No More Learning

No domain of nature is quite closed to man at all times, and now we
draw near to the empire of the fishes. Our feet glide swiftly over
unfathomed depths, where in summer our line tempted the pout and
perch, and where the stately pickerel lurked in the long corridors
formed by the bulrushes. The deep, impenetrable marsh, where the heron
waded and bittern squatted, is made pervious to our swift shoes, as if
a thousand railroads had been made into it. With one impulse we are
carried to the cabin of the muskrat, that earliest settler, and see
him dart away under the transparent ice, like a furred fish, to his
hole in the bank; and we glide rapidly over meadows where lately "the
mower whet his scythe," through beds of frozen cranberries mixed with
meadow-grass. We skate near to where the blackbird, the pewee, and the
kingbird hung their nests over the water, and the hornets builded from
the maple in the swamp. How many gay warblers, following the sun, have
radiated from this nest of silver birch and thistle-down! On the
swamp's outer edge was hung the supermarine village, where no foot
penetrated. In this hollow tree the wood duck reared her brood, and
slid away each day to forage in yonder fen.

In winter, nature is a cabinet of curiosities, full of dried
specimens, in their natural order and position. The meadows and
forests are a _hortus siccus_. The leaves and grasses stand perfectly
pressed by the air without screw or gum, and the birds' nests are not
hung on an artificial twig, but where they builded them. We go about
dry-shod to inspect the summer's work in the rank swamp, and see what
a growth have got the alders, the willows, and the maples; testifying
to how many warm suns, and fertilizing dews and showers. See what
strides their boughs took in the luxuriant summer,--and anon these
dormant buds will carry them onward and upward another span into the
heavens.

Occasionally we wade through fields of snow, under whose depths the
river is lost for many rods, to appear again to the right or left,
where we least expected; still holding on its way underneath, with a
faint, stertorous, rumbling sound, as if, like the bear and marmot,
it too had hibernated, and we had followed its faint summer trail to
where it earthed itself in snow and ice. At first we should have
thought that rivers would be empty and dry in midwinter, or else
frozen solid till the spring thawed them; but their volume is not
diminished even, for only a superficial cold bridges their surfaces.
The thousand springs which feed the lakes and streams are flowing
still. The issues of a few surface springs only are closed, and they
go to swell the deep reservoirs. Nature's wells are below the frost.
The summer brooks are not filled with snow-water, nor does the mower
quench his thirst with that alone. The streams are swollen when the
snow melts in the spring, because nature's work has been delayed, the
water being turned into ice and snow, whose particles are less smooth
and round, and do not find their level so soon.

Far over the ice, between the hemlock woods and snow-clad hills,
stands the pickerel-fisher, his lines set in some retired cove, like a
Finlander, with his arms thrust into the pouches of his dreadnaught;
with dull, snowy, fishy thoughts, himself a finless fish, separated a
few inches from his race; dumb, erect, and made to be enveloped in
clouds and snows, like the pines on shore. In these wild scenes, men
stand about in the scenery, or move deliberately and heavily, having
sacrificed the sprightliness and vivacity of towns to the dumb
sobriety of nature. He does not make the scenery less wild, more than
the jays and muskrats, but stands there as a part of it, as the
natives are represented in the voyages of early navigators, at Nootka
Sound, and on the Northwest coast, with their furs about them, before
they were tempted to loquacity by a scrap of iron. He belongs to the
natural family of man, and is planted deeper in nature and has more
root than the inhabitants of towns. Go to him, ask what luck, and you
will learn that he too is a worshiper of the unseen. Hear with what
sincere deference and waving gesture in his tone he speaks of the lake
pickerel, which he has never seen, his primitive and ideal race of
pickerel. He is connected with the shore still, as by a fish-line, and
yet remembers the season when he took fish through the ice on the
pond, while the peas were up in his garden at home.

But now, while we have loitered, the clouds have gathered again, and a
few straggling snowflakes are beginning to descend. Faster and faster
they fall, shutting out the distant objects from sight. The snow falls
on every wood and field, and no crevice is forgotten; by the river and
the pond, on the hill and in the valley. Quadrupeds are confined to
their coverts and the birds sit upon their perches this peaceful hour.