I WAS delighted when my hostess at
Kingfield, Tennessee, suggested a Sabbath afternoon walk. As
we passed along the woodsy paths, suddenly I stopped and
sniffed the air intently. "What is it?" asked my friend,
noting my excitement.
"Nothing yet," I said, "but a memory—the
memory of a fragrance, the breath of the November woods,
something I haven't smelled since I was a child. There must
be witch hazel growing close by."
Soon we found it. Nothing else is like
it. Once its fragrance has filled the nostrils of a child
who lives in the woods, it is never forgotten. Such an
elusive, thin, light sweetness would be lost among the airs
of spring or the more robust aromas, of the hot season. But
in the autumn woods there are two fragrances that are the
soul (the "breath") of the season: the fragrance of falling
leaves and the scent of witch-hazel blossoms found in rich
abundance.
Let us pay a loving tribute over the
graves of the goodly leaves. They are the banners of
unselfish service all summer; they are shining and fragrant
in their dying; they enrich the world in their death. They
are like godly personalities, lovely and pleasant in life,
not divided from beauty in death.
But there is nothing dying about the
witch hazel. It seems exuberant with life the year around.
Too large to be a shrub, it is too small to be a tree. It
can't stand still long enough to be a tree. It must send up
multiple stems instead of one trunk. And these strong,
flexible stems bend vibrantly before storms (but more so
when children ride them for "horses"). It must be a little
different in everything. Its leaves cannot be folded into
equal halves; they are irregular at their bases and
sometimes wider than long.
But it is in its flowering and seeding
that witch hazel is most alive. When even the leaves lie in
sodden graves under fall rains, witch hazel lights its
candles. Its long wands are crowded with tiny flowers set
three or four to a cluster, each with four strap-shaped
petals. The petals are not sedate, but are as curled and
wavy as though perpetually dancing in miniature breezes. And
lest the eye miss its pale gold sunshine, it sends forth the
sweetest flower breath I know to ravish the attention to its
loveliness.
Then when its lover bends to enjoy its
sweet savor, it may shoot him square on the cheek with a
shiny black seed fired with an audible pop from last year's
seedpods, ripening beneath this year's flower clusters. No
dropping its seeds for witch hazel! No idle waiting for wind
or animal to carry them! It fires them off. Witch hazel
shots have been measured as much as forty-five feet.
So there is something thrillingly alive
about the witch hazel around the calendar. God is a lover of
life and beauty, or He would never have set the golden witch
hazel blossoms under November's black skies.
