It was almost
transcendental. I walked across the hill with my nose in the air
taking it in. It lasted for two days. I imagined it came from the
willows of a distant swamp, whose catkins were affording the bees
their first pollen: or did it come from much farther,--from beyond
the horizon, the accumulated breath of innumerable farms and
budding forests? The main characteristic of these April odors is
their uncloying freshness. They are not sweet, they are oftener
bitter, they are penetrating and lyrical. I know well the odors of
May and June, of the world of meadows and orchards bursting into
bloom, but they are not so ineffable and immaterial and so
stimulating to the sense as the incense of April.
The season of which I speak does not correspond with the April of
the almanac in all sections of our vast geography. It answers to
March in Virginia and Maryland, while in parts of New York and New
England it laps well over into May. It begins when the partridge
drums, when the hyla pipes, when the shad start up the rivers, when
the grass greens in the spring runs, and it ends when the leaves
are unfolding and the last snowflake dissolves in midair. It may be
the first of May before the first swallow appears, before the whip-
poor-will is heard, before the wood thrush sings; but it is April
as long as there is snow upon the mountains, no matter what the
almanac may say. Our April is, in fact, a kind of Alpine summer,
full of such contrasts and touches of wild, delicate beauty as no
other season affords.
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