Racoon Creek

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Title:     Racoon Creek
Author: Dallas Lore Sharp [More Titles by Sharp]

Into the wode to her the briddes sing.

I

Over the creek, and clearing it by a little, hung a snow-white, stirless mist, its under surface even and parallel with the face of the water, its upper surface peaked and billowed half-way to the tops of the shore-skirting trees.

As I dipped along, my head was enveloped in the cloud; but bending over the skiff, I could see far up the stream between a mist-ceiling and a water-floor, as through a long, low room. How deep and dark seemed the water! And the trees how remote, aerial, and floating! as if growing in the skies, with no roots' fast hold of the earth. Filling the valley, conforming to every bend and stretch of the creek, lay the breath of the water, motionless and sheeted, a spirit stream, hovering over the sluggish current a moment, before it should float upward and melt away. It was cold, too, as a wraith might be, colder than the water, for the June sun had not yet risen over the swamp.

At the bridge where the road crossed was a dam which backed the creek out into an acre or more of pond. Not a particle of mud discolored the water; but it was dark, and as it came tumbling, foaming over the moss-edged gates it lighted up a rich amber color, the color of strong tea. In the half chill of the dawn the old bridge lay veiled in smoking spray, in a thin, rising vapor of spicy odors, clean, medicinal odors, as of the brewing of many roots, the fragrance of shores of sedges, ferns, and aromatic herbs steeped in the slow, soft tide. And faint across the creek, the road, and the fields lay the pondy smell of spatter-docks.

I pushed out from the sandy cove and lay with a reach of the lusty docks between me and either shore. It was early morning. The yellow, dew-laid road down which I came still slumbered undisturbed; the village cows had not been milked, and the pasture slope, rounding with a feminine grace of curve and form, lay asleep, with its sedgy fingers trailing in the water; even the locomotive in the little terminal round-house over the hill was not awake and wheezing. But the creek people were stirring--except the frogs. They were growing sleepy. The long June night they had improved, soberly, philosophically; and now, seeing nothing worth while in the dawn of this wonder day, they had begun to doze. But the birds were alive, full of the crisp June morning, of its overflow of gladness, and were telling their joy in chorus up and down both banks of the creek.

Hearkneth thise blisful briddes how they singe.

Do you mean out in Finsbury Moor, Father Chaucer? They were sweet along the banks of the Walbrook, I know, for among them "maken melodye" were the skylark, ethereal minstrel! and the nightingale. But, Father Chaucer, you should have heard the wood-thrushes, the orchard-orioles--this whole morning chorus singing along the creek! No one may know how blissful, how wide, how thrilling the singing of birds can be unless he has listened when the summer mists are rising over Racoon Creek.

There is no song-hour after sun rise to compare with this for spirit and volume of sound. The difference between the singing in the dusk and in the dawn is the difference between the slow, sweet melody of a dirge and the triumphant, full-voiced peal of a wedding march. Even one who has always lived in the country can scarcely believe his ears the first time he is afield in June at the birds' awaking-hour.

Robins led the singing along the creek. They always do. In New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan,--everywhere it is the same,--they out-number all rivals three to one. It is necessary to listen closely in order to distinguish the other voices. This particular morning, however, the wood-thrushes were all arranged up the copsy hillside at my back, and so reinforced each other that their part was not overborne by robin song. One of the thrushes was perched upon a willow stub along the edge of the water, so near that I could see every flirt of his wings, could almost count the big spots in his sides. Softly, calmly, with the purest joy he sang, pausing at the end of every few bars to preen and call. His song was the soul of serenity, of all that is spiritual. Accompanied by the lower, more continuous notes from among the trees, it rose, a clear, pure, wonderful soprano, lifting the whole wide chorus nearer heaven.

Farther along the creek, on the border of the swamp, the red-shouldered blackbirds were massed; chiming in everywhere sang the catbirds, white-eyed vireos, yellow warblers, orchard-orioles, and Maryland yellowthroats; and at short intervals, soaring for a moment high over the other voices, sounded the thrilling, throbbing notes of the cardinal, broken suddenly and drowned by the roll of the flicker, the wild, weird cry of the great-crested flycatcher, or the rapid, hay-rake rattle of the belted kingfisher.

