Roof and Meadow | Page 4

the
snow-white bodies of the herring-gulls toss in the wind above the roofs
like patches of foam. I hear the sea--the wind, the surf, the wild, fierce
tumult of the shore--whenever the white gulls sail screaming into my
winter sky.
I have never lived under a wider reach of sky than that above my roof.
It offers a clear, straight, six-minute course to the swiftest wedge of
wild geese. Spring and autumn the geese and ducks go over, and their
passage is the most thrilling event in all my bird calendar.
It is because the ducks fly high and silent that I see them so rarely.
They are always a surprise. You look, and there against the dull sky
they move, strange dark forms that set your blood leaping. But I never
see a string of them winging over that I do not think of a huge
thousand-legger crawling the clouds.
My glimpses of the geese are largely chance, too. Several times,
through the open window by my table, I have heard the faint, far-off
honking, and have hurried to the roof in time to watch the travelers
disappear. One spring day I was upon the roof when a large belated
flock came over, headed north. It was the 20th of April, and the
morning had broken very warm. I could see that the geese were hot and
tired. They were barely clearing the church spires. On they came, their
wedge wide and straggling, until almost over me, when something
happened. The gander in the lead faltered and swerved, the wedge lines
wavered, the flock rushed together in confusion, wheeled, dropped,
then broke apart, and honking wildly, turned back toward the bay.
It was instant and complete demoralization. A stronger gander, I think,
could have led the wedge unbroken over the city to some neighboring
pond, where the weakest of the stragglers, however, must have fallen
from sheer exhaustion.
Scaling lower and lower across the roofs, the flock had reached the
center of the city and had driven suddenly into the roar and confusion

of the streets. Weary from the heat, they were dismayed at the noise,
their leader faltered, and, at a stroke, the great flying wedge went to
pieces.
There is nothing in the life of birds quite so stirring to the imagination
as their migration: the sight of gathering swallows, the sudden
appearance of strange warblers, the call of passing plovers--all are
suggestive of instincts, movements, and highways that are unseen,
unaccountable, and full of mystery. Little wonder that the most thrilling
poem ever written to a bird begins:
Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps
of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary
way?
The question, the mystery in that "certain flight" I never felt so vividly
as from my roof. Here I have often heard the reed-birds and the
water-fowl passing. Sometimes I have heard them going over in the
dark. One night I remember particularly, the sky and the air were so
clear and the geese so high in the blue.
Over the fields and wide silent marshes such passing is strange enough.
But here I stood above a sleeping city of men, and far above me, so far
that I could only hear them, holding their northward way through the
starlit sky, they passed--whither? and how guided? Was the shining
dome of the State House a beacon? Did they mark the light at
Marblehead?

THE HUNTING OF THE WOODCHUCK

[Illustration]
THE HUNTING OF THE WOODCHUCK
... the chylde may Rue that ys vn-born, it wos the mor pitte.

There was murder in my heart. The woodchuck knew it. He never had
had a thought before, but he had one now. It came hard and heavily, yet
it arrived in time; and it was not a slow thought for a woodchuck,
either--just a trifle better, indeed, than my own.
This was the first time I had caught the woodchuck away from his hole.
He had left his old burrow in the huckleberry hillside, and dug a new
hole under one of my young peach-trees. I had made no objection to his
huckleberry hole. He used to come down the hillside and waddle into
the orchard in broad day, free to do and go as he pleased; but not since
he began to dig under the peach-tree.
I discovered this new hole when it was only a foot deep, and promptly
filled it with stones. The next morning the stones were out and the
cavity two feet deeper. I filled it up again, driving a large squarish piece
of rock into the mouth, tight, certainly stopping all further work, as I
thought.
There are woodchucks that you can discourage and there are those that
you can't.