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SLOWLY Autumn kindles her torch. Here and there a yellow leaf shows among the green. Then comes a premonitory softening of the whole landscape. Then colors, almost as dainty as those of spring, creep over the earth, so slowly that time and again you decide there is to be no great display this year, when, some warm November day, you look out to find the world transfigured.
The difference between the autumn coloring of the North and of the South is that there it is brilliant, while here it is tender. There the hardwood trees blaze, here they glow. The reds that here so wonderfully emblazon the book of nature have a peculiar delicacy and softness of tone that give a character of its own to the landscape. As the oak leaves deepen to wine-red, the dogwoods turn exquisite shades of old-rose and pink, and the sourwood adds its ruby splendor. The tall pyramidal forms of the sweetgum, mantled in dark purple or deep reds touched with orange, add depth to the color-tone of the forest, or its leaves turn yellow, - and sometimes all these colors mingle together on the same tree. A sweet-gum in autumn dress with the sun through it fairly takes one's breath. Sassafras points the woods with thrilling spots of scarlet, orange, and red. Sumac burns in the hedges, while huckleberry and other bushes crimson the ground.
Mingling with the reds, or apart by themselves, are the clean yellows characteristic of this region. Tall tulip-trees stand in the hollows and along the ravines with crowns of gold. Hickories and beeches add ;heir yellows and browns, and the chestnut oak, when :ether oaks are red, keeps up the pretense and turns golden-brown, the color of fading chestnut leaves.
The whole world is at times immersed in a light that strangely enhances its beauty. Is it smoke that makes those intensely blue spaces under the trees? The forests have not yet begun to burn, only the people are burning brush here and there. The color seems to be in the air itself. The very tree-trunks often look blue, the delicate, mystical blue of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
One wakens day after day to transports of color. Out of each window a new scene constantly unfolds. The sun shines in to you through a tent of red and yellow leaves that incloses the house, and the mountains seen through them take on intenser tones of rose-color and blue, of purple and peacock green. The mountain slopes far and near at this time seem hung with an arras from some enchanted loom. The splendid colors of the hardwood trees are interwoven with the sunny plumes of the pines, while here and there the twisted crown of an ancient pine tree is drawn in strong lines against the glowing background, while golden sunlight sifts and quivers through it all.
Slowly the autumn draws on, and slowly it passes, lingering as lingered the coming of spring, sometimes sustaining its flames well into December. Indeed, there are splashes of crimson remaining all winter, for which one has to thank the horse-brier, the most exasperating plant that grows, but to see it in midwinter festooning the young trees and the bushes with its trailing wreaths of fire is to forgive it everything. If you go down to the brookside in November, supposing the flowers are gone and the winter at hand, you will meet with a pleasant surprise. Those deep blue spindles standing upright among the fallen leaves are closed gentians, more graceful and of a deeper, purer blue than the closed gentians of the North.
When the leaves are taking on their autumn colors, the cornfields turn to gold, and men, women, and children go out to "pull fodder," an occupation that in the meadowless regions, and to an extent all through the mountains, takes the place of haying, and, consistently, is less arduous. The stripped-off leaves and the cut-off tassels are hung up to dry on the yet standing stalk in the crotch made by the ear of corn, or sometimes in the crotch of a convenient tree. And that is all there is to it.
When the fodder-pullers have finished their work and the dried fodder has been "toted" home, the cornfield for a time presents the most extraordinary appearance in its history. It suggests a company of pygmies, each standing erect with his pack over his shoulder, for the heavy ears of corn turn down and are all that is left on the stripped and beheaded stalks. Throughout the mountains these absurd cornfields are a feature of the autumn landscape, lying on the slopes, covering the valley bottoms, and appearing without warning in the midst of an otherwise unbroken forest. The Northern visitor some times compares them, to their disadvantage, with other cornfields of his acquaintance, where noble stacks stand in even rows, great golden pumpkins scattered over the ground between. But what he does not consider is that such a cornfield would be out of place here, and the golden pumpkin might strike a false note. Pumpkins there are, it is true, but they are pink, thus failing in one of the most important functions of a pumpkin. A pink pumpkin! But it would do very well if called by some other name; that is, as an ornament, for you can by no means make good pies out of a pink pumpkin, "pumpkin pie" remaining the unchallenged treasure of the North.
