Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/228

 *tween the trees down to the valley below and up its further side till the gaze touched the sky on the distant blue summit of Haystack. It was easy to note with what feathers and fur the earth keeps herself warm in the fierce cold of Vermont winters. In the distance the black growth of evergreen spruce and hemlock would hardly let the roughest gale pass within. Where these do not stand interwoven the misty mingling of the twigs of deciduous trees made a cloak that was softly beautiful to the eye yet hardly less penetrable, and over all the cleared spaces and under all other protection was the white ermine of the snow. The March sun and the thawing rains of approaching spring had settled this snow ermine closer to the ground, indeed, but had only compacted it more firmly. A foot or more of it was everywhere and you could plunge to the shoulders in the drifts.

Soon the gathering barrel was full and the horse plodded back to the sugar house, where from the hillside the sap ran into the sapholder, a twenty-one barrel cask propped up within, thence to go by gravity through a tube to the pan. Here the