Kitobni o'qish: «The Fall of the Year», sahifa 5

CHAPTER XII
A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO HEAR THIS FALL

I

YOU ought to hear the scream of the hen-hawks circling high in the air. In August and September and late into October, if you listen in the open country, you will hear their piercing whistle, – shrill, exultant scream comes nearer to describing it, – as they sail and sail a mile away in the sky.

II

You ought to go out upon some mowing hill or field of stubble and hear the crickets, then into the apple orchard and hear the katydids, then into the high grass and bushes along the fence and hear the whole stringed chorus of green grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets. You have heard them all your life; but the trouble is that, because you have heard them so constantly in the autumn, and because one player after another has come gradually into the orchestra, you have taken them as part of the natural course of things and have never really heard them individually, to know what parts they play. Now anybody can hear a lion roar, or a mule bray, or a loon laugh his wild crazy laugh over a silent mountain lake, and know what sound it is; but who can hear a cricket out of doors, or a grasshopper, and know which is which?

III

Did you ever hear a loon laugh? You ought to. I would go a hundred miles to hear that weird, meaningless, melancholy, maniacal laughter of the loon, or great northern diver, as the dusk comes down over some lonely lake in the wilderness of the far North. From Maine westward to northern Illinois you may listen for him in early autumn; then, when the migration begins, anywhere south to the Gulf of Mexico. You may never hear the call of the bull moose in the northern woods, nor the howl of a coyote on the western prairies, nor the wild cac, cac, cac of the soaring eagles, nor the husky yap, yap, yap of the fox. But, if you do, “make a note of it,” as Captain Cuttle would say; for the tongues that utter this wild language are fast ceasing to speak to us.

IV

One strangely sweet, strangely wild voice that you still may hear in our old apple orchards, is the whimpering, whinnying voice of the little screech owl. “When night comes,” says the bird book, “one may hear the screech owl’s tremulous, wailing whistle. It is a weird, melancholy call, welcomed only by those who love Nature’s voice, whatever be the medium through which she speaks.” Now listen this autumn for the screech owl; listen until the weird, melancholy call is welcomed by you, until the shiver that creeps up your back turns off through your hair, as you hear the low plaintive voice speaking to you out of the hollow darkness, out of the softness and the silence of night.

V

You ought to hear the brown leaves rustling under your feet.

 
“Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.”
 

And they should rustle to your tread as well. Scuff along in them where they lie in deep windrows by the side of the road; and hear them also, as the wind gathers them into a whirling flurry and sends them rattling over the fields.

VI

You ought to hear the cry of the blue jay and the caw of the crow in the autumn woods.

 
“The robin and the wren are flown, but from the shrub the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.”
 

Everybody knows those lines of Bryant, because everybody has heard that loud scream of the jay in the lonesome woods, and the caw, caw, caw of the sentinel crow from the top of some tall tree. The robins may not be all gone, for I heard and saw a flock of them this year in January; but they are silent now, and so many of the birds have gone, and the woods have become so empty, that the cries of the jay and the crow seem, on a gloomy day, to be the only sounds in all the hollow woods. There could hardly be an autumn for me if I did not hear these two voices speaking – the one with a kind of warning in its shrill, half-plaintive cry; the other with a message slow and solemn, like the color of its sable coat.

VII

You ought to hear, you ought to catch, I should say, a good round scolding from the red squirrel this fall. A red squirrel is always ready to scold you (and doubtless you are always in need of his scolding), but he is never so breathless and emphatic as in the fall. “Whose nuts are these in the woods?” he asks, as you come up with your stick and bag. “Who found this tree first? Come, get out of here! Get right back to the city and eat peanuts! Come, do you hear? Get out of this!”

No, don’t be afraid; he won’t “eat you alive” – though I think he might if he were big enough. He won’t blow up, either, and burst! He is the kind of fire-cracker that you call a “sizzler” – all sputter and no explosion. But isn’t he a tempest! Isn’t he a whirlwind! Isn’t he a red-coated cyclone! Let him blow! The little scamp, he steals birds’ eggs in the summer, they say; but there are none now for him to steal, and the woods are very empty. We need a dash of him on these autumn days, as we need a dash of spice in our food.

