Truly, this was very much like lying down in the sleeping-car of an overland train. You recline and act as if nothing unusual were going on; and meanwhile a force that has something irresistible about it and is indeed largely beyond your control, wafts you over mile after mile of fabled distance; now and then the rumble of car on rail will stop, the quiet awakens you, lights flash their piercing darts, a voice calls out; it is a well known stop on your journey and then the rumbling resumes, you doze again, to be awakened again, and so on. And when you get up in the morning—there she lies, the goal of your dreams-the resplendent city...
My goal was my “home,” and mildly startling, at least one such mid-nightly awakening came. I had kept peering about for a landmark, a light. Somewhere here in those farmhouses which I saw with my mind’s eye, people were sitting around their fireside, chatting or reading. Lamps shed their homely light; roof and wall kept the fog-spook securely out: nothing as comfortable then as to listen to stories of being lost on the marsh, or to tell them... But between those people and myself the curtain had fallen—no sign of their presence, no faintest gleam of their light and warmth! They did not know of the stranger passing outside, his whole being a-yearn with the desire for wife and child. I listened intently—no sound of man or beast, no soughing of wind in stems or rustling of the very last leaves that were now fast falling... And then the startling neighing of Dan, my horse! This was the third trip he made with me, and I might have known and expected it, but it always came as a surprise. Whenever we passed that second farm, he stopped and raising his head, with a sideways motion, neighed a loud and piercing call. And now he had stopped and done it again. He knew where we were. I lowered my whip and patted his rump. How did he know? And why did he do it? Was there a horse on this farmstead which he had known in former life? Or was it a man? Or did he merely feel that it was about time to put in for the night? I enquired later on, but failed to discover any reason for his behaviour.
Now came that angling road past the “White Range Line House.” I relied on the horses entirely. This “Range Line House” was inhabited now—a settler was putting in winter-residence so he might not lose his claim. He had taken down the clapboards that closed the windows, and always had I so far seen a light in the house.
It seemed to me that in this corner of the marsh the fog was less dense than it had been farther south, and the horses, once started, were swinging along though in a leisurely way, yet without hesitation. Another half hour passed. Once, at a bend in the trail, the rays from the powerful tractor searchlight, sweeping sideways past the horses, struck a wetly glistening, greyish stone to the right of the road. I knew that stone. Yes, surely the fog must be thinning, or I could not have seen it. I could now also dimly make out the horses’ heads, as they nodded up and down...
And then, like a phantom, way up in the mist, I made out a blacker black in the black—the majestic poplars north of the “Range Line House.” Not that I could really see them or pick out the slightest detail—no! But it seemed to my searching eyes as if there was a quiet pool in the slow flow of the fog—as the water in a slow flowing stream will come to rest when it strikes the stems of a willow submerged at its margin. I was trying even at the time to decide how much of what I seemed to divine rather than to perceive was imagination and how much reality. And I was just about ready to contend that I also saw to the north something like the faintest possible suggestion of an eddy, such as would form in the flowing water below a pillar or a rock—when I was rudely shaken up and jolted.
Trap, trap, I heard the horses’ feet on the culvert. Crash! And Peter went stumbling down. Then a violent lurch of the buggy, I holding on—Peter rallied, and then, before I had time to get a firmer grasp on the lines, both horses bolted again. It took me some time to realize what had happened. It was the culvert, of course; it had broken down, and lucky I was that the ditch underneath was shallow. Only much later, when reflecting upon the incident, did I see that this accident was really the best verification of what I was nearly inclined to regard as the product of my imagination. The trees must indeed have stood where I had seemed to see that quiet reach in the fog and that eddy...
We tore along. I spoke to the horses and quietly and evenly pulled at the lines. I think it must have been several minutes before I had them under control again. And then—in this night of weird things—the weirdest sight of them all showed ahead.
I was just beginning to wonder, whether after all we had not lost the road again, when the faintest of all faint glimmers began to define itself somewhere in front. And... was I right? Yes, a small, thin voice came out of the fog that incessantly floated into my cone of light and was left behind in eddies. What did it mean?...
The glimmer was now defining itself more clearly. Somewhere, not very far ahead and slightly to the left, a globe of the faintest iridescent luminosity seemed suspended in the brewing and waving mist. The horses turned at right angles on to the bridge, the glimmer swinging round to the other side of the buggy. Their hoofs struck wood, and both beasts snorted and stopped.
