Letters from an Oregon Ranch/Chapter 18
XVIII
Now that the “mellow Autumn days” have come, if you are longing for—
“Air and sunshine and blue sky,
The feeling of the breeze upon your face,
The feeling of the turf beneath your feet,
And no walls but the far-off mountain tops,”
then come to my beloved Oregon hills. All for which you long is here; and far more, now that Autumn is abroad in the land, standing tiptoe upon the hilltops, pouring down their slopes “from a beaker full of richest dyes” a flame that setteth the mountains on fire and maketh a new heaven and a new earth. Illustrated in colors, they seem not the hills we have known, but strangely unfamiliar in this shimmering radiance, this new witchery “from dreamland sent.” There was a time when I was rather skeptical of the existence of a “beauty that intoxicates,” but that was before coming to Oregon. I am a believer now, and already half inebriated through the charm of this latest revelation. For a long time I have been sitting on an old stump,—one of the decorative features of our woodland lawn,—looking over this wonderland and regretting the years lost in finding it.
Copyright, Kiser Bros., Portland, Ore.
TILLAMOOK HEAD, OREGON COAST
A view near Katharine’s ranch
For the first and only time in my life, I am happy and content in my environment. Of course there are some ugly old buildings that mar the picture,—but you know that we are told to look up, not down; and looking up, they are quite forgotten. Such a sky as we have here to-day,—blue as a harebell, and much the shape of one, its rim just resting upon this crown of dark firs; crawling up its western edge, a low line of white wreathing clouds, as if the sea, rolling high, were dashing its foam there. A luminous flood of sunshine is in the air, soft, caressing, and sweet with the aromatic breath of the fir trees; brooding over all is “Nature’s own exceeding peace,” a hush unusual even in this land of silence. I thought—as I often do here—of the stillness of Craigenputtoch, where “for hours the only sound is that of the sheep nibbling the short grass a quarter of a mile away;” of Carlyle writing his mother: “These are the grayest and most silent days I ever saw. My broom, as I sweep up the withered leaves, might be heard at a furlong’s distance.” I always think of that place as the dreariest on earth. “The house, gaunt and hungry-looking, standing in its scanty fields like an island in a sea of morass, the landscape unredeemed either by grace or grandeur,—mere undulating hills of grass and heather, with peat-bogs in the hollows.” What a home for the eager, ambitious, brilliant Jeannie Welsh Carlyle! Away from all the refinements of life, shut up in that gaunt, hungry-looking house on that treeless waste with that tragic man of genius,—of terrible earnestness and blackest melancholy,—is it any wonder that she lost her cheerfulness and vivacity?
Though we have here the solitude, thank goodness we have not the gray desolation of Craigenputtoch nor the gloom of a man of genius. The only sounds that come to me in this peaceful Eden are those of softly rippling invisible waters, the low murmur of insects, the occasional dropping of the tiny brown cones of the alders, and a faint rustle of falling leaves. Nothing more. Even the clamorous cricket is silent. Our birds have long been mute, and now “slide o’er the lustrous woodland,” voiceless phantoms of the minstrels we once knew.
But we have a visitor who has brought his voice with him. He has but lately come to us, from out of the reeds and rushes of the lowlands,—a meadow-lark. Every morning comes floating up to us from this little glen a melody so divine that the angels above must fold their wings to listen. From childhood I have loved this bird above all others. His notes are inexpressibly mellow and sweet,—tender, too, with a perplexing hint of sadness. Is it the pathos of reminiscence, of prophecy, or of passionate pleading? I try hard to understand, but cannot. I only know there is in it a cadence—
“That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams—
Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where.”
Tears fill my eyes as I listen. I hope that “when I put out to sea” a flight of this divine melody may pilot me through the gray mists to that far-away shore where shine the lights of the heavenly harbor.
