edema UebcOUNe > Us ih PereN 11 
song wasn’t right for the clay-colored. One of the sparrows would come out 
into plain view, then disappear into the shrub, then reappear, creating a 
suspense as great as that of any mystery play. For nearly half an hour we 
studied him, coming up so close we could see his flesh-colored bill and every 
stripe. How put into words the delight of this little play with its setting of 
sand, gay flowers and pines, with the back-drop of blue lake and sky and 
white clouds! 
Later in the day we sat on the shore of the lake, watching the endless 
wheeling of the gulls and terns. What lovely arcs they made! One almost 
wished the design of their movements could be made visible like that of a 
sky-writer. 
“Lone white gull with sickle wings, 
You reap for the heart inscrutable things.” 
But if field trips with a group are productive of many intangibles, how 
much more are trips alone. Near my old home where I grew up and where 
three generations of my ancestors have lived and died, is a beautiful river, 
Blue River. It has been a part of all our lives. We had our picnics on its 
banks; men from the harvest field went to “the river” in the evening for a 
swim; its holes were good for fish—sunfish, bass, catfish, suckers; all 
baptizings were held there. Each spring I go back and spend days along its 
banks, ostensibly looking for birds. This last spring I was there the first 
of May. The entire week was warm and sunny. The narrow wood on 
either side of the river was dressed in the fresh yellow-green of half grown 
leaves. The ground was carpeted with thick grass, violets, crow-foots, and 
spring beauties. Herons, wood ducks, a barred owl, and scores of little birds 
added excitement to the peace. The air was full of songs, the incessant 
twitterings of goldfinch, the insistent notes of vireos, the scolding of wrens 
and titmice, and every now and then like golden threads gleaming in the 
background of sound, the call of the wood trush, the very essence of the 
forest, and the whistle of the chickadee, the very essence of spring. 
As I sat in the warm sunshine on a large log that extended out into 
the water, with all these lovely sounds blending with that of the riffle 
coming around the bend, I thought of Mr. Polly and his bit of river from 
which he watched the sunsets. Mr. Polly expected to come back to his 
favorite spot when he had become a ghost. “I’d be a sort of diaphalous 
feeling—just mellowish and warmish like.” “Perhaps,” I thought, ‘the 
ghosts of the dozens of contented fishermen who sat on this log in the past 
are responsible for this ‘diaphalous’ feeling.” 
But happy as are the memories of Blue River in May, these times make 
some wild Canadian tract where no evidence of man’s existence can be 
found seem more congenial. Hardy said when writing of the majesty of 
Egdon Heath, “The time seems near, when the chastened sublimity of a 
moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in keeping 
with the moods of the more thinking among mankind.” Today when one’s 
life-long friend may, panic-stricken, suddenly turn into some strange and 
terrible monster, avid for the destruction of millions of his fellow-men, what 
wonder if our spirits seek some lonely, gaunt waste with a friendly little 
plover for companionship! 