In course of time the ear of corn also disappears from the bereft stalk, it is " toted "home and husked, then a part is shelled and the white and wrinkled kernels ground into the sweetest meal in the world, between the slow stones of little mills that stand along the water-courses. If a man is successful in life and owns "right smart of corn-land," he will likely have his own mill, though it may be no larger than a good-sized chicken coop, with perhaps a wooden wheel, taller than itself, on the outside, a wheel that turns slowly and with dignity, the silver water dropping from the broad paddles in a miniature cascade. The miller in the smaller mills is sometimes a woman in a sunbonnet, but running the mill is not very hard work, since it often consists in pouring the corn into the hopper, then going away for a few hours or all day, and coming back in the fullness of time to take the sweet meal from the box below the leisurely stones.
Besides the cornfields there are those frequent fields of something that "imitates corn a right smart," as the people say, but which is only sorghum, from which in the fall the mountaineer extracts molasses for home consumption. Sorghum is a picturesque crop from first to last. When the slender stalks have been cut, the juice is expressed from them in sugar-mills simpler even than the corn-mills. Between two cogged wheels the long canes are fed by a patient man sitting on a log, while the wheels are turned by a patient mule at the end of a long beam, walking forever round and round and going nowhere. During this process the family is generally grouped about the mill, while the vat into which the sweet juice runs is the scene of tragic deaths, as into it crowd bees, flies, and wasps greedy for a share of the harvest. Near the cane-mill, and like it standing in the open air, is a large pan under which a fire is built and in which the juice is boiled bees and all. Standing over the caldron is a man enveloped in clouds of steam as with a long pole he stirs the bubbling sweet. In a short time "them molasses" is done. Sorghum cannot be reduced to sugar, or, if it can be, it never is here in the mountains. It is put into jugs and provides the principal "sweetening" of the family.
Man is so close to the soil here that he recognizes the relationship. He sees his bread - and molasses - come directly from the earth. He loves the land, and the ambition of every youth is to possess a little farm of his own. In the wild forest he clears a place, plants the corn, cultivates it, watches it grow, gathers in the harvest, grinds the meal and makes the bread, most of these things being done in the open air. And there is no hurry. He feels the sun and the wind, he looks into the forest and is not afraid, neither is he unhappy. The cornfield is almost the boundary of his desires. He sells corn, or its equivalent in "blockade," for money with which to supply his needs. He fattens his pigs on corn and with it feeds the poultry. The mule and the horse eat corn, knowing no other grain. It is fed to them on the cob, since shelling corn for an animal able to shell it for himself would be a waste of time.
Although the corn is the hope of the farmer, one sees an occasional oat-field, and sometimes a field of wheat or rye, but these seem to have been sown for the purpose of beautifying the landscape, the red soil showing through the scattering blue or green stalks with pleasing effect. In some valleys of the higher mountains these grains may be raised with profit, but on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge corn is the safer crop; although the people have a beautiful faith in the possibilities of their land, one farmer proudly saying of his venture in wheat, " There never was no better-headed wheat on earth, what there was of it-but there wa'n't none." And these fortunate people are as cheerful under failure as they are hopeful of success in impossible conditions. "What you doin' up there, Dicky? " your driver calls out one day derisively to a man gathering an almost invisible crop from a hillside. "Nigh about nothin'," Dicky cheerfully responds.
Autumn is not wholly devoid of fruits, though about Traumfest summer claims the greater share of those that elsewhere belong to the later season; maypops linger on, and when their time is past there comes the triumphant harvest of the autumn, which harvest also belongs to winter. Persimmons are ripe! - a crop that never fails. When the autumn woods are in their glory, the persimmon tree is covered with a glory of its own, every twig being loaded with little flattened globes, salmon pink in color and covered with a bloom that in the shadows is deep blue. But be careful of these tricksy fruits, for pretty as they are, they may not yet be perfectly ripe, and until they are, nobody not even the most longing negro - shakes a tree, for the pucker of a green persimmon is such as to set even the teeth of memory on edge. When ripe they begin to fall, and when you find a treeful of good ones, for there is great choice in persimmons, you will know why the negro loves them so.
