III. MARCH--AND A SPRING BOUQUET


Every pilgrim to the mystic land of spring knows hallowed places in
sunny valleys where the tender goddess first reveals herself at
Nature's living altars. Yet he can scarcely tell at which shrine she
will first appear. She delights in surprising her votaries. Thoreau
was right in saying that no man was ever alert enough to behold the
first manifestation of spring. Sometimes as we walk toward the mossy
bank in the glen where the fresh green leaves of the haircap mosses
were last year's first signs of vernal verdure, the bluebird calls to
us from the torch-like top of the smooth sumac and shyly tells us
that, if we please, spring is here. Sometimes we thrill with the
"honk, honk" of the Canada goose and think the A-shaped band of
migrants is surely this year's messenger, crying in the wilderness to
prepare the way of the goddess and make her paths straight; but a
little later we pass through a shadowy ravine where the white oaks
have held their leaves all winter, and find that the great horned owl
has already appropriated a last year's hawk's nest and deposited
therein her two white eggs. At the foot of the sunny hill where the
spring has freely flowed all winter long, we tramp around the swamp in
the vain hope of finding the purplish monk's-hood of the skunk's
cabbage; but look up to see, instead, the many "mouse ears," shining
like bits of silvery fur, along the slender stems of the pussy willow.
Or we tramp through a hazel thicket, where the squirrels have been
festive among the nuts all winter, in the hope of finding, among the