In the far western mountains he has a cousin called the Douglas squirrel; and Mr. John Muir calls him “the brightest of all the squirrels I have ever seen, a hot spark of life, making every tree tingle with his prickly toes, a condensed nugget of fresh mountain vigor and valor, as free from disease as a sunbeam. How he scolds, and what faces he makes, all eyes, teeth, and whiskers!”

You must hear him this fall and take your scolding, whether you deserve it or not.

VIII

You ought to hear in the cedars, pines, or spruces the small thin cheep, cheep, cheep of the chickadees or the kinglets. You must take a quiet day on the very edge of winter and, in some sunny dip or glade, hear them as they feed and flit about you. They speak in a language different from that of the crow and the jay. This tiny talk of the kinglet is all friendly and cheerful and personal and confidential, as if you were one of the party and liked spiders’ eggs and sunshine and didn’t care a snap for the coming winter! In all the vast gray out of doors what bits of winged bravery, what crumbs of feathered courage, they seem! One is hardly ready for the winter until he has heard them in the cedars and has been assured that they will stay, no matter how it snows and blows.

IX

You ought to hear, some quiet day or moonlit night in October or November, the baying of the hounds as they course the swamps and meadows on the heels of the fox. Strange advice, you say? No, not strange. It is a wild, fierce cry that your fathers heard, and their fathers, and theirs – away on back to the cave days, when life was hardly anything but the hunt, and the dogs were the only tame animal, and the most useful possession, man had. Their deep bass voices have echoed through all the wild forests of our past, and stir within us nowadays wild memories that are good for us again to feel. Stand still, as the baying pack comes bringing the quarry through the forest toward you. The blood will leap in your veins, as the ringing cries lift and fall in the chorus that echoes back from every hollow and hill around; and you will on with the panting pack – will on in the fierce, wild exultation of the chase; for instinctively we are hunters, just as all our ancestors were.

No, don’t be afraid. You won’t catch the fox.

X

You ought to hear by day – or better, by night – the call of the migrating birds as they pass over, through the sky, on their way to the South. East or west, on the Atlantic or on the Pacific shore, or in the vast valley of the Mississippi, you may hear at night, so high in air that you cannot see the birds, these voices of the passing migrants. Chink, chink, chink! will drop the calls of the bobolinks – fine, metallic, starry notes; honk, honk, honk! the clarion cry of the wild geese will ring along the aërial way, as they shout to one another and to you, listening far below them on the steadfast earth.

Far away, yonder in the starry vault, far beyond the reach of human eyes, a multitude of feathered folk, myriads of them, are streaming over; armies of them winging down the long highway of the sky from the frozen North, down to the rice fields of the Carolinas, down to the deep tangled jungles of the Amazon, down beyond the cold, cruel reach of winter.

Listen as they hail you from the sky.

CHAPTER XIII
HONK, HONK, HONK!

H ONK , honk, honk! Out of the silence of the November night, down through the depths of the darkened sky, rang the thrilling call of the passing geese.

Honk, honk, honk! I was out of bed in an instant; but before I had touched the floor, there was a patter of feet in the boys’ room, the creak of windows going up, and – silence.

Honk, honk, honk! A mighty flock was coming. The stars shone clear in the far blue; the trees stood dark on the rim of the North; and somewhere between the trees and the stars, somewhere along a pathway running north and south, close up against the distant sky, the wild geese were winging.

Honk, honk, honk! They were overhead. Clear as bugles, round and mellow as falling flute notes, ordered as the tramp of soldiers, fell the honk, honk, honk, as the flock in single line, or double like the letter V, swept over and was gone.

We had not seen them. Out of a sound sleep they had summoned us, out of beds with four wooden legs and no wings; and we had heard the wild sky-call, had heard and followed through our open windows, through the dark of the night, up into the blue vault under the light of the stars.

Round and dim swung the earth below us, hushed and asleep in the soft arms of the night. Hill and valley lay close together, farm-land and wood-land, all wrapped in the coverlet of the dark. City and town, like watch fires along the edge of a sleeping camp, burned bright on the rivers and brighter still on the ragged line of shore and sea, for we were far away near the stars. The mountains rose up, but they could not reach us; the white lakes beckoned, but they could not call us down. For the stars were bright, the sky-coast was clear, the wind in our wings was the keen, wild wind of the North, and the call that we heard – ah! who knows the call? Yet, who does not know it – that distant haunting call to fly, fly, fly?

I found myself in my bed the next morning. I found the small boys in their beds. I found the big round sun in the sky that morning and not a star in sight! There was nothing unusual to be seen up there, nothing mysterious at all. But there was something unusual, something mysterious to be seen in the four small faces at the breakfast-table that morning – eyes all full of stars and deep with the far, dark depths of the midnight sky into which they had gazed – into which those four small boys had flown!

We had often heard the geese go over before, but never such a flock as this, never such wild waking clangor, so clear, so far away, so measured, swift, and – gone!

I love the sound of the ocean surf, the roar of a winter gale in the leafless woods, the sough of the moss-hung cypress in the dark southern swamps. But no other voice of Nature is so strangely, deeply thrilling to me as the honk, honk, honk of the passing geese.

For what other voice, heard nowadays, of beast or bird is so wild and free and far-resounding? Heard in the solemn silence of the night, the notes fall as from the stars, a faint and far-off salutation, like the call of sentinels down the picket line – “All’s well! All’s well!” Heard in the open day, when you can see the winged wedge splitting through the dull gray sky, the notes seem to cleave the dun clouds, driven down by the powerful wing-beats where the travelers are passing high and far beyond the reach of our guns.

The sight of the geese going over in the day, and the sound of their trumpetings, turn the whole world of cloud and sky into a wilderness, as wild and primeval a wilderness as that distant forest of the far Northwest where the howl of wolves is still heard by the trappers. Even that wilderness, however, is passing; and perhaps no one of us will ever hear the howl of wolves in the hollow snow-filled forests, as many of our parents have heard. But the honk of the wild geese going over we should all hear, and our children should hear; for this flock of wild creatures we have in our hands to preserve.

The wild geese breed in the low, wet marshes of the half-frozen North, where, for a thousand years to come they will not interfere with the needs of man. They pass over our northern and middle states and spend the winter in the rivers, marshes, and lagoons of the South, where, for another thousand years to come, they can do little, if any, harm to man, but rather good.

But North and South, and all along their journey back and forth, they are shot for sport and food. For the wild geese cannot make this thousand-mile flight without coming down to rest and eat; and wherever that descent is made, there is pretty sure to be a man with a gun on the watch.

Here, close to my home, are four ponds; and around the sides of each of them are “goose blinds” – screens made of cedar and pine boughs fixed into the shore, behind which the gunners lie in wait. More than that, out upon the surface of the pond are geese swimming, but tied so that they cannot escape – geese that have been raised in captivity and placed there to lure the flying wild flocks down. Others, known as “flyers,” are kept within the blind to be let loose when a big flock is seen approaching – to fly out and mingle with them and decoy them to the pond. These “flyers” are usually young birds and, when thrown out upon their wings, naturally come back, bringing the wild flock with them, to their fellows fastened in the pond.

A weary flock comes winging over, hungry, and looking for a place to rest. Instantly the captive geese out on the pond see them and set up a loud honking. The flying flock hear them and begin to descend. Then they see one (tossed from the blind) coming on to meet them, and they circle lower to the pond, only to fall before a fury of shots that pour from behind the blind.

Those of the flock that are not killed rise frightened and bewildered to fly to the opposite shore, where other guns riddle them, the whole flock sometimes perishing within the ring of fire!

Such shooting is a crime because it is unfair, giving the creature no chance to exercise his native wit and caution. The fun of hunting, as of any sport, is in playing the game – the danger, the exercise, the pitting of limb against limb, wit against wit, patience against patience; not in a heap of carcasses, the dead and bloody weight of mere meat!

If the hunter would only play fair with the wild goose, shoot him (the wild Canada goose) only along the North Carolina coast, where he passes the winter, then there would be no danger of the noble bird’s becoming extinct. And the hunter then would know what real sport is, and what a long-headed, far-sighted goose the wild goose really is – for there are few birds with his cunning and alertness.

Along the Carolina shore the geese congregate in vast numbers; and when the day is calm, they ride out into the ocean after feeding, so far off shore that no hunter could approach them. At night they come in for shelter across the bars, sailing into the safety of the inlets and bays for a place to sleep. If the wind rises, and a storm blows up, then they must remain in the pools and water-holes, where the hunter has a chance to take them. Only here, where the odds, never even, are not all against the birds, should the wild geese be hunted.

With the coming of March there is a new note in the clamor of the flocks, a new restlessness in their movements; and, before the month is gone, many mated pairs of the birds have flocked together and are off on their far northern journey to the icy lakes of Newfoundland and the wild, bleak marshes of Labrador.

Honk, honk, honk! Shall I hear them going over, – going northward, – as I have heard them going southward this fall? Winter comes down in their wake. There is the clang of the cold in their trumpeting, the closing of iron gates, the bolting of iron doors for the long boreal night. They pass and leave the forests empty, the meadows brown and sodden, the rivers silent, the bays and lakes close sealed. Spring will come up with them on their return; and their honk, honk, honk will waken the frogs from their oozy slumbers and stir every winter sleeper to the very circle of the Pole.

Honk, honk, honk! Oh, may I be awake to hear you, ye strong-winged travelers on the sky, when ye go over northward, calling the sleeping earth to waken, calling all the South to follow you through the broken ice-gates of the North!

Honk, honk, honk! The wild geese are passing – southward!

NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS

CHAPTER I

TO THE TEACHER

Go yourself frequently into the fields and woods, or into the city parks, or along the water front – anywhere so that you can touch nature directly, and look and listen for yourselves. Don’t try to teach what you do not know, and there is nothing in this book that you cannot know, for the lesson to be taught in each chapter is a spiritual lesson, not a number of bare facts. This spiritual lesson you must first learn before you can teach it – must feel, I should say; and a single thoughtful excursion alone into the autumn fields will give you possession of it. And what is the lesson in this chapter? Just this: that the strong growths of summer, the ripening of seeds and fruits, the languid lazy spirit, and the pensive signs of coming autumn are all the manifold preparations of nature for a fresh outburst of life with the coming of spring.

FOR THE PUPIL

Page 1

The clock of the year strikes one: When, in the daytime, the clock strikes one, the hour of noon is past; the afternoon begins. On the 21st of June the clock of the year strikes twelve – noon! By late July the clock strikes one – the noon hour is past! Summer is gone; autumn – the afternoon of the year – begins.

going “creepy-creep”: In the quiet of some July day in fields or woods, listen to the stirring of the insects and other small wood creatures. All summer long they are going about their business, but in the midst of stronger noises we are almost deaf to their world of little sounds.

Page 3

begins to shift: Why is the oak’s shadow likely to be “round” at noon? What causes the shadow to “shift”; or move? In which direction would it move?

falls a yellow leaf from a slender birch near by … small flock of robins from a pine … swallows were gathering upon the telegraph wires: Next summer, note the exact date on which you first see signs of autumn – the first falling of the leaves, the first gathering of birds for their southern trip. Most of the migrating birds go in flocks for the sake of companionship and protection.

chewink (named from his call, chē-wink´; accent on second, not on first, syllable, as in some dictionaries) or ground robin, or towhee or joree; one of the finch family. You will know him by his saying “chewink” and by his vigorous scratching among the dead leaves, and by his red-brown body and black head and neck.

vireo (vīr´-ē-ō): the red-eyed vireo, the commonest of the vireo family; often called “Preacher”; builds the little hanging nest from a small fork on a bush or tree so low often that you can look into it.

fiery notes of the scarlet tanager (tăn´-a-jẽr): His notes are loud and strong, and he is dressed in fiery red clothes and sings on the fieriest of July days.

Page 4

resonant song of the indigo bunting: or indigo-bird, one of the finch family. He sings from the very tip of a tree as if to get up close under the dome of the sky. Indeed, his notes seem to strike against it and ring down to us; for there is a peculiar ringing quality to them, as if he were singing to you from inside a great copper kettle.

scarlet tanager by some accident: The tanager arrives among the last of the birds in the spring, and builds late; but, if you find a nest in July or August, it is pretty certain to be a second nest, the first having been destroyed somehow – a too frequent occurrence with all birds.

half-fledged cuckoos: The cuckoo also is a very late builder. I have more than once found its eggs in July.

red wood-lily: Do you know the wood-lily, or the “wild orange-red lily” as some call it (Lilium philadelphicum)? It is found from New England to North Carolina and west to Missouri, but only on hot, dry, sandy ground, whereas the turk’s-cap and the wild yellow lily are found only where the ground is rich and moist.

low mouldy moss: Bring to school a flake, as large as your hand, of the kind of lichen you think this may be. Some call it “reindeer moss.”

sweet-fern: Put a handful of sweet-fern (Myrica asplenifolia) in your pocket, a leaf or two in your book; and whenever you pass it in the fields, pull it through your fingers for the odor. Sweet gale and bayberry are its two sweet relatives.