In a flash a thought came. I had just broken through a culvert—the bridge, too, must have broken down, and somebody had put a light there to warn the chance traveller who might stray along on a night like this! I was on the point of getting out of my wraps, when a thinner wave in the mist permitted me to see the flames of three lanterns hung to the side-rails of the bridge. And that very moment a thin, piping voice came out of the darkness beyond. “Daddy, is that you?” I did not know the child’s voice, but I sang out as cheerily as I could. “I am a daddy all right, but I am afraid, not yours. Is the bridge broken down, sonny? Anything wrong?” “No, Sir,” the answer came, “nothing wrong.” So I pulled up to the lanterns, and there I saw, dimly enough, God wot, a small, ten-year old boy standing and shivering by the signal which he had rigged up. He was barefooted and bareheaded, in shirt and torn knee-trousers. I pointed to the lanterns with my whip. “What’s the meaning of this, my boy?” I asked in as friendly a voice as I could muster. “Daddy went to town this morning,” he said rather haltingly, “and he must have got caught in the fog. We were afraid he might not find the bridge.” “Well, cheer up, son,” I said, “he is not the only one as you see; his horses will know the road. Where did he go?” The boy named the town—it was to the west, not half the distance away that I had come. “Don’t worry,” I said; “I don’t think he has started out at all. The fog caught me about sixteen miles south of here. It’s nine o’clock now If he had started before the fog got there, he would be here by now.” I sat and thought for a moment. Should I say anything about the broken culvert? “Which way would your daddy come, along the creek or across the marsh?” “Along the creek.” All right then, no use in saying anything further. “Well, as I said,” I sang out and clicked my tongue to the horses, “don’t worry; better go home; he will come to-morrow” “I guess so,” replied the boy the moment I lost sight of him and the lanterns.
I made the turn to the southeast and walked my horses. Here, where the trail wound along through the chasm of the bush, the light from my cone would, over the horses’ backs, strike twigs and leaves now and then. Everything seemed to drip and to weep. All nature was weeping I walked the horses for ten minutes more. Then I stopped. It must have been just at the point where the grade began; but I do not know for sure.
I fumbled a long while for my shoes; but at last I found them and put them on over my dry woollens. When I had shaken myself out of my robes, I jumped to the ground. There was, here, too, a film of mud on top, but otherwise the road was firm enough. I quickly threw the blankets over the horses’ backs, dropped the traces, took the bits out of their mouths, and slipped the feed-bags over their heads. I looked at my watch, for it was my custom to let them eat for just ten minutes, then to hook them up again and walk them for another ten before trotting. I had found that that refreshed them enough to make the remainder of the trip in excellent shape.
While I was waiting, I stood between the wheels of the buggy, leaning against the box and staring into the light. It was with something akin to a start that I realized the direction from which the fog rolled by: it came from the south! I had, of course, seen that already, but it had so far not entered my consciousness as a definite observation. It was this fact that later set me to thinking about the origin of the fog along the lines which I have indicated above. Again I marvelled at the density of the mist which somehow seemed greater while we were standing than while we were driving. I had repeatedly been in the clouds, on mountainsides, but they seemed light and thin as compared with this. Finland, Northern Sweden, Canada—no other country which I knew had anything resembling it. The famous London fogs are different altogether. These mists, like the mist pools, need the swamp as their mother, I suppose, and the ice-cool summer night for their nurse...
The time was up. I quickly did what had to be done, and five minutes later we were on the road again. I watched the horses for a while, and suddenly I thought once more of that fleeting impression of an eddy in the lee of the poplar bluff at the “White Range Line House.” It was on the north side of the trees, if it was there at all! The significance of the fact had escaped me at the time. It again confirmed my observation of the flow of the fog in both directions. It came from a common centre. And still there was no breath of air. I had no doubt any longer; it was not the air that pushed the fog; the floating bubbles, the infinitesimally small ones as well as those that were quite perceptible, simply displaced the lighter atmosphere. I wondered what kept these bubbles apart. Some repellent force with which they were charged? Something, at any rate, must be preventing them from coalescing into rain. Maybe it was merely the perfect evenness of their flow, for they gathered thickly enough on the twigs and the few dried leaves, on any obstacles in their way. And again I thought of the fact that the mist had seemed thinner when I came out on the marsh. This double flow explained it, of course. There were denser and less dense waves in it: like veils hung up one behind the other. So long as I went in a direction opposite to its flow, I had to look through sheet after sheet of the denser waves. Later I could every now and then look along a plane of lesser density...
It was Dan who found the turn off the grade into the bushy glades. I could see distinctly how he pushed Peter over. Here, where again the road was winding, and where the light, therefore, once more frequently struck the twigs and boughs, as they floated into my cone of luminosity, to disappear again behind, a new impression thrust itself upon me. I call it an impression, not an observation. It is very hard to say, what was reality, what fancy on a night like that. In spite of its air of unreality, of improbability even, it has stayed with me as one of my strongest visions. I nearly hesitate to put it in writing.
These boughs and twigs were like fingers held into a stream that carried loose algae, arresting them in their gliding motion. Or again, those wisps of mist were like gossamers as they floated along, and they would bend and fold over on the boughs before they tore; and where they broke, they seemed like comets to trail a thinner tail of themselves behind. There was tenacity in them, a certain consistency which made them appear as if woven of different things from air and mere moisture. I have often doubted my memory here, and yet I have my very definite notes, and besides there is the picture in my mind. In spite of my own uncertainty I can assure you, that this is only one quarter a poem woven of impressions; the other three quarters are reality. But, while I am trying to set down facts, I am also trying to render moods and images begot by them...
We went on for an hour, and it lengthened out into two. No twigs and boughs any longer, at last. But where I was, I knew not. Much as I listened, I could not make out any difference in the tramp of the horses now I looked down over the back of my buggy seat, and I seemed to see the yellow or brownish clay of a grade. I went on rather thoughtlessly. Then, about eleven o’clock, I noticed that the road was rough. I had long since, as I said, given myself over to the horses. But now I grew nervous. No doubt, unless we had entirely strayed from our road, we were by this time riding the last dam; for no other trail over which we went was quite so rough. But then I should have heard the rumble on the bridge, and I felt convinced that I had not. It shows to what an extent a man may be hypnotised into insensibility by a constant sameness of view, that I was mistaken. If we were on the dam and missed the turn at the end of it, on to the correction line, we should infallibly go down from the grade, on to muskeg ground, for there was a gap in the dam. At that place I had seen a horse disappear, and many a cow had ended there in the deadly struggle against the downward suck of the swamp...
I pulled the horses back to a walk, and we went on for another half hour. I was by this time sitting on the left hand side of the side, bicycle lantern in my left hand, and bending over as far as I could to the left, trying, with arm outstretched, to reach the ground with my light. The lantern at the back of the buggy was useless for this. Here and there the drop-laden, glistening tops of the taller grasses and weeds would float into this auxiliary cone of light—but that was all.
Then no weeds appeared any longer, so I must be on the last half-mile of the dam, the only piece of it that was bare and caution extreme was the word. I made up my mind to go on riding for another five minutes and timed myself, for there was hardly enough room for a team and a walking man besides. When the time was up, I pulled in and got out. I took the lines short, laid my right hand on Peter’s back and proceeded. The bicycle lantern was hanging down from my left and showed plainly the clayey gravel of the dam. And so I walked on for maybe ten minutes.
Suddenly I became again aware of a glimmer to the left, and the very next moment a lantern shot out of the mist, held high by an arm wrapped in white. A shivering woman, tall, young, with gleaming eyes, dressed in a linen house dress, an apron flung over breast and shoulders, gasped out two words, “You came!” “Have you been standing here and waiting?” I asked. “No, no! I just could not bear it any longer. Something told me. He’s at the culvert now, and if I do not run, he will go down into the swamp!” There was something of a catch in the voice. I did not reply I swung the horses around and crossed the culvert that bridges the master ditch.
And while we were walking up to the yard—had my drive been anything brave—anything at all deserving of the slightest reward—had it not in itself been a thing of beauty, not to be missed by selfish me—surely, the touch of that arm, as we went, would have been more than enough to reward even the most chivalrous deeds of yore.
Two days before Christmas the ground was still bare. I had a splendid new cutter with a top and side curtains; a heavy outfit, but one that would stand up, I believed, under any road conditions. I was anxious to use it, too, for I intended to spend a two weeks’ holiday up north with my family. I was afraid, if I used the buggy, I might find it impossible to get back to town, seeing that the first heavy winter storms usually set in about the turn of the year.
School had closed at noon. I intended to set out next morning at as early an hour as I could. I do not know what gave me my confidence, but I firmly expected to find snow on the ground by that time. I am rather a student of the weather. I worked till late at night getting my cutter ready. I had to adjust my buggy pole and to stow away a great number of parcels. The latter contained the first real doll for my little girl, two or three picture books, a hand sleigh, Pip—a little stuffed dog of the silkiest fluffiness—and as many more trifles for wife and child as my Christmas allowance permitted me to buy. It was the first time in the five years of my married life that, thanks to my wife’s co-operation in earning money, there was any Christmas allowance to spend; and since I am writing this chiefly for her and the little girl’s future reading, I want to set it down here, too, that it was thanks to this very same co-operation that I had been able to buy the horses and the driving outfit which I needed badly, for the poor state of my health forbade more rigorous exercise. I have already said, I think, that I am essentially an outdoor creature; and for several years the fact that I had been forced to look at the out-of-doors from the window of a town house only, had been eating away at my vitality. Those drives took decades off my age, and in spite of incurable illness my few friends say that I look once more like a young man.
Besides my Christmas parcels I had to take oats along, enough to feed the horses for two weeks. And I was, as I said, engaged that evening in stowing everything away, when about nine o’clock one of the physicians of the town came into the stable. He had had a call into the country, I believe, and came to order a team. When he saw me working in the shed, he stepped up and said, “You’ll kill your horses.” “Meaning?” I queried. “I see you are getting your cutter ready,” he replied. “If I were you, I should stick to the wheels.” I laughed. “I might not be able to get back to work.” “Oh yes,” he scoffed, “it won’t snow up before the end of next month. We figure on keeping the cars going for a little while yet.” Again I laughed. “I hope not,” I said, which may not have sounded very gracious.
At ten o’clock every bolt had been tightened, the horses’ harness and their feed were ready against the morning, and everything looked good to me.
I was going to have the first real Christmas again in twenty-five years, with a real Christmas tree, and with wife and child, and even though it was a poor man’s Christmas, I refused to let anything darken my Christmas spirit or dull the keen edge of my enjoyment. Before going out, I stepped into the office of the stable, slipped a half-dollar into the hostler’s palm and asked him once more to be sure to have the horses fed at half-past five in the morning.
Then I left. A slight haze filled the air, not heavy enough to blot out the stars; but sufficient to promise hoarfrost at least. Somehow there was no reason to despair as yet of Christmas weather.
I went home and to bed and slept about as soundly as I could wish. When the alarm of my clock went off at five in the morning, I jumped out of bed and hurried down to shake the fire into activity. As soon as I had started something of a blaze, I went to the window and looked out. It was pitch dark, of course, the moon being down by this time, but it seemed to me that there was snow on the ground. I lighted a lamp and held it to the window; and sure enough, its rays fell on white upon white on shrubs and fence posts and window ledge. I laughed and instantly was in a glow of impatience to be off.
At half past five, when the coffee water was in the kettle and on the stove, I hurried over to the stable across the bridge. The snow was three inches deep, enough to make the going easy for the horses. The slight haze persisted, and I saw no stars. At the stable I found, of course, that the horses had not been fed; so I gave them oats and hay and went to call the hostler. When after much knocking at last he responded to my impatience, he wore a guilty look on his face but assured me that he was just getting up to feed my team. “Never mind about feeding,” I said “I’ve done that. But have them harnessed and hitched up by a quarter past six. I’ll water them on the road.” They never drank their fill before nine o’clock. And I hurried home to get my breakfast...
“Merry Christmas!” the hostler called after me; and I shouted back over my shoulder, “The same to you.” The horses were going under the merry jingle of the bells which they carried for the first time this winter.
I rarely could hold them down to a walk or a trot now, since the cold weather had set in; and mostly, before they even had cleared the slide-doors, they were in a gallop. Peter had changed his nature since he had a mate. By feeding and breeding he was so much Dan’s superior in vitality that, into whatever mischief the two got themselves, he was the leader. For all times the picture, seen by the light of a lantern, stands out in my mind how he bit at Dan, wilfully, urging him playfully on, when we swung out into the crisp, dark, hazy morning air. Dan being nothing loth and always keen at the start, we shot across the bridge.
It was hard now, mostly, to hitch them up. They would leap and rear with impatience when taken into the open before they were hooked to the vehicle. They were being very well fed, and though once a week they had the hardest of work, for the rest of the time they had never more than enough to limber them up, for on schooldays I used to take them out for a spin of three or four miles only, after four. At home, when I left, my wife and I would get them ready in the stable; then I took them out and lined them up in front of the buggy. My wife quickly took the lines: I hooked the traces up, jumped in, grabbed for the lines and waved my last farewell from the road afar off. Even at that they got away from us once or twice and came very near upsetting and wrecking the buggy; but nothing serious ever happened during the winter. I had to have horses like that, for I needed their speed and their staying power, as the reader will see if he cares to follow me very much farther.
We flew along—the road seemed ideal—the air was wonderfully crisp and cold—my cutter fulfilled the highest expectations—the horses revelled in speed. But soon I pulled them down to a trot, for I followed the horsemen’s rules whenever I could, and Dan, as I mentioned, was anyway rather too keen at the start for steady work later on. I settled back. The top of my cutter was down, for not a breath stirred; and I was always anxious to see as much of the country as I could...
Do you know which is the stillest hour of the night? The hour before dawn. It is at that time, too, that in our winter nights the mercury dips down to its lowest level. Perhaps the two things have a causal relation—whatever there is of wild life in nature, withdraws more deeply within itself; it curls up and dreams. On calm summer mornings you hear no sound except the chirping and twittering of the sleeping birds. The birds are great dreamers—like dogs; like dogs they will twitch and stir in their sleep, as if they were running and flying and playing and chasing each other. Just stalk a bird’s nest of which you know at half past two in the morning, some time during the month of July; and before you see them, you will hear them. If there are young birds in the nest, all the better; take the mother bird off and the little ones will open their beaks, all mouth as they are, and go to sleep again; and they will stretch their featherless little wings; and if they are a little bit older, they will even try to move their tiny legs, as if longing to use them. As with dogs, it is the young ones that dream most. I suppose their impressions are so much more vivid, the whole world is so new to them that it rushes in upon them charged with emotion. Emotions penetrate even us to a greater depth than mere apperceptions; so they break through that crust that seems to envelop the seat of our memory, and once inside, they will work out again into some form of consciousness—that of sleep or of the wakeful dream which we call memory.
The stillest hour! In starlit winter nights the heavenly bodies seem to take on an additional splendour, something next to blazing, overweening boastfulness. “Now sleeps the world,” they seem to say, “but we are awake and weaving destiny” And on they swing on their immutable paths.
The stillest hour! If you step out of a sleeping house and are alone, you are apt to hold your breath; and if you are not, you are apt to whisper. There is an expectancy in the air, a fatefulness—a loud word would be blasphemy that offends the ear and the feeling of decency It is the hour of all still things, the silent things that pass like dreams through the night. You seem to stand hushed. Stark and bare, stripped of all accidentals, the universe swings on its way.
The stillest hour! But how much stiller than still, when the earth has drawn over its shoulders that morning mist that allows of no slightest breath—when under the haze the very air seems to lie curled and to have gone to sleep. And yet how portentous! The haze seems to brood. It seems somehow to suggest that there is all of life asleep on earth. You seem to feel rather than to hear the whole creation breathing in its sleep—as if it was soundlessly stirring in dreams—presently to stretch, to awake. There is also the delicacy, the tenderness of all young things about it. Even in winter it reminds me of the very first unfolding of young leaves on trees; of the few hours while they are still hanging down, unable to raise themselves up as yet; they look so worldlywise sometimes, so precocious, and before them there still lie all hopes and all disappointments... In clear nights you forget the earth—under the hazy cover your eye is thrown back upon it. It is the contrast of the universe and of creation.
We drove along—and slowly, slowly came the dawn. You could not define how it came. The whole world seemed to pale and to whiten, and that was all. There was no sunrise. It merely seemed as if all of Nature—very gradually—was soaking itself full of some light; it was dim at first, but never grey; and then it became the whitest, the clearest, the most undefinable light. There were no shadows. Under the brush of the wild land which I was skirting by now there seemed to be quite as much of luminosity as overhead. The mist was the thinnest haze, and it seemed to derive its whiteness as much from the virgin snow on the ground as from above. I could not cease to marvel at this light which seemed to be without a source—like the halo around the Saviour’s face. The eye as yet did not reach very far, and wherever I looked, I found but one word to describe it: impalpable—and that is saying what it was not rather than what it was. As I said, there was no sunshine, but the light was there, omnipresent, diffused, coming mildly, softly, but from all sides, and out of all things as well as into them.
Shakespeare has this word in Macbeth, and I had often pondered on it:
So fair and foul a day I have not seen.
This was it, I thought. We have such days about four or five times a year—and none but the northern countries have them. There are clouds—or rather, there is a uniform layer of cloud, very high, and just the slightest suggestion of curdiness in it; and the light is very white. These days seem to waken in me every wander instinct that lay asleep. There is nothing definite, nothing that seems to be emphasized—something seems to beckon to me and to invite me to take to my wings and just glide along—without beating of wings—as if I could glide without sinking, glide and still keep my height... If you see the sun at all—as I did not on this day of days—he stands away up, very distant and quite aloof. He looks more like the moon than like his own self, white and heatless and lightless, as if it were not he at all from whom all this transparency and visibility proceeded.
I have lived in southern countries, and I have travelled rather far for a single lifetime. Like an epic stretch my memories into dim and ever receding pasts. I have drunk full and deep from the cup of creation. The Southern Cross is no strange sight to my eyes. I have slept in the desert close to my horse, and I have walked on Lebanon. I have cruised in the seven seas and seen the white marvels of ancient cities reflected in the wave of incredible blueness. But then I was young. When the years began to pile up, I longed to stake off my horizons, to flatten out my views. I wanted the simpler, the more elemental things, things cosmic in their associations, nearer to the beginning or end of creation. The parrot that flashed through “nutmeg groves” did not hold out so much allurement as the simple gray-and-slaty junco. The things that are unobtrusive and differentiated by shadings only—grey in grey above all—like our northern woods, like our sparrows, our wolves—they held a more compelling attraction than orgies of colour and screams of sound. So I came home to the north. On days like this, however, I should like once more to fly out and see the tireless wave and the unconquerable rock. But I should like to see them from afar and dimly only—as Moses saw the promised land. Or I should like to point them out to a younger soul and remark upon the futility and innate vanity of things.
And because these days take me out of myself, because they change my whole being into a very indefinite longing and dreaming, I wilfully blot from my vision whatever enters. If I meet a tree, I see it not. If I meet a man, I pass him by without speaking. I do not care to be disturbed. I do not care to follow even a definite thought. There is sadness in the mood, such sadness as enters—strange to say—into a great and very definitely expected disappointment. It is an exceedingly delicate sadness—haughty, aloof like the sun, and like him cool to the outer world. It does not even want sympathy; it merely wants to be left alone.
It strangely chimed in with my mood on this particular and very perfect morning that no jolt shook me up, that we glided along over virgin snow which had come soft-footedly over night, in a motion, so smooth and silent as to suggest that wingless flight...
We spurned the miles, and I saw them not. As if in a dream we turned in at one of the “half way farms,” and the horses drank. And we went on and wound our way across that corner of the marsh. We came to the “White Range Line House,” and though there were many things to see, I still closed the eye of conscious vision and saw them not. We neared the bridge, and we crossed it; and then—when I had turned southeast—on to the winding log-road through the bush—at last the spell that was cast over me gave way and broke. My horses fell into their accustomed walk, and at last I saw.
Now, what I saw, may not be worth the describing, I do not know. It surely is hardly capable of being described. But if I had been led through fairylands or enchanted gardens, I could not have been awakened to a truer day of joy, to a greater realization of the good will towards all things than I was here.
Oh, the surpassing beauty of it! There stood the trees, motionless under that veil of mist, and not their slenderest finger but was clothed in white. And the white it was! A translucent white, receding into itself, with strange backgrounds of white behind it—a modest white, and yet full of pride. An elusive white, and yet firm and substantial. The white of a diamond lying on snow white velvet, the white of a diamond in diffused light. None of the sparkle and colour play that the most precious of stones assumes under a definite, limited light which proceeds from a definite, limited source. Its colour play was suggested, it is true, but so subdued that you hardly thought of naming or even recognising its component parts. There was no red or yellow or blue or violet, but merely that which might flash into red and yellow and blue and violet, should perchance the sun break forth and monopolize the luminosity of the atmosphere. There was, as it were, a latent opalescence.