All at once a narrow breeze cut a swath through the mist just across my bows, turned, spread, caught the severed cloud in which I was drifting, and whirled it up and away. The head of the pond and the upper creek were still shrouded, while around me only breaths of the white flecked the water and the spatter-docks. The breeze had not stirred a ripple; the current here in the broad of the pond was imperceptible; and I lay becalmed on the edge of the open channel, among the rank leaves and golden knobs of the docks.

A crowd of chimney-swallows gathered over the pond for a morning bath. Half a hundred of them were wheeling, looping, and cutting about me in a perfect maze of orbits, as if so many little black shuttles had borrowed wings and gone crazy with freedom. They had come to wash--a very proper thing to do, for there are few birds or beasts that need it more. It was highly fitting for sooty little Tom, seeing he had to turn into something, to become a Water Baby. And if these smaller, winged sweeps of our American chimneys are contemplating a metamorphosis, it ought to be toward a similar life of soaking.

They must have been particularly sooty this morning. One plunge apiece, so far from sufficing, seemed hardly a beginning. They kept diving in over and over, continuing so long that finally I grew curious to know how many dips they were taking, and so, in order to count his dives, I singled one out, after most of the flock had done and gone off to hawk. How many he had taken before I marked him, and how many more he took after I lost him among the other birds, I cannot say; but, standing up in the skiff, I followed him around and around until he made his nineteenth splash,--in less than half as many minutes,--when I got so groggy that his twentieth splash I came near taking with him.

The pond narrows toward the head, and just before it becomes a creek again the channel turns abruptly through the docks in against the right shore, where the current curls and dimples darkly under the drooping branches of great red maple; then it horseshoes into the middle, coming down through small bush-islands and tangled brush which deepen into an extensive swamp.

June seemed a little tardy here, but the elder, the rose, and the panicled cornel were almost ready, the button-bushes were showing ivory, while the arrow-wood, fully open, was glistening snowily everywhere, its tiny flower crowns falling and floating in patches down-stream, its over-sweet breath hanging heavy in the morning mist. My nose was in the air all the way for magnolias and water-lilies, yet never a whiff from either shore, so particular, so unaccountably notional are some of the high-caste flowers with regard to their homes.

The skiff edged slowly past the first of the islands, a mere hummock about a yard square, and was turning a sharp bend farther up, when I thought I had a glimpse of yellowish wings, a mere guess of a bird shadow, dropping among the dense maple saplings and elder of the islet.

Had I seen or simply imagined something? If I had seen wings, then they were not those of the thrasher,--the first bird that came to mind,--for they slipped, sank, dropped through the bushes, with just a hint of dodging in their movement, not exactly as a thrasher would have moved.

Drifting noiselessly back, I searched the tangle and must have been looking directly at the bird several seconds before cutting it out from the stalks and branches. It was a least bittern, a female. She was clinging to a perpendicular stem of elder, hand over hand, wren fashion, her long neck thrust straight into the air, absolutely stiff and statuesque.

We were less than a skiff's length apart, each trying to outpose and outstare the other. I won. Human eyes are none the strongest, neither is human patience, yet I have rarely seen a creature that could outwait a man. The only steady, straightforward eye in the Jungle was Mowgli's--because it was the only one with a steady mind behind it. As soon as the bird let herself look me squarely in the eye, she knew she was discovered, that her little trick of turning into a stub was seen through; and immediately, ruffling her feathers, she lowered her head, poked out her neck at me, and swaying from side to side like a caged bear, tried to scare me, glaring and softly growling.

Off she flopped as I landed. The nest might be upon the ground or lodged among the bushes; but the only ground space large enough was covered layer over layer with pearly clam-shells, the kitchen-midden of some muskrat; and the bushes were empty. I went to the other islets, searched bog and tangle, and finally pulled away disappointed, giving the least bittern credit for considerable mother-wit and woodcraft. How little wit she really had appeared on my return down-creek that afternoon.

I had now entered the high, overhanging swamp, where the shaggy trees, the looping vines, and the rank, pulpous undergrowth grew thick on both sides, reaching far back, a wet, heavy wilderness without a path, except for the silent feet of the mink and the otter, and the more silent feet of the creek, here a narrow stream winding darkly down through the shadows.

