and leave Meeko to his own affairs; but that is the last thing he
proposes to do with me. When I turn away from the thicket he rushes
over branches above me, reiterating his demand, growing more wrathy as
I keep silence. I am wishing I knew his language, which sounds like an
imprecatory psalm with a pirate’s variation, as he follows me abusively
along the road. Not till he reaches the boundary of his small territory
(for squirrels, like other beasts, have limits beyond which they
rarely go) does he turn back, leaving other squirrels to deal with me
as an intruder. Searching the woods to the left, I soon find a blazed
hemlock, and turn gladly from the lumber road into a trapper’s winter
trail.
Here, save for an occasional old “blaze” on a tree, for which guiding
signal one must look ahead sharply, there is no trace of man or his
destruction. All is still, fragrant, beautiful, just as Nature left her
handiwork. There is a sudden bumping of feet on soft earth, a flash of
orange color, and I catch the waving of white flags as a deer and her
fawns bound away. Farther on a brood of partridges barely move aside
into the underbrush, where they stop to watch me as I pass. A hare
darts out from underfoot, and he, too, is inquisitive; he crouches in
the first bit of cover to find out who I am.
Up and down goes the trail, now over hardwood ridges where great sugar
maples stand wide apart, now through dim evergreen valleys or cedar
swamps where one must feel his way; and at last, from the summit of a
ridge, comes a gleam of blue ahