Roof and Meadow by Dallas Lore Sharp

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Now there are few people clothed in sane minds who do not like raw
oysters. Mark this, however: when you see a person wash raw oysters, keep
out of his way; he has lost either his wits or his morals. The only two
creatures I ever knew to wash raw oysters were Mux and an oyster-dealer in
Cambridge Street, Boston. I saw this dealer take up a two-gallon can that
had just arrived at his store, and dump the dark salty shell-fish into a
great colander, stick the end of a piece of rubber hose in among them,
turn the water on? and stir and soak them. How white they got! How fat
they got! How their ghastly corpses swelled!

Mux did not wash his to see them swell, but simply that he might take no
chances with dirt--or poison, for I used to think sometimes that he
thought I was trying to poison him. He was desperately fond of oysters.
But who could cast his pearls, or, to be scientifically and literally
correct, his mothers of pearls, before such a swine? Mux had just one
plateful of oysters while I was his keeper. They were nice plump fellows,
and when I saw the maniac soak one all stringy and tasteless I poured his
wash-water out. Was he to be balked that way! No, no. He took oyster
number two, flopped it into the empty tub, scoured it around on the muddy
bottom, looked it over as carefully as he had done stringy number one, and
swallowed sandy, muddy number two with just as much relish.

This was too much. I cuffed him and took away the tub. This I suppose was
wrong, for I understand you must never oppose crazy persons. Well, Mux
helped himself to oyster number three. There was no water, no tub. But
what were oysters for if not to be washed? And who was he but _Procyon
lotor_--_Procyon_ "the washer"? Can the leopard change his spots or the
racoon his habits? Can he? Shall he? I could almost hear him muttering
under his breath, "To be, or not to be: that is the question." Then he
darted a triumphantly malicious glance at me, retreated to the back of his
cage, thrust his oyster out of sight beneath the straw of his bed, and
washed it--washed the oyster in the straw, washed it into a fistful of
sticks and chaff, and gloated as he swallowed it.

RACOON CREEK

[Illustration]

RACOON CREEK

Into the wode to her the briddes sing.

I

Over the creek, and clearing it by a little, hung a snow-white, stirless
mist, its under surface even and parallel with the face of the water, its
upper surface peaked and billowed half-way to the tops of the
shore-skirting trees.

As I dipped along, my head was enveloped in the cloud; but bending over
the skiff, I could see far up the stream between a mist-ceiling and a
water-floor, as through a long, low room. How deep and dark seemed the
water! And the trees how remote, aerial, and floating! as if growing in
the skies, with no roots' fast hold of the earth. Filling the valley,
conforming to every bend and stretch of the creek, lay the breath of the
water, motionless and sheeted, a spirit stream, hovering over the sluggish
current a moment, before it should float upward and melt away. It was
cold, too, as a wraith might be, colder than the water, for the June sun
had not yet risen over the swamp.

At the bridge where the road crossed was a dam which backed the creek out
into an acre or more of pond. Not a particle of mud discolored the water;
but it was dark, and as it came tumbling, foaming over the moss-edged
gates it lighted up a rich amber color, the color of strong tea. In the
half chill of the dawn the old bridge lay veiled in smoking spray, in a
thin, rising vapor of spicy odors, clean, medicinal odors, as of the
brewing of many roots, the fragrance of shores of sedges, ferns, and
aromatic herbs steeped in the slow, soft tide. And faint across the creek,
the road, and the fields lay the pondy smell of spatter-docks.

I pushed out from the sandy cove and lay with a reach of the lusty docks
between me and either shore. It was early morning. The yellow, dew-laid
road down which I came still slumbered undisturbed; the village cows had
not been milked, and the pasture slope, rounding with a feminine grace of
curve and form, lay asleep, with its sedgy fingers trailing in the water;
even the locomotive in the little terminal round-house over the hill was
not awake and wheezing. But the creek people were stirring--except the
frogs. They were growing sleepy. The long June night they had improved,
soberly, philosophically; and now, seeing nothing worth while in the dawn
of this wonder day, they had begun to doze. But the birds were alive, full
of the crisp June morning, of its overflow of gladness, and were telling
their joy in chorus up and down both banks of the creek.

Hearkneth thise blisful briddes how they singe.

