| | 1 | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The White Rose Road  | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Being a New Englander, it is natural that I should first speak
about the weather. Only the middle of June, the green fields, and
blue sky, and bright sun, with a touch of northern mountain wind
blowing straight toward the sea, could make such a day, and that is
all one can say about it. We were driving seaward through a part
of the country which has been least changed in the last thirty
years,—among farms which have been won from swampy lowland, and
rocky, stump-buttressed hillsides; where the forests wall in the
fields, and send their outposts year by year farther into the
pastures. There is a year or two in the history of these pastures
before they have arrived at the dignity of being called woodland,
and yet are too much shaded and overgrown by young trees to give
proper pasturage, when they make delightful harbors for the small
wild creatures which yet remain, and for wild flowers and berries.
Here you send an astonished rabbit scurrying to his burrow, and
there you startle yourself with a partridge, who seems to get the
best of the encounter. Sometimes you see a hen partridge and her
brood of chickens crossing your path with an air of comfortable
door-yard security. As you drive along the narrow, grassy road,
you see many charming sights and delightful nooks on either hand,
where the young trees spring out of a close-cropped turf that
carpets the ground like velvet. Toward the east and the quaint
fishing village of Ogunquit I find the most delightful woodland
roads. There is little left of the large timber which once filled
the region, but much young growth, and there are hundreds of acres
of cleared land and pasture ground where the forests are springing
fast and covering the country once more, as if they had no idea of
losing in their war with civilization and the intruding white
settler. The pine woods and the Indians seem to be next of kin,
and the former owners of this corner of New England are the only
proper figures to paint into such landscapes. The twilight under
tall pines seems to be untenanted and to lack something, at first
sight, as if one opened the door of an empty house. A farmer
passing through with his axe is but an intruder, and children
straying home from school give one a feeling of solicitude at their
unprotectedness. The pines are the red man's house, and it may be
hazardous even yet for the gray farmhouses to stand so near the
eaves of the forest. I have noticed a distrust of the deep woods,
among elderly people, which was something more than a fear of
losing their way. It was a feeling of defenselessness against some
unrecognized but malicious influence. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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