Some Winter Days in Iowa | Page 8

sighs for a sight of the plains, for the feeling of room and liberty
that belongs to the wider sky-reach. On the prairies the love of truth
and liberty grows as easily as the morning light.
The sun rose clear and golden and now is almost white, so clear is the
atmosphere. The snow crystals break the white light into all the
prismatic colors,--rubies and garnets, emeralds and sapphires, topaz and
amethyst, all sparkle in the brilliant light. The shadow of the solitary
elm's trunk, here on the prairie, has very clear cut edges and is tinted
with blue. The finely reticulated shadows of the graceful twigs are
sharply shadowed on the snow beneath,--a winter picture worthy of a
master hand.
In the enjoyment of such beauty as this is the only real wealth. Money
cannot buy it. Hirelings cannot take it from the lowly and give it to the
proud. No trust can corner it. No canvas can screen it from the eye of
him who has not silver to give the cathedral care-taker. February, like
June, may be had by the poorest comer. But it is like Ruskin's Faubourg
St. Germain. Before you may enjoy it you shall be worthy of it.
"Such beauty, varying in the light, Of living nature, cannot be
portrayed By words, nor by the pencil's silent skill; But is the property
of him alone Who hath beheld it, noted it with care, And in his mind

recorded it with love."
Leave the prairie and enter the forest which crowns the neighboring
ridge. Here are more of those blue shadows on the snow. The delicate
blue sky is faintly reflected on the snow in the full sunlight, but it is
more obvious in the shadow; in some places its hue is almost indigo.
This sky reflection is one of the most beautiful of Nature's winter
exhibitions. Towards sundown the snow-capped ridges will sometimes
be tinged with pink. And in a red sunset the winter trees will sometimes
throw shadows of green, the complementary color, on the snow.
* * * * *
You are early in the woods. Nature's children are not yet astir. The
silence is profound; but it is a fruitful, uplifting silence. There are no
sounds to strike the most delicate strings in that wondrous harp of your
inner ear. But if your spiritual ear is attentive you should catch those
forest voices that fall softer than silence and speak of peace and purity,
truth and beauty.
Soon the silence is broken. Curiously, the first sound you hear comes
from advanced civilization, the rumble of a train fifteen miles away. On
a still morning like this one can hardly stand five full minutes on any
spot in the whole state of Iowa without hearing the sound of a train.
There are no more trackless prairies, no more terrors of blizzards.
Pioneer days have passed away. The railroads have brought security,
comfort, prosperity, intelligence, and the best of the world's work,
physical and mental, fresh at the door every morning.
Whirr! There goes a ruffed grouse from the snow, scarce a rod ahead.
In a moment, up goes another. Too bad to rout them from their bed
under the roots of a fallen tree. Farther on a rabbit scurries from another
log. There is his "form" fresh in the snow.
The river, away down below, begins to boom and crack. The ice is like
the tight head of a big bass drum, but the drummer is inside and the
sound comes muffled. The frost is the peg which tightens all the strings
of earth and makes them vibrant. The tinkle of sleigh bells on the

wagon road fully a mile away comes with peculiar clearness.
When the sun is more than half way from the horizon to the meridian,
Nature begins to wake up. A chickadee emerges from his hole in the
decaying trunk of a red oak and cheeps softly as he flies to the branch
of a slippery elm. His merry "chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee" brings others of
his race, and away they all go down to the red birches on the river
bottom. The metallic quanks of a pair of nuthatches call attention to the
upper branches of a big white oak. A chickadee and one of the
nuthatches see a tempting morsel at the same time. A spiteful peck
from nuthatch leaves him master of the morsel and the field. But the
chickadee does not care. He flies down and spies a stalk of golden-rod
above the snow on which there is a round object looking like a small
onion. Chickadee doesn't know that this is the spherical gall of the
trypeta solidaginis, but he does know that it contains a fat white grub.
He knows, too, that there is a beveled passage