Every little while along the rooty, hummocky banks of the creek I would pass a muskrat's slide. Here was one at the butt of a tulip-poplar, its platform wet and freshly trodden, its "dive" shooting sheer over a root into the stream. Farther on stood a large tussock whose top was trampled flat and covered with sedge-roots. I could not resist putting my nose down for a sniff, so good is the smell of a fresh trail, so close are we to the rest of the pack. In the thick of the swamp I stopped a moment to examine the footprints of an otter at a shallow, shelving place along the bank, where, opening through the skunk-cabbage and Indian turnip, and covered almost ankle-deep with water, was the creature's runway.

I had moved leisurely along, yet not aimlessly. The whole June day was mine to waste; but it would not be well wasted if nothing more purposeful than wasting were in mind.

One does not often drift to a port. Going into the woods to see anything is a very sure way of seeing little or nothing; and taking the path to anywhere is certain to lead one nowhere in particular. Many interested, nature-loving people fail to enjoy the out-of-doors simply because they have no definite spot to reach, no flower, bird, or bug to find when they enter the fields and woods. Going forth "to commune with nature" sounds very fine, but it is much more difficult work than conversing with the Sphinx. In order to draw near to nature I require a pole with a hook and line on the end of it. While I watch the float and wait, if there is any communion, it is nature who holds it with me through the medium of the pole. I need to have an errand to do; some berries to pick, a patch of potatoes to hoe (a very small patch); an engagement to keep, like Thoreau, with a tree, if I hope to squander with profit even the laziest summer day.

I was heading up-stream toward a deep sandy-sided pool that was bottomed, or rather unbottomed, by the shadows of overhanging beeches. The pool was alive with racoon-perch. A few mornings before this, a boy from a neighboring farm had come to fish here and had found a fisher ahead of him. He was just about to cast, when back under the limbs of the beeches the water broke, and a mink rose to the surface with a fine perch twisting in her jaws. Straight toward the boy she swam till within reach of his rod, when she recognized the human in him, turned a back-dive somersault, and vanished.

Would she be fishing again this morning? I hoped so. It was her hour--the hour of the rising mist; visitors rarely found their way to the pool; and I knew the appearance of the boy had given her no lasting alarm.

Floating around the bend, I pulled in among the shore bushes by a bit of grape-vine, and sitting down upon it, made my boat fast. I had planned the trip with the hope of seeing this mink; so I waited, quite hidden, though having the pool in full view. An hour passed, but no mink appeared. Another hour, and the sun was breaking upon the beeches, and the mist was gone; yet no mink came to fish. And what mink would? Of course you must have it in mind to see a mink fish if you wish to see anything; but the day you really catch the mink fishing will likely be the day you went out to watch for muskrats.

So an hour's waiting is rarely fruitless. The mink did not come, but another and quite as expert a fisher did. All the way up the creek I had been hearing the throaty _ghouw-bhouw_ of a great blue heron off in the swamp. It was he that came for perch.

The flapping of the great blue heron is a sight good for the soul--an unheard-of motion these days, so moderate, unhurried, and time-contemning! The wing-beats of this one, as he came dangling down upon the meadow opposite me, have often given me pause since. If I could have the wings of the great blue heron and flap to my fishing now and again!

On alighting, however, he was instantly all nerve and tension. With the utmost caution he came over the high sedges on his stilt-like legs to the brink of the creek and posed. I doubt if a frog or a minnow could have told he was a thing of life. Stiff as a stub, every muscle taut, all alert, he stood, till--flash! and the long pointed bill pinned a perch, a foot and a half beneath the water. He had quite made out a breakfast, when, stepping upon a tall tussock, he stood face to face with me--a human spectator! It was only for a moment that I could keep motionless enough to puzzle him. Some muscle must have twitched, for he understood and leaped into the air with a croak of mortal fright.

II

The creek was roped off by the sagging fox grape-vines, and barred, from this point on, by the alders, so that I gave up all attempt at farther ascent. I had already given up the mink; yet I waited under the beeches.

