The Road of a Naturalist by Donald Culross Peattie

Author:Donald Culross Peattie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

10

A CABIN

ON FISH CREEK

NEVER had any man a more kingly sense of home than I in this cabin where I had slept a single night — but how deeply! All that I most required was here, and nothing else. There was a room, one big room, giving me length to pace in, space for thoughts to grow longer. There was a roof, beamed with the boles of what had been tall trees once; there were walls, log walls, snug and unornamented by more than their own forest pride. I had two beds at one end of my room, and my wife lay happy on hers; at the other end was a stove with wood burning in it and a kettle boiling on it. The table was broad enough for my typewriter and the full rank of my books, and when I sat down at it I looked through a win­dow at pine trees and wildflowers and a brook where trout leaped. This brook, which ran right past my door, filled my house endlessly with its low, sociable music. The birds outside put in a melody here and there for variation. And for a glimpse of something higher than the fullest earthly contentment, I had but to open my door, step over my threshold, and tipping my head I would see what I love better than any sight except beloved faces — a peak that lifts in everlasting snowy purity into the blue summer sky. The grandest of the three Grand Tetons, seen intimately between two pine boughs, as you keep beauty secret in a locket.

Now here was I snugly at the heart of the life I love best. It had taken twenty years for that sorry young man astray in New York City to get here. I thought about him, as I walked up and down in my pipesmoke, the sound of brook water going along with me. The old dis­content sharpened my peace, gave it the edge a good poem has, and I could recollect the very moment that he started off this way. He asked directions of a policeman on Mad­ison Avenue. Asked him the way to what was his destiny, and the officer said to take the local from Grand Central Station.

The Bronx Botanical Garden is attached, more or less, to the Zoo, and there are few who are not diverted from it by the charms of a giraffe or blue-bottomed mandrill. For those who wander in, as I did on that day, the garden is a prospect pleasant but not exciting. It all resembled Na­ture as a flower show resembles a garden. I investigated the greenhouses; the high glass roof sheltered tropical ornaments in a steamy atmosphere not unlike my aunt’s conservatory off her old back parlor; nursemaids and chil­dren and a few old men with canes loitered on the walks. I wandered out again. Presently I found some beds set out, not formally for a floral effect, but planted in families. This was strictly botanical; my attention pointed like a bird dog.

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