28 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



The deep woods have many moods in Winter, more, 

 perhaps, than in Summer, or even in Spring. But 

 they are never quite so beautiful as on this brilliant 

 morning after the first heavy snowfall. Now the un- 

 derbrush is bowed everywhere in slender hoops and 

 arches of white. Now the brooks are still unfrozen and 

 have hollowed the snow on their banks into rounded 

 caps. Now the tree trunks down the forest aisles are 

 sharply divided like a Harlequin's costume into black 

 and white, white on the windward side, black on the 

 leeward. Now the forest overhead is one continuous 

 roof of frosted fairy tracery, dazzling where the sun 

 shoots through, soft and feathery in shadow. Down a 

 glittering forest aisle a fern stands up in the shelter 

 of a rock, a vivid green above the white carpet. About 

 us in the silence, as we walk, come down little plops of 

 snow from shaken branches. As the sun mounts and its 

 heat is felt, the tiny avalanches are sounding softly all 

 around us in the woods. By noon the fairy groins and 

 arches overhead, all this tracery as of elfin Gothic gone 

 delightfully mad, will have fallen. The trees will stand 

 up naked above a snow carpet packing down for the 

 first layer of Winter. But for one glorious morning we 

 walk in spangled aisles and count it the best day of the 

 year. 



Later, when the real storms of Whiter have followed 

 and packed two feet of snow upon the forest floor, when 

 the brooks have frozen into winding coils of slippery 



