The Fall of the Year

Then beyond the swamp and the nest stretched a vast wild marsh-land, where the reeds grew, and the tides came in, and the mud-hens lived. And beyond that flowed the river, and beyond the river lay another marsh, and beyond the marsh another swamp. And over all this vast wild world towered the nest of the eagles, like some ancient castle; and over it all – swamp and marsh and river – ruled the eagles, as bold and free as the mighty barons of old.

Is it any wonder that I often found myself gazing away at that nest on the horizon and longing for wings? – for wings with which to soar above the swamp and the bay and the marsh and the river, to circle about and about that lofty eyrie, as wild as the eagles and as free? Is it any wonder that I determined some day to stand up in that nest, wings or no wings, while the eagles should scream about me, and away below me should stretch river and marsh and swamp?

To stand up in that nest, to yell and wave my arms with the eagles wheeling and screaming over me, became the very peak of my boy ambitions.

And I did it. I actually had the eggs of those eagles in my hands. I got into the nest; but I am glad even now that I got out of the nest and reached the ground.

It must have been in the spring of my fourteenth year when, at last, I found myself beneath the eagle tree. It was a stark old white oak, almost limbless, and standing out alone on the marsh some distance from the swamp. The eagle’s nest capped its very top.

The nest, I knew, must be big; but not until I had climbed up close under it did I realize that it was the size of a small haystack. There was certainly half a cord of wood in it. I think that it must originally have been built by fish hawks.

Holding to the forking top upon which the nest was placed, I reached out, but could not touch the edge from any side.

I had come determined to get up into it, however, at any hazard; and so I set to work. I never thought of how I was to get down; nor had I dreamed, either, of fearing the eagles. A bald eagle is a bully. I would as soon have thought of fearing our hissing old gander at home.

As I could not get out to the edge of the nest and scale the walls, the only possible way up, apparently, was through the nest. The sticks here in the bottom were old and quite rotten. Digging was easy, and I soon had a good beginning.

The structure was somewhat cone-shaped, the smaller end down. It had grown in circumference as it grew in years and in height, probably because at the bottom the building materials had decayed and gradually fallen away, until now there was a decided outward slant from bottom to top. It had grown lopsided, too, there being a big bulge on one side of the nest near the middle.

The smallness of the bottom at first helped me; there was less of the stuff to be pulled out. I easily broke away the dead timbers and pushed aside the tougher sticks. I intended to cut a channel clear to the top and go up through the nest. Already my head and shoulders were well into it.

Now the work became more difficult. The sticks were newer, some of them being of seasoned oak and hickory, which the birds had taken from cord-wood piles.

I had cut my channel up the side of the nest nearly halfway when I came to a forked branch that I could neither break off nor push aside. I soon found that it was not loose, but that it belonged to the oak tree itself. It ran out through the nest horizontally, extending a little more than a foot beyond the rough walls.

Backing down, I saw that this fork was the support of the bulge that had given the nest its lopsided appearance. A few large timbers had been rested across it, small loose pieces had gradually lodged upon these, and thus in time brought about the big bulge.

I pushed off this loose stuff and the few heavy timbers and found that the fork would bear my weight. It now projected a little way from the walls of the nest. I got a firm hold on the forks out at their ends, swung clear, and drew myself up between them. After a lively scramble, I got carefully to my feet, and, clutching the sticks protruding from the side, stood up, with my eyes almost on a level with the rim of the great nest. This was better than cutting a channel, certainly – at least for the ascent, and I was not then thinking of the descent.

I looked over the protruding sticks of the rim. I caught a glimpse of large dull white eggs!

Eggs of shining gold could not have so fascinated me. There were thousands of persons who could have gold eggs if they cared. But eagles’ eggs! Money could not buy such a sight as this.

I was more than ever eager now to get into the nest. Working my fingers among the sticks of the rim for a firm grip, I stuck my toes into the rough wall and began to climb. At some considerable hazard and at the cost of many rents in my clothing, I wriggled up over the edge and into the hollow of the nest where the coveted eggs lay.

