Free Over Prairie Trails by Frederick Philip Grove Page B

Strange to say, there is the exception of high-flung trellis-viaducts bridging the chasm of mountain canyons. Maybe it is exactly on account of their unpretentious, plain utility; or is it that they reconcile by their overweening boldness, by their very paradoxality – as there is beauty even in the hawk’s bloodthirsty savagery. To-day this bridge was, like the grades, like the trees and the meadows furred over with opalescent, feathery frost.
    And the dam over which I am driving now! This dam that erstwhile was a very blasphemy, an obscenity flung on the marshy meadows with their reeds, their cat-tails, and their wide-leaved swamp-dock clusters! It had been used by the winds as a veritable dumping ground for obnoxious weeds which grew and thrived on the marly clay while every other plant despised it! Not that I mean to decry weeds – far be it from me. When the goldenrod flings its velvet cushions along the edge of the copses, or when the dandelion spangles the meadows, they are things of beauty as well as any tulip or tiger-lily. But when they or their rivals, silverweed, burdock, false ragweed, thistles, gumweed, and others usurp the landscape and seem to choke up the very earth and the very air with ceaseless monotony and repetition, then they become anoffence to the eye and a reproach to those who tolerate them. To-day, however, they all lent their stalks to support the hoarfrost, to double and quadruple its total mass. They were powdered over with countless diamonds.
    It was here that I met with the flocks of snowflakes; and if my joyous mood had admitted of any enhancement, they would have given it.
    And never before had I seen the school and the cottage from quite so far! The haze was still there, but somehow it seemed to be further overhead now, with a stratum of winter-clear air underneath. Once before, when driving along the first east-west grade, where I discovered the vista, I had wondered at the distance to which the eye could pierce. Here, on the dam, of course, my vision was further aided by the fact that whatever of trees and shrubs there was in the way – and a ridge of poplars ran at right angles to the ditch, throwing up a leafy curtain in summer – stood bare of its foliage. I was still nearly four miles from my “home” when I first beheld it. And how pitiably lonesome it looked! Not another house was to be seen in its neighbourhood. I touched the horses up with my whip. I felt as if I should fly across the distance and bring my presence to those in the cottage as their dearest gift. They knew I was coming. They were at this very moment flying to meet me with their thoughts. Was I well? Was I finding everything as I had wished to find it? And though I often told them how I loved and enjoyed my drives, they could not view them but with much anxiety, for they were waiting, waiting, waiting…. Waiting on Thursday for Friday to come, waiting on Wednesday and Tuesday and Monday – waiting on Sunday even, as soon as I had left; counting the days, and the hours, and the minutes, till I was out, fighting storm and night to my heart’s content! And then – worry, worry, worry – whatmight not happen! Whatever my drives were to me, to them they were horrors. There never were watchers of weather and sky so anxiously eager as they! And when, as it often, too often happened, the winter storms came, when care rose, hope fell, then eye was clouded, thought dulled, heart aflutter…. Sometimes the soul sought comfort from nearest neighbours, and not always was it vouchsafed. “Well,” they would say, “if he starts out to-day, he will kill his horses!” – or, “In weather like this I should not care to drive five miles!” – Surely, surely, I owe it to them, staunch, faithful hearts that they were, to set down this record so it may gladden the lonesome twilight hours that are sure to come….
    And at last I swung west again, up the ridge and on to the yard. And there on the porch stood the tall,