Page 5

milkweed, boneset, peppermint, turtle-head, joe-pye-weed, jewel-weed, smartweed, and budding goldenrod: Go down to the nearest meadow stream and gather for school as many of these flowers as you can find. Examine their seeds.

wind is a sower going forth to sow: Besides the winds what other seed-scatterers do you know? They are many and very interesting.

Page 6

“Over the fields where the daisies grow…”

From “Thistledown” in a volume of poems called “Summer-Fallow,” by Charles Buxton Going.

seed-souls of thistles and daisies and fall dandelions seeking new bodies for themselves in the warm soil of Mother Earth: On your country walks, watch to see where such seeds have been caught, or have fallen. They will be washed down into the earth by rain and snow. If you can mark the place, go again next spring to see for yourself if they have risen in “new bodies” from the earth.

sweet pepper-bush: The sweet pepper-bush is also called white alder and clethra.

chickadees: Stand stock-still upon meeting a flock of chickadees and see how curious they become to know you. You may know the chickadee by its tiny size, its gray coat, black cap and throat, its saying “chick-a-dee,” and its plaintive call of “phœbe” in three distinct syllables.

Page 7

clock strikes twelve: As we have thought of midsummer as the hour from twelve to one in the day, so the dead of winter seems by comparison the twelve o’clock of midnight.

shimmering of the spiders’ silky balloons: It is the curious habit of many of the spiders to travel, especially in the fall, by throwing skeins of silky web into the air, which the breezes catch and carry up, while the spiders, like balloonists, hang in their web ropes below and sail away.

CHAPTER II

TO THE TEACHER

I have chosen the fox in this chapter to illustrate this very interesting and striking fact that wild animals, birds and beasts, thrive in the neighborhood of man if given the least protection; for if the fox holds his own (as surely he does) in the very gates of one of the largest cities in the United States, how easy it should be for us to preserve for generations yet the birds and smaller animals! I might have written a very earnest chapter on the need for every pupil’s joining the Audubon Society and the Animal Rescue League; but young pupils, no less than their elders, hate to be preached to. So I have recounted a series of short narratives, trusting to the suggestions of the chapter, and to the quiet comment of the teacher to do the good work. Every pupil a protector of wild life is the moral.

FOR THE PUPIL

There are two species of foxes in the eastern states – the gray fox, common from New Jersey southward, and the larger red fox, so frequent here in New England and northward, popularly known at Reynard. Far up under the Arctic circle lives the little white or Arctic fox, so valuable for its fur; and in California still another species known as the coast fox. The so-called silver or blue, or black, or cross fox, is only the red fox with a blackish or bluish coat.

Page 9

Mullein Hill: the name of the author’s country home in Hingham, Massachusetts. The house is built on the top of a wooded ridge looking down upon the tops of the orchard trees and away over miles of meadow and woodland to the Blue Hills, and at night to the lights that flash in Boston Harbor. Years before the house was built the ridge was known as Mullein Hill because of the number and size of the mulleins (Verbascum Thapsus) that grew upon its sides and top.

Page 10

mowing-field: a New England term for a field kept permanently in grass for hay.

Page 11

grubby acres: referring to the grubs of various beetles found in the soil and under the leaves of its woodland.

BB: the name of shot about the size of sweet pea seed.

Page 12

Pigeon Henny’s coop: a pet name for one of the hens that looked very much like a pigeon.

shells: loaded cartridges used in a breech-loading gun.

bead drew dead: when the little metal ball on the end of the gun-barrel, used to aim by, showed that the gun was pointing directly at the fox.

