Getting Ready for Winter 



rate, all physical life worth saving, and firm 

 in her faith that she can do so. Observe, 

 for instance, how she safeguards the trees. 

 First, she strips them of encumbering and 

 storm-holding foliage that which pros 

 trates or snaps so many noble trees in sum 

 mer hurricanes. Then she gradually stops 

 the flow of the sap, so that as the cold in 

 creases the veins of the tree are drained, 

 and it presents no point of attack for frost. 

 At the same time the soft outer layer of 

 new wood, just underneath the bark, hard 

 ens and forms, as it were, an inner coat of 

 mail, a cuirass, to stop the spear of the cold. 

 When you hear a tree crack in a sharp win 

 ter night, you may know that something has 

 obstructed the complete draining of sap from 

 its veins, and a drop or two somewhere has 

 frozen and split the restraining fibers. 



But nature does not stop with the faith 

 ful safeguarding of the parent life of the 

 tree. She makes armor and clothing for 

 its embryonic buds as well thick, hard, 

 overlapping scales (from which men got 

 their first notion of armor, perhaps), a 

 glutinous, waxy exudation, and sometimes 

 an inner lining of woolly down, like a 



