Some Winter Days in Iowa Part 3

But the winds of March deserve a word of praise, as everyone knows who has filled his lungs with their vitalizing freshness and felt the earth respond to their purifying influence. They are only boisterous, not cruel. The specters of miasma and contagion flee before them like the last leaves. Many of the oaks have held a wealth of withered foliage all the winter but now the leaves fly almost as fast as they did in late October, and make a dry, rustling carpet up to your shoe tops. Now and again the wind gets down into this leaf-carpet and makes merry sport.

Listen to the majestic roar of the winds in a grove of rugged oaks, and then again, for contrast, where the timber on the river bottom is all-yielding birch. It is like changing from the great _diapason_ to the _dulciana_ stop. In the mixed woodlands, so common in Iowa, the effect is even more delightful. The coa.r.s.e, angular, unyielding twigs of the oaks give deep tones like the vibrations of the thick strings on the big double ba.s.s. The opposite, widespreading twigs of the ash sing like the cello, and the tones of the alternate spray of the lindens are finer, like the viola. The still smaller, opposite twigs of the maples murmur like the tender tones of the altos and the fine, yielding spray of the birches, the feathery elm and the hackberry make music pure and sweet as the wailing of the first violins. When the director of this _maestoso_ March movement signals _fortissimo_ the effect is sublime and the fine ear shall not fail to detect the overtones which come from the hop hornbeams and the hazel in the undergrowth below.

In keeping with the majestic orchestra is the continuous noise of grinding ice from the river. There is a sign at the edge of the birch swamp which says: "Positively no trespa.s.sing allowed here"--but it is not necessary now, for the river has overflowed the swamp and big ma.s.ses of ice lean up against the trunks of the birches. Out in the main channel the river is swiftly flowing, packed with ice floes, from the little clear fragments which s.h.i.+ne like crystals, to the great ma.s.ses as big as the side of a house, bearing upon them the acc.u.mulated dust and dirt and uncleanness of the winter. Pieces of trees, trunks and roots, cornstalks from fields along the sh.o.r.e, all are being carried seaward. In the middle of the river the prow of a flat boat projects upward from between two huge ice floes which have mashed it, like a miniature wreck in arctic seas. The best view of this annual ice spectacle is to look up the river and see the big field of broken, tumbling, cras.h.i.+ng, grinding ice coming down.

Farther down, at the narrows of the river, where the heavy timber shuts out the sunlight, the ice has not given way and here a gorge is formed. Hundreds of tons of ice are washed swiftly up to it and stop with a crash. The water backs up, flows over the banks and fills up all the summer fish ponds along the sh.o.r.e. Some of it forces its way through, foaming into a white spray. By-and-bye, under the combined influence of the rus.h.i.+ng water and the ever increasing weight of the ice, the gorge gives way and the irresistible floes pa.s.s on with a mighty crash to their dissolution in the summery waters away down the Mississippi. After many months of shrouded death this new life of the river is also a symbol of the resurrection.

There are other days in March so soft and beautiful that they might well have a place in May.

_"And in thy reign of blast and storm, Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day When the changed winds are soft and warm, And heaven puts on the blue of May."_

From the summit of a thinly-treed hill we look across a wide valley on the right which gradually slopes up to a high ridge three miles away.

On the left there is a clear view for fully twenty miles, out to where the lavender haze hangs softly on the forest-fringed horizon. The plowed fields lie mellow and chocolate-hued in the sunlight and the russet meadows are beginning to show a faint undertone of green. The golden green of the willow fences which separate some of the fields s.h.i.+nes from afar in the abundant light and there is a quickening crimson in the tops of the red maple groves around the homesteads. The deep blue of the high-domed sky gives a glory to the landscape. The few, far clouds, soft and white, float slowly in the azure sea and now and then approach the throne of the king of day, sending dark shadows chasing the sunlight over the smiling fields. When these shadows reach the nearer woodlands across the valley on the right it is as if a moving belt of dark pines was swiftly pa.s.sing through the deciduous forest. We think of Birnam wood removing to Dunsinane, but that was trivial compared with this. The dark belt of shadow makes a strong and beautiful contrast to the reddish brown and gray of the winter woods.

