40 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



begins, as soon as man has given up the fight and re- 

 treated from some homely, hideous spot of earth, to 

 cover it with verdure and make it beautiful for the 

 mass is full of the nubbly roots of the blue violet, green 



WE HAVE TORN OUR WAY THROUGH THE SPRAIN BROOK BOG 



where the sunlight has reached them, and the chubby red 

 roots of the bloodroot, Sanguinaria Canadensis, the sharp 

 sprouts already pointing upward for next spring's deli- 

 cate white blossoms. 



We have broken a root in digging 

 it up, and it bleeds like a cut finger. 

 We are sorry that we disturbed it, 

 for isn't there some distant cousin- 

 ship between this little red-blooded 

 haunter of the waste places and 

 ourselves? Are they talking to us, 

 the Little People, who surely must 

 live in the chinks of the old cellar 

 stones ; the familiar spirits, the 

 little Trilbys who stole the cat's 

 milk from the ingleside and frisked 

 before the buxom young house- 

 wife on the hearth from their hid- 

 ing place in the chimney corner of 

 this one-time home? Are they 

 peeping out of nook and cranny 

 with angry little eyes because we 

 have dared dig up the wild garden 



they have planted to cover the tragedy of a forgotten 

 heart ? 



"Who do you think gathered the shiny seeds of the 

 bloodroot and the wild ginger from the sidehills and 

 planted them here to make a lovesome spot of this old 

 ruin?" they are asking us. "Do you think we did it 

 just for idle saunterers to dig them up and destroy them ? 

 Away with you, before we turn you into dried sticks 

 or withered mushrooms for the wind to blow about !" It 

 is our old, old inner minds that hear these things, not 



our this-generation intellects, and that's why our con- 

 science pricks a little, and why our intellects hurry to 

 tell us that it is all right, and no harm done, and that 

 there are no Little People, anyway. Nevertheless, we 

 put the bloodroot back and carefully bury it so 

 it will grow next spring. We wonder, as we go 

 up over the hill to the Grassy Sprain forest, just 

 why we replaced the roots. 



There is no place more entrancingly mystic and 

 suggestive, so legended, so interesting, as an old 

 abandoned orchard returned years ago to pasture- 

 land and grown up to a tangle of young forest 

 trees. One looks furtively about among the 

 woodpecker embroidered trunks half expecting to 

 see the hairy shanks and little sharp black horns 

 of Pan and to hear the piping of his reeds as 

 he dodges our search. Here we come suddenly 

 into such a sanctuary. It would take me all day 

 to tell you of the surprises, the bits of human 

 history half revealed, in this old orchard. It is 

 haunted with black-and-white and brown garbed 

 chewinks and reddish-brown tailed hermit 

 thrushes with speckled vests, in summer ; with 

 rabbits, coons and foxes in winter. Snuggling 

 about the gray old ledges worn smooth on the 

 western side by the glaciers that ground off the tops of 

 the Palisades which we can just see over the hills to the 

 west, are delicate little ebony ferns, tall, slim, lance-like 

 blades of green that seem to prosper 

 rankly on the worn-out soil of this 

 old orchard, but dwindle, once their 

 poverty is replaced by the rich en- 

 vironment of a cultivated garden. In 



WHEN THE GREAT TULIPS AND SYCA- 

 MORES WHISPER TOGETHER 



the crack of a 

 ledge, full of 

 black loam, we 

 come upon the 

 dried stalks of 

 the blackberry 



AN OLD ORCHARD RETURNED TO PAS- 

 TURE LAND 



lily with the shiny black seeds still clustering at the ends 

 of the flower stalks like luscious blackberries ripening in 

 January. It is an escape from some old garden but 

 where was the garden, one wonders? Maybe the birds 



