as conscious only of bewildering
patches of snow that lay like half-veiled moonlight on the dark
stretches of the marsh. At last a clump of cedars made themselves felt
rather than seen. "There's the fence corner! We're all right," said
Jonathan. A snow-filled horse rut gave faint guidance, the twigs of the
hedgerow lightly felt of our faces as we passed. We found the main road,
and it led us through the quiet, fog-bound village, whose house lights
made tiny blurs on the mist, to the hot, bright little station. Then
came the close, flaringly lighted car, and people--commuters--getting on
and off, talking about the "weather," and filling the car with the smell
of wet newspapers and umbrellas. We had returned to the land of
"weather." Yet it did not really touch us. It seemed a dream. The
reality was the marsh, with its fog and its pricking raindrops and its
sentinel cedars, its silence and its wings.

In the days that followed, the fog passed, and there were long, warm
rains. The marsh called us, but we could not go. Then the sky cleared,
the wind rose, the mercury began to drop. Jonathan looked across the
luncheon table and said, "What about ducks?"

"Can you get off?" I asked joyously.

"I can't, but I will," he replied.

And this time-- Did I think I knew the marsh? Did I suppose, having seen
it at dawn in the fall days when the sun still rises early, having seen
it in winter twilight, fog-beset, that I knew it? Do I suppose I know it
now? At least I know it better, having seen it under a clearing sky,
when the cold wind sweeps it clean, and the air, crystalline, seems like
a lens through which one looks and sees a revelation of new things.

As we struck into the marsh, just at sundown, my first thought was a
rushing prayer for words, for colors, for something to catch and hold
the beauty of it. But there are no words, no colors. No one who has not
seen it can know what a New England shore marsh can be in winter under
a golden sky.

Winter does some things for us that summer cannot do. Summer gives us
everything all at once--color, fragrance, line, sound--in an
overwhelming exuberance of riches. And it is good. But winter-- Ah,
winter is an artist, winter has reserves; he selects, he emphasizes, he
interprets. Winter says, "I will give you nothing to-day but brown and
white, but I will glorify these until you shall wonder that there can be
any beauty except thus." And again winter says: "Did you think the world