Some Summer Days in Iowa Part 2

Because the first nest of the wood thrush was robbed by the blue-jays, a second nest was built. This family was safely reared, and the wood thrush sang until the third week in July, when one clear sunset night, the sky all aglow with banners of golden red, he sang his farewell solo. For seven weeks the Maryland yellow throat sang just at the turn of the old woods road, where his mate had her nest in a low bush. As the babies waxed large his song waned, and he was not heard during the last week in July, nor since. Still the d.i.c.kcissel, the lark sparrow and the indigo bunting continued their trio. Evidently their babies were somewhere over in the field nearby, a field that was corn last year, and now is grown up thickly with smartweed. August came with a rush of the mercury above the ninety mark, and there it has stayed. A week of it was enough for this trio. They ceased their concert work, but now and then the lark sparrow pipes up a feeble imitation of his sweet notes in July. Like the song sparrow, he cannot wholly refrain from expressing his satisfaction in being alive. Many men and women are just like that. The vireos also ceased singing at the end of the first week in August, but sometimes the red-eye gives a little preachment from his leafy pulpits in the woods. Latest among the singers are the chewinks, the wood pewees, the field sparrows, and, of course, the goldfinches and the cuckoos. The young chewinks left their nests in the pasture on the third, and the chewink's feelings expressed themselves in song for two weeks after that. He out-sang the field sparrows, whose young were hatched August third, and left their nest on the twelfth. Apparently the field sparrow stopped singing and went to work providing for his family of three. But the chewink was not to be sobered so quickly. Why not sing with the work? The days are long enough, happy enough, for both. Even now he gives occasional bursts of song. Evidently this is the theory of the tanager also, for he sang all through July, and here in mid-August his trumpet tones occasionally ring through the leafy silences of the woods. The young wood pewees which left their nests on the eleventh are now able to s.h.i.+ft for themselves; but the parents have much the same song as they had when the three eggs lay in the nest, saddled to the burr-oak bough. Still, through the peaceful morning air comes the loud, clear, cheery call of the Bob White--a note that has in it health and vigor for the healing of many a tired heart. As for the cuckoo, well, his mate is guarding those bluish-green eggs in the apology for a nest built in the lower branches of a young black-oak; they will not be hatched until the very last of the month. He does his best to be cheerful and to make a joyful sound. "Kut-Kut-Kut," and "Kow-Kow-Kow"--you may often hear the latter sound in the middle of the night. Does he try to let his lady dear know that he is near her through the darkness, or is he happily singing in his dreams?

Perched on a mullen spike, a goldfinch is singing to his mate, whose nest is in a sapling not far away. His jet black wings fold over his yellow back, shaping it into a pointed s.h.i.+eld of gold. He is so happy and so fond that he can not bear long to remain out of her sight. Now he sings a tender serenade, then his joy rises to ecstasy. He takes wings and floats up and down the imaginary waves, circling higher and higher, his sweet notes growing more rapturous until finally they reach their climax as he goes abruptly skyward. Then his fluttering wings close, and he drops from a height of perhaps forty or fifty feet, to alight again on his original perch and resume his tender serenade, singing now in a sweet, dreamy way, sounding just like a ripple of moonlit water looks. This love-song of the goldfinch is the climax of the summer's bird-song. If there were none other, the summer would be worth while.

Dreamily sitting on a bare twig, the wood pewee is content. She has raised her family, they are now able to get their own food. Though she is worn and wasted since the spring, and may easily be told from her husband, because he is handsome and well-groomed, yet is she content to sit and wait for the food to come her way. Now she circles from her perch and returns. Watching her catch an insect on the way, I hear the sharp snap of her bill, as if two pebbles had been smartly struck together.

