WALKS IN THE WOODS 



(I) THE NEPPERHAN VALLEY IN WINTER TIME 

 BY J. OTIS SWIFT, AUTHOR OF " WOODLAND MAGIC" 



(WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR) 



IT IS bright and sunny outside the house here in The 

 Manor. The inch of snow on the ground is melting 



wherever the sun strikes it. The day grows warmer. 

 The blue of the distant Ramapoo Mountains, clear and 

 bright as torquoise this morning, is growing dim now as 

 the haze rises from the shining Hudson. The grim 

 Palisades turn from purple to gray and brown across the 

 river. It is a winter day full of grandeur. Mile upon 

 mile of roiling country over beyond Tappan and The 

 Reaping Hook suggest big thoughts and sweeping im- 

 pulses as I gaze from this ridge of hills. But all the 

 morning I have had a more intimate desire in my 

 heart. I have 

 wished to see 

 and study a 

 more humble 

 part of the uni- 

 verse about me. 

 You will laugh, 

 I am sure, but 

 I have been 

 wishing to see, 

 to make sure 

 down to the 

 smallest detail, 

 just what this 

 bitter winter 

 has done to the 

 little frog pond 

 over the hill at 

 the foot of the 

 o 1 d woodroad 

 in the Nepper- 

 han Valley. 



Kings have 

 their courts, 

 and emperors 

 their botanical 



gardens, but not one of them is more wonderful than this 

 little three-acre button-bush circled, flag-waded, lily-dot- 

 ted home of painted turtles and pollywogs. The greatest 

 landscape gardener in the world, who works day and 

 night, summer and winter, without salary and for pure 

 love, laid out its mystic mazes and hidden grottoes. You 

 know the place in summer ! A very tangle of wild frost 

 grapes, wild beans, sumach, Benjamin-bush and sassafras, 

 surrounding a half dried up shallow of green cow-lily 

 padded water, reeds, grasses and marsh marigold and 

 mallow ! 



To get there we go over through the grounds of the 

 New York Juvenile Asylum and down an old twisting 

 woodroad. Once this woodroad was a colonial lane from 

 Hastings to Tuckahoe, and Washington's troopers pass- 



ed this way. Before that, legend says, it was the old 

 Algonquin trail where the Iroquois came down from 

 Central New York in the autumn to eat clams and 

 oysters along the Sound in winter. It comes down from 

 Tappan over the Palisades into the Lawrence Estate in- 

 tersecting the Palisades Interstate Park on the west side 

 of the Hudson. The Dutch settlers made a roadway of 

 it on this side. Christmas ferns, rock ferns, jack-in-the- 

 pulpits, bloodroot, Dutchmen's-breeches, windflowers, 

 fairy-cup moss, sarsaparilla, and a hundred other beau- 

 tiful little denizens of the wildwood grow among the 

 lichen-covered stones down this old forest wood path. 



Overhead are 

 white and red 

 oaks ; dead 

 chestnut trees, 

 gaunt and 

 skeleton-like in 

 their barkless 

 nudity ; great 

 old tulips that 

 are glorious in 

 the spring. To- 

 day there is a 

 hush in the 

 wood. Chicka- 

 dees chirp 

 vaguely. White 

 breasted nut- 

 hatches run 

 head down- 

 ward over the 

 bark of the 

 black birches, 

 saying soft- 

 ly, " C r a n k ! 

 Crank!" But it 

 is not the hush 

 of death. Only the chestnuts are dead — and even they 

 are not dead, for they struggle up in shoots every spring, 

 about the roots. Will the parasite disappear before they 

 are quite gone ? Far and wide through the forest we are 

 almost conscious of the breathing of the trees in their 

 winter sleep. It is the rest time, preparatory to spring's 

 reincarnations. 



The tall, dry stalks of the lobelias rustle disconsolately, 

 their old clothes in the wind — like ghosts shaking their 

 shrouds about them. But, oh my friend, kneel down here 

 in the dead leaves by this clump of black haw and I'll 

 show you the ever-new miracle of reincarnation. Care- 

 fully we dig away the snowy leaves and decayed vegetable 

 mould about the roots of the lobelia, and discover a 

 nursery with two or three babies sleeping healthily. Each 



THE OLD WOOD ROAD DOWN INTO NEPPERHAN VALLEY AND THE FROG POND 



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