It was blazing overhead, growing hotter and closer all the time, with hardly breeze enough to disturb the sleep of the leaf shadows on the sleepy stream. A rusty, red-bellied water-snake, in a mat of briers near by, relaxed and straightened slowly out,--and softly, that I might not be attracted,--stretching himself to the warmth. I could have broken his back with my paddle, and perhaps, by so doing, saved the nestlings of a pair of Maryland yellowthroats fidgeting about near him. He had eaten many a young bird of these bushes, I was sure--yet only circumstantially sure. Catching him in the act of robbing a nest would have been different; I should have felt justified then in despatching him. But to strike him asleep in the sun simply because he was a snake would have robbed the spot of part of its life and spirit and robbed me of serenity for the rest of the day. I should not have been, able to enjoy the quiet again until I had said my prayers and slept.

And as between the hawks and other wild birds, we need not interfere. While the water-snake was spreading himself, a small hawk, a sharp-shinned, I think, came beating over the meadow and was met by a vigilance committee of red-shouldered blackbirds. He did not stop to eat any of them, but darted up, and they after him. On up he went, round and round in a rapid, mounting spiral, till only one of the daring redwings followed. I watched. Up they went, higher than I had ever seen a blackbird venture before. And against such unequal odds! But the hawk was scared and had not stopped to look back. He circled; the blackbird cut across inside and caught him on almost every round. And still higher in pure bravado the redwing forced him. I began to tremble for the plucky bird, when I saw him turn, half fold his shining wings, and shoot straight down--a meteor of jet with fire flying from its opposite sides--down, down, while I held my breath. Suddenly the wings flashed, and he was scaling a steep incline; another flash, a turn, and he was upon a slower plane--had thrown himself against the air and settled upon the swaying top of a brown cattail.

A quiet had been creeping over the swamp and meadow. The dry rasp of a dragon-fly's wings was loud in the grass. The stream beneath the beeches darkened and grew moody as the light neared its noon intensity; the beech-leaves hung limp and silent; a catbird settled near me with dropped tail and head drawn in between her shoulders, as mute as the leaves; the Maryland yellowthroat broke into a sharp gallop of song at intervals,--he would have to clatter a little on doomsday, if that day fell in June,--but the intervals were far apart. The meadow shimmered. No part of the horizon was in sight--only the sky overhanging the little open of grass, and this was cloudless, though far from blue.

Perhaps there was not a real sign of uneasiness anywhere except in my boat; yet I felt something ominous in this silent, stifled noon. After all, I ought to have scotched the rusty, red-bellied water-snake leering at me now. The croak of the great blue heron sounded again; then far away, mysterious and spirit-like, floated a soft _qua, qua, qua_--the cry of the least bittern out of the heart of the swamp.

I loosed the grape-vine, put in my paddle, and turned down-stream, with an urgent desire to get out of the swamp, out where I could see about me. I made no haste, lest the stream, the swamp, the something that made me uneasy, should know. Not that I am superstitious, though I should have been had I lived when the land was all swamp and wood and prairie; and I should be now were I a sailor. My boat slipped swiftly along under the thick-shadowing trees, and rounding a sharp bend, brought me to the open pond, to the sky, and to a sight that explained my disquietude. The west, half-way to the zenith, was green--the black-and-blue green of bruised flesh. Out of it shot a fork of lightning, and behind it rumbled muffled thunder.

There was no time to descend the pond. I could already hear the wind across the silence and suspense. It was one of the supreme moments of the summer. The very trees seemed breathless and awe-struck. Pushing quickly to the wooded shore, I drew out the boat, turned it over, and crawled under it just as the leaves stirred with the first cool, wet breath.

There was an instant's lull, a tremor through the ground; then the rending and crunching of the wind monster in the oaks, the shriek of the forest victim--and the wind was gone. The rain followed with fearful violence, the lightning sizzled and cracked among the trees, and the thunder burst just above the boat--all holding on to finish the wind's work.

It was soon over. The leaves were dripping when I crept out of my shell; the afternoon sun was blinking through a million gleaming tears, and the storm was rumbling far away, behind the swamp. A robin lighted upon a branch over me, and set off its load of drops, which rattled down on my boat's bottom like a charge of shot. I glided into the stream. Down the pond where I had seen the sullen clouds was now an indescribable freshness and glory of shining hills and shining sky. The air had been washed and was still hanging across the heavens undried. The maple-leaves showed silver; the flock of chimney-swifts had returned, and among them, twinkling white and blue and brown, were tree-swallows and barn-swallows squeaking in their flight like new harness; a pair of night-hawks played back and forth across the water, too, awakened, probably, by the thunder, or else mistaken in the green darkness of the storm, thinking it the twilight; and the creek up and down as far as I could hear was ringing with bird-calls.

