WINTER WALKS IN THE WOODS 



89 



coverlet of brown leaves our 

 fingers, delving in cracks and 

 crannies, uncover the sprouting 

 roots of Dutchmen's breeches, 

 Indian turnips, wind-flowers, and 

 dogtooth violets, all ready to 

 start growing again, the moment 

 warm spring sunshine peeps 

 down through the tree tops and 

 stirs the cradles in which these 

 babies of the wild sleep the win- 

 ter away. Only the brown leaf 

 coverlet is dead. All else seems 

 pregnant with life. In the black 

 loam are hundreds of tiny bulbs, 

 corms, and seeds, each with its 

 spark of life and energy. We 

 feel like burglars who have dis- 

 turbed a nursery at midnight. 

 There is very little sign of death 



IN THE WORNOUT FIELDS BLIGHT KILLED CHESTNUTS IN THE 

 ARMS PATHETICALLY TO THE SKY 



POCANTICO BROOK TUMBLES AND LAUGHS DOWN THROUGH THE HIDDEN RAVINE, BY 

 THE PATH OF THE EARLY DUTCH LOVERS 



All the chestnuts in the Hollow 

 died of the blight a few years 

 ago, but this old monarch has 

 lain here for forty years, and 

 chipmunks dodge into its crev- 

 ices. In the wornout fields 

 around, growing up now to juni- 

 pers and cedars, are the skele- 

 tons of chestnuts that died of the 

 blight, their naked white arms 

 stretching pathetically skyward, 

 but their trunks, nude of bark, 

 still standing, through their great 

 resistance to decay. 



Downy woodpeckers, flitting 

 from mossy tree trunk to decay- 

 ing stump in the jungles ; black- 

 cap and Hudsonian chickadees 

 hunting for food among the aro- 



'HOLLOW" RAISE WHITE 



about. Even the pungent odor 

 of the loam suggests reincarna- 

 tion rather than death. What a 

 whispering and laughing of 

 babies when all these infants 

 start growing in the spring! 

 What joy and merriment in the 

 underbrush as baby after baby 

 kicks off the bedspread of dry 

 leaves with its pink toes ! 



As we go on, breaking through 

 the dry stalks of moth-mullin, 

 pig-weed, golden-rod and milk- 

 weed by the brookside we come 

 to where the brook tinkle-tankles 

 over stones, and across from 

 shore to shore lies the great 

 trunk of a dead chestnut, a foot- 

 bridge for lovers and fishermen. 



ACROSS FROM SHORE TO SHORE OF THE BROOKSIDE LIES THE GREAT TRUNK OF A FALLEN 

 CHESTNUT, AN IDEAL BRIDGE FOR FISHERMEN 