Inseparably connected with the persimmon in one's mind is the 'possum. For the 'possum loves the 'simmon as the nightingale loves the rose. Of a dark night he may be found sitting in the tree among the ripe fruit. He gets fat on 'simmons, and acquires that peculiarly rich and delicate flavor so highly appreciated by the negro. All through the hunting season you are wakened by the excited bark of the 'possum dog, accompanied by the wild yells of the negroes and an occasional gunshot. The 'possum dog, like the poet, is born, not made. You can never know what dog will develop genius in this direction, excepting that you may be sure it will be one of pure mongrel strain. The 'possum dog is no beauty, but he is worth his weight in 'possums, which is the same as saying he is a very valuable dog.
There is no denying that fat 'possum is a dish for the gods. If you live in the South you will doubtless some day bake a fat 'possum, that is to say, you will bake it, figuratively speaking, for the actual task must be performed by a generous, genial black cook who loves 'possum. She bakes it con amore, and with sweet potatoes. The memory of one's first 'possum dinner lingers like a happy dream. After eating it, one does not wonder at or blame the negro for spending night after night in the woods - to the detriment of his day's work - in hilarious quest of the fat 'possum sitting among the persimmons, - the fatiguing, happy, and exciting hunt to have the sequel of "baked 'possum and sweet taters."
Baked 'possum is the Christmas goose of the epicurean negro, and as the season moves on, the voice of the 'possum dog is heard in the woods assisting in the preparations for that season of high living and neglect of work which is the negro's perquisite, inherited by him from the days of slavery. "Christmas" about Traumfest does not mean a niggardly twenty-fifth of December; it means that, and all the days following, until sunset of New Year's Day. To be fair, however, one must add that in these modern, trying times, the week-long holiday is very much interrupted by daily labor. It is a fiction more than a fact, yet it no doubt adds a certain feeling of festivity to the day's work, a feeling that one is somehow having an extra good time, though it might be hard to tell just where to put your finger on it.
IT is winter, according to the almanac, and the dates on the Northern newspapers that come regularly and too often. For the newspaper is a sort of inverted anachronism here where life is a good halfcentury behind the times. Why waste the golden hours reading things that by the time we catch up with the world will have been happily forgotten by everybody? The leaves have fallen, but it does not look like winter, the laurel is so green on the slopes and the pine trees are so sunny, while the uninvited mistletoe burdens the oaks with its pale-green form. Birds are singing - the wren always believes it will be summer to-morrow, and comports himself accordingly. The air acquires a sparkling quality, without wholly losing its softness.
The native people speak of the coming of winter as a calamity, and you, too, half dread the cold that is to pinch, and yet does not come. But one day it does come. The wind howls, the air is icy, and your blood chills. You fill the fireplace with logs, and resign yourself to the inevitable. But in three days you are out without a hat. How warm the sun, how delicious the air! And was there ever such color on the mountains! One has a rare surprise in this color of the winter mountains. They remain so warm and tender. They are drowned in light, and assume the marvelous pale blue which is unlike the blue of other mountains. But sometimes they are lilac, and blue in the shadows, or they are white and blue. They sometimes look white through the trees, a pure gleaming white with intense blue spaces, though there is no snow on them, only a shimmering light as though they were giving back the sunshine absorbed by them through the long summer. It is in the winter months that one gets that glow on the mountains, so tempting and so illusive to the painter's brush, when towards night you often see the southern slopes tinged with the pink of the wild rose, again warm lilac or deep red, while the sky and the earth that inclose them are sympathetic shades of blue and gray. It is nearing Christmas and Christmas berries are blazing in the thickets. Down the Pacolet Valley rustling canebrakes are green and gold, while golden sedge-grass spreads over slope after slope, its silky white plumes trembling in the breeze.
