Boulders

I KNOW a place where the Great Ice of long ago engraved on the landscape a page of his memoirs. I have had the history read to me by one who is skilled in geological hieroglyphics; and a wonderful tale it was. How tinkling waters flowed in crystal channels; how the untenanted earth teemed with busy hands, moulding, carving, chiseling, etching, while the immortal stars looked on. How the north wind lent his breath, and the mountains gave their ribs, the earth her magnetism, and water its obedience, to furnish forth the vast unwitnessed spectacle. How Winter lodged in immaculate tents sparkling with gems, and marshaled the snows of ages, and measured his reign by centuries. How at last King Sun, great ally of the exiled Spring, conquered the hoary usurper, and forced him out of his fastnesses, and imprisoned him in his native North; and his legions were the sunny days, and his arms were sheaves of sunbeams. And then how the exile Spring returned, and the crunching of ice and the grinding of rocks applauded his entry, and the mists unfurled his league-wide banners, and the tuneful dripping of melting frost accompanied his triumphal march. How rushing torrents ploughed the earth, and the winds planted forests, and the fields decked out their bosoms, and men and beasts did join the celebration.

Thus read the interpreter, and to prove the tale true he showed the very works of the ancient sculptors — here a ridge, there a groove, a basin, a knob, a stranded delta; and he pointed out the tools with which the works were wrought: boulders, pebbles of all shapes dropped at random here and there; and he showed me where on polished rocks the banished Winter has left a map of his retreat.

This autumn day as I sit by my open window, I dream that history over again. A tame enough landscape my outlook affords — brown fields still patched with green, a few picturesque ruins of trees, and beyond, a little grove, and a hazy sky-line. But this is enough — it affords me space to dream in. I see it all happen as it is written in that place I know of. Best of all I like to live over that long moment between the passing winter and the coming summer. I wish I had been there to feel the warmth of the lengthening days, when the sun shone ever brighter. I wish I had been there, to lie in some rocky shelter, and watch the slow, slow melting of the ice-masses, and hear the musical drip-drip above the roar of torrents. That hazy sky-line reminds me of the billowing mists that rose in the sunshine of those melting days. And next to this chapter of the story, I like best to recall the matchless night. What depth of skies, what lustre of stars! and hark! how the sharp artillery of the cold points the wondrous stillness!

It seems to me I lived those days and nights, in the place I know of; for I seem to remember. But I should still be grateful to Memory, even if she took me back no further than those more recent days, when I wandered among the gray boulders, set off by bright hanging barberries. All boulders remind me of those boulders. All barberries remind me of those barberries. For I left something of my soul in that place.

Nay, who shall deny it? Is it. nothing that I sat on those rocks, and pricked my hands with those thorns; that I lay face down on those wooded hills, and saw how the oaks and elms and birches ran down the precipitate slope? The violet that bloomed here last May has left a grain of pollen behind. The crow that passed over this wood has dropped a feather to mark his flight. Is the blossoming of a flower, is the passage of a bird, a greater event than my visit to these rocks, that it should be recorded, and I should leave no sign behind? I brought to this place my gladness, my sadness, my best thoughts. When the leaves rustled on the trees, and when the leaves rustled on the ground, I dreamed there. I am not the same as I was before I knew the place. I am the greater by some memories, the wiser by some experiences.

Can it be that the place is as if it had never known me? When the rain washed away my footprints, and the wind carried away my sigh and my song, was there nothing left of me, nothing? Thousands might visit that spot who would find the black feather, for one who would discover the pollengrain. Perhaps there is a soul in millions, a single, rare soul perhaps, that might wander among these boulders and find some trace of me.

There was a time when people held that the boulders were scattered abroad by a capricious Creator, in idle extravagance. To-day we know that inevitable causes worked with them inevitable results. Our eyes are sharp enough to-day to see the invisible pollen-grain. Perhaps some future day we shall see more. While the boulders are ground to powder, and the hills are leveled, and the fields are sunk to the bottom of the sea, men may be getting wisdom.