Some Winter Days in Iowa | Page 5

you neither distinctly hear nor clearly see, yet you are aware, in a less marked degree than was the mouse, that an owl was near. You feel certain that the downy woodpecker is asleep in that neat little round hole on the southwest side of a tree trunk, just a little higher than you can reach. In the early afternoon you saw a red squirrel go gaily up a tall red oak and climb into his nest of leaves. You fancy he is snugly coiled there now. This recent hill of fresh dirt--strange sight in January--was surely made by a mole, and you know that they are all somewhere beneath your feet: moles, pocket gophers, and the pretty striped gopher which used to sit up on his hind legs, fold his front paws, and look at you in the summer time, then give a low whistle and duck; meadow mice in their cozy tunnels through which the water will be pouring when the spring freshets come; the woodchuck in his long, long sleep, and the chipmunk with his winter store of food. And so watching, listening, and musing you come at length to the western edge of the woodland and look across the prairie, far as the eye can reach, to where the red ball of the sun hangs scarce a yard above the horizon. You look upon a scene which is peculiar to this part of Iowa alone. It is not found in any other state or nation on earth. "These are the gardens of the desert, for which the speech of England has no name--the Prairies."
"Lo they stretch In airy undulations, far away, As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed, And motionless, forever."
The "rounded billows fixed" are the paha ridges which the glaciers made. They are not high enough to obstruct the view, nor to mar its ocean-like effect. In the middle distance you may see a farm windmill from sail to platform, but away across the snow-plain sea you catch only the uppermost part of the white sails. The rest is concealed from view by the illusory rise of the foreground toward the horizon--for this twenty-mile stretch of prairie has an illusory curve similar to that seen from all ocean shores. But now the sun has disappeared and the windmills, houses, groves, and fences which looked like black etchings against the flame-colored sky slowly vanish, first far away toward the bluffs on the yon shore of the prairie sea, then nearer, nearer, comes the gloom until the fence across the first field is scarcely discernible. The bright vermilion fades at length to misty gray and lights appear in the windows of the farm homes.
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This sunset and twilight scene, peculiar to Iowa, is succeeded by the pageant of the stars. These are not peculiar, in neighboring latitudes, to any clime or time. They are the same stars which sang together when the foundations of the earth were fastened; the same calm stars upon which Adam gazed in remorse, the night he was driven from the garden of Eden. The Chinese, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans counted the hours of the night by the revolutions of the Greater and the Lesser Bear around Polaris, and guided their crafts and caravans by that sure star's light:
"And therefore bards of old, Sages and hermits of the solemn wood, Did in thy beams behold That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray The voyager of time should shape his needful way."
These
"Constellations of the early night That sparkled brighter as the twilight died And made the darkness glorious"
were mysteries to Ptolemy and to Plato, as well as to Job. All ages of mankind must have watched and wondered, pondering over the unsolved problems. When the First Great Cause projected all these whirling fire-mists into illimitable space with all the laws of physics, chemistry, evolution in perfect working order, did he choose this earth as humanity's only home? Is this the only planet with a plan of salvation? Is this mere speck among all the myriads of worlds in the solar system, and the other systems, the only creation of His hand which has known a Garden of Eden, a Bethlehem, and a Calvary? When the sun has lost his heat and the cold crystals of the earth have fought their last fight with cellular structures, and won; when all the fairy forms of field and forest are only fossils in the grim, gray rocks; when the music of bee and bird and breeze shall have waned into everlasting silence; when "all the pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre;" when man with all his achievements and triumphs, his love and laughter, his songs and