There had been a perceptible rise and quickening of the current. It was slightly roiled and carried a floatage of broken twigs, torn leaves, with here and there a golden-green tulip-petal, like the broken wings of butterflies.

I was in no hurry now, in no disquietude. The swamp and the storm were at my back. Before me lay the pond, the pastures, and the roofs of a human village--all bathed in the splendor of the year's divinest hour. It had not been a perfect day, but these closing hours were perfect, so perfect that they redeemed the whole, and not that day only: they were perfect enough to have redeemed the whole of creation travailing till then in pain.

Because I turned from all this sunset glory to find out what little bird was making the very big fuss near by, and because, parting the foliage of an arrow-wood bush, I looked with exquisite pleasure into the nest of a white-eyed vireo, does it mean that I am still unborn as to soul? For some reason it was a relief to look away from that west of vast and burning color to the delicately dotted eggs in the tiny cradle--the same relief felt in descending from a mountain-top to the valley; in turning from the sweep of the sea to watch beach-fleas hopping over the sand; in giving over the wisdom of men for the gabble of my little boys.

How the vireo scolded! and her mate! He half sang his threat and defiance. "Come, get out of this! Come; do you hear?" he cried over and over, as I peeked into the nest. It was a thick-walled, exquisite bit of a basket, rimmed round with green, growing moss, worked over with shredded bark and fragments of yellow wood from a punky stump across the stream, and suspended by spider-webs upon two parallel twigs about three feet above the water. It was not consciously worked out by the birds, of course, but the patch of yellow-wood fragments on the side of the nest exactly matched the size and color of the fading cymes of arrow-wood blossoms all over the bush, so that I mistook the little domicile utterly on first parting the leaves. A crow or a snake would never have discovered it from that side.

Paddling down, I was soon out of earshot of the scolding vireos, but the little cock's vigorous, ringing song followed me to the head of the pond. Flying heavily over from the meadows with folded neck and dangling legs came a little green heron--the "poke." I spun round behind a big clump of elder to watch him; but he saw me, veered, gulped aloud, and pulled off with a rapid stroke up the creek.

As I turned, my eye fell upon a soft, yellowish something in the rose-bushes across the docks. I was slow to believe. It was too good to be credited all at once. Within three paddle-lengths of my boat, in a patch of dark that must be a nest, stood my least bittern.

I sat still for several seconds, tasting the joy of my discovery and anticipating the look into the nest. Then, upon my knees in the bow of the skiff, I pulled up by means of the stout dock-leaves until almost able to touch the bird, when she walked off down a dead stalk to the ground, clucking and growling at me.

It wasn't a nest to boast of; but she might boast of her eggs, for there was more of eggs than of nest--a great deal more. A few sticks had been laid upon the ends of the bending rose-bushes, and this flimsy, inadequate platform was literally covered by the five dirty-white eggs. The hen had to stand on the bushes straddling the nest in order to brood. How she ever got as close to the nest as that without spilling its contents was hard to see; for I took an egg out and had the greatest difficulty in putting it back, so little room was there, so near to nothing for it to rest upon.

Working back into the channel, I gave the skiff to the easy current and drew slowly along toward the foot of the pond.

The sun had gone down behind the hill; the flame had faded from the sky, and over the rim of the circling slopes poured the soft, cool twilight, with a breeze as soft and cool, and a spirit that was prayer. Drifting across the pond as gently as the gray half-light fell a shower of lint from the willow catkins. The swallows had left; but from the leafy darkness of the copse in front of me, piercing the dreamy, foamy roar of the distant dam, came the notes of a wood-thrush, pure, sweet, and peaceful, speaking the soul of the quiet time. My boat grated softly on the sandy bottom of the cove and swung in. Out from the deep shadow of the wooded shore, out over the pond, a thin white veil was creeping--the mist, the breath of the sleeping water, the spirit of the stream. And away up the creek a distorted, inarticulate sound--the hoarse, guttural croak of the great blue heron, the weird, uncanny cry of the night, the mock, the menace of the tangled, untamed swamp!

[The end]
Dallas Lore Sharp's essay: Racoon Creek

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