The river is more than bank full. Shut in on one side by the high ridge upon which we are standing it has spread over half a mile of bottom on the other side. Once more, after many months of waiting we rejoice in the gleam of its waters. The broad valley, which has so long been paved with white, is bottomed with amethyst now, the fainter reflection of the azure sky above. The trees which have so long stood comfortless again see their doubles in the waters below. The huge gray trunks of the water elms and the silver maples, the red rags of the birches and the delicate tracery of their spray, the ruby gold of the willows, the s.h.i.+ning white of the sycamores, the ashen green of the poplars and the dark crimson of the wild rose and the red osier dogwood,--all these are reflected as from a vast mirror.

There is not a ripple on the surface. But anon a belated ice floe comes down the main channel and shows how swiftly the waters are flowing now that they once more move "unvexed to the sea." There are still some ma.s.ses hugging the sh.o.r.e. One by one they slip into the waters and float away,--just as a man's prejudices and delusions are the last to leave him after the light of truth and the warmth of love have set his soul free from the bondage of error and wrong.

The stillness is a marked contrast to the recent roar of the winds.

You may hear your watch ticking in your pocket. The leisurely tapping of a downy woodp.e.c.k.e.r sounds like the ticking of a clock in a vast ancestral hall. You may actually hear a squirrel running down a tree, twenty rods away. He paws out an acorn and begins to eat. The noise of your footstep seems like a profanation of holy ground. Also it disturbs the squirrel who scurries up to the topmost twigs of an elm nearly a hundred feet high. With a gla.s.s you may see his eyes s.h.i.+ne as he watches you. His long red tail hangs down still and straight and there is not breeze enough, even up there, to stir it.

Gnats and moths flit in the soft sunlight and spiders run over tree trunks while their single s.h.i.+ning lines of silk are stretched among the hazel.

Anon the bird chorus breaks out, full and strong. The winter birds report all present but there are a number of new voices, especially the warble of the robin, the tremulous, confiding "sol-si, sol-si" of the bluebird and the clear call of the phoebe. The robins are thick down in the birch swamps, on the islands among the last year's knot-weed. You may tell them at a distance by their trim, military manner of walking, and if you wish you may get close enough to them to take their complete description. And, by the way, how many can describe this common bird, the color of his head and bill, his back and tail, and the exact shade of his breast. Is there any white on him, and if so, where?

After the ice is out of the rivers the bird-lover is kept busy. In the early sunny morning the duet of the robins and the meadow larks is better than breakfast. March usually gives us the hermit thrush and the ruby-and golden-crowned kinglets; the song, field, fox, white throated, Savannah and Lincoln sparrows; the meadow lark, the bronzed grackle and the cowbird; the red-winged, the yellow-head and the rusty blackbirds; the wood pewee and the olive-sided flycatcher; the flicker and the sap-sucker, the mourning dove and several of the water fowl.

Last week--the first week in March--a golden eagle paused in his migration to sit awhile on a fence post at the side of a timber road.

Two men got near enough to see the color of his feathers and then one of them, with a John Burroughs instinct, took a shot at him. He missed; there was a spread of the great wings and the big bird resumed his journey northward.

By the shallow creek which ripples over the many-hued gravel there is much of interest. The frog sits on the bank as we approach and goes into the water with a splash. In the quiet little bayous the minnows are lively, and tracks upon the soft mud show that the mink has been watching them. A pile of neatly cleaned clam sh.e.l.ls is evidence that the muskrat has had a feast. There is a huge clam, partly opened, at arm's length from the sh.o.r.e. We fish it out and pry it open farther; out comes the remains of the esculent clam, and we almost jump when it is followed by a live and healthy crawfish.

