Perhaps the brightest spot of that sad period when we were making ready
to leave the woods, with all their comfort, their peace and their
religion, and go back to the harrying haunts of men, to mingle with the
fever and fret of daily strife, is the memory of a trip to Jeremy's Bay.
I don't know in the least where Jeremy's Bay is, but it is somewhere
within an hour's paddle of Jim Charles's Point, and it is that hour and
the return that sticks with me now.
It was among the last days of June--the most wonderful season in the
north woods. The sun seems never ready to set there, then, and all the
world is made of blues and greens and the long, lingering tones of
evening.
We had early tea in preparation for the sunset fishing. It was best, Del
said, in Jeremy's Bay about that time. So it was perhaps an hour earlier
when we started, the canoes light.
In any one life there are not many evenings such as that. It is just as
well, for I should account it a permanent sadness if they became
monotonous. Perhaps they never would. Our course lay between shores--an
island on the one hand, the mainland on the other. When we rounded the
point, we were met by a breeze blown straight from the sunset--a breath
that was wild and fresh and sweet, and billowed the water till it caught
every hue and shimmering iridescence that the sky and shores and setting
sun could give.
We were eager and rested, for we had done little that day, and the empty
canoes slipped like magic into a magical sea of amethyst and emerald
gold, the fresh breeze filling us with life and ecstasy until we seemed
almost to fly. The eyes could not look easily into the glory ahead,
though it was less easy to look away from the enchantment which lay
under the sunset. The Kingdom of Ponemah was there, and it was as if we
were following Hiawatha to that fair and eternal hunting-ground.
Yet when one did turn, the transformation was almost worth while. The
colors were all changed. They were more peaceful, more like reality,
less like a harbor of dreams and visions too fair for the eyes of man to
look upon. A single glance backward, and then away once more between
walls of green, billowing into the sunset--away, away to Jeremy's Bay!
The sun was just on the horizon when we reached there--the water already
in shadow near the shore. So deep and vivid were its hues that we seemed
to be fishing in dye-stuff. And the breeze went out with the sun, and
the painted pool became still, ruffled only where the trout broke water
or a bird dipped down to drink.
I will not speak of the fishing there. I have already promised that I
would not speak of fishing again. But Jeremy's Bay is a spot that few
guides know and few fishermen find. It was our last real fishing, and it
was worthy. Then home to camp, between walls of dusk--away, away from
Jeremy's Bay--silently slipping under darkening shores--silently, and a
little sadly, for our long Day of Joy was closing in--the hour of return
drew near.
And postpone it as you will, the final moment must come--the time when
the rod must be taken down for good; the leaders stripped and coiled in
their box, the fly-book tenderly gone over and the last flies you have
used fitted into place and laid away.
One does not go through that final ritual without a little sentiment--a
little tugging about the heart. The flies were all new and trim and
properly placed when you set out. They were a gay array and you were as
proud of them as of a little garden. They are in disarray now. They have
an unkempt look. The shells are shredded, the feathers are caked and
bitten, the hackle is frazzled and frayed out. Yet you are even more
proud of them than in the beginning. Then they were only a promise, fair
and beautiful to look upon; now they conjure up pictures of supreme
fulfillment--days and moments so firmly set upon the past that they
shall not soon fade away. That big Silver Doctor--from which the shell
has twice been broken, and the feathers wrapped and rewrapped--that must
have been wound with a special blessing, for when all else failed it was
a certain lure. The big trout below Loon Lake rose to that fly, and
accordingly this battered thing will forever be preserved. This scarlet
Breck, with almost every gay feather gone and the silver wrapping
replaced with tinfoil--even when it displayed a mere shred of its former
glory it proved far more fatal than many a newer fly. How vividly it
recalls a certain wild pool of strange, dim lucence where, for me, the
trout would take no other lure. And this Montreal--it has become a magic
brush that paints a picture of black rocks and dark water, and my first
trout taken on a cast. For a hundred years, if I live that long, this
crumpled book and these broken, worn-out flies will bring back the
clear, wild water and the green shores of a Nova Scotia June, the
remoter silences of the deeper forest, the bright camps by twisting
pools and tumbling falls, the flash of the leaping trout, the feel of
the curved rod and the music of the singing reel.
I shall always recall Eddie, then, and I shall bless him for many
things--and forgive him for others. I shall remember Del, too, the
Stout, and Charles the Strong, and that they made my camping worth
while. I was a trial to them, and they were patient--almost unreasonably
so. I am even sorry now for the time that my gun went off and scared
Del, though it seemed amusing at the moment. When the wind beats up and
down the park, and the trees are bending and cracking with ice; when I
know that once more the still places of the North are white and the
waters fettered--I shall shut my eyes and see again the ripple and the
toss of June, and hear once more the under voices of the falls. And some
day I shall return to those far shores, for it is a place to find one's
soul.
Yet perhaps I should not leave that statement unqualified, for it
depends upon the sort of a soul that is to be found. The north wood does
not offer welcome or respond readily to the lover of conventional luxury
and the smaller comforts of living. Luxury is there, surely, but it is
the luxury that rewards effort, and privation, and toil. It is the
comfort of food and warmth and dry clothes after a day of endurance--a
day of wet, and dragging weariness, and bitter chill. It is the bliss of
reaching, after long, toilsome travel, a place where you can meet the
trout--the splendid, full-grown wild trout, in his native home, knowing
that you will not find a picnic party on every brook and a fisherman
behind every tree. Finally, it is the preciousness of isolation, the
remoteness from men who dig up and tear down and destroy, who set
whistles to tooting and bells to jingling--who shriek themselves hoarse
in the market place and make the world ugly and discordant, and life a
short and fevered span in which the soul has a chance to become no more
than a feeble and crumpled thing. And if that kind of a soul pleases
you, don't go to the woods. It will be only a place of mosquitoes, and
general wetness, and discomfort. You won't care for it. You will hate
it. But if you are willing to get wet and stay wet--to get cold and stay
cold--to be bruised, and scuffed, and bitten--to be hungry and thirsty
and to have your muscles strained and sore from unusual taxation: if you
will welcome all these things, not once, but many times, for the sake of
moments of pure triumph and that larger luxury which comes with the
comfort of the camp and the conquest of the wilderness, then go! The
wilderness will welcome you, and teach you, and take you to its heart.
And you will find your own soul there; and the discovery will be worth
while!