Pigskins and Dowitchers 



20 



*** W ♦ I THINK THAT NOBODY CAN GATN- 



say this: the life of a city is certainly different from that of a 

 marsh, so much different that the existence of one is not 

 compatible with the existence of the other. But sometimes 

 the two are found continuing, temporarily at least, in a sort 

 of balance which grows progressively less in favor of the 

 marsh and progressively more in favor of the city. Often 

 there is a remarkable amount of adaptability on the part of 

 the marsh dwellers so that with half a chance they manage to 

 exist and even to prosper. This is the story of one of the days 

 in the area when the impact of the human crowd seemed al- 

 most overwhelming. It began this way. I walked down to the 

 canoehouse one September morning with the feeling that fall 

 was very near. The wall of the big athletic pavilion was free 

 of the many cliff swallows which yearly daubed their clay 

 nests in the high window recesses. They had flown late in 

 August. The barn swallows which nested freely in small 

 buildings and tunnels around the stadium had either left or 

 were with the birds which had congregated in the marsh 

 preparatory to migrating. All the haziness caused by summer 

 forest fires had disappeared, and the Cascades, tipped by 



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