654 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



baby is an off-shoot from the mother stalk of the lobelia, 

 waiting patiently for next spring's hush-a-bye baby songs 

 through the undergrowth. The under world of the loam, 

 just below the dried leaf coverlet, is verily whispering 

 with life and energy. The ground is not frozen here in 

 this warm corner. Our fingers uncover elongated cucum- 

 ber-roots, jack-in-the-pulpit corms, tiny, globular, bulb- 

 like roots of many of the early spring flowers; the hard 

 nut-like tuber of the spring-beauty, the fleshy roots of the 

 dog-tooth violet all very much alive and waiting with 



THERE ARE DENSE MASSES OF BUTTON BUSH ON THE 

 FAR SHORE 



almost throbbing interest for the first warm rays of the 

 sun-god to call them in the spring. 



No, there is no death here ! Only eternal, everlasting 

 life, incarnated again and again. Mother Nature kneeds 

 over and over this black earth to give form and fibre to 

 the souls of her plant children for if they have not souls 

 what is the thing that is not matter, in the trillium, the 

 painted emblem of the Trinity? They are reincarnated 

 over and over, these wanderers of the wild places. This 

 tangled, sprawling root of wild ginger, Asarum canadense, 

 was black loam a few years ago. It will be black loam a 

 few years hence. But in its crawling, snake-like roots 

 is a spark of life as old, almost, as anything in the 

 world. It has come down the centuries, undying, this 

 particular thread, but constantly reincarnated. It is as 

 old as you or I. But let us get on to the f rogpond ! We 

 clamber down over gnarled root and mossy logs. 



There is ice on the pond. The thin sheet of snow is 

 tracked with the feet of rabbits, squirrels, meadow mice, 

 mole shrews, and crows going to the air holes and 

 something, perhaps only the wind, has been scattering the 

 seeds of the marsh mallow over the white coverlet. What 

 a glorious sight these marsh mallows were last August, 

 staining great patches of the swamp with pale rose color ! 



They stand dry and sere on little islands knee deep in 

 ice, now. The wind rattles their hard little seeds like pills 

 in a box. Beyond the marsh-mallow are yards and yards 

 of wild rose bushes, their red tips glowing brightly. Our 

 grandmothers used to gather some varieties of them to 

 make into jellies. Along the far shore is a jungle of 

 button-bush, covered now by dry, round balls, but last 

 summer making the bank look a bevy of brides in their 

 veils, the white flowers densely gathered in rounded 

 peduncled heads. 



We go gingerly out on the ice, and on a far little island, 

 hidden behind clumps of elderberry where the cedar 

 waxwings, bluebirds and starlings feasted last autumn, 

 come upon a large high-bush blueberry. It should have 

 borne several quarts last year, but no one could have 

 picked them, and only the birds could have known of the 

 banquet though dozens of boys passed within a few rods 

 on their way to school. Along the shore where in sum- 

 mer painted turtles sun on rotting logs, the dry stalks of 

 arrowleaf, cat-o-nine tails, calamus root, water arum, 

 cardinal flower and countless other free citizens of the 

 bog greet us as we pass. The farmers have been trying 



A QUIET SPOT UNDER GIANT OLD OAKS AND TULIPS 



to exterminate them for hundreds of years, but these 

 persistent democrats flourish on from year to year, ful- 

 filling their duty of making the waste places beautiful. 

 There is a sense of mystery revealed in walking about 

 a frozen bog in winter. The catbird's nest that defied you 

 last July while its owner fluttered before you through the 

 watery jungle, mimicking every bird in the swamp and 

 many out of it, is plainly revealed now, a little handful 

 of sticks laid carelessly across the crotched twigs of the 

 cornel bush. It is half full of snow, but there is still 

 the air of a home about it. Close down by the door of 

 old Musquash's reedy house the muskrats built high 



