Excerpt from Lichen Tufts, from the Alleghanies

Abstract

Excerpt from Lichen Tufts, from the Alleghanies Elizabeth C. Wright We landed on the pebbly beach under a spreading sycamore, which leaned its heavy head waterward, and seemed to be looking at itself in that ever wavering mirror, as it reflected its gleaming white arms and made them sway and beckon upwards, though the tree itself stood still. But the deep water shoaled to a ripple here, and each separate facet of every wave set up for a mirror on its own account, reflecting what it could at a miscellaneous variety of angles of reflection and refraction, so that the sycamore had the pleasure of beholding its own clearly defined and pointed foliage run together into an indefinite mop of green, dancing incessantly on the changeful surface. There was a curve in the river here like a silver bow, and on the opposite side, which was the outer rim of the crescent, the water was tranquil as a pond. From its waveless edge up to the region of clouds, rose the hill abrupt and dark, clothed to its very summit with an unbroken mass of evergreens, rising tier on tier up the steep side of this “mountain wall,” whose shadow lay, like a fragment of midnight, on the pool below. We encamped on the grass under the lighter foliage of young trees which clothed our side of the stream. A grassy open space spread towards the river before us, and a sheltering thicket gloomed behind. We built three bright driftwood fires in a triangle, and within the area we spread our blankets in gipsy-like groups, and with a roof of sky and stars above and walls of green tapestry about us, we lay down, safe and happy, and watched the sparks fly up like showers of stars among the leaves, and saw the smoke go rolling upwards like home-brewed clouds, going to seek their kindred above. A grateful content, a peaceful rest, such as comes to happy children, settled upon us like dew upon the grass, and those who did not sleep lay listening to the “voices of the night.” He who lives under the eaves of the forest will learn the voices of the trees. They have a definite speech which the initiated can understand. Here lies the germ of truth which makes the charm of the Oriental fable, that some persons can learn the languages of beasts and birds and all living things. Even our dull Western ears can learn, by long listening, to distinguish the differences in the whisperings of trees. If you sit at a street window in one of the thoroughfares of a cosmopolitan city, and listen to the varied gibberish jabbered in the streets, you will soon learn to tell the Irish and Scotch brogues apart, and as easily tell the Swedish from German, or Spanish from Italian or French, without [End Page 134] knowing any language but your mother tongue. So in the woods. You may not know what the leaves say in their musical whisperings, but you will know their several tongues. The voices of trees are as characteristic as the voices of the human race. The poet eye of the traveller was in love with the tall tropic palms of the Indian isles, and he thought it would be life enough for a poet to lie ever under that broad, plumy foliage, and be fanned by those leafy wings. But the sea breeze came and whispered, and the harsh, reedy hissing of the palm-tree’s greeting disenchanted the finely-attuned ear, and the poet soul returned to its allegiance to the pines of his native hills. We should not have believed him to be a poet if he had not remained loyal to the oldest of the forest kings, and greatest minstrel and bard of them all. . . . A stranger would hardly know the roar of the wind among the hemlocks from the deeper and hollower sound it brings out of the longer leaved tops of the pines, but a novice could distinguish the difference in their whispers. It is the difference between a robin’s “Good morning!” and the wood-thrush’s “Good night!” There are two...