The eagles were wheeling and screaming overhead. The weird cac, cac, cac of the male came down from far above me; while the female, circling closer, would swoop and shrill her menacing, maniacal half-laugh almost in my ears.

Their wild cries thrilled me, and their mighty wings, wheeling so close around me, seemed to catch me in their majestic sweep and almost to carry me in swift, swinging circles through the empty air. An ecstasy of excitement overcame me. I felt no body, no weight of anything. I lost my head completely, and, seizing the eggs, rose to my feet and stood upright in the nest.

The eagles swept nearer. I could feel the wind from their wings. I could see the rolling of their gleaming eyes, and the glint of the sun on their snow-white necks. And as they dipped and turned and careened over me, I came perilously near trying to fly myself.

What a scene lay under me and rolled wide and free to the very edge of the world! The level marsh, the blue, hazy bay, the far-off, unblurred horizon beyond the bending hill of the sea! The wild, free wind from the bay blew in upon my face, the old tree trembled and rocked beneath me, the screaming eagles wove a mazy spell of double circles about me, till I screamed back at them in wild delight.

The sound of my voice seemed to infuriate the birds. The male turned suddenly in his round and swooped directly at me. The movement was instantly understood by his mate, who, thus emboldened, cut under him and hurled herself downward, passing with a vicious grab at my face. I dodged, or she would have hit me.

For the moment I had forgotten where I stood; and, in dodging the eagle, I almost stepped over the edge of the nest. I caught my balance and dropped quickly to my knees, completely unnerved.

Fear like a panic took instant hold on me. Only one desire possessed me – to get down. I crept to the edge and looked over. The sight made me dizzy. Sixty feet of almost empty air! Far down, a few small limbs intervened between me and the ground. But there was nothing by which to descend.

I was dismayed; and my expression, my posture – something, betrayed my confusion to the eagles. They immediately lost all dread of me. While I was looking over, one of them struck me a stinging blow on the head, knocking my cap off into the air.

That started me. I must climb down or be knocked over. If only I had continued with my channel to the top! If only that forked branch by which I ascended were within reach! But how could I back over the flaring rim to my whole length and swing my body under against the inward-slanting nest until my feet could touch the fork? But if I ever got down, that was what I must do; for the eagles gave me no chance to cut a channel now.

Laying the eggs back for the time in the hollow, I began tearing away the rim of the nest in order to clear a place over which to back down.

I was momentarily in danger of being hurled off by the birds; for I could not watch them and work, too. And they were growing bolder with every dash. One of them, driving fearfully from behind, flattened me out on the nest. Had the blow been delivered from the front, I should have been knocked headlong to the ground.

I was afraid to delay longer. A good-sized breach was opened in the rim of the nest by this time. And now, if the sticks would not pull out, I might let myself over and reach the fork. Once my feet touched that, I could manage the rest, I knew.

Digging my hands deep into the nest for a firm hold, I began cautiously to back over the rough, stubby rim, reaching with my feet toward the fork.

The eagles seemed to appreciate the opportunity my awkward position offered them. I could not have arranged myself more conveniently to their minds, I am sure. And they made the most of it. I can laugh now; but the memory of it can still make me shiver, too.

I had wriggled over just so that I could bend my body at the waist and bring my legs against the nest when a sharp stub caught in my clothes and held me. I could get neither up nor down. My handhold was of the most precarious kind, and I dared not let go for a moment to get off the snag.

I tried to back out and push off from it, but it seemed to come out with me. It must be broken; and pulling myself up, I dropped with all the force I could put into my body. That loosened, but did not break it. Suddenly, while I was resting between the efforts, the thing gave way.

I was wholly unprepared. All my weight was instantly thrown upon my hands. The jagged sticks cut into my wrists, my grip was pried off, and I fell.

Once, twice, the stubs in the wall of the nest caught and partly stopped me, then broke. I clutched frantically at them, but could not hold. Then, almost before I realized that I was falling, I hung suspended between two limbs – the forks of the white oak branch in the side of the nest.

I had been directly above it when the stub broke, and had fallen through it; and the two branches had caught me right under both of my arms.