Fanning the air with gauzy wings, the honey bee comes for a feast on the flowers of the figwort. Visiting every open blossom, he loads up with the honey and departs in a line for his hive. Bye-and-bye a humble-bee wanders along, quickly finding that another has drained the blossoms of their sweets. He pa.s.ses on undismayed; there are more flowers. Over by the wire fence the tick-trefoil, desmodium, is in its glory. Its lower petal stands out like a doorstep, and on it the humble-bee alights. Two little yellow spots, bordered with deep red, show him where lies the nectar. Here he thrusts his head, forcing open the wing petals from the standard. Instantly the keel snaps down as if a steel spring had been released. The bee is dusted with pollen, which he carries with him to fertilize another flower. How did the flower learn to fas.h.i.+on that mechanism, to construct those highly colored nectar-guides? How many centuries of acc.u.mulated intelligence or instinct,--call it what the scientists please,--are there behind that action of the bee, thrusting his head just where those nectar-guides are placed? Is the bee more sentient than the flower? Or, is the flower which provided the nectar and placed the nectar-guides just at the right place on the bright blossoms, as special allurements for the senses of the bee, the more to be admired for its intelligence? One by one the bee opens the flowers, which were so fresh and beautiful at sunrise. When he goes to his nest in the gra.s.s at evening, they will all have been drained of their nectar, and the petals will be wilted by the sun. But they have achieved their object, the ovules have been fertilized. Tomorrow morning there will be many bright, new blossoms, their nectar crying to the bees, like the voice in Omar Khayyam's tavern to those outside the door:

_"When all the temple is prepared within, Why lags the drowsy wors.h.i.+per outside?"_

Now there comes sidling, gliding along the barbed wire fence, the Baltimore oriole, always a charming fellow because of his flaming plumage, which has won for him the name of the golden robin and firebird. He walks along the wire fence in a gliding, one-leg-at-a-time fas.h.i.+on, as he often does on the twig of a tree. His head is down, he is on the lookout for caterpillars. Now he reaches the tick-trefoil, and nips out some stamens from its purple blossoms, which he eats with relish.

The work of the year will soon be done. Most of the trees have completed the growth for the year and nothing remains but to complete the filling of the buds which already have formed for next year. Pull down a twig of the white-oak and you find a cl.u.s.ter of terminal buds at the end, marking the close of this year's growth, each of them containing the nucleus of next year's life. In the axils of the leaves on the elm are the little jeweled buds which will be brown and dull all winter, but will s.h.i.+ne like garnets when the springtime comes. The fat, green buds on the linden are yellowing now, and next they are to be tinted into the ruby red which is so attractive in the winter months when contrasted with the snow.

As the sun nears the zenith the heat waves on the ridges, and across the cornfields seem to have a rhythmic motion, as if they are manifestations of the great throbbing pulse-beat of nature, working at almost feverish haste to ripen her fruits and prepare for the winter in the few weeks of summer that yet remain. And now the suns.h.i.+ne has a new and deeper meaning. If we have ever complained of it, we hasten to pray pardon. Not only in the cornfields, where the milky ears are fast filling, but all over upland and lowland, in woods and fields and meadows, Nature is busy making and storing starch and sugar, protein and alb.u.men, that the earth and all that therein is may have cause to rejoice in the fullness of the year. Above the ground she stores it in drupe and pome and berry, nut and nutlet and achene, and below the ground in rootstock and rhizome, corm and tuber, pumping them full with strokes quick and strong in these grand climacteric days of the summer. All the water which seemed so useless in April, all the rain which seemed so superfluous and so dreary in May and June, has been used. Not a drop of it was wasted. Its office was to feed life, to dissolve the substances in the rocks and the soils which the plants needed, to be mixed with the suns.h.i.+ne in the manufacture of food for the present and for the future. Nor is the heat nor the light wasted.

Both are stored in the trunks of the trees, and when in the winter the back log sends out its steady heat and the foresticks their cheerful blaze, the old tree will give back, measure for measure, the light and heat it has stored through the years. Let us rejoice in the fervent heat and the grand work of the August days. So a man works as he approaches his ideals. Feebly at first he begins. Winds of adversity buffet him, cold disdain would freeze his ambition, hot scorn would shrivel his soul. Still he perseveres, striving towards his ideal, firmly rooted in faith and his heart ever open for the beauty and the suns.h.i.+ne of the world. In periods of storm and cloud, his heart, like the sun, makes its own warmth and splendor, knowing that the season of its strength shall come. When he seems to be growing nearer his ideal his fervor is at August heat; for him there is no burden in the heat of the day; tirelessly, joyously, he strives, achieves, attains.

