Page:Scribner's Magazine Volume 50.pdf/665



was the seventh of November when winter began forus in the Berkshires. The day opened dull and gray, with a damp chill in the air. The chickadees gathered in the shelter of the Norway spruces before the house, and pecked eagerly at the suet wired to a crotch. Under a leaden sky we drove northward along the road that skirts Stockbridge Bowl. The wind was keen out of the north-west and the white caps were chasing over the lake and splashing on the beach. Between us and the sources of the wind, West Stockbridge Mountain opposed its long, copper-colored battlement, copper colored with the dead foliage still shredding the hard timber. The leaden clouds were racing up over its summit. Even as we watched, there was suddenly a puff of white vapor, like smoke, enshrouding its northward point. This smoke rapidly spread along the level summit, wiping it from sight, swept down the slope, wiping out the mountain, was caught by the wind and swirled over the lake. A spit of snow, a stinging flake on eyelash or lip, and then the white vapor was upon us. We were shrouded in winter. It was as if the long range of the mountain had been our protecting battlement, invaded, captured, overrun by all the cohorts of the frost and storm.

The next day we woke into a picturebook world of sunshine and dazzling white. Every long, graceful limb of our Norway spruces was bowed with its burden, and the pines behind the house rested their white loads on the roof. As we looked from our windows, we seemed to be shut out from the world, to be dwelling in a frosted Christmas card. But the snow melted rapidly. By afternoon the roads were clear though muddy. We walked southward toward Monument Mountain, and came upon a newly ploughed field. Between each brown ridge of soil ran a furrow filled with snowy white. These beautiful parallels led over a doming ridge, like a striped carpet, to the feet of a red house tucked away amid dark green spruces. The design was exquisite for all its ruled primness. On the mountain the snow had not melted, and High Pasture looked as if some giant had dropped his napkin there. A red sunset