Wildwood Ways

Part 1

WILDWOOD WAYS

WILDWOOD WAYS

WINTHROP PACKARD

AUTHOR OF “WILD PASTURES”

BOSTON

SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1909

BY SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY

(INCORPORATED)

Entered at Stationers’ Hall

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

The author wishes to express his thanks to the “Boston Transcript” for permission to reprint in this volume matter which was originally contributed to its columns.

CONTENTS

PAGE

SNUGGING-DOWN DAYS 1

CERTAIN WHITE-FACED HORNETS 23

THIN ICE 45

WINTER FERN-HUNTING 65

THE BARE HILLS IN MIDWINTER 87

SOME JANUARY BIRDS 107

WHEN THE SNOW CAME 129

THE MINK’S HUNTING GROUND 151

IN THE WHITE WOODS 169

THE ROAD TO MUDDY POND 191

AMONG THE MUSKRAT LODGES 215

THICK ICE 235

ILLUSTRATIONS

Part 2

The muskrats have built higher than common this year Frontispiece

OPPOSITE PAGE

Their paper fort ... had by September grown to the dimensions of a water-bucket and contained a prodigious swarm of valiant fighters 34

There are other feathered folk who seem to delight in the cold 118

Here in a little tangle of tiny undergrowth and brown leaves, with a fallen trunk for overhead shelter, you might find him any forenoon 132

You may ... get a glimpse of the weasel-like head of one lifted above the bank as he sniffs the breeze for game and enemies 160

He lifted his head high, fluffed out those glossy black neck feathers and strutted 179

He was in and out again in a jiffy 182

SNUGGING-DOWN DAYS

To-day came with a flashing sun that looked through crystal-clear atmosphere into the eyes of a keen northwest wind that had dried up all of November’s fog and left no trace of moisture to hold its keenness and touch you with its chill. It was one of those days when the cart road from the north side to the south side of a pine wood leads you from early December straight to early May. On the one side is a nipping and eager air; on the other sunny softness and a smell of spring. It is more than that difference of a hundred miles in latitude which market gardeners say exists between the north and south side of a board fence. It is like having thousand league boots and passing from Labrador to Louisiana at a stride.

On the north side of a strip of woodland which borders the boggy outlet to Ponkapoag Pond lies a great mowing field, and here among the sere stubble I stand in the pale shadow of deciduous trees and face the wind coming over the rolling uplands as it might come across Arctic barrens, singing down upon the northerly outposts of the timber line. On the south side the muskrat teepees rise from blue water at the bog edge like peaks of Teneriffe from the sunny seas that border the Canary Isles. Such contrasts you may find on many an early December day, when walking in the rarefied brightness of the open air is like moving about in the heart of a diamond.

Yet even the big mowing field shows unmistakable signs of having been snugged down for the winter. Here and there a tree, still afloat in its brown undulating ocean, seems to be scudding for the shelter of the forest under bare poles, while the stout white oaks lie to near the coast under double-reefed courses, the brown leaf-sails still holding to the lower yards while all the spars above have been blown bare. The woodchuck paths, that not long ago led from one clover patch to another and then on to well-hidden holes, lie pale and untravelled, while their fat owners are snugged down below in warm burrows with their noses folded in under their forepaws. Tradition has it that they will wake in a warm spell in midwinter and peer out of their burrows to see what the prospect of spring may be. Hence, the second of February is not only Candlemas day, but ground-hog day in rural tradition, the day on which the woodchuck is fabled to appear at the mouth of his underground retreat and look for weather signs, but I don’t know anyone who has ever seen him do it. You may often find skunk tracks in the snow or mud during a good midwinter thaw, but I have never seen those of the woodchuck then, and I am quite confident that he stays snugged down the winter through.

Scattered here and there about the borders of the field are groups of dwarf goldenrod still in full leaf and flower, so far as form goes. The crowded terminal panicles of bloom bend gracefully towards earth like stout ostrich plumes, and I think they are more beautiful in the feathery russet of crowded seed-masses than they were in their September finery of golden yellow. Their stems are lined with leaves still, but these have lost their sombre green to put on the color of deep seal brown. It is as if they had donned their sealskin cloaks for winter wear.

But all these clumps are doubly protected in another way, not for their own sake, for they are but dead stems, but for the birds, who will need their seeds when the snows later in the month shall have covered the ground far out of their reach. All the autumn the winds have been whirling dry leaves back and forth, and each clump has trapped them cunningly till the slender stems that might otherwise be buried and broken by the snow are reënforced on all sides by elastic leaves that will hold them bravely up. Here is an open larder, a free-lunch counter for the goldfinches and chickadees of next January. Here they may glean and glean again, for except they be plucked by eager beaks some of these seeds will not let go their grip on the receptacles till spring rains loosen them and the ground is fit for their sowing.

Everywhere in wood and pasture the numbers of seeds of plants and trees that are thus held waiting the winter gleaners are incomputable; nor will these need to seek them on the plant itself, for little by little as the winter winds come and go they will loose their hold and scatter themselves about as we scatter crumbs for the snow-birds and sparrows. Here are the birches, for instance, holding fast still to their wealth. If bursting spring buds could be gray-brown in color instead of sage-green we well might think the trees had another almanac than our own and that with them it was late April, for wherever the trees are silhouetted against the light we see every twig decorated with new life. It is new life, indeed, but not that of spring leaves. Every tree has a thousand cones, and every cone is packed with tiny seeds about a central core of stiff fibre that is like a fine wire.

Holding the seeds tight in their places are little flat scales, having an outline like that of a conventionalized fleur-de-lis or somewhat like tiny flying birds. The whole is so keyed by the tip that as they hang head down it is possible to dislodge only the topmost scales and seeds. A very vigorous shake of the tree sends a cloud of these flying, but when you look at the tree you find that not a thousandth part of its store has been dispensed. When the midwinter snows lie deep all about, the paymaster wind will requisition these stores as needed for the tiny creatures of the wood and scatter them wide on the white surface, till it will look as if spiced by the confectioner, so well does the forest take care of its own. The Lady Amina of the Arabian tale picking single grains of rice at the banquet might not seem to dine more daintily. The spring will be near at hand when the last of these birch seeds will have been dispensed. Thus innumerable graneries are stored the woodland and pasture through, so lightly locked that all may pilfer, and so abundantly filled, pressed down and running over that there shall be no lack in either quantity or variety.

Far other and stranger forms of winter-guarding forethought are to be seen all about the big mowing field and in the coppices that divide it from the open marsh and the pond shore, if we will but look for them. In many places has witchery been at work as well as forethought, and strange and unaccountable things have been brought to pass that tiny creatures may be kept safe until spring. Here and there among the goldenrod stems you find one that is swollen to the size of a hickory nut, a smooth globe which is merely the stem expanded from the diameter of a toothpick to three-quarters of an inch. When I split this bulb with my knife I find it made up of tough pith shot through with the growing fibres of the plant, but having a tiny hollow in the centre.

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