XLIV

SO COMES to an end as pleasant an October as any of us can remember, an October so mild and warm that it might have been a second and more tranquil summer. Because there have been few heavy rains it has been a fine season for field work and harvesting, and on all the farms the autumn ploughing has been unhurriedly done, the potatoes dug, the apples picked, the field manured, and the house gardens raked clean of the pale and sprawling ghosts which the heavier frosts left withering on the ground. Now comes November and a colder sky with a prophecy of winter in its lessened and russet light, and something of the vast silence of winter in the air.

It is a time for rustic satisfaction, and a time, in the old phrase, “to count one’s blessings,” be they golden Hubbards or a barrel of farm cider, yet a touch of melancholy can steal its way into the mood. The great, earthy, and out of door tasks of the farm are over and done, and on these cold nights when a rising wind rattles to the windows and the ragged clouds sail across the moon, we know in our warm kitchens what will presently come down upon us from the solitudes of the north. Strengthened and provisioned like fortresses, our cordwood stacked under cover and our cellars filled, we should not fear the northeaster and the wind running in above the sea.

Fortresses we are, fortresses of the life of man in the beauty and glare and sunshine of the snow. In Maine we call our preparation for the siege—and the phrase is ancestral—“housing up.” The women of the farms now put in order the rooms which will not be used, stripping the beds and folding up and laying away the blankets, placing chairs to one side, and carefully putting each thing that might be breakable into a bureau drawer. During the last of autumn, when such rooms are not too cold, these deserted chambers have a magnetic quality of attracting to their chilly emptiness all sorts of things which must be kept at a proper temperature, baskets of winter pears, for instance, and late-ripening apples, and even jars of jelly put aside to “set” awhile.

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Today Elizabeth, together with our neighbor Mrs. Ruth Erskine (who is pianist at our Grange), has been busy at this domestic ritual. Blankets have been hanging on the line all morning in this coldish light, the hooked rugs have been laid flat and swept on the grey veranda, and the company tea cups taken from their shelf on the what-not in the parlor and put away, each wrapped in its bit of newspaper. The house retreats upon itself but its life is not weakened; it is merely given more unity and concentration.

It is the task of the men to see to the state of the house and barn, make repairs, and check on the primary supplies. If there is a coal stove in use part of the winter, the coal must be in; kerosene barrels filled, too, and the stove wood as far as possible got under cover. Today Ellis Simmons and I have been working outside. The screens have come off, some willingly, some obstinately, the storm doors and the double shutters fitted, two more cords of wood stacked, and the pond water-system drained and the great pump greased and laid up for winter.

A little after four o’clock a great wild sound in the sky sent us all rushing out of doors. A huge flock of Canada geese, flying unusually low, were passing by directly above the farm. Arriving from the east, the line swung south toward the local inlets and the sea, hovered for a few minutes in milling indecision, and disappeared, still apparently confused, into the cold and wintry light a little south of west.

FARM DIARY

Another community supper, this one given by the Nobleboro church and Grange together. The door of the Grange Hall stands open, a glare of electric light, and in the starlit darkness beyond, loom the vague shades of the farm trucks and autos which have brought in their people to the baked beans, brownbread, and pumpkin pie. / Have a grand talk with Linwood Palmer, Jr. / On the way home from supper, the car going rather slowly over the country road, a raccoon runs in the headlight beam for about thirty feet, and then turns off to the right into the roadside darkness and the underbrush. As he turns, he glances sideways at us, and we see the masklike coloration across the eyes. / About a mile from the farm, some beavers have dammed a culvert under the railroad track through which a vague brook joins the pond, and have raised the level of the backed-up water a good three feet. / A mild afternoon, and Elizabeth busy with a trowel naturalizing tiger-lily bulbs in various half-wild corners of the nearer land.

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However various may be the tasks which man is given to attend to upon this earth, his major occupation is a concern with life. To accomplish this duty, he must honor life, even if he honors it but blindly, knowing that life has a sacredness and mystery which no destruction of the poetic spirit can diminish. The curtain has just rung down on a great show and carnival of death and the air is still poisoned and we are poisoned. Our strength and intelligence have been used to counter the very will and purpose of the earth. We had better begin considering not what our governments want but what the earth imposes.