For a second I was too dazed to think. Then a swish of wings, a hard blow on the neck, and a shooting pain made my position clear. I was not down yet nor out of danger. The angry birds still had me in reach.

Hanging with one arm, I twisted round until the other arm was free, then seized the branches and swung under, but not before the eagles had given me another raking dab.

Here beneath the branches, close up to the bottom of the nest, I was quite out of the reach of the birds; and through the channel I had cut in my ascent, I climbed quickly down into the tree.

It was now a mere matter of sliding to the ground. But I was so battered and faint that I nearly tumbled. I was a sorry-looking boy – my clothing torn, my hands bleeding, my head and neck clawed in a dozen places.

But what did I do with the eagles’ eggs? Why, I allowed the old eagles to hatch them. What else could I do? or what better?

CHAPTER VI

THANKSGIVING AT GRANDFATHER’S FARM

THANKSGIVING at Grandfather’s farm was more than a holiday. It was a great date on the calendar, for it divided the year in halves as no other single day of the three hundred and sixty-five did. It marked the end of the outdoors, and the beginning of the indoors – the day when everybody came home; when along with them into the house came all the outdoors, too, as if the whole farm were brought in to toast its toes before the great hearth fire!

For the hearth fire was big enough and cheery enough. And so was the farmhouse – that is, if you added the big barn and the crib-house and the wagon-house and the dog-house and the hen-house and the “spring-house!”

Oh, there was plenty of room inside for everybody and for everything! And there needed to be; for did not everybody come home to Grandfather’s for Thanksgiving? And did not everything that anybody could need for the winter, grow on Grandfather’s farm?

And it all had to be brought in by Thanksgiving Day – everything brought in, everything housed and stored and battened down tight. The preparations began along in late October, continuing with more speed as the days shortened and darkened and hurried us into November. And they continued with still more speed as the gray lowering clouds thickened in the sky, and the wind began to whistle through the oak grove. Then, with the first real cold snap, the first swift flurry of snow, how the husking and the stacking and the chopping went on!

Thanksgiving must find us ready for winter indoors and out.

The hay-mows were full to the beams where the swallows built; the north and west sides of the barnyard were flanked with a deep wind-break of corn-fodder that ran on down the old worm-fence each side of the lane in yellow zigzag walls; the big wooden pump under the turn-o’-lane tree by the barn was bundled up and buttoned to the tip of its dripping nose; the bees by the currant bushes were doubled-hived, the strawberries covered with hay, the wood all split and piled, the cellar windows packed, and the storm-doors put on.

The very cows had put on an extra coat, and turned their collars up about their ears; the turkeys had changed their roost from the ridge-pole of the corn-crib to the pearmain tree on the sunny side of the wagon-house; the squirrels had finished their bulky nests in the oaks; the muskrats of the lower pasture had completed their lodges; the whole farm – house, barn, fields, and wood-lot – had shuffled into its greatcoat and muffler and settled comfortably down for the winter.

The old farmhouse was an invitation to winter. It looked its joy at the prospect of the coming cold. Low, weather-worn, mossy-shingled, secluded in its wayward garden of box and bleeding-hearts, sheltered by its tall pines, grape-vined, hop-vined, clung to by creeper and honeysuckle, it stood where the roads divided, halfway between everywhere, unpainted, unpretentious, as much a part of the landscape as the muskrat-lodge, and, like the lodge, roomy, warm, and hospitable.

Round at the back, under the wide, open shed, a door led into the kitchen; another led into the living-room; another, into the store-room; and two big, slanting double-doors, scoured and slippery with four generations of sliders, covered the cavernous way into the cellar. But they let the smell of apples up, as the garret door let the smell of sage and thyme come down; while from the door of the store-room, mingling with the odor of apples and herbs, filling the whole house and all my early memories, came the smell of broom-corn, came the sound of Grandfather’s loom.

For Grandfather in the winter made brooms – the best brooms, I think, that ever were made. The tall broom-corn was grown on the farm in the summer, ripened and cut and seeded, and then, as soon as winter set in, was loomed and wired and sewed into brooms.

