No More Learning

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.
There is not so much sound as in fair weather, but silently and
gradually every slope, and the gray walls and fences, and the polished
ice, and the sere leaves, which were not buried before, are concealed,
and the tracks of men and beasts are lost. With so little effort does
nature reassert her rule and blot out the traces of men. Hear how
Homer has described the same: "The snowflakes fall thick and fast on a
winter's day. The winds are lulled, and the snow falls incessant,
covering the tops of the mountains, and the hills, and the plains
where the lotus-tree grows, and the cultivated fields, and they are
falling by the inlets and shores of the foaming sea, but are silently
dissolved by the waves. " The snow levels all things, and infolds them
deeper in the bosom of nature, as, in the slow summer, vegetation
creeps up to the entablature of the temple, and the turrets of the
castle, and helps her to prevail over art.

The surly night-wind rustles through the wood, and warns us to retrace
our steps, while the sun goes down behind the thickening storm, and
birds seek their roosts, and cattle their stalls.

"Drooping the lab'rer ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and _now_ demands
The fruit of all his toil. "

Though winter is represented in the almanac as an old man, facing the
wind and sleet, and drawing his cloak about him, we rather think of
him as a merry woodchopper, and warm-blooded youth, as blithe as
summer.