And every twig and every bough, every branch and every limb, every trunk and every crack even in the bark was furred with it. It seemed as if the hoarfrost still continued to form. It looked heavy, and yet it was nearly without weight. Not a twig was bent down under its load, yet with its halo of frost it measured fully two inches across. The crystals were large, formed like spearheads, flat, slablike, yet of infinite thinness and delicacy, so thin and light that, when by misadventure my whip touched the boughs, the flakes seemed to float down rather than to fall. And every one of these flat and angular slabs was fringed with hairlike needles, or with featherlike needles, and longer needles stood in between. There was such an air of fragility about it all that you hated to touch it—and I, for one, took my whip down lest it shook bare too many boughs.
Whoever has seen the trees like that—and who has not?—will see with his mind’s eye what I am trying to suggest rather than to describe. It was never the single sight nor the isolated thing that made my drives the things of beauty which they were. There was nothing remarkable in them either. They were commonplace enough. I really do not know why I should feel urged to describe our western winters. Whatever I may be able to tell you about them, is yours to see and yours to interpret. The gifts of Nature are free to all for the asking. And yet, so it seems to me, there is in the agglomerations of scenes and impressions, as they followed each other in my experience, something of the quality of a great symphony; and I consider this quality as a free and undeserved present which Chance or Nature shook out of her cornucopia so it happened to fall at my feet. I am trying to render this quality here for you.
On that short mile along the first of the east-west grades, before again I turned into the bush, I was for the thousandth time in my life struck with the fact how winter blots out the sins of utility. What is useful, is often ugly because in our fight for existence we do not always have time or effort to spare to consider the looks of things. But the slightest cover of snow will bury the eyesores. Snow is the greatest equalizer in Nature. No longer are there fields and wild lands, beautiful trails and ugly grades—all are hidden away under that which comes from Nature’s purest hands and fertile thoughts alone. Now there was no longer the raw, offending scar on Nature’s body; just a smooth expanse of snow white ribbon that led afar.
That led afar! And here is a curious fact. On this early December morning—it was only a little after nine when I started the horses into their trot again—I noticed for the first time that this grade which sprang here out of the bush opened up to the east a vista into a seemingly endless distance. Twenty-six times I had gone along this piece of it, but thirteen times it had been at night, and thirteen times I had been facing west, when I went back to the scene of my work. So I had never looked east very far. This morning, however, in this strange light, which was at this very hour undergoing a subtle change that I could not define as yet, mile after mile of road seemed to lift itself up in the far away distance, as if you might drive on for ever through fairyland. The very fact of its straightness, flanked as it was by the rows of frosted trees, seemed like a call. And a feeling that is very familiar to me—that of an eternity in the perpetuation of whatever may be the state I happen to be in, came over me, and a desire to go on and on, for ever, and to see what might be beyond...
But then the turn into the bushy trail was reached. I did not see the slightest sign of it on the road. But Dan seemed infallible—he made the turn. And again I was in Winter’s enchanted palace, again the slight whirl in the air that our motion set up made the fairy tracery of the boughs shower down upon me like snow white petals of flowers, so delicate that to disturb the virginity of it all seemed like profaning the temple of the All-Highest.
But then I noticed that I had not been the first one to visit the woods. All over their soft-napped carpet floor there were the restless, fleeting tracks of the snowflake, lacing and interlacing in lines and loops, as if they had been assembled in countless numbers, as no doubt they had. And every track looked like nothing so much as like that kind of embroidery, done white upon white, which ladies, I think; call the feather stitch. In places I could clearly see how they had chased and pursued each other, running, and there was a merriness about their spoors, a suggestion of swiftness which made me look up and about to see whether they were not wheeling their restless curves and circles overhead. But in this I was disappointed for the moment, though only a little later I was to see them in numbers galore. It was on that last stretch of my road, when I drove along the dam of the angling ditch. There they came like a whirlwind and wheeled and curved and circled about as if they knew no enemy, feeding meanwhile with infallible skill from the tops of seed-bearing weeds while skimming along. But I am anticipating just now In the bush I saw only their trails. Yet they suggested their twittering and whistling even there; and since on the gloomiest day their sound and their sight will cheer you, you surely cannot help feeling glad and overflowing with joy when you see any sign of them on a day like this!
Meanwhile we were winging along ourselves, so it seemed. For there was the second east-west grade ahead. And that made me think of wife and child to whom I was coming like Santa Claus, and so I stopped under a bush that overhung the trail; and though I hated to destroy even a trifling part of the beauty around, I reached high up with my whip and let go at the branches, so that the moment before the horses bolted, the flakes showered down upon me and my robes and the cutter and changed me into a veritable snowman in snow white garb.