But the cured and seeded broom-corn was not the main thing, after all, that was brought in for the winter. Behind the stove in the kitchen, stood the sweet-potato box (a sweet potato, you know, must be kept dry and warm). An ample, ten-barrel box it was, fresh-papered like the walls, full of Jersey sweets that were sweet – long, golden, syrupy potatoes, such as grow only in the warm sandy soil of southern New Jersey.

Against that big box in Grandmother’s kitchen stood the sea-chest, fresh with the same kitchen paper and piled with wood. There was another such chest in the living-room near the old fireplace, and still another in Grandfather’s work-room behind the “template” stove.

But wood and warmth and sweet smells were not all. There was music also, the music of life, of young life and of old life – grandparents, grandchildren (about twenty-eight of the latter). There were seven of us alone – a girl at each end of the seven and one in the middle. Thanksgiving always found us all at Grandfather’s and brimming full of thanks.

That, of course, was long, long ago. Things are different nowadays. There are as many grandfathers, I suppose, as ever; but they don’t make brooms in the winter and live on farms.

They live in flats. The old farm with its open acres has become a city street; the generous old farmhouse has become a speaking-tube, kitchenette, and bath – all the “modern conveniences”; the cows have evaporated into convenient cans of condensed “milk”; the ten-barrel box of potatoes has changed into a convenient ten-pound bag, the wood-pile into a convenient five-cent bundle of blocks tied up with a tarred string, the fireplace into a convenient gas log, the seven children into one or none, or into a little bull-terrier pup.

But is it so? No, it is not so – not so of a million homes. For there is many an old-fashioned farmhouse still in the country, and many a new-fashioned city house where there are more human children than little bull-terrier pups.

And it is not so in my home, which is neither a real farm nor yet a city home. For here are some small boys who live very much as I did when I was a boy. No, they are not farmer’s boys; for I am not a farmer, but only a “commuter” – if you know what that is. I go into a great city for my work; and when the day’s work is done, I turn homeward here to Mullein Hill – far out in the country. And when the dark November nights come, I hang the lantern high in the stable, as my father used to do, while four shining faces gather round, as four small boys seat themselves on upturned buckets behind the cow. The lantern flickers, the milk foams, the stories flow – “Bucksy” stories of the noble red-man; and stories of the heroes of old; and marvelous stories of that greatest hero of all – their father, far away yonder when he was a boy, when there were so many interesting things to do on Grandfather’s farm just before Thanksgiving Day.

CHAPTER VII

A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO DO THIS FALL

I

YOU ought to go out into the fields and woods as many as six times this fall, even though you have to take a long street-car ride to get out of the city. Let me give you just six bits of sound advice about going afield: —

First, go often to the same place, so that you can travel over and over the same ground and become very familiar with it. The first trip you will not see much but woods and fields. But after that, each succeeding walk will show you particular things – this dead tree with the flicker’s hole, that old rail-pile with its rabbit-hole – until, by and by, you will know every turn and dip, every pile of stones, every hole and nest; and you will find a thousand things that on the first trip you didn’t dream were there.

Secondly, when you go into the woods, go expecting to see something in particular – always looking for some particular nest, bird, beast, or plant. You may not find that particular thing, but your eyes will be sharpened by your expectation and purpose, and you will be pretty sure therefore to see something. At worst you will come back with a disappointment, and that is better than coming back without a thing!

Thirdly, go off when you can alone. Don’t be selfish, unsociable, offish – by no means that. But you must learn to use your own eyes and ears, think your own thoughts, make your own discoveries, and follow the hints and hopes that you alone can have. Go with the school class for a picnic, but for woodcraft go alone.

Fourthly, learn first of all in the woods to be as silent as an Indian and as patient as a granite rock. Practice standing still when the mosquitoes sing, and fixing your mind on the hole under the stump instead of the hole the mosquito is boring between your eyes.

Fifthly, go out in every variety of weather, and at night, as well as during the day. There are three scenes to every day – morning, noon, and early evening – when the very actors themselves are changed. To one who has never been in the fields at daybreak, the world is so new, so fresh and strange, as to seem like a different planet. And then the evening – the hour of dusk and the deeper, darker night! Go once this autumn into the woods at night.

