Chapter I: To the Teacher

“It must be a lovely place _in the summer_!” the dull and
irritating often say to me, referring to my home in the country.
What they mean is, of course, “How wretched a place the country
is in winter!” But that attitude toward winter grows less and
less common. We are learning how to enjoy the winter; and it is
my hope that this volume may distinctly contribute to the
knowledge that makes for that joy. Behind such joy is love, and
behind the love is understanding, and behind the understanding
is knowledge.

The trouble with those who say they hate winter is a lack of
knowledge. They do not know the winter; they never tramp the
woods and fields in winter; they have no calendar of the rare,
the high-festival days of winter.

Such a day is the one of this opening chapter--“Hunting the
Snow.” And the winter is full of them; as full as the summer, I
had almost said! The possibilities of winter for nature-study,
for tramps afield, for outdoor sport--for joy and health and
knowledge and poetry are quite as good as those of summer. Try
it this winter. Indeed, let the coldest, dullest, deadest day
this winter challenge you to discover to yourself and to your
pupils some sight, some sound, some happening, or some thought
of the world outside that shall add to their small
understanding, or touch their ready imaginations, or awaken
their eager love for Nature.

And do not let the rarer winter days pass (such as the day that
follows the first snow-fall) without your taking them or sending
them a-hunting the snow, else you will fail in duty as
grievously as you would if you allowed a child to finish his
public-school education without hearing of Bunker Hill.

In reading this first chapter lay emphasis upon: (1) the real
excitement possible without a gun in such a hunt; (2) the
keener, higher kind of joy in watching a live animal than in
killing it; (3) the unfairness of hunting to kill; (4) the rapid
extinction of our wild animals, largely caused by guns; (5) the
necessity now for protection--for every pupil’s doing all he can
to protect wild life everywhere.

FOR THE PUPIL

Study the drawings of the tracks in this chapter, then go into
the woods and try to identify the tracks you find in the snow.
Every track you discover and identify will be quarry in your
bag--just as truly as though you had killed a deer or a moose or
a bear. You can all turn snow-hunters without leaving blood and
pain and death and emptiness and silence behind you. And it is
just as good and exciting sport.

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_cushion-marked holes:_ Examine a cat’s feet. Make a study of
cat tracks: how they are placed; how wide apart; how they look
when she walks, when she runs, when she jumps, when she gathers
herself together for a spring. You can learn the art of
snow-hunting by studying the tracks of the cat in your own
dooryards.

_wood pussy_: a polite name in New England for the skunk.

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_the great northern hare:_ The northern hare is not often seen
here, and I am not sure but that this may be the common brown
rabbit.

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_slashings:_ The name for the waste limbs and tops left after
cutting forest trees. Tree wardens should compel the
woodchoppers to pile this brush up as they cut and burn it while
the snow is on the ground to prevent forest fires in summer.

_hazelnuts_: small brown nuts like the filberts of the stores.
They grow on a bush two to six feet high. There are two
kinds,--common hazelnut and beaked hazelnut. The green husk
looks like a cap, hence its Saxon name _haesle_, a cap, and the
scientific name _Corylus_ from the Greek _corys_, a helmet.

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_Burns:_ Robert Burns, the Scotch poet.

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_root and all, and all in all_: from a poem by Lord Tennyson
called “Flower in the Crannied Wall.”

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_Atalanta’s race:_ Look up the story of the beautiful girl
runner who lost her race with her lover because of her desire to
pick up a golden apple.

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_Two mighty wings_: an owl’s wing marks, perhaps the barred owl
or the great horned owl, or the snowy owl, which sometimes comes
down from the north in the winter.