In the Catskills | Page 3

what a severe yet master artist old Winter is. Ah, a severe artist!
How stern the woods look, dark and cold and as rigid against the
horizon as iron!
All life and action upon the snow have an added emphasis and
significance. Every expression is underscored. Summer has few finer
pictures than this winter one of the farmer foddering his cattle from a
stack upon the clean snow,--the movement, the sharply defined figures,
the great green flakes of hay, the long file of patient cows, the advance
just arriving and pressing eagerly for the choicest morsels, and the
bounty and providence it suggests. Or the chopper in the woods,--the
prostrate tree, the white new chips scattered about, his easy triumph
over the cold, his coat hanging to a limb, and the clear, sharp ring of his
axe. The woods are rigid and tense, keyed up by the frost, and resound
like a stringed instrument. Or the road-breakers, sallying forth with
oxen and sleds in the still, white world, the day after the storm, to
restore the lost track and demolish the beleaguering drifts.
All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I hear
more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a
sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in
winter always the same low, sullen growl.
A severe artist! No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble
and the chisel. When the nights are calm and the moon full, I go out to
gaze upon the wonderful purity of the moonlight and the snow. The air
is full of latent fire, and the cold warms me--after a different fashion
from that of the kitchen stove. The world lies about me in a "trance of
snow." The clouds are pearly and iridescent, and seem the farthest
possible remove from the condition of a storm,--the ghosts of clouds,
the indwelling beauty freed from all dross. I see the hills, bulging with

great drifts, lift themselves up cold and white against the sky, the black
lines of fences here and there obliterated by the depth of the snow.
Presently a fox barks away up next the mountain, and I imagine I can
almost see him sitting there, in his furs, upon the illuminated surface,
and looking down in my direction. As I listen, one answers him from
behind the woods in the valley. What a wild winter sound, wild and
weird, up among the ghostly hills! Since the wolf has ceased to howl
upon these mountains, and the panther to scream, there is nothing to be
compared with it. So wild! I get up in the middle of the night to hear it.
It is refreshing to the ear, and one delights to know that such wild
creatures are among us. At this season Nature makes the most of every
throb of life that can withstand her severity. How heartily she indorses
this fox! In what bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the
snow! The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as effectually as it
obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that has happened. I cross
the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor, the fact is
chronicled.
The red fox is the only species that abounds in my locality; the little
gray fox seems to prefer a more rocky and precipitous country, and a
less rigorous climate; the cross fox is occasionally seen, and there are
traditions of the silver gray among the oldest hunters. But the red fox is
the sportsman's prize, and the only fur-bearer worthy of note in these
mountains.[1] I go out in the morning, after a fresh fall of snow, and
see at all points where he has crossed the road. Here he has leisurely
passed within rifle-range of the house, evidently reconnoitring the
premises with an eye to the hen-roost. That clear, sharp track,--there is
no mistaking it for the clumsy footprint of a little dog. All his wildness
and agility are photographed in it. Here he has taken fright, or suddenly
recollected an engagement, and in long, graceful leaps, barely touching
the fence, has gone careering up the hill as fleet as the wind.
[Footnote 1: A spur of the Catskills.]
The wild, buoyant creature, how beautiful he is! I had often seen his
dead carcass, and at a distance had witnessed the hounds drive him
across the upper fields; but the thrill and excitement of meeting him in

his wild freedom in the woods were unknown to me till, one cold
winter day, drawn thither by the baying of a hound, I stood near the
summit of the mountain, waiting a renewal of the sound, that I might