Do you mean out in Finsbury Moor, Father Chaucer? They were sweet along
the banks of the Walbrook, I know, for among them "maken melodye" were the
skylark, ethereal minstrel! and the nightingale. But, Father Chaucer, you
should have heard the wood-thrushes, the orchard-orioles--this whole
morning chorus singing along the creek! No one may know how blissful, how
wide, how thrilling the singing of birds can be unless he has listened
when the summer mists are rising over Racoon Creek.

There is no song-hour after sun rise to compare with this for spirit and
volume of sound. The difference between the singing in the dusk and in the
dawn is the difference between the slow, sweet melody of a dirge and the
triumphant, full-voiced peal of a wedding march. Even one who has always
lived in the country can scarcely believe his ears the first time he is
afield in June at the birds' awaking-hour.

Robins led the singing along the creek. They always do. In New Jersey,
Massachusetts, Michigan,--everywhere it is the same,--they out-number all
rivals three to one. It is necessary to listen closely in order to
distinguish the other voices. This particular morning, however, the
wood-thrushes were all arranged up the copsy hillside at my back, and so
reinforced each other that their part was not overborne by robin song. One
of the thrushes was perched upon a willow stub along the edge of the
water, so near that I could see every flirt of his wings, could almost
count the big spots in his sides. Softly, calmly, with the purest joy he
sang, pausing at the end of every few bars to preen and call. His song was
the soul of serenity, of all that is spiritual. Accompanied by the lower,
more continuous notes from among the trees, it rose, a clear, pure,
wonderful soprano, lifting the whole wide chorus nearer heaven.

Farther along the creek, on the border of the swamp, the red-shouldered
blackbirds were massed; chiming in everywhere sang the catbirds,
white-eyed vireos, yellow warblers, orchard-orioles, and Maryland
yellowthroats; and at short intervals, soaring for a moment high over the
other voices, sounded the thrilling, throbbing notes of the cardinal,
broken suddenly and drowned by the roll of the flicker, the wild, weird
cry of the great-crested flycatcher, or the rapid, hay-rake rattle of the
belted kingfisher.

All at once a narrow breeze cut a swath through the mist just across my
bows, turned, spread, caught the severed cloud in which I was drifting,
and whirled it up and away. The head of the pond and the upper creek were
still shrouded, while around me only breaths of the white flecked the
water and the spatter-docks. The breeze had not stirred a ripple; the
current here in the broad of the pond was imperceptible; and I lay
becalmed on the edge of the open channel, among the rank leaves and golden
knobs of the docks.

A crowd of chimney-swallows gathered over the pond for a morning bath.
Half a hundred of them were wheeling, looping, and cutting about me in a
perfect maze of orbits, as if so many little black shuttles had borrowed
wings and gone crazy with freedom. They had come to wash--a very proper
thing to do, for there are few birds or beasts that need it more. It was
highly fitting for sooty little Tom, seeing he had to turn into something,
to become a Water Baby. And if these smaller, winged sweeps of our
American chimneys are contemplating a metamorphosis, it ought to be toward
a similar life of soaking.

They must have been particularly sooty this morning. One plunge apiece, so
far from sufficing, seemed hardly a beginning. They kept diving in over
and over, continuing so long that finally I grew curious to know how many
dips they were taking, and so, in order to count his dives, I singled one
out, after most of the flock had done and gone off to hawk. How many he
had taken before I marked him, and how many more he took after I lost him
among the other birds, I cannot say; but, standing up in the skiff, I
followed him around and around until he made his nineteenth splash,--in
less than half as many minutes,--when I got so groggy that his twentieth
splash I came near taking with him.

The pond narrows toward the head, and just before it becomes a creek again
the channel turns abruptly through the docks in against the right shore,
where the current curls and dimples darkly under the drooping branches of
great red maple; then it horseshoes into the middle, coming down through
small bush-islands and tangled brush which deepen into an extensive swamp.

June seemed a little tardy here, but the elder, the rose, and the panicled
cornel were almost ready, the button-bushes were showing ivory, while the
arrow-wood, fully open, was glistening snowily everywhere, its tiny flower
crowns falling and floating in patches down-stream, its over-sweet breath
hanging heavy in the morning mist. My nose was in the air all the way for
magnolias and water-lilies, yet never a whiff from either shore, so
particular, so unaccountably notional are some of the high-caste flowers
with regard to their homes.

The skiff edged slowly past the first of the islands, a mere hummock about
a yard square, and was turning a sharp bend farther up, when I thought I
had a glimpse of yellowish wings, a mere guess of a bird shadow, dropping
among the dense maple saplings and elder of the islet.