Thus he does his share of the work of the world and adds his mite to the heritage of its future.

The plants of the woodlands seem strangely unfamiliar since the springtime. If you have not called upon them during these months that have fled so swiftly you will almost feel the need of being introduced to them again. Some of them, such as the Dutchman's breeches and the bluebell, have gone, like the beautiful children who died when life was young. Others have grown away from you, like the children you used to know in the days gone by, so strangely altered now. The little uvularia, whose leaves were so soft and silky in May and whose blossom drooped so prettily, like a golden bell, is tall, and branched now, and its leaves are stiff and papery. Its curious, triangular, leathery pods have lifted their lids at the top and discharged their bony seeds. The blood-root, the hepatica, and the wild ginger are showing big and healthy leaves, but the few lady slippers, here and there, have faded almost beyond recognition.

When the summer shower patters down among the leaves the music of the insect orchestra ceases and the performers s.h.i.+eld their instruments with their wings. It pa.s.ses and gleams of suns.h.i.+ne make jewels of the raindrops. Then a little breeze brings the aroma of the blossoming bergamot, wild mint, basil and catnip, filling the air with a spicy fragrance. The insects tune up; soon the orchestra is at it again.

White c.u.mulus clouds appear, floating lazily in the azure, reflected by the river below. They chase the sunlight across the amber stubble of the oat-fields and weave huge pictures which flash and fade among the swaying ta.s.sels of the corn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IN PLACID PONDS" (p. 92)]

And oh, the color-splendor of these August days! Here at the top of the cliff, the orange-flowered milkweed still flames in beauty, mingled with the pink and lavender bergamot and the varied yellows of the sunflowers and the rosin weeds. Down nearer the water's edge where the shelves of the cliff are layered with soil, the virgin's bower twines cl.u.s.ters of creamy white. On the gra.s.sy sh.o.r.e where the river begins to leave the rocks the brilliant blue lobelia is breaking into blossom, contrasted with the bright lemon yellow of the helenium.

Ma.s.ses of pink light up shady places where the false dragonhead grows, and the jewel weeds are thickly hung with pendant blossoms of orange and pale yellow. The river winds along the low sh.o.r.es and reedy shallows, sometimes partly losing itself in placid ponds, gay with the crimson and green and blue of the dragon-flies, and fringed by dark green reeds and rushes from which Pan might well have made his pipes to charm the G.o.ds, and the Naiads of the sacred fount. Onward it goes, now pa.s.sing by a sloping bank which the gray-leaved golden rod has covered with a wealth of golden glory; for this low-growing golden rod which blossoms so early, is the most brilliantly and richly golden of them all.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "STILL THE RIVER BECKONS ONWARD" (p. 93)]

Great fluffy ma.s.ses of pink purple at the top of large-leaved stems are the blossoms of the Joe Pye Weed, and smaller cl.u.s.ters of royal purple in the gra.s.sy places are the efflorescence of the iron weed. A stretch of gra.s.sy ground, which slopes down to the river's brink, is gemmed with the thick purple cl.u.s.ters of the milkwort, which s.h.i.+nes among the gra.s.s as the early blossoms of the clover used to do when the summer was young. Here and there the little bag-like blossoms of the gerardia, or foxglove, are opening among the stems of the fading gra.s.s, and the white blossoms of the marsh bellflower, the midget member of the campanula family, are apparently as fresh and numerous as they were in early July. Water h.o.r.ehound has whitish whorls of tiny blossoms and prettily cut leaves, which are as interesting as the flowers. And still the river beckons onward, murmuring that the quest of the flower-lover is not yet done and that the prize awaits the victor who presses on to the swamp around the bend where the birches hang drooping branches over quiet, fish-full pools. The prize is worth the extra half-mile. It is the gorgeous flower of late summer, a fit symbol of August, the queen blossom of a queenly month, the brilliant red lobelia, or cardinal flower. There is no flower in the year so full of vivid color. Sometimes, but only very rarely, the purple torches of the exquisite little fringed orchis (habenaria psychodes) lights up a swampy place beneath the trees and sheds its delicate fragrance as a welcome to the bees.

The life of an August day, like all life, comes too quickly to a close. In the morning of a day, of a summer, or of a life, there seems so much ahead; so many friends to help and cheer, so much beauty to behold, so many pleasant roads to roam, so much to accomplish, and so many treasures to gather by the way. But when the days are growing shorter and the twilight falls, perhaps it is enough if we can feel that we have at the best but faithful failures; perhaps enough if we have forgotten the dust and the rocks and the mire, and have treasured only the memories of the beauty and the music and the joy which was ours by the way; surely enough if we can look forward happily and peacefully to the west where

_The sky is aglow with colors untold, With a triumph of crimson and opal and gold, And wavering curtains woven of fire Are hung o'er the portals of Day's desire.

The sun goes to rest in his western halls And over the world, the twilight falls._

And then the glory fades to gray and beautiful Venus smiles at us just over the tops of the trees. Little is heard save the occasional note of the whip-poor-will and the constant reminder from the katydid that it is not far to frost. But the river ripples softly around the rocks and a cool air stirs in the trees above, exorcising all mournful spirits. The harvest moon is rising and the white light lies sleeping, dreaming, on trees and cliff and river. On such a night pleading Pan wooed his coy nymph with the promise:

_And then I'll tell you tales that no one knows Of what the trees talk in the summer nights; When far above you hear them murmuring, As they sway whispering to the lifting breeze._

IX.--THE Pa.s.sING OF SUMMER

When the wild plums ripen in the thicket by the creek and the grapes are purpling in the kisses of the sun; when even the sunlight itself grows mellow and the landscape wears a dreamy haze, colored like the bloom on a plum, as if the year, too, had reached perfect ripeness; then it is mid-September and Iowa begins a season of loveliness which shall hardly be excelled anywhere on earth.

Young birds imitate the spring songs of their parents in a faint, wistful, reminiscent way, some of those hatched early in the year rising almost to full song, as in the case of the meadow larks whose music rings through the meadows and makes the balmy afternoons seem like those of early May. The wild strawberry blossoms again; the violet and some of the other spring flowers. But the signs of the pa.s.sing of the summer are everywhere in evidence. Dense, white morning mists--the September mists--lie in the valleys and yield but slowly to the shafts of the rising sun. Flocks of feathered voyagers are shaping their course toward the south. Gold and crimson leaves grow more numerous along the lanes and in the woods. Antares, Altair and Vega, with the summer constellations, are pa.s.sing farther towards the west, while before bedtime Fomalhaut may be seen at the mouth of the Southern Fish in the southeast and the creamy white Capella is leading up Auriga in the northeast. Between them, just over the eastern rim of the world, appear the Pleiades, their "sweet influences" in keeping with the season. The summer is pa.s.sing, but not in sadness. Some of the greatest of its glories are reserved for these last days.

Now the cicada, forgetting to give his winding salute at sundown, has almost dropped out of the insect orchestra and the katydid, too, is heard less often. The rest of the screeching musicians vary the volume and the speed of their music in approximate ratio to the temperature.

In the warm evening they saw and rub away at presto time as if they were determined to get to the end of the selection before the curtain goes up for the moonlight scene; but they slacken to moderato when the nights grow cooler, slower, always slower, and fainter as the chill air creeps through the woods. When the north wind filters coldly through the trees their music thins and dims till it sounds pathetic as the tick of a tall clock in a lonely house at night. But it warms up again with the suns.h.i.+ne next day, keeping time and tune with the varying moods of the final days of the summer. When a dreamy, hazy day is followed by a mellow night and little patches of white moonlight lie dreaming beneath the trees, the crickets have a lullaby that comes in rhythmic beats, as if they watched the moonlight breathe and rocked the world to sleep.

Comforting and soothing as the touch of a loved hand on a fevered brow come the first cooling breezes of September after the fierce white heat of August. Sweeter than music is the sound of the wind, as it pa.s.ses through the woods, welcomed by millions of waving branches and dancing leaves. It brings the call of the quail, the scream of the jay, the bark of the squirrel, the crack of the hunter's gun, the first notes of the returning bluebirds, the clean, keen scent of the earth after rain, the courage and joy of life, motion, action. Seen from the top of a cliff the acres of foliage spread out in the creek valley beneath has a motion suggesting the waves of the sea, now flowing in green billows before the wind, now whipped into spray at the sh.o.r.e of the creek where the willows show the white sides of their leaves.

In the fields the far-flung banners of the corn take on ripening tints and begin to rustle drily in the breeze. Golden ears, wrapped in tobacco-brown silk, are pus.h.i.+ng from tanned and purplish husks.

Newly-plowed fields were made possible by the rains which started the gra.s.s growing in the stubble, changing the color from amber to emerald and wrought a miracle of verdure in the pastures which August had baked brown. Here and there the aftermath of red clover has developed a field of new blossoms,--a little lake of pink where suns.h.i.+ne plays with shadow and st.u.r.dy humble bees spend the days in ecstasy.

Summer puts on her last bright robes for the final floral review before she is borne by the birds down the valley to set up her court in the southland. Tall and soldierly, this last gay army of the flowers pa.s.ses in review before her. Blazing stars in pink and purple, tall and picturesque, with long rows of brilliant b.u.t.tons; regiments of asters in blue and white and purple; rattle-snake root with big and quaintly slashed leaves and hundreds of ta.s.sels in delicate shades of lilac, purple and white; swamp sunflowers in dazzling yellow, camped in millions along the creek bottom to make it more glorious than the historical pageant of the Field of the Cloth of Gold; plumy battalions of golden-rod, marshalled by the sun along every country lane; companies of tall, saw-leaved sunflowers with golden petals and darker disks, deployed along the fences and seen at their best in the twilight when they look like friendly faces with beaming eyes; as I write them so they march across the land and bow farewell to summer.

There is no floral spectacle in all the land so fine as this march of the composites over the Iowa prairies and fields in September. That is the judgment of those who have travelled and observed. In the swamps and along the ditches the blue lobelias flourish and the companies of blue gentians are bringing up the rear to end the floral review, begging the summer to wait until they pa.s.s by.

The little creek near which I live rises in a little swale between two rolling ridges of the pasture. When it leaves the pasture only a narrow box culvert is necessary to take it across the road, but before it reaches the river, twenty miles away, a double-spanned bridge is required to carry the road over it. In the pasture where it rises it fails to furnish enough water for the cattle, but half way along its course it sometimes washes out bridges in the springtime and farther down it often floods the lowlands. Slipping silently among the feet of the long gra.s.ses in the meadows it is scarcely seen at first; but by-and-by it attains the dignity of a stream, winding through meadows and bordering orchards and grain-fields. Now the willows begin to mark its course, then elms and oaks and walnuts with little thickets of panicled dogwood and wild plum, where the wild grape and the bittersweet display their fruit and the wild duck sometimes makes her nest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "PAUSING IN EACH DEEP POOL TO COOL AND REFRESH ITSELF"

(p. 109)]

Sometimes the creek almost sinks from sight in a bed of hot sand; it leaves only a narrow runlet of water idling along the foot of the high bank and pausing in each deep pool at the feet of the overhanging trees to cool and refresh itself for its onward journey. To these quiet pools goes the fisherman with his minnow seine and a stick. He knows that in the water among the roots of the old tree lie s.h.i.+ners and soap minnows, creek chubs and soft-sh.e.l.led "crawdads," the kind that make good bait for the black ba.s.s down in the river. He pokes around vigorously with his stick and sends them scurrying into his short seine. Hither also go the school-boy fishermen, with a willow pole and one gallus apiece, seeking to entice the patriarchal chub, the s.h.i.+ner and the stone-roller. From this point down, the young anglers are strung along the banks. Some try their luck for sunfish by the piles of loose rock and boulders, and some would tempt the bullheads from siestas in the mud.

Above the mill-dam the water backs up to form a peaceful pond which mirrors the trees and the rushes and cat-tails above it and sleeps beneath the thicket of willows where the redwings flock in the evenings. Broad leaves of the arrow-head and pickerel-weed give shelter to the coot, bobbing her head and neck as she makes nervous journeys through the water, sometimes scratching a long streak across its mirror-like surface as she uses both feet and wings in her haste to escape from the lone pedestrian. At sundown the sandhill crane may sometimes be surprised, standing like a silhouette by the sh.o.r.e of a gra.s.sy island. The awkward, wary bittern and the still more vigilant least bittern are familiar residents here.

Below the dam the creek winds at will through a peaceful valley, appropriating to itself an ever widening stretch from the farm lands.

Sometimes it hastens down a pebbly speedway, then slackens its pace and wanders off from its course until suddenly it seems to grow alarmed, whips around a bend and comes hurrying back. Sometimes its level flood-plain is a quarter mile wide, bounded on either side by steep timbered hills which stretch on and on down the valley until the sky receives them in a glory of blue haze. Sometimes the creek has cut its way straight down the face of a high rock cliff on one side, while on the other side is a level meadow with bushy-margined ponds. In places the water of the creek lies asleep in a dream of suns.h.i.+ne, but further on it ripples and gurgles over a bouldered bed, walled in by rocky slopes. These are kept moist by water trickling down from hidden springs among the roots of the shrubs and vines, ferns and mosses which soften the grim limestone into beauty of form and color.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "LIES ASLEEP IN A DREAM OF SUNs.h.i.+NE" (p. 111)]

In the cool days of September, when walking is a fine art, I love to accompany the lower portion of the old creek down to the river, following the little path made by farmer boys and fishermen. The two posts at the fence by the roadside, set just far enough apart for a man to squeeze himself through, are the gates to a land elysian. When I pa.s.s through them I am a thousand miles from the city with its toil and pain, its strife and sorrow. Worldly cares drop from my back as I stand upon the brink of this creek and watch the water spreading itself out over the white sand. Time and distance lose their force as factors in my life. I have found and entered the lost lands of Theocritus. Beneath this black ash, touched here and there with the purple wistfulness of the pa.s.sing year, Pan might have sat to play his pipes, the Cyclops might have pleaded with the graceful Galatea. This haze which hangs over the white oak grove, for aught I know, may be the incense from Druid fires. Along this valley Chaucer's Immortals may have gone a pilgriming, and in this bosky wood Robin Hood may have trained his band. The legend that from this cliff an Indian lover on his favorite pony once leaped to the creek a hundred feet below and a mighty funeral ceremony was held at the Indian mound a little farther down the valley seems to be attested both by the cliff and the mound.

Before I have gone very far I am unconcernedly conscious that I have not the slightest idea in which direction lies the nearest road home, nor how far I have come. But I know that somewhere down the lavender-veiled valley the creek and myself shall reach the river at last and all will be well. There are so many beautiful things to see on the way that I would not hasten if I could. Life and the future is much like that.

There is a pleasant constancy in the companions.h.i.+p of a creek. It is always at home when I call, always seems to wear a smile of welcome, always has something new to offer in the way of entertainment. And it is changeless through the years. If I were to return some September afternoon after an absence of half a lifetime I should expect to see a green heron fly up the creek when I reached this particular bend and to find the kingfisher in his accustomed place on the bare branch of this patriarchal oak. At the next bend, where the current has cut the bank straight down I should look for the rows of holes made by the little colony of bank swallows. I should steal around the sharp bend by the old willow to see a little sandpiper on the boulder in mid-stream as of old. On a certain high gra.s.sy knoll I should find the woodchuck sunning himself and he would run towards his same old hole beneath the ba.s.swood tree, just as he does today. On the swampy edge of the stream I should find the perennial blossoms of this same corymbed rattle-snake root and its interesting spear-shaped leaves reflected in the water. From the dry bank just at the end of this ledge of rock my nostrils would catch the resinous odor of the creamy-flowered kuhnia and a more subtle aroma from the pearly-blossomed everlasting. The horse in the pasture would again come up and rub his nose in my hand and the cattle beneath the trees would make the same picture as in the days of long ago. Civilization can hardly spoil the creek. The spring freshets obliterate attempts at road-making and the steep hills protect it from encroachment and preserve its independence and wild beauty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "CATTLE BENEATH THE TREES WOULD MAKE THE SAME PICTURE"

(p. 116)]