In our drives about the country we soon discover why the people dread the winter. It does not take very cold weather to make one shiver over an open fire, when the house walls are open to every breeze that blows and one's clothes are not winter-proof. One never sees a winter wood-pile in this country, and as to "filling the cellar," with the ant-like thrift of the New Englander, it is undreamed of. There are no cellars, neither the quality of the land nor the climate lending itself favorably to cellars: one reason, perhaps, for dreading the winter. Corn-pone, dried beans, and salt pork must get somewhat monotonous, even to those who love them. Storehouses are almost as rare as cellars, and is one to deprecate or envy a state of mind that enables people cheerfully to sell their corn in the autumn at thirty cents a bushel, with the certainty that they will have to buy it in the spring at eighty cents?
We take advantage of each soft and sunny day, as though it were to be the last. It is yet December, so the calendar says, but along the roadside one sees a maze of sunny, yellow petals, the witch-hazel defying the season. Gay red berries are falling from the trees, and little bushes are crowded with coral beads. The holly tree, decked with scarlet, stands with its toes in the rippling brook. Jack-oak leaves glow tremendously, and crimson horse-brier makes gay splashes against the evergreen pines.
When Christmas comes, the people celebrate with firecrackers, and sometimes they have fireworks at night, rockets, pinwheels, Roman candles. But in the remoter places there is no Christmas. Santa Claus has not been discovered, and the day passes without notice.
Days come at last when you resign yourself to endless cold, but presently the sun bursts out in a fury, and your blood seems to feel a thrill of spring. This is premature, however, January is not spring; and we are smartly reminded of that when, one day amidst howling winds, the air is filled with snow. The ground now is white. How cold we are! How exasperating these tumultuously blazing open fires that roast you on one side while you freeze on the other! One resigns one's self with as good a grace as possible to the cold of a Southern winter, against which one is so defenseless, when you discover that a change has come. The snow is all gone. You are a little surprised, and crestfallen, to find that the extreme cold you grumbled so about has lasted just three days. Sometimes there comes a day of witchery, when the flakes are large and soft, and there is no wind. Softly, swiftly, the white mantle covers the earth, shrouds the trees, the green bushes, and the tall, brown weeds. How lovely is the pine forest at such a time! Enjoy it while you can, for by night fairyland will have vanished.
Thus the snow comes and goes. In the high mountains, it comes earlier, and stays longer, but you will not find any noticeable preparation for winter. Even the sleds you sometimes see are used to haul wood in summer.
Days of fury are followed by days of sweetness and warmth, when walking leisurely about you wonder at the size of the laurel and azalea buds and the buttons on the dogwood trees. These things keep on growing as though they did not really believe in winter - and what is that? A large gauzy-winged grasshopper leaps up and sails away at your approach. As you watch the light on the wings of these insects that dart up one by one before you, as you look over the green forest shining in the warm sun, you forget where you are; for a moment you think it is summer. The wren has evidently made the same mistake. There is hardly a winter day severe enough to still his happy song. And whenever there come those frequent warm days that cause the sap to stir in twigs and hearts alike, you hear the joyful outpourings of other birds, those wintering here, or those belonging here. It is only January, but the red-bird has begun to whistle - indeed, there is not a month in the year when some bird is not singing a joyous song; and when February comes no bird holds back any longer.
When the ground freezes, or snow comes, the birds confidently draw near to the houses, and at many of them they find a table always spread. Over on her ridge the dear lady from C. beckons you to come on tiptoe to the window, and see the hermit thrush in the food-box - and there he is, whether you can believe such a thing or not. Another birdlover, whose back door opens into beautiful spaces bounded by the not too distant form of Tryon Mountain, has also persuaded the hermit to conquer his shyness, and feed from her stores.
Birds that, according to the books, do not belong in this part of the world, are frequently seen and recorded by eyes always on the watch. Thus are captured - in the records - many a stray wight.
