Part 19

During a shower one day I halted under a large hickory just beyond his den. He came running after me, so interested that he forgot to look to his footing, and just opposite me slipped and bumped his nose hard against a stone,—so hard that he sat up immediately and vigorously rubbed it. Another time he followed me across to the garden and on to the barbed-wire fence along the meadow. Here he climbed a post and continued after me by way of the middle strand of the wire, wriggling, twisting, even grabbing the barbs, in his efforts to maintain his balance. He got midway between the posts, when the sagging strand tripped him and he fell with a splash into a shallow pool below.

Did the family in the orchard wall stay together as a family for the first summer, I should like to know. As late as August they all seemed to be in the wall, for in August I cut my oats, and during this harvest they all worked together.

I mowed the oats as soon as they began to yellow, cocking them to cure for hay. It was necessary to let them “make” for six or seven days, and all this time the squirrels raced back and forth between the cocks and the stone wall. They might have hidden their gleanings in a dozen crannies nearer at hand; but evidently they had a particular storehouse, near the home nest, where the family could get at their provisions in bad weather without coming forth.

Had I removed the stones and dug out the nest, I should have found a tunnel leading into the ground for a few feet and opening into a chamber filled with a bulky grass nest,—a bed capable of holding half a dozen chipmunks, and adjoining this, by a short passageway, the storehouse of the oats.

How many trips they made between this crib and the oat patch, how many kernels they carried in their pouches at a trip, and how big a pile they had when all the grains were in,—these are more of the questions I should like to know.

I might have killed one of the squirrels and numbered the contents of his pouches, but my scientific zeal does not quite reach that pitch any more. The knowledge of just how many oat kernels a chipmunk can stuff into his left cheek (into both cheeks he can put twenty-nine kernels of corn) is really not worth the cost of his life. Of course some one has counted them,—just as some one has counted the hairs on the tail of the dog of the child of the wife of the Wild Man of Borneo, or at least seriously guessed at the number.

But this is thesis work for the doctors of philosophy, not a task for farmers and mere watchers in the woods. The chipmunks are in no danger because of my zeal for science; not that I am uninterested in the capacity of their cheeks in terms of oats, but that I am more interested in the whole squirrel, the whole family of squirrels.

When the first frosts come, the family—if they are still a family—seek the nest in the ground beneath the stone wall. But they do not go to sleep immediately. Their outer entrances have not yet been closed. There is still plenty of fresh air, and, of course, plenty of food,—acorns, chestnuts, hickory nuts, and oats. They doze quietly for a time and eat, pushing the empty shells and hulls into some side passage prepared beforehand to receive the débris.

But soon the frost is creeping down through the stones and earth overhead, the rains are filling the outer doorways and shutting off the supply of fresh air, and one day, though not sound sleepers, the family cuddles down and forgets to wake,—until the frost has begun to creep back toward the surface, and down through the softened soil is felt the thrill of the waking spring.

XIV

The Buzzard of the Bear Swamp

TO most eyes, no doubt, the prospect would have seemed desolate, even forbidding. A single track of railroad lay under my feet, while down and away in front of me stretched the Bear Swamp, the largest, least-trod area of primeval swamp in southern New Jersey.

To me it was neither desolate nor forbidding, because I knew it well,—its gloomy depths, its silent streams, its hollow stumps, its trails, and its haunting mysteries. Yet I had never crossed its borders. I was born within its shadows, close enough to smell the magnolias of the margin, and had lived my first ten years only a little farther off; but not till now, after twice ten years of absence, had I stood here ready to enter and tread the paths where so long I had slipped to and fro as a shadow.

But what a pity ever to cross such a country! ever to map these unexplored child-lands to a scale of after years! I tramped the Bear Swamp over from edge to edge, letting the light of day into the deepest of its recesses, and found—a turkey buzzard’s nest.

The silent streams, the stumps, the trails, I found, too, and there, it seems, they must be found a century hence; but the haunting mysteries of the great swamp fled away before me, and are gone forever. So much did I pay for my buzzard’s nest.

