WALKS IN THE WOODS 



(TI) "AROUND ROBIN HOOD'S BARN" TO THE GRASSY SPRAIN WOOD 

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



(PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR) 



A GLINT of gold in the winter sunshine; filmy blue 

 the mountains on the western horizon ; a soft haze 

 veiling the Hudson below us, and lazy fish-hawks 

 circling in the ether above the Tappan Zee ! The cobwebs 

 of a week's work indoors tangle up our thoughts as we 

 gaze out of the window here in the Manor at Hastings- 

 on-Hudson. Let's get out in the woods and see if we 

 can, perchance, snare the old enchantment once again. 

 You'll come along, just to keep me cotnpany, and, too 

 there's a world of interesting things to see over in the 

 Grassy Sprain forest. The 

 old Dutch settlers around 

 Hastings stamped their 

 hallmarks on many things. 

 One was the little Grassy 

 Sprain brook that runs 

 down through Westchester 

 County from up near Po- 

 cantico Hills, the home of 

 Mr. Rockefeller, to the 

 Yonkers reservoir. 



As we go down an old 

 colonial wood road to the 

 Nepperhan \'alley, star- 

 lings whistle sharply in the 

 tall tulips and white oaks 

 by Robin Hood's Barn. 

 Robin Hood's Barn, you 

 know, was the wild wood. 

 The way to the silence and 

 restfulness of Nature's lali- 

 oratories is always "around 

 by Robin Hood's Barn." 

 When our modern philoso- 

 ])hers talk of going into The 

 Silence as something new, 

 I recall the old monks and 



anchorites who used to seek milkweed-silk doublets, 



out the woodland caves and rock cells in the fastnesses come out to dance with the laughing, frolicking, thistle- 



AN OLD COLONIAL WOOD ROAD BY ROBIN HOOD'S BARN 



passing between White Plains and Dobbs Ferry used to 

 cat their noon-day lunch beside this spring. Over these 

 picturesque hills were camped the French army under 

 Count de Rochambeau in 1781 while he and Washington 

 planned the Southern campaign. Some of the most 

 celebrated soldiers of Europe may have stood on the 

 greensward here. Harvey Birch, the American spy, often 

 drank from this pool, and no doubt Washington Irving, 

 who knew every bit of the countryside hereabouts, drew 

 mystic fancies from the shadowy depths where the water 



sank away under the mossy 

 bank and crawling beech 

 roots. The beech is cover- 

 ed with deep-cut initials, 

 and some thoughtful soul 

 has carved, right over the 

 drinking place. Pro Bono 

 Publico — for the good of 

 the people. 



As we sink our lips in 

 the cold water a speckled 

 trout darts out from a re- 

 cess under the bank, flash- 

 ing his red-gold spots for a 

 moment in the shaft of sun- 

 light, and is gone. He has 

 been a willing prisoner since 

 the high water last Spring. 

 F'incushion, lichen, and 

 fairy-cup moss is pleated 

 over stone and wet earth. 

 There are deep fern-fes- 

 tooned crevices where it is 

 not hard to imagine that on 

 moonlit nights little old 

 men — gnomes and brownies 

 with frogskin breeches and 



to comnume with their Maker. The silence of the wood, 

 as we go down this ]5ath, is so great one may almost hear 

 the rythmic beating of the big heart of Nature, to say 

 nothing of the soft vvhisi)ering gossip of black birch and 

 hemlock rehearsing all the scandals of the jungle. 



Downy woodpeckers and blackca]^ chickadees are busy 

 over the grubs in the bark of the dead chestnuts. Neat, 

 lady-like, gray-robed juncos flirt their two white tail- 

 feathers like momentary glimpses of ruffled lingerie peep- 

 ing beneath skirt bottoms in country dances, as we turn 

 again into the woods oft' Jackson Avenue beyond Mt. 

 Hope and come suddenly upon a wayside spring under 

 the roots of a gnarled old beech. Revolutionary troops 



down clad naiads and fays from the buUrush fens near 

 the brook below. 



You should come along this brookside path from the 

 'spring — worn by who knows what lagging feet of hoboes, 

 Ishmaelites and lovers — on a moonlit summer's night 

 when the underbrush is aglimmer with the mysteries of 

 glow worms, lightning bugs or phosphorescent wood, an<l 

 a-whisper with the love-songs of crickets, locusts, cicadas 

 and katydids. Above are the great cathedral arches made 

 by reaching arms of elm, yellow poplar, oilnut and red 

 (Ilk that fill the imagination with strange, incompre- 

 hensible throbs of emotion originating in the pri- 

 r.'.ordial davs when vou and I — who knows — instead of 