There is one bird, however, here that never comes near the houses. One sees him drawing marvelous lines in the sky, rising and floating, circling about and about in the vast spaces of the air on apparently motionless pinions. What is it that thus sustains the incredible flight of the buzzard? What is the secret of the illimitable wing of this lonely spirit of the sky, whose companions are the clouds? As you sit on a log, some winter day, absorbed in watching the buzzard wheeling in the sky, you become conscious of something moving on the ground, and look down in time to see a striped chipmunk whisk behind a stump. Again, your unsuspected companion may be a gray squirrel who betrays himself by a quick motion, as he flirts his bushy tail around a treetrunk to get out of sight. Squirrels are no longer abundant here, they have been hunted so remorselessly, but in the fall the gray squirrel comes in companies to harvest the nuts of your trees, - or, may it be, only for a little excursion out into the world? The shy little red squirrel who hides in the depths of the woods is known as the "mountain boomer," a name also derisively applied to the mountaineer by his low-country neighbors, whose own title, equally descriptive one supposes, is "tar-heel."
Another rodent, abundant but seldom molested, is the pretty little flying-squirrel, whose form may sometimes be seen at dusk bridging the space between one tree-top and another, like a miniature aeroplane. He is a gentle little creature, but a sad rascal, who hides by day and chases up and down between your walls at night, coming into the house and gnawing to pieces whatever excites his admiration, though he never deigns to taste your food. Although a nuisance, he is better than rats, which, the people say, never come to a house occupied by flying-squirrels. Of course the common rat is here as elsewhere, but he is not very abundant, and his place is sometimes taken by the comical wood-rat, whose curious habits are not destructive to anything but your nerves, until you find out the cause of those eerie noises that render the night uneasy.
The chipmunk is all too easily tamed, but, what we plume ourselves upon as a rare occurrence, we once had a family of woodchucks living under our porch. They came out at dawn, like so many little bears, and we watched their clumsy yet sinuous movements through the flowers, and we saw them sit up and with their hands draw down our best pinks and eat off all the blossoms.
If gray squirrels are not abundant, rabbits are. Hunting does not seem to thin their ranks. You often see a bright round eye turned square upon you, as you are walking through the woods. It belongs to Molly Cottontail, sitting under a bush, as still as a mouse, with that great eye sentinel over a dangerous world. If you pause or leave the path, she is off, a vanishing mist of gray fur. There are rabbit paths everywhere in the bushes, so that one must needs be careful, and not stray away into these curious highways of the furry folk that go nowhere that man, or dog, can follow, but lead the unwary into thickets of bushes tied together by prickly vines. Close to the ground the little path tunnels its way, but one would need be as small as the rabbit to follow it.
There are places where one, watching quietly at night, can see the rabbits at play. And when snow is on the ground, who but they make those double tracks that everywhere line the woods, usually accompanied by the prints of a dog's foot, the dog himself visible to your mind's eye in frantic but useless pursuit! How ridiculous Molly Cottontail can make poor doggy appear! In the woods you hear him barking excitedly as he runs - then across an open space drifts a fluff of fur. After it, some distance behind, comes the dog, not resembling in the least a fluff of fur, and not drifting. The contrast between the desperate efforts of the jointed dog, and the fleet farewell of the little vision floating off ahead, apparently without effort, makes one laugh in delight. All winter you can hear the whining cry of the hounds as they course about, hunting for their own amusement or accompanied by a man with a gun. Other tracks in the snow are made by the birds: - here has passed quite a flock of quails, and here has gone hopping along - a robin, perhaps.
You are still in a state of defense, waiting for and dreading the winter that comes, and yet does not come, when one day you find the alders in bloom! And then, walking in the woods, there comes a sudden, cinnamon-like fragrance, sweet, spicy, and clean. You would say flowers were blooming somewhere near. And there, indeed, under the trees is a little bunch of brown-capped, rosy blossoms - the Carolina pine-sap that scents the winter woods like a breath of spring.
After this there will undoubtedly be cold days and cold storms that will drive you into the chimney corner, but between these short, cold spells how hot the sun! - and who can believe in winter, seeing the alders in bloom! Besides, the birds, one might say, are also in bloom. You thought they sang all winter, but when you hear them now - well, you need no further assurance that the winter is over and gone.
Yes, the winter is behind you, and you suddenly realize that you have spent nearly all of it out of doors, and, although a Northerner and a skeptic, you begin to believe in the sun.