74 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
should lose if there were no winter in our 
year! Sometimes in following up a watercourse 
among our hills, in the early spring, one comes 
to a weird and desolate place, where one huge 
wild grapevine has wreathed its ragged arms 
around a whole thicket and brought it to the 
ground,— swarming to the tops of hemlocks, 
clinching a dozen young maples at once and 
tugging them downward, stretching its wizard 
black length across the underbrush, into the 
earth and out again, wrenching up great stones 
in its blind, aimless struggle. What a piece 
of chaos is this! Yet come here again, two 
months hence, and you shall find all this deso- 
lation clothed with beauty and with fragrance, 
one vast bower of soft green leaves and grace- 
ful tendrils, while summer birds chirp and flut- 
ter amid these sunny arches all the livelong 
day. 
To the end of April, and often later, one 
still finds remains of snow-banks in sheltered 
woods, especially among evergreens ; and this 
snow, like that upon high mountains, has often 
become hardened, by the repeated thawing and 
freezing of the surface, till it is more impene- 
trable than ice. But the snow that falls during 
April is usually what Vermonters call “sugar- 
snow,” — falling in the night and just whiten- 
ing the surface for an hour or two, and taking 