And then up on the grade. One mile to the east, and the bridge appeared.
It did not look like the work of man. Apart from its straight lines it resembled more the architecture of a forest brook as it will build after heavy fall rains followed by a late drought when all the waters of the wild are receding so that the icy cover stands above them like the arches of a bridge. It is strange how rarely the work of man will really harmonize with Nature. The beaver builds, and his work will blend. Man builds, and it jars—very likely because he mostly builds with silly pretensions. But in winter Nature breathes upon his handiwork and transforms it. Bridges may be imposing and of great artificial beauty in cities—as for instance the ancient structure that spans the Tiber just below the tomb of Hadrian, or among modern works the spider web engineering feat of Brooklyn bridge—but if in the wilderness we run across them, there is something incongruous about them, and they disturb. Strange to say, there is the exception of high-flung trellis-viaducts bridging the chasm of mountain canyons. Maybe it is exactly on account of their unpretentious, plain utility; or is it that they reconcile by their overweening boldness, by their very paradoxality—as there is beauty even in the hawk’s bloodthirsty savagery. To-day this bridge was, like the grades, like the trees and the meadows furred over with opalescent, feathery frost.
And the dam over which I am driving now! This dam that erstwhile was a very blasphemy, an obscenity flung on the marshy meadows with their reeds, their cat-tails, and their wide-leaved swamp-dock clusters! It had been used by the winds as a veritable dumping ground for obnoxious weeds which grew and thrived on the marly clay while every other plant despised it! Not that I mean to decry weeds—far be it from me. When the goldenrod flings its velvet cushions along the edge of the copses, or when the dandelion spangles the meadows, they are things of beauty as well as any tulip or tiger-lily. But when they or their rivals, silverweed, burdock, false ragweed, thistles, gumweed, and others usurp the landscape and seem to choke up the very earth and the very air with ceaseless monotony and repetition, then they become an offence to the eye and a reproach to those who tolerate them. To-day, however, they all lent their stalks to support the hoarfrost, to double and quadruple its total mass. They were powdered over with countless diamonds.
It was here that I met with the flocks of snowflakes; and if my joyous mood had admitted of any enhancement, they would have given it.
And never before had I seen the school and the cottage from quite so far! The haze was still there, but somehow it seemed to be further overhead now, with a stratum of winterclear air underneath. Once before, when driving along the first east-west grade, where I discovered the vista, I had wondered at the distance to which the eye could pierce. Here, on the dam, of course, my vision was further aided by the fact that whatever of trees and shrubs there was in the way—and a ridge of poplars ran at right angles to the ditch, throwing up a leafy curtain in summer—stood bare of its foliage. I was still nearly four miles from my “home” when I first beheld it. And how pitiably lonesome it looked! Not another house was to be seen in its neighbourhood. I touched the horses up with my whip. I felt as if I should fly across the distance and bring my presence to those in the cottage as their dearest gift. They knew I was coming. They were at this very moment flying to meet me with their thoughts. Was I well? Was I finding everything as I had wished to find it? And though I often told them how I loved and enjoyed my drives, they could not view them but with much anxiety, for they were waiting, waiting, waiting... Waiting on Thursday for Friday to come, waiting on Wednesday and Tuesday and Monday—waiting on Sunday even, as soon as I had left; counting the days, and the hours, and the minutes, till I was out, fighting storm and night to my heart’s content! And then—worry, worry, worry—what might not happen! Whatever my drives were to me, to them they were horrors. There never were watchers of weather and sky so anxiously eager as they! And when, as it often, too often happened, the winter storms came, when care rose, hope fell, then eye was clouded, thought dulled, heart aflutter... Sometimes the soul sought comfort from nearest neighbours, and not always was it vouchsafed. “Well,” they would say, “if he starts out to-day, he will kill his horses!”—or, “In weather like this I should not care to drive five miles!”—Surely, surely, I owe it to them, staunch, faithful hearts that they were, to set down this record so it may gladden the lonesome twilight hours that are sure to come...
And at last I swung west again, up the ridge and on to the yard. And there on the porch stood the tall, young, smiling woman, and at her knee the fairest-haired girl in all the world. And quite unconscious of Nature’s wonder-garb, though doubtlessly gladdened by it the little girl shrilled out, “Oh, Daddy, Daddy, did du see Santa Claus?” And I replied lustily, “Of course, my girl, I am coming straight from his palace.”