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The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Year in the Fields
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Title: A Year in the Fields

Author: John Burroughs

Release date: February 16, 2010 [eBook #31292]

Most recently updated: June 27, 2021

Language: English

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A YEAR IN THE

FIELDS ***
A HAWK IN SIGHT
 A Year in the Fields
SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS
OF JOHN BURROUGHS: WITH
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS
BY CLIFTON
JOHNSON

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge

Copyright, 1875, 1877, 1879, 1881, 1886, 1894, and 1895,

By JOHN BURROUGHS.

Copyright, 1896 and 1901,

By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

All rights reserved

 NOTE
Taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by the
necessity for again reprinting A Year in the Fields, the
publishers have added to the volume a biographical sketch
of Mr. Burroughs and a number of new illustrations.
Boston, September, 1901.
 CONTENTS
John Burroughs: a Biographical Sketch
I.A Snow-storm
II. Winter Neighbors
III.A Spring Relish
IV. April
V. Birch Browsings
VI. A Bunch of Herbs.
Fragrant Wild Flowers
Weeds
VII. Autumn Tides
VIII. A Sharp Lookout
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
A Hawk in Sight
Riverby, Mr. Burroughs's Home on the Hudson
"Slabsides"
Tracks in the Snow
The Study
Out for a Walk
The Old Apple-tree
Winter at Riverby on the Hudson
Wood for the Study Fire
An Evening in Spring
At the Study Door
A Woodland Brook
An April Day
The Home of a Spider
A Bird Song
In the Woods
Picking Wild Flowers
A Flower in a Woodland Roadway
A Stalwart Weed
Among the Rocks
On the Edge of a Catskill "Sugar Bush"
A Catskill Roadway
Beechnuts (Mr. Burroughs's Boyhood Home seen in the distance.)
By the Study Fire
 JOHN BURROUGHS
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

BY CLIFTON JOHNSON

In the town of Roxbury, among the western Catskills, was born

April 3, 1837, John Burroughs. The house in which he first saw the
light was an unpainted, squarish structure, only a single story high,
with a big chimney in the middle. This house was removed a few
years later, and a better and somewhat larger one, which still stands,
was built in its place. The situation is very pleasing. Roundabout is a
varied country of heights, dales, woods and pastures, and cultivated
fields. The dwelling is in a wide upland hollow that falls away to the
east and south into a deep valley, beyond which rise line on line of
great mounding hills. These turn blue in the distance and look like
immense billows rolling in from a distant ocean.
There were nine children in the Burroughs family, and John was
one of the younger members of this numerous household. He was a
true country boy, acquainted with all the hard work and all the
pleasures of an old-fashioned farm life. His people were poor and he
had his own way to make in the world, but the environment was on
the whole a salutary one.
He has always had a marked affection for the place of his birth,
and he rejoices in the fact that from an eminence near his present
home on the Hudson he can see mountains that are visible from his
native hills. Two or three times every year he goes back to these hills
to renew his youth among the familiar scenes of his boyhood.
"Johnny" Burroughs, as he was known to his home folks and the
neighbors, was very like the other youngsters of the region in his
interests, his ways, and his work. Yet as compared with them he
undoubtedly had a livelier imagination, and things made a keener
impression on his mind. In some cases his sensitiveness was more
disturbing than gratifying. When his grandfather told "spook" stories
to the children gathered around the evening blaze of the kitchen
fireplace, John's hair would almost stand on end and he was afraid
of every shadow.