The cost in time and trouble was what came near undoing my good uncle, with whom I was staying near the swamp. “What in thunderation!” he exclaimed, when I made known my desires. “From Boston to Haleyville to see a buzzard’s nest!” As there are some things that even one’s wife cannot quite understand, I didn’t try to reason the matter of buzzards’ nests with an uncle. If it had been a hawk’s nest or a cardinal’s, he would have thought nothing strange. But a buzzard’s!

Perhaps my years of absence from the skies of the buzzard account for it. Yet it was never mere bird, mere buzzard, to me; so much more than buzzard, indeed, that I often wish it would sail into these empty New England skies. How eagerly I watch for it when homeward bound toward Jersey! The moment I cross the Delaware I begin to search the skies, and I know, for sure, when it swims into view, that I am near the blessed fields once more. No matter how wide and free, how full of clouds and color, my sky to the end will always need a soaring buzzard.

This is a burst of sentiment, truly, and doesn’t explain at all why I should want to see the creature of these divine wings in the gruesome light of an earth-view, on its nesting stump or in its hollow log.

Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown! It must, or we shall rue it: We have a vision of our own; Ah! why should we undo it?

I understand. Nevertheless, I wanted to find a buzzard’s nest,—the nest of the Bear Swamp buzzard; and here at last I stood; and yonder on the clouds, a mere mote in the distance, floated one of the birds. It was coming toward me over the wide reach of the swamp.

Its coming seemed perfectly natural, as the sight of the swamp seemed entirely familiar, though I had never looked upon it from this point before. Silent, inscrutable, and alien it lay, untouched by human hands except for this narrow braid of railroad binding its outer edges. Over it hung a quiet and reserve as real as twilight. Like a mask it was worn, and was slipped on, I know, at my approach. I could feel the silent spirit of the place drawing back away from me, though not to leave me quite alone. I should have at least a guide to lead me through the shadow land, for out of the lower living green towered a line of limbless stubs, their bleached bones gleaming white, or showing dark and gaunt against the horizon and marking for me a path far out across the swamp. Besides, here came the buzzard winding slowly down the clouds. Soon its spiral changed to a long pendulum swing, till just above the skeleton trees it wheeled, and bracing itself with its flapping wings, dropped heavily upon one of their headless trunks.

It had come leisurely, yet with a definiteness that was unmistakable and that was also meaningful. It had discovered me in the distance, and while still invisible to my eyes, had started down to perch upon that giant stub in order to watch me. Its eye had told it that I was not a workman upon the track, nor a traveler between stations. If there was a purpose to its movements that suggested just one thing to me, there was a lack of purpose in mine that meant many things to it. It was suspicious, and had come because somewhere beneath its perch lay a hollow log, the creature’s den, holding the two eggs or young. A buzzard has some soul.

Marking the direction of the stub, and the probable distance, I waded into the deep underbrush, the buzzard for my guide, and for my quest the stump or hollow log that held the creature’s nest.

The rank ferns and ropy vines swallowed me up, and shut out at times even the sight of the sky. Nothing could be seen of the buzzard. Half an hour’s struggle left me climbing a pine-crested swell in the low bottom, and here I sighted the bird again. It had not moved.

I was now in the real swamp, the old uncut forest. It was a land of giants; huge tulip poplar and swamp white oak, so old that they had become solitary, their comrades having fallen one by one, or else, unable to loose the grip upon the soil that had widened and tightened through centuries, they had died standing. It was upon one of these that the buzzard sat humped.

Directly in my path stood an ancient swamp white oak, the greatest tree, I think, that I have ever seen. It was not the highest, nor the largest round, perhaps, but individually, spiritually, the greatest. Hoary, hollow, and broken-limbed, its huge bole seemed encircled with the centuries, and into its green and grizzled top all the winds of heaven had some time come.

One could worship in the presence of such a tree as easily as in the shadow of a vast cathedral.

For it had bene an auncient tree, Sacred with many a mysteree.