When the north wind filters coldly
through the trees their music thins and dims till it sounds pathetic
as the tick of a tall clock in a lonely house at night. But it warms
up again with the sunshine next day, keeping time and tune with the
varying moods of the final days of the summer. When a dreamy, hazy day
is followed by a mellow night and little patches of white moonlight
lie dreaming beneath the trees, the crickets have a lullaby that comes
in rhythmic beats, as if they watched the moonlight breathe and rocked
the world to sleep.
* * * * *
Comforting and soothing as the touch of a loved hand on a fevered brow
come the first cooling breezes of September after the fierce white
heat of August. Sweeter than music is the sound of the wind, as it
passes through the woods, welcomed by millions of waving branches and
dancing leaves. It brings the call of the quail, the scream of the
jay, the bark of the squirrel, the crack of the hunter's gun, the
first notes of the returning bluebirds, the clean, keen scent of the
earth after rain, the courage and joy of life, motion, action. Seen
from the top of a cliff the acres of foliage spread out in the creek
valley beneath has a motion suggesting the waves of the sea, now
flowing in green billows before the wind, now whipped into spray at
the shore of the creek where the willows show the white sides of their
leaves.
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