Free Over Prairie Trails by Frederick Philip Grove Page A

morning, however, in this strange light, which was at this very hour undergoing a subtle change that I could not define as yet, mile after mile of road seemed to lift itself up in the far away distance, as if you might drive on for ever through fairyland. The very fact of its straightness, flanked as it was by the rows of frosted trees, seemed like a call. And a feeling that is very familiar to me – that of an eternity in the perpetuation of whatever may be the state I happen to be in, came over me, and a desire to go on and on, for ever, and to see what might be beyond….
    But then the turn into the bushy trail was reached. I did not see the slightest sign of it on the road. But Dan seemed infallible – he made the turn. And again I was in Winter’s enchanted palace, again the slight whirl in the air that our motion set up made the fairy tracery of the boughs shower down upon me like snow white petals of flowers, so delicate that to disturb the virginity of it all seemed like profaning the temple of the All-Highest.
    But then I noticed that I had not been the first one to visit the woods. All over their soft-napped carpet floor there were the restless, fleeting tracks of the snowflake, lacing and interlacing in lines and loops, as if they had been assembled in countless numbers, as no doubt they had. And every track looked like nothing so much as like that kind of embroidery, done white upon white, which ladies, I think, call the feather stitch. In places I could clearly see how they had chased and pursued each other, running, and there was a merriness abouttheir spoors, a suggestion of swiftness which made me look up and about to see whether they were not wheeling their restless curves and circles overhead. But in this I was disappointed for the moment, though only a little later I was to see them in numbers galore. It was on that last stretch of my road, when I drove along the dam of the angling ditch. There they came like a whirlwind and wheeled and curved and circled about as if they knew no enemy, feeding meanwhile with infallible skill from the tops of seed-bearing weeds while skimming along. But I am anticipating just now. In the bush I saw only their trails. Yet they suggested their twittering and whistling even there; and since on the gloomiest day their sound and their sight will cheer you, you surely cannot help feeling glad and overflowing with joy when you see any sign of them on a day like this!
    Meanwhile we were winging along ourselves, so it seemed. For there was the second east-west grade ahead. And that made me think of wife and child to whom I was coming like Santa Claus, and so I stopped under a bush that overhung the trail; and though I hated to destroy even a trifling part of the beauty around, I reached high up with my whip and let go at the branches, so that the moment before the horses bolted, the flakes showered down upon me and my robes and the cutter and changed me into a veritable snowman in snow white garb.
    And then up on the grade. One mile to the east, and the bridge appeared.
    It did not look like the work of man. Apart from its straight lines it resembled more the architecture of a forest brook as it will build after heavy fall rains followed by a late drought when all the waters of the wild are receding so that the icy cover stands above them like the arches of a bridge. Itis strange how rarely the work of man will really harmonize with Nature. The beaver builds, and his work will blend. Man builds, and it jars – very likely because he mostly builds with silly pretensions. But in winter Nature breathes upon his handiwork and transforms it. Bridges may be imposing and of great artificial beauty in cities – as for instance the ancient structure that spans the Tiber just below the tomb of Hadrian, or among modern works the spider web engineering feat of the Brooklyn Bridge – but if in the wilderness we run across them, there is something incongruous about them, and they disturb.