Page 16

the mind in the wild animal world: how the animals may really feel when being chased, namely, not frightened to death, as we commonly think, but perhaps cool and collected, taking the chase as a matter of course, even enjoying it.

Page 17

The Chase: The sound of the hunting is likened to a chorus of singing voices; the changing sounds, as when the pack emerges from thick woods into open meadow, being likened to the various measures of the musical score; the whole musical composition or chorus being called The Chase.

Page 18

dead heat: a race between two or more horses or boats where two of the racers come out even, neither winning.

Page 19

Flood: Why spelled with a capital? What flood is meant?

Page 20

hard-pressed fox had narrowly won his way: In spite of the author’s attempt to shoot the fox that was stealing his chickens do you think the author would be glad if there were no foxes in his woods? How do they add interest to his out of doors? What other things besides chickens do they eat? Might it not be that their destruction of woodchucks (for they eat woodchucks) and mice and muskrats quite balances their killing of poultry? (The author thinks so.)

CHAPTER III

TO THE TEACHER

The thought in this chapter is evident, namely, that love for the out of doors is dependent upon knowledge of the out of doors. The more we know and the better we understand, the more perfect and marvelous nature seems and the more lovely. The toadfish looks loathly, but upon closer study he becomes very interesting, even admirable – one of the very foundations of real love. So, as a teacher and as a lover of nature, be careful never to use the words “ugly” or “nasty” or “loathly”; never shrink from a toad; never make a wry face at a worm; never show that you are having a nervous fit at a snake; for it all argues a lack of knowledge and understanding. All life, from Man to the Amœba, is one long series of links in a golden chain, one succession of wonderful life-histories, each vastly important, all making up the divinely beautiful world of life which our lives crown, but of which we are only a part, and, perhaps, no more important a part than the toadfish.

FOR THE PUPIL

The toadfish of this story is Batrachus tau, sometimes called oyster-fish or sapo. The fishing-frog or angler is by some called toadfish, as is also the swell-fish or common puffer of the Atlantic Coast.

Page 21

Buzzards Bay: Where is Buzzards Bay? Do you know Whittier’s beautiful poem, The Prayer of Agassiz, which begins: —

 
“On the isle of Penikese
Ringed about by sapphire seas.”
 

Where is Penikese? What waters are those “sapphire seas,” and what was Agassiz doing there?

Page 23

Davy Jones: Who is Davy Jones? Look him up under Jones, Davy, in your dictionary of Proper Names. Get into the “looking up” habit. Never let anything in your reading, that you do not understand, go unlooked up.

Old Man of the Sea: Look him up too. Are he and Davy Jones any relation?

It was really a fish: What names do you think of that might fit this fish?

Page 24

coarsely marbled with a darker hue: What is the meaning of marbled?

Page 25

covered with water: The author means that the rock is not always covered with water, not the hole under the rock. Of course the hole is always built so that it is full of water, else the fish would perish at low tide.

Page 27

love the out of doors with all your mind: Do you know what is meant by loving the out of doors with your mind? Just this: that while you feel (with your heart) the beauty of a star, at the same time you know (with your mind) that that particular star, let us say, is the Pole Star, the guide to the sailors on the seas; that it is also only one of a vast multitude of stars each one of which has its place in the heavens, its circuit or path through the skies, its part in the whole orderly universe – a thought so vast and wonderful that we cannot comprehend it. All this it means to love with our minds. Without minds a star to us is only a point of light, as to Peter Bell

 
“A primrose by the river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And it was nothing more.”
 

Does the toadfish become anything more than a mere toadfish in a shoe before the end of the chapter?

Page 28

in the toadfish’s shoe: What does the author mean by asking you to put yourself in the toadfish’s shoe? Only this: to try, even with the humblest of creatures, to share sympathetically their lives with them. The best way to do this with man as well as with toadfish is to learn about their lives.

CHAPTER IV

TO THE TEACHER

There are several practical uses to which you can put this chapter, and the similar chapters, VII and XII: they can be made the purpose for field excursions with the class. Such excursions might be quite impossible for many a teacher in school hours; and we know how the exacting duties overcrowd the after-school hours; but one field excursion each season of the year, no matter how precious your time, would do more for you and your class than many books about nature read inside your four plastered walls. Better the books than nothing; but take the book and go with your pupils into the real out of doors.