Some Summer Days in Iowa
9781465556332
pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
AN OLD ROAD IN JULY In the old woods road a soft haze hung, too subtle to see save where its delicate colorings were contrasted against the dark green leaves of the oaks beyond the fence. Not the tangible, vapory haze of early morning, but a tinted, ethereal haze, the visible effluence of the summer, the nimbus of its power and glory. From tall cord grasses arching over the side of the road, drawing water from the ditch in which their feet were bathed and breathing it into the air with the scent of their own greenness; from the transpiration of the trees, shrubs and vines, flowers and mosses and ferns, from billions of pores in acres of leaves it came streaming into the sunlight, vanishing quickly, yet ever renewed, as surely as the little brook where the grasses drank and the grackles fished for tadpoles and young frogs, was replenished by the hidden spring. Mingled with it and floating in it was another stream of life, the innumerable living organisms that make up the dust of the sunshine. Pink and white, black and yellow spores from the mushrooms over the fence in the pasture; pollen pushed from the glumes of the red top grasses and the lilac spires of the hedge nettle and germander by the roadside; shoals of spores from the mosses and ferns by the trees and in the swamp; all these life particles rose and floated in the haze, giving it tints and meanings strangely sweet. When a farmer’s buggy passed along the old road the haze became a warm pink, like some western sky in the evening, slowly clearing again to turquoise as the dust settled. Viewed in this way, the haze became a mighty, broad-mouthed river of life, fed by billions of tiny streams and moving ever toward the vast ocean of the sunlight. Faintly visible to the discerning eye, it was also audible to the attentive ear, listening as one listens at the edge of a field in the night time to hear the growing of the corn. If all the millions of leaves had ceased their transpiration, if this flow of life had been shut off, as the organist pushes in the tremolo stop, the sound of the summer would not have been the same. Something of the strength and joy of the summer was in it. Drinking deeply of it the body was invigorated and the heart grew glad. In it the faith of the winter’s buds and the hope of the spring’s tender leaves found rich fulfillment. Theirs was a life of hope and promise that the resurrection should come; this was the glorious life after the resurrection, faith lost in sight and patient hope crowned. Slender white minarets of the Culver’s root, rising from green towers above the leafy architecture of the woodland undergrowth and reaching toward the light of the sky, told the time of the year as plainly as if a muezzin had appeared on one of its leafy balconies and proclaimed a namaz for the middle of July. Beholding them from afar, honey bees came on humming wings for the nectar lying deep in their tiny florets. Eager stamens reached out far beyond the blossoms to brush the bees' backs with precious freights of pollen to be transported to the stigmas of older flowers. Playing each its part in the plan of the universe, flower and insect added its mite to the life and the loveliness of the summer. From the sunshine and the soil-water the long leaves manufactured food for the growth of the plant. Prettily notched, daintily tapering, and arranged in star-like whorls about the stem, they enhanced the beauty of the flowers above them and attracted the observer to the exquisite order governing their growth. When the leaves were arranged in whorls of four, the floral spires were quadruple, like the pinnacles on a church tower; if the green towers were hexagonal, then six white minarets pointed to the sky. The perfect order of the solar system and the majesty of the Mind which planned it, was manifested in this single plant. So does beauty lead the way to the mountain tops of truth. By the road of earthly beauty we may always reach religion and truth is ever beckoning us to new and nobler visions. That thread of the all-sustaining beauty, which runs through all and doth all unite gently leads us from the things which are tangible and temporal to the truths which are spiritual and eternal; from the beauty of the concrete to the beauty of the abstract, onward along the road of beauty and farther up the heights of truth until our admiration for the beauty of the sunrise, the snow crystal, the graceful spray of the trees in winter, the exquisite order and harmony of the universe from the orbit of the largest planet to the flow of life in the tiniest leaf, develops into a lasting love for beauty in life and in character; and still farther up the heights into an atmosphere of intelligent, rational, genuine love for the Great First Cause of all beauty. As the heart opens to receive the beauty of the world, as the mind and soul strive, like the plants, for the highest development, so is the world redeemed from error and crime and the perfection of the race is attained. If one soul finds this truth more quickly and easily here amid the trees and flowers, for him is the old road greater than religious dogmas or social systems. Always beautiful and interesting, in these long days of mid-July the old road is at its best. No length of day can measure its loveliness or encompass its charm. Very early in the morning there is a faint rustle of the leaves, a delicate flutter through the woods as if the awakening birds are shaking out their wings. Shrubs and bushes and trunks of trees have ghostly shapes in the few strange moments that are neither the darkness nor the dawn. As the light steals through the woods their forms grow less grotesque. In the half light a phoebe begins her shrill song. A blue-jay screams. The quail sounds his first Bob White. Brown thrashers in the thicket—it is past their time of singing—respond with a strange, sibilant sound, a mingled hiss and whistle, far different from his ringing songs of May, now only memories; different also from her scoldings when she was disturbed on her nest and from her tender crooning calls to her babies during June. As the light increases waves of delicate color appear in the sky to the northeast, and by and by the sun’s face appears over the tops of the trees. He shoots arrows of pale flame through the woods. In the clearing the trunks of the trees are like cathedral pillars, and the sunlight comes down in slanting rays as if the openings among the tree-tops were windows and the blue haze beneath the incense of the morning mass. Black-capped precentor of the avian choir, the chickadee sounds two sweet tones, clear and musical, like keynotes blown from a silver pipe. The wood thrush sounds a few organ tones, resonant and thrilling. It is almost his last summer service; soon, like the thrashers, he will be drooping and silent. The chewink, the indigo bird, the glad goldfinches, the plaintive pewees are the sopranos; the blue-bird, the quail, with her long, sweet call, and the grosbeak, with his mellow tones, are the altos; the nuthatch and the tanager take up the tenor, while the red-headed woodpeckers, the crows and the cuckoos bear down heavy on the bass. Growing with the light, the fugue swells into crescendo. Lakes of sunshine and capes of shadow down the old road are more sharply defined. Bushes of tall, white melilot, clustered with myriads of tiny flowers, exhale a sweet fragrance into the morning air. The clearing around the house is flooded with sunlight. In the wooded pasture some trunks are bathed with a golden glory, while others yet stand iron gray in the deep shadows. The world is awake. The day’s work begins. One late young redhead in a hole high up in the decaying trunk of an aspen tree calls loudly for his breakfast, redoubling his noise as his mother approaches with the first course. Sitting clumsily on a big stump, a big baby cowbird, well able to shift for himself, shamelessly takes food from his little field sparrow foster-mother, scarcely more than half his size. Soon he will leave her and join the flocks of his kindred in the oat-fields and the swamps. Young chewinks are being fed down among the ripening May-apples in the pasture. A catbird with soft quoots assembles her family in the hazel and the wood-thrush sounds warning quirts as fancied peril approaches her children beneath the ripening blackberries. From the top of a tall white oak a red squirrel leaps to the arching branches of an elm, continuing his foraging there. Sitting straight up on a mossy log the chipmunk holds in his paws a bit of bread thrown from somebody’s basket, nibbles at it for a while and then makes a dash for the thicket, carrying the bread in his mouth
