Literary Pilgrimages of a NaturalistPackard, Winthrop
History
Literary Pilgrimages of a Naturalist
Packard, Winthrop
Natural history -- Outdoor books; New England -- Description and travel
Here and there on these is an apple tree that has strolled down
from suburban orchards as if to view the beauty of the river, and
liked the place so well that it stayed, glad to escape the humdrum
of ordered life, sending out wild shoots at will and producing
fruit that has a half-wild vigor of flavor that puts the orchard
apples to shame for their insipidity. They riot in lawless growth,
these runaway trees, and welcome their boon companions, crows and
jays, spreading an autumnal feast for their delectation and
holding the fragments far into the winter that none may go away
from a visit hungry. The pasture cedars, that love the river air,
but may not live on the marsh, have built seaside colonies on
these hillocks and spread a feast of blue cedar berries for all
passing flocks. Here the robins, now gathering for their winter
flight south, flock and feed, holding their ground at the approach
of man, crying “Tut, tut!” to his intrusion. With them are the
cedar wax-wings, also very fond of the cedar berries, the soft
gray-browns of the bird’s plumage blending most pleasantly with
the olive greens of the cedars. There is a dainty, sleek beauty
about this bird that harmonizes wonderfully well with the cedar
trees which it frequents, and the little red sealing-wax tips
on its wing feathers make one think that the flock is bringing
Christmas decorations of holly berries to each tree to deck it for
the holiday season. In wild apple trees the robins seem less than
half-wild and in the cedars the wax-wings more than half-tame. The
two give a friendly spirit to the spot and at once make you feel
that you are welcome. To sit quietly in such a place for five
minutes is to make it your own home, and you go away with regret
and a certain homesickness. Huckleberry bushes, maples, beach plums
and birches stand admiringly round, and wild grasses and pasture
flowers crowd in and add to the cosiness.
Of these wild flowers the seaside goldenrod is most profuse.
Pasture-born like the cedars, it too loves the sea and crowds to
its very edge like the people at Revere and Nantasket, so close
indeed that at high tides the smelt and young herring, swimming in
silver shoals, nibble at the bare toes the plants dabble in the
water. You may know this even if you do not see the nibblers, for
the plants quiver and shake with suppressed laughter at being thus
tickled. The seaside goldenrod is prettier now in the cool winds
and under the pale October sun’s slant rays than it was in the
heyday of August, when it burgeoned with yellow racemes of rather
coarse bloom. Its head-gear is in the full autumn style, and it
bows beneath the weight of ostrich-plume pappus and softens all the
foreground of the view with gray fluff.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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