And lastly, don’t go into the woods as if they were a kind of Noah’s Ark; for you cannot enter the door and find all the animals standing in a row. You will go a great many times before seeing them all. Don’t be disappointed if they are not so plentiful there as they are in your books. Nature books are like menageries – the animals are caught and caged for you. The woods are better than books and just as full of things, as soon as you learn to take a hint, to read the signs, to put two and two together and get – four – four paws – black paws, with a long black snout, a big ringed and bushy tail – a coon!

II

Whether you live in the heart of a great city or in the open country, you ought to begin this fall to learn the names and habits of the birds and beasts (snakes, lizards, turtles, toads!) that live wild in your region. Even when all the summer birds have gone south for the winter, there will remain in your woods and fields crows, jays, juncos, tree sparrows, chickadees, kinglets, nuthatches, screech owls, barred owls, – perhaps even snowy owls, – quails, partridges, goldfinches, with now and then a flock of crossbills, snow buntings, and other northern visitors, and even a flicker, robin, and bluebird left over from the fall migrations. These are plenty to begin on; and yet, as they are so few, compared with the numbers of the summer, the beginner’s work is thus all the easier in the autumn.

III

You should go out one of these frosty mornings for chestnuts, if they grow in your woods; or for “shagbarks,” if you live in New England; for black walnuts, if you live in the Middle States; for pecan nuts, if you live in the Gulf States; for butternuts, if you live in the states of the Middle West; for – what kind of nuts can you not go for, if you live in California where they make everything grow! It matters little whether you go for paper-shelled English walnuts or for plate-armored pignuts so long as you go. It is the going that is worth while.

IV

You ought to go “cocooning” this fall – to sharpen your eyes. But do not go often; for once you begin to look for cocoons, you are in danger of seeing nothing else – except brown leaves. And how many brown leaves, that look like cocoons, there are! They tease you to vexation. But a day now and then “cocooning” will do you no harm; indeed, it will cultivate your habit of concentration and close seeing as will no other kind of hunting I know.

Bring home with you the big brown silky cocoons of cecropia – the largest cocoon you will find, lashed all along its length to its twig, and usually near the ground. Look on the black cherry, the barberry, sassafras, and roadside and garden trees for the harder, whiter cocoon of the promethea moth. This hangs by its tip, because the caterpillar has begun his house by using the leaf, spinning it into the cocoon as part of its walls, much as does the wretched “brown-tail.” The gray cocoons, or rather nests, of this “brown-tail” moth you must bring home to burn, for they are one of our greatest pests. You will find them full of tiny caterpillars as you tear them open.

Bring home your collection and, with the help of such a book as “Moths and Butterflies” by Mary C. Dickerson, identify them and hang them up for their “coming out” in the spring.

V

If you live in the city, you ought to go up frequently to your roof and watch for the birds that fly over. If in one of our many cities near the water, you will have a chance that those in the country seldom have, of seeing the seabirds – the white herring gulls (the young gulls are brown, and look like a different species), as they pass over whistling plaintively, and others of the wild seafowl, that merely to hear and see in the smoky air of the city, is almost as refreshing as an ocean voyage. Then there are the parks and public gardens – never without their birds and, at the fall migrating time, often sheltering the very rarest of visitors.

VI

In order to give point and purpose to one of these autumn outings, you should take your basket, or botanizing can, and scour the woods and fields for autumn berries. No bunch of flowers in June could be lovelier than the bunch of autumn berries that you can gather from thicket and wayside to carry home. And then, in order to enjoy the trip all over again, read James Buckham’s exquisite story, “A Quest for Fall Berries,” in his book, “Where Town and Country Meet.”

VII

Take your botany can on a trip toward the end of November and see how many blossoming flowers you can bring home from the woods. Wild flowers after Thanksgiving in any northern state? Make the search, on all the southern slopes and in all the sheltered corners and see for yourselves. When you get back, you will want to read Mr. Bradford Torrey’s account of the flowers that he found blossoming out of doors in New England in the month of November. But who is Mr. Bradford Torrey? and where can you find this account of his November walk? You do not know? Well, then there is something more for you to do this fall.