The—I was going to say lawn, but I won’t, for that word doesn’t fit this lumpy, bumpy, gopher-hilled ground; it is best, when you live in the woods, to put aside affectations; so henceforth and forever I shall say dooryard. The dooryard now has none of its June loveliness. While the grass is still green, it has lost its freshness through the drouth and heat of summer; and the wild flowers that once blossomed here are but a memory. A few clover blooms, in defiance of fate and frost, are trying bravely to hold up their heads, but they have lost the rosy glow of youth. All about me the dandelions are lifting high in air their gauzy white balloons. They are quite different from ours at home, which were low growers; and if one rashly attempted to cut down one of the white-headed veterans, his head fell off and blew away. Here they are nearly two feet high, and that hollow starry globe of lacework is a wonderful stayer. Nearly a month ago, tempted by the beauty of these delicate transparencies, I cut a few of the slender stems and stuck them in a pot of growing ferns, not expecting them to last more than a few hours; and here they are to-day, those fairy balloons just lifted above the green, fully inflated and tugging at their guy-ropes.
The thistle family also is well represented here. Purple with bloom and white with down, the yard looks like a cotton-field. I find the thistle rather interesting, now that I have left the vain world and its distractions and have time to look at it, with its long narrow leaf deeply notched and lance-tipped, its purple-stained paintbrush blossom, its seed-pod,—such a pretty flaring cup of wood-brown, thickly studded with sharp spikes and filled with tiny brown seeds all feathered and ready for flight. It seems a wonderful plant, and must be possessed of virtues still unknown to us, else why did nature take such pains to protect and perpetuate it?
Holding up the brown cup, I blew gently across it, and oh, such a frenzy of excitement among those little feathery folk of thistle-down! They leaped over the housetop, tumbled down the spiked walls, clinging frantically to one another in that brief moment of parting; then, disentangling themselves, floated upward, circling about an instant, took one last look at the little brown home, and one by one sailed away into the blue briery world. As the empty cup fell from my hand, I felt half sorry for those drifting airy voyagers.
When the cups have emptied their contents, they soon become round platters, each with a fringed lining of old-ivory satin, in the centre a tiny tufted couch of softest down. In such a cosey bed had nestled the little brown heads of my poor wanderers. Why need I have meddled with them?
Farmers may despise the thistle, but I’m sure the butterflies love it. Oh, the beauties I have seen this day,—not the delicately tinted butterflies of Summer, but living, glowing jewels, fluttering always above the thistles! One rested for a long time upon a purple bloom quite near me, opening and closing his exquisite wings of black and gold, sun-illumined, like dainty, gauzy Japanese fans.
I must go back and tell you of the beauty of that towering hill directly in front of us. It is really a mountain, I think, but here we call it a hill. We had quite forgotten the many maple trees growing upon its slopes, the green of their foliage in the Summer-time being lost in that of the firs. Though we forgot, Autumn remembered; and, grieved that her favorites should remain unrecognized in that monotony of green, she stole softly into the shadowy forest, traced up the lost Cinderellas, and then, with the gorgeous dyes of Turner and the brush of an impressionist, splashed all their broad leaves with that ineffable glory which is the distinctive badge of the maple family. To-day, as I look up and see them standing on the heights, the rich blazonry of their armorial bearings flashing in the fair October sunlight, I say aloud, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Such a blaze of beauty so near the sky seems passing strange to me coming from a level country, seems alien to this world, and I half believe it to be a celestial landslide. I look, and look, and am thrilled through every fibre of my being. I feel such excitement, buoyancy, exultation, I want to absorb it all, to catch the luminous picture with its wavering lights, its tremulous shadows, and fold it away in memory as a sort of sacred amulet, a charm to be brought from its hiding-place when the dull days come, as come they must in every human life.
“Katharine! Oh, Katharine!”
That’s Bert’s voice. “I’m coming!” I answered, as, clambering down, I turned for one last lingering look at those banners of scarlet and gold floating across that field of green, like the passing of some royal old-time cavalcade, and I thought that if I should hear the blast of a trumpet or the notes of a bugle, see prancing steeds with gay trappings, and catch a glimpse of the plumed heads of lords and ladies, followed by glittering knights with shining shields and lances, I should feel no surprise, but think it fitting pageantry for this “land o’ glamour,” where—
“The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.”