RIVERBY, MR. BURROUGHS'S HOME ON

THE HUDSON
 He went to school in the little red schoolhouse across the valley,
and as he grew older he aspired to attend an academy. But he had
to make the opportunity for himself, and only succeeded in doing so
at the age of seventeen, when he raised the needful money by six
months of teaching. This enabled him in the autumn of 1854 to
enter the Heading Literary Institute at Ashland. He found the life
there enjoyable, but his funds ran low by spring and he was obliged
to return to the farm. Until September he labored among his native
fields, then took up teaching again. When pay day came he set off
for a seminary of some note at Cooperstown, where a single term
brought his student days forever to a close, and after another period
of farm work at home he borrowed a small sum of money and
journeyed to Illinois. Near Freeport he secured a school at forty
dollars a month, which was much more than he could have earned
in the East. Yet he gave up his position at the end of six months. "I
came back," he says, "because of 'the girl I left behind me'; and it
was pretty hard to stay even as long as I did."
Soon afterward he married. His total capital at the time was fifty
dollars, a sum which was reduced one fifth by the wedding
expenses. For several years he continued to teach, and at the age of
twenty-five we find him in charge of a school near West Point. Up to
this time his interest in nature and his aptitude for observation lay
dormant. But now it was awakened by reading a volume of Audubon
which chanced to fall into his hands. That was a revelation, and he
went to the woods with entirely new interest and enthusiasm. He
began at once to get acquainted with the birds, his vision grew keen
and alert, and birds he had passed by before, he now saw at once.
Meanwhile the Civil War was going on, and it aroused in
Burroughs a strong desire to enlist. He visited Washington to get a
closer view of army life, but what he saw of it rather damped his
military ardor. It seemed to him that the men were driven about and
herded like cattle; and when a peaceful position in the Treasury
Department was offered him he accepted it, and for nine years was
a Government clerk.
 SLABSIDES
At the Treasury he guarded a vault and kept a record of the
money that went in or out. The duties were not arduous, and in his
long intervals of leisure his mind wandered far afield. It dwelt on the
charm of flitting wings and bird melodies, on the pleasures of
rambling along country roads and into the woodlands; and, sitting
before the Treasury vault, at a high desk and facing an iron wall he
began to write. There was no need for notes. His memory was all-
sufficient, and the result was the essays which make "Wake-
Robin,"—his first book.
 By 1873 Burroughs had had enough of the routine of a
Government clerkship, and he resigned to become the receiver of a
bank in Middletown, New York. Later he accepted a position as bank
examiner in the eastern part of the State. But his longing to return
to the soil was growing apace, and presently he bought a little farm
on the west shore of the Hudson. He at once erected a substantial
stone house and started orchards and vineyards, yet it was not until
1885 that he felt he could relinquish his Government position and
dwell on his own land with the assurance of a safe support.
He has never been a great traveler. Still, he has been abroad twice
and has recently made a trip to Alaska. Lesser excursions have taken
him to Virginia and Kentucky, and to Canada, and he has camped in
Maine and the Adirondacks. But the district that he knows best and
that he puts oftenest into his nature studies is his home country in
the Catskills and the region about his "Riverby" farm. Very little of
his writing, however, has been done in the house in which he lives.
This was never a wholly satisfactory working-place. He felt he must
get away from all conventionalities, and he early put up on the
outskirts of his vineyards a little bark-covered study, to which it has
been his habit to retire for his indoor thinking and writing. He still
uses this study more or less, and often in the summer evenings sits
in an easy-chair, under an apple-tree just outside the door, and
listens to the voices of Nature while he looks off across the Hudson.
But the spot that at present most engages his affection is a
reclaimed woodland swamp, back among some rocky hills, a mile or
two from the river. A few years ago the swamp was a wild tangle of
brush and stumps, fallen trees and murky pools. Now it has been
cleared and drained, and the dark forest mould produces wonderful
crops of celery, sweet corn, potatoes, and other vegetables. On a
shoulder of rock near the swamp borders Burroughs has built a
rustic house, sheathed outside with slabs, and smacking in all its
arrangements of the woodlands and of the days of pioneering. It has
an open fireplace, where the flames crackle cheerfully on chilly
evenings, and over the fireplace coals most of the cooking is done;
but in really hot weather an oil stove serves instead.
 On the other side of the hollow a delightfully cold spring bubbles
forth, and immediately back of the house is a natural cavern which
makes an ideal storage place for perishable foods. The descent to
the cavern is made by a rude ladder, and the sight of Burroughs
coming and going between it and the house has a most suggestive
touch of the wild and romantic.
He is often at "Slabsides"—sometimes for weeks or months at a
time, though he always makes daily visits to the valley to look after
the work in his vineyards and to visit the post-office at the railway
station. He is a leisurely man, to whom haste and the nervous
pursuit of wealth or fame are totally foreign. He thoroughly enjoys
country loitering, and when he gets a hint of anything interesting or
new going on among the birds and little creatures of the fields, he
likes to stop and investigate. His ears are remarkably quick and his
eyes and sense of smell phenomenally acute, and much which to
most of us would be unperceived or meaningless he reads as if it
were an open book. Best of all, he has the power of imparting his
enjoyment, and what he writes is full of outdoor fragrance, racy,
piquant, and individual. His snap and vivacity are wholly unartificial.
They are a part of the man—a man full of imagination and
sensitiveness, a philosopher, a humorist, a hater of shams and
pretension. The tenor of his life changes little from year to year, his
affections remain steadfast, and this hardy, gray poet of things rural
will continue, as ever, the warm-hearted nature enthusiast, and
inspirer of the love of nature in others.
A YEAR IN THE FIELDS
 I
A SNOW-STORM