It never pays to be a clam. It is very meet, right, and the bounden duty of every quadruped, biped and decapod to prey upon the clam.

Farther down is a sandy hollow which was deep under water in the great January freshet. That freshet deposited a new layer of sand and also bushels of clam and snail sh.e.l.ls of all sizes and species. They lie so thick they may be taken up by the shovelful. Two or three dead fish are also found. What a fine fossiliferous stratum will be found here about a hundred million years from now!

In March the rains and the melting of the "robin snows" soften the leathery lichens and their painted circles on the trees and rocks vary from olive gray and green to bright red and yellow. They revel in the moist gray days. And the mosses which draw a tapestry of tender velvet around the splintered rocks in the timber quarries and strangely veil the ruin of the fallen forest kings,--how much they add to the beauty of the landscape in the interval between the going of the snow and the coming of the gra.s.s! The rich dark green of the common hair-cap clothes many a bank with beauty, the dense tufts of the broom moss hide the ruin and a.s.suage the grief where an exalted forest monarch has been cast down by the storm. The silvery Bryum shows abundantly on the sandy fields and the thick green velvet mats of the Anomodon creep up the bases of the big water elms in the swamps. The delicate branchlets of the beautiful fern moss are recompense for a day's search, and the bright yellow-green Schreber's Hypnum, with its red stems, is a rich rug for reluctant feet. The moist rocks down which the water trickles into the ravine below are stained green and orange by the glossy Entodon. These patient mosses cover wounds in the landscape gently as tender thoughts soothe aching voids left by the loss of those we love. They lead us into the most entrancing bits of the woodland scenery--shaded rills, flowing springs, das.h.i.+ng cascades, fairy glens, and among the castellated rocks of the dark ravines.

Their parts are so exquisitely perfect, almost they persuade the nature-lover to degenerate into a mere naturalist, walking through the woods seeing nothing but sporophytes through his lens, just as a rare book sometimes causes the bibliophile to become a bibliomaniac, reading nothing but catalogues. It is a credit to be a bibliomaniac provided one is a bibliophile as well. And the best moss naturalists are they whose hearts respond to the enthusiasm in Ruskin's closing paragraphs of _Leaves Motionless_.

The yielding odorous soil is promiseful after its stubborn hardness of winter months and we watch it eagerly for the first herbaceous growth.

Often this is one of the fern allies, the field horsetail. The appearance of its warm, mushroom-colored, fertile stems is one of the first signs of returning spring, and its earliest stems are found in dry sandy places. The buds containing its fruiting cones have long been all complete, waiting for the first warm day, and when the start is finally made the tubered rootstocks, full of nutriment, send up the slender stem at the rate of two inches a day.

During the last week in the month, when the dark maroon flowers of the elm and the crimson blossom of the red maples are giving a ruddy glow to the woods with the catkins of the cotton-woods, the aspens and the red birches adding to the color harmony, we shall look for the fuzzy scape of the hepatica, bringing up through the leaf carpet of the woods its single blue, white or pinkish flower, closely wrapped in warm gray furs. At the same time, perhaps a day or two earlier, the white oblong petals of the dwarf trillium, or wake-robin, will gleam in the rich woods. And some sunny day in the same period we shall see a gleam of gold in a sheltered nook, the first flower of the dandelion. A few days later and the light purple pasque-flower will unfold and gem the flush of new life on the northern prairies. Even should the last week of the month be unseasonably cold we shall not have long to wait. Yet

_"----a little while And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and growth; a thousand forms shall rise From these dead clods and chills, as from low burial graves, Thine eyes, ears,--all thy best attributes,--all that takes cognizance of natural beauty, Shall wake and fill. Thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the delicate miracles of earth Dandelions, clover, the emerald gra.s.s, the early scents and flowers; With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs--the flitting bluebird; For such scenes the annual play brings on."_