Had I seen or simply imagined something? If I had seen wings, then they
were not those of the thrasher,--the first bird that came to mind,--for
they slipped, sank, dropped through the bushes, with just a hint of
dodging in their movement, not exactly as a thrasher would have moved.

Drifting noiselessly back, I searched the tangle and must have been
looking directly at the bird several seconds before cutting it out from
the stalks and branches. It was a least bittern, a female. She was
clinging to a perpendicular stem of elder, hand over hand, wren fashion,
her long neck thrust straight into the air, absolutely stiff and
statuesque.

We were less than a skiff's length apart, each trying to outpose and
outstare the other. I won. Human eyes are none the strongest, neither is
human patience, yet I have rarely seen a creature that could outwait a
man. The only steady, straightforward eye in the Jungle was
Mowgli's--because it was the only one with a steady mind behind it. As
soon as the bird let herself look me squarely in the eye, she knew she was
discovered, that her little trick of turning into a stub was seen through;
and immediately, ruffling her feathers, she lowered her head, poked out
her neck at me, and swaying from side to side like a caged bear, tried to
scare me, glaring and softly growling.

Off she flopped as I landed. The nest might be upon the ground or lodged
among the bushes; but the only ground space large enough was covered layer
over layer with pearly clam-shells, the kitchen-midden of some muskrat;
and the bushes were empty. I went to the other islets, searched bog and
tangle, and finally pulled away disappointed, giving the least bittern
credit for considerable mother-wit and woodcraft. How little wit she
really had appeared on my return down-creek that afternoon.

I had now entered the high, overhanging swamp, where the shaggy trees, the
looping vines, and the rank, pulpous undergrowth grew thick on both sides,
reaching far back, a wet, heavy wilderness without a path, except for the
silent feet of the mink and the otter, and the more silent feet of the
creek, here a narrow stream winding darkly down through the shadows.

Every little while along the rooty, hummocky banks of the creek I would
pass a muskrat's slide. Here was one at the butt of a tulip-poplar, its
platform wet and freshly trodden, its "dive" shooting sheer over a root
into the stream. Farther on stood a large tussock whose top was trampled
flat and covered with sedge-roots. I could not resist putting my nose down
for a sniff, so good is the smell of a fresh trail, so close are we to the
rest of the pack. In the thick of the swamp I stopped a moment to examine
the footprints of an otter at a shallow, shelving place along the bank,
where, opening through the skunk-cabbage and Indian turnip, and covered
almost ankle-deep with water, was the creature's runway.

I had moved leisurely along, yet not aimlessly. The whole June day was
mine to waste; but it would not be well wasted if nothing more purposeful
than wasting were in mind.

One does not often drift to a port. Going into the woods to see anything
is a very sure way of seeing little or nothing; and taking the path to
anywhere is certain to lead one nowhere in particular. Many interested,
nature-loving people fail to enjoy the out-of-doors simply because they
have no definite spot to reach, no flower, bird, or bug to find when they
enter the fields and woods. Going forth "to commune with nature" sounds
very fine, but it is much more difficult work than conversing with the
Sphinx. In order to draw near to nature I require a pole with a hook and
line on the end of it. While I watch the float and wait, if there is any
communion, it is nature who holds it with me through the medium of the
pole. I need to have an errand to do; some berries to pick, a patch of
potatoes to hoe (a very small patch); an engagement to keep, like
Thoreau, with a tree, if I hope to squander with profit even the laziest
summer day.

I was heading up-stream toward a deep sandy-sided pool that was bottomed,
or rather unbottomed, by the shadows of overhanging beeches. The pool was
alive with racoon-perch. A few mornings before this, a boy from a
neighboring farm had come to fish here and had found a fisher ahead of
him. He was just about to cast, when back under the limbs of the beeches
the water broke, and a mink rose to the surface with a fine perch twisting
in her jaws. Straight toward the boy she swam till within reach of his
rod, when she recognized the human in him, turned a back-dive somersault,
and vanished.

Would she be fishing again this morning? I hoped so. It was her hour--the
hour of the rising mist; visitors rarely found their way to the pool; and
I knew the appearance of the boy had given her no lasting alarm.

Floating around the bend, I pulled in among the shore bushes by a bit of
grape-vine, and sitting down upon it, made my boat fast. I had planned
the trip with the hope of seeing this mink; so I waited, quite hidden,
though having the pool in full view. An hour passed, but no mink appeared.
Another hour, and the sun was breaking upon the beeches, and the mist was
gone; yet no mink came to fish. And what mink would? Of course you must
have it in mind to see a mink fish if you wish to see anything; but the
day you really catch the mink fishing will likely be the day you went out
to watch for muskrats.

So an hour's waiting is rarely fruitless. The mink did not come, but
another and quite as expert a fisher did. All the way up the creek I had
been hearing the throaty _ghouw-bhouw_ of a great blue heron off in the
swamp. It was he that came for perch.

The flapping of the great blue heron is a sight good for the soul--an
unheard-of motion these days, so moderate, unhurried, and time-contemning!
The wing-beats of this one, as he came dangling down upon the meadow
opposite me, have often given me pause since. If I could have the wings of
the great blue heron and flap to my fishing now and again!

On alighting, however, he was instantly all nerve and tension. With the
utmost caution he came over the high sedges on his stilt-like legs to the
brink of the creek and posed. I doubt if a frog or a minnow could have
told he was a thing of life. Stiff as a stub, every muscle taut, all
alert, he stood, till--flash! and the long pointed bill pinned a perch, a
foot and a half beneath the water. He had quite made out a breakfast,
when, stepping upon a tall tussock, he stood face to face with me--a human
spectator! It was only for a moment that I could keep motionless enough to
puzzle him. Some muscle must have twitched, for he understood and leaped
into the air with a croak of mortal fright.

II

The creek was roped off by the sagging fox grape-vines, and barred, from
this point on, by the alders, so that I gave up all attempt at farther
ascent. I had already given up the mink; yet I waited under the beeches.

It was blazing overhead, growing hotter and closer all the time, with
hardly breeze enough to disturb the sleep of the leaf shadows on the
sleepy stream. A rusty, red-bellied water-snake, in a mat of briers near
by, relaxed and straightened slowly out,--and softly, that I might not be
attracted,--stretching himself to the warmth. I could have broken his back
with my paddle, and perhaps, by so doing, saved the nestlings of a pair of
Maryland yellowthroats fidgeting about near him. He had eaten many a young
bird of these bushes, I was sure--yet only circumstantially sure. Catching
him in the act of robbing a nest would have been different; I should have
felt justified then in despatching him. But to strike him asleep in the
sun simply because he was a snake would have robbed the spot of part of
its life and spirit and robbed me of serenity for the rest of the day. I
should not have been, able to enjoy the quiet again until I had said my
prayers and slept.

And as between the hawks and other wild birds, we need not interfere.
While the water-snake was spreading himself, a small hawk, a
sharp-shinned, I think, came beating over the meadow and was met by a
vigilance committee of red-shouldered blackbirds. He did not stop to eat
any of them, but darted up, and they after him. On up he went, round and
round in a rapid, mounting spiral, till only one of the daring redwings
followed. I watched. Up they went, higher than I had ever seen a blackbird
venture before. And against such unequal odds! But the hawk was scared and
had not stopped to look back. He circled; the blackbird cut across inside
and caught him on almost every round. And still higher in pure bravado the
redwing forced him. I began to tremble for the plucky bird, when I saw him
turn, half fold his shining wings, and shoot straight down--a meteor of
jet with fire flying from its opposite sides--down, down, while I held my
breath. Suddenly the wings flashed, and he was scaling a steep incline;
another flash, a turn, and he was upon a slower plane--had thrown himself
against the air and settled upon the swaying top of a brown cattail.

A quiet had been creeping over the swamp and meadow. The dry rasp of a
dragon-fly's wings was loud in the grass. The stream beneath the beeches
darkened and grew moody as the light neared its noon intensity; the
beech-leaves hung limp and silent; a catbird settled near me with dropped
tail and head drawn in between her shoulders, as mute as the leaves; the
Maryland yellowthroat broke into a sharp gallop of song at intervals,--he
would have to clatter a little on doomsday, if that day fell in June,--but
the intervals were far apart. The meadow shimmered. No part of the horizon
was in sight--only the sky overhanging the little open of grass, and this
was cloudless, though far from blue.

Perhaps there was not a real sign of uneasiness anywhere except in my
boat; yet I felt something ominous in this silent, stifled noon. After
all, I ought to have scotched the rusty, red-bellied water-snake leering
at me now. The croak of the great blue heron sounded again; then far away,
mysterious and spirit-like, floated a soft _qua, qua, qua_--the cry of the
least bittern out of the heart of the swamp.

I loosed the grape-vine, put in my paddle, and turned down-stream, with an
urgent desire to get out of the swamp, out where I could see about me. I
made no haste, lest the stream, the swamp, the something that made me
uneasy, should know. Not that I am superstitious, though I should have
been had I lived when the land was all swamp and wood and prairie; and I
should be now were I a sailor. My boat slipped swiftly along under the
thick-shadowing trees, and rounding a sharp bend, brought me to the open
pond, to the sky, and to a sight that explained my disquietude. The west,
half-way to the zenith, was green--the black-and-blue green of bruised
flesh. Out of it shot a fork of lightning, and behind it rumbled muffled
thunder.

There was no time to descend the pond. I could already hear the wind
across the silence and suspense. It was one of the supreme moments of the
summer. The very trees seemed breathless and awe-struck. Pushing quickly
to the wooded shore, I drew out the boat, turned it over, and crawled
under it just as the leaves stirred with the first cool, wet breath.

There was an instant's lull, a tremor through the ground; then the rending
and crunching of the wind monster in the oaks, the shriek of the forest
victim--and the wind was gone. The rain followed with fearful violence,
the lightning sizzled and cracked among the trees, and the thunder burst
just above the boat--all holding on to finish the wind's work.

It was soon over. The leaves were dripping when I crept out of my shell;
the afternoon sun was blinking through a million gleaming tears, and the
storm was rumbling far away, behind the swamp. A robin lighted upon a
branch over me, and set off its load of drops, which rattled down on my
boat's bottom like a charge of shot. I glided into the stream. Down the
pond where I had seen the sullen clouds was now an indescribable freshness
and glory of shining hills and shining sky. The air had been washed and
was still hanging across the heavens undried. The maple-leaves showed
silver; the flock of chimney-swifts had returned, and among them,
twinkling white and blue and brown, were tree-swallows and barn-swallows
squeaking in their flight like new harness; a pair of night-hawks played
back and forth across the water, too, awakened, probably, by the thunder,
or else mistaken in the green darkness of the storm, thinking it the
twilight; and the creek up and down as far as I could hear was ringing
with bird-calls.

There had been a perceptible rise and quickening of the current. It was
slightly roiled and carried a floatage of broken twigs, torn leaves, with
here and there a golden-green tulip-petal, like the broken wings of
butterflies.

I was in no hurry now, in no disquietude. The swamp and the storm were at
my back. Before me lay the pond, the pastures, and the roofs of a human
village--all bathed in the splendor of the year's divinest hour. It had
not been a perfect day, but these closing hours were perfect, so perfect
that they redeemed the whole, and not that day only: they were perfect
enough to have redeemed the whole of creation travailing till then in
pain.

Because I turned from all this sunset glory to find out what little bird
was making the very big fuss near by, and because, parting the foliage of
an arrow-wood bush, I looked with exquisite pleasure into the nest of a
white-eyed vireo, does it mean that I am still unborn as to soul? For some
reason it was a relief to look away from that west of vast and burning
color to the delicately dotted eggs in the tiny cradle--the same relief
felt in descending from a mountain-top to the valley; in turning from the
sweep of the sea to watch beach-fleas hopping over the sand; in giving
over the wisdom of men for the gabble of my little boys.

How the vireo scolded! and her mate! He half sang his threat and defiance.
"Come, get out of this! Come; do you hear?" he cried over and over, as I
peeked into the nest. It was a thick-walled, exquisite bit of a basket,
rimmed round with green, growing moss, worked over with shredded bark and
fragments of yellow wood from a punky stump across the stream, and
suspended by spider-webs upon two parallel twigs about three feet above
the water. It was not consciously worked out by the birds, of course, but
the patch of yellow-wood fragments on the side of the nest exactly matched
the size and color of the fading cymes of arrow-wood blossoms all over the
bush, so that I mistook the little domicile utterly on first parting the
leaves. A crow or a snake would never have discovered it from that side.

Paddling down, I was soon out of earshot of the scolding vireos, but the
little cock's vigorous, ringing song followed me to the head of the pond.
Flying heavily over from the meadows with folded neck and dangling legs
came a little green heron--the "poke." I spun round behind a big clump of
elder to watch him; but he saw me, veered, gulped aloud, and pulled off
with a rapid stroke up the creek.

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