pages 31-33 of the same volume.