That is a striking line with which Emerson opens his beautiful

poem of the Snow-Storm:—
"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight."
One seems to see the clouds puffing their cheeks as they sound
the charge of their white legions. But the line is more accurately
descriptive of a rain-storm, as, in both summer and winter, rain is
usually preceded by wind. Homer, describing a snow-storm in his
time, says:—
"The winds are lulled."
 TRACKS IN THE SNOW
The preparations of a snow-storm are, as a rule, gentle and quiet;
a marked hush pervades both the earth and the sky. The movements
of the celestial forces are muffled, as if the snow already paved the
way of their coming. There is no uproar, no clashing of arms, no
blowing of wind trumpets. These soft, feathery, exquisite crystals are
formed as if in the silence and privacy of the inner cloud-chambers.
Rude winds would break the spell and mar the process. The clouds
are smoother, and slower in their movements, with less definite
outlines than those which bring rain. In fact, everything is prophetic
of the gentle and noiseless meteor that is approaching, and of the
stillness that is to succeed it, when "all the batteries of sound are
spiked," as Lowell says, and "we see the movements of life as a deaf
man sees it,—a mere wraith of the clamorous existence that inflicts
itself on our ears when the ground is bare." After the storm is fairly
launched the winds not infrequently awake, and, seeing their
opportunity, pipe the flakes a lively dance. I am speaking now of the
typical, full-born midwinter storm that comes to us from the North or
N. N. E., and that piles the landscape knee-deep with snow. Such a
storm once came to us the last day of January,—the master-storm of
the winter. Previous to that date, we had had but light snow. The
spruces had been able to catch it all upon their arms, and keep a
circle of bare ground beneath them where the birds scratched. But
the day following this fall, they stood with their lower branches
completely buried. If the Old Man of the North had but sent us his
couriers and errand-boys before, the old graybeard appeared himself
at our doors on this occasion, and we were all his subjects. His flag
was upon every tree and roof, his seal upon every door and window,
and his embargo upon every path and highway. He slipped down
upon us, too, under the cover of such a bright, seraphic day,—a day
that disarmed suspicion with all but the wise ones, a day without a
cloud or a film, a gentle breeze from the west, a dry, bracing air, a
blazing sun that brought out the bare ground under the lee of the
fences and farm-buildings, and at night a spotless moon near her
full. The next morning the sky reddened in the east, then became
gray, heavy, and silent. A seamless cloud covered it. The smoke from
the chimneys went up with a barely perceptible slant toward the
north. In the forenoon the cedar-birds, purple finches, yellowbirds,
nuthatches, bluebirds, were in flocks or in couples and trios about
the trees, more or less noisy and loquacious. About noon a thin
white veil began to blur the distant southern mountains. It was like a
white dream slowly descending upon them. The first flake or flakelet
that reached me was a mere white speck that came idly circling and
eddying to the ground. I could not see it after it alighted. It might
have been a scale from the feather of some passing bird, or a larger
mote in the air that the stillness was allowing to settle. Yet it was the
altogether inaudible and infinitesimal trumpeter that announced the
coming storm, the grain of sand that heralded the desert. Presently
another fell, then another; the white mist was creeping up the river
valley. How slowly and loiteringly it came, and how microscopic its
first siftings!
This mill is bolting its flour very fine, you think. But wait a little; it
gets coarser by and by; you begin to see the flakes; they increase in
numbers and in size, and before one o'clock it is snowing steadily.
The flakes come straight down, but in a half hour they have a
marked slant toward the north; the wind is taking a hand in the
game. By mid-afternoon the storm is coming in regular pulse-beats
or in vertical waves. The wind is not strong, but seems steady; the
pines hum, yet there is a sort of rhythmic throb in the meteor; the
air toward the wind looks ribbed with steady-moving vertical waves
of snow. The impulses travel along like undulations in a vast
suspended white curtain, imparted by some invisible hand there in
the northeast. As the day declines the storm waxes, the wind
increases, the snow-fall thickens, and
"the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm,"
a privacy which you feel outside as well as in. Out-of-doors you
seem in a vast tent of snow; the distance is shut out, near-by
objects are hidden; there are white curtains above you and white
screens about you, and you feel housed and secluded in storm. Your
friend leaves your door, and he is wrapped away in white obscurity,
caught up in a cloud, and his footsteps are obliterated. Travelers
meet on the road, and do not see or hear each other till they are
face to face. The passing train, half a mile away, gives forth a mere
wraith of sound. Its whistle is deadened as in a dense wood.
Still the storm rose. At five o'clock I went forth to face it in a two-
mile walk. It was exhilarating in the extreme. The snow was lighter
than chaff. It had been dried in the Arctic ovens to the last degree.