IX
IF THE SOLAR TURN in December marks the return of light and the first great step forward of our northern year, something happens in February which the country man can only call the second great milestone of the annual rebirth. It is not a turn as definite as the solar reversal, but it is every bit as real and powerful. With us, it comes about February tenth, and even as I write, the mystery is upon us at the farm. It is the ritual moment when winter, still visibly unconquered, and even with weeks to go, has nevertheless lost the ascendancy, and the great vital forces appear and show themselves in a first promise of their power.
It is not entirely a matter of light, great as I believe the influence of light to be. It is not yet the rebirth of warmth for the sun as warmth does not come into power ’till the end of February. It is really a kind of entrance into action of the life forces, solar and terrestrial, a stirring, a shaking, and an awakening of all that will remake our cold and dormant world; as the Witch of Endor said to King Saul, “I see gods ascending out of the Earth.”
I write this on a day in early March fierce with a northwest wind, and looking from the window out towards a night’s new-fallen snow, I ask myself what signs have I of this turn which has no name? In the sunny window stands a box of experimental seedlings; before the soundings of the mysterious signal, before this metaphorical and cosmic crash of brass and cymbals in the empty air, they make but a little, creeping progress. Now they have taken a sort of green leap forward. Yesterday, talking over the change with my friend and neighbor Lester Dunbar, he said, “Everything responds to it. Now, I’ve noticed my brook year after year. Once the turn has come, the water begins to rise and run strong, even when there has been no thaw or sign of a thaw.”
In chicken houses the eggs increase; even in the deeps of the sea, there is already a movement north along the coast. The green world would seem to follow the animal in point of time. In that kingdom and in this latitude, little or nothing of change is visible above the snow.
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Perhaps the realm most aware of this—shall I say “Dionysian” turn?—is the wild life in our woods. Night and day now I hear foxes barking; the woods are full of them this year. Some think they have locally reduced the year’s abundance of the “snowshoe rabbit,” but I find about as many rabbit tracks as usual.
Only yesterday, a neighbor cutting wood in the forest heard a fox coming through the woods, the patter of his feet very audible on the crust. Every now and then, the creature barked. My neighbor hid behind a pair of hemlock trees. Just as he expected, the fox was on the old wood road, and coming in his direction. He came within about three feet of the trees, stopped, backed away, looked again, went a little farther off and looked for a third time. My neighbor now moved, and “My! You should have seen him go.” A little later, the creature began barking again as he ran on. This story, too, I had from Neighbor Dunbar.
It is the time of the year when the foxes seek their mates. The wood stirs; there is hardly a night that we do not overhear some odd living sound or uneasy cry. The clock of the stars has struck, and life has awakened in the cold and has turned and has heard.
FARM DIARY
One of those giant rings whose diameter is approximately the length of the handle of the Dipper encloses the veiled moon together with the planets Mars and Saturn and the shoulders of Orion. Like a vast symbol or portent, it does not vanish with the hours but only changes position with the motion of the sky. / Elizabeth says that there are tracks on the overgrown road which must be those of the bobcat we have been hearing about. / General agreement among the farmers that automobile and tractor repairs are beginning to cost a lot of money—“if you can get the parts.” / Early morning, and a bright, windless ten below. Find the cord at the spring, with which I lower my pail, frozen to a sort of thick, clumsy wire. Rather a job tying the usual knot!
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One of the pleasantest things about country life is that it has never lost sight of the dignity of old age. To return to the farms from the city is to come from a region in which the really elderly have somehow vanished away to a region where human life and its natural human pattern are taken for granted. Here the work of the old is needed, and their opinions and ideas are listened to and valued. The old people do not feel themselves fifth wheels, nor are they left to themselves in some lonely rocking chair with nothing whatever to do, and no one really interested in what they have to say.
Again and again when business or a friendly call brings me to a farm, it is some “old-timer” who is turned to as the family weather prophet and as the authority on what ails the pig. It is “gramma” who sees both mother and the children through when they are ill, and once a fortnight bakes the “muster gingerbread” she has made for over sixty years. Very often, too, the old folks carry on busily and skillfully our country handicrafts. Among a number of such crafts, they make cane chairs, braid and hook wonderful rugs, and whittle toys. On a neighboring island a fine old man close to ninety makes and repairs all the fishing nets and lobstering gear for his community.
No way of life is normal or even properly human without something of this kind. A denial of the conditions of existence cuts life in two. It is the rounding out which holds the adventure together, which gives it assurance, and establishes a communal wisdom and a memory.