Photograph by H. K. Gloyd. 
The Marsh 
By W. J. BEECHER 
There used to be a marsh in the early history of most of us that, 
for a time at least, made up an important part of our environment. It 
occupied a broad, open spot on the face of the earth, and the birds 
trilled and insects droned contentedly, and the sedge billowed away 
toward the distant woodlands all day long. Symbol of the wilderness 
that was, it drowses into focus now through a kind of dreamy haze— 
the Mist of Time perhaps. Or maybe it is the hot, fragrant breath of 
growing things, toiling upward in the sunlight. ... For the marsh in 
those unforgotten days was a living, breathing thing. 
Idyllic reflection of summers past! Sometimes it comes back to us 
limned in startling sharpness of detail:—there is the whinny of the 
Sora, the squawk of the Night Heron, the plaintive loneliness of the 
Spotted Sandpiper’s note; ... the sun goes down in a spuming of 
roselight ... the night sky shadows up over the low-flung slough 
and fireflies flash momentarily in the darkling pockets of the wood- 
land glens. A little screech owl quavers eerily, and across the fen the 
weird “‘bloop!” of the bittern sends its uncanny message tingling up 
the spinal cord. Fascinating to listen to the voice of the night marsh— 
the fine, thin hum of mosquitoes, the appalling crescendo of cricket 
frogs!—but the plash of the oars and the dark shape of the Native 
and the glow of his pipe were reassuring evidence of reality. 
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