Some Winter Days in Iowa | Page 3

with evergreen ferns in arresting the attention of the rambler. In one sheltered spot a clump of catnip was found, fresh, green, and aromatic, as if it were July instead of January.
Sunday, the sixth, was a day of rare beauty and enticement. Well might the recording angel forgive the nature lover who forgot the promises made for him by his sponsors that he should "hear sermons," and who fared forth into the woods instead, first reciting "The groves were God's first temples," and then softly singing, "When God invites, how blest the day!"
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They err who think the winter woods void of life and color. Pause for a moment on the broad open flood-plain of the river, the winter fields and meadows stretching away in gentle slopes on either side. There are but few trees, but they have had room for full development and are noble specimens. All is gaiety. A blue-jay screams from a broad-topped white ash which is so full of winged seeds that it looks like a mass of foliage. The sable-robed king of the winter woods, the American crow, in the full vigor of his three-score years, maybe, (he lives to be a hundred) caws lustily from the bare white branches of a big sycamore, that queer anomaly of the forest which disrobes itself for the winter. The merry chickadees divide their time between the rustling, ragged bark of the red birches and the withered heads of heath-aster and blue vervain below. In the one they get the meat portion of their midday meal, and in the other the cereal foods. No wonder they are sleek and joyous.
A few steps farther and we leave this broad alluvial bottom to enter the ca?on through which the river, ages ago, began to cut its course. These ridges of limestone, loess and drift rise a hundred feet or more above the level of the plain from which the river suddenly turns aside. They are thickly covered with timber. There is no angel with a flaming sword to keep you from passing into this winter paradise! The river bank is lined with pussy willows; they gleam in the sunshine like copper. Farther back there are different varieties of dogwood, some with delicate green twigs and some a cherry red. The wild rose and the raspberry vines add their glossy purplish and cherry red stems to the color combination, and a contrast is afforded by the silvery gray bark of stray aspens. A still softer and more beautiful shade of silver gray is seen in the big hornet's nest of last year which still hangs suspended from a low sugar maple. On all of these the sunlight plays and makes a wondrous color symphony. "Truly the light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." To be sure, this colorful arrangement of the stems and twigs is not brilliant, like the flaming vermilion blossoms of the Lobelia cardinalis in August, the orange yellow of the rudbeckias in September, or the wondrous blue of the fringed gentian in early October. It is more like the delicate tints and shadings of an arts and crafts exhibition, stained leather, hammered copper and brass, art canvas, and ancient illuminated initials in monks' missals. The tempered winter sunlight is further softened by the trees; as it illuminates the soft red rags of the happy old birch it seems sublimated, almost sanctified and spiritual, like that which filters through rich windows in cathedrals, and makes a real halo around the heads of sweet-faced saints.
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There are strange sounds for January. All the winter birds are doing their share in the chorus and orchestra; crows, jays, woodpeckers, nut-hatches, juncos, tree-sparrows. But suddenly a woodpecker begins a new sound,--his vernal drumming! Not the mere tap, tap, tap, in quest of insects, but the love-call drumming of the nidification season, nearly three months ahead of time.
Swollen by recent rains, the river is two feet higher than usual. There is a sheet of ice on either shore, but the water swiftly flows down the narrow channel in the middle with a sound halfway between a gurgle and a roar, mingled anon with the sound of grinding cakes of ice. Suddenly away up at the bend of the river there is a sharp crack, like the discharge of a volley of musketry. Swiftly it comes down the ice, passes your feet with a distinct tremor, and your eyes follow the sound down the river until the two walls of the ca?on meet in the perspective. In a small way you know how it would feel to hear the rumble of an approaching seismic shock. Only there was no terror in this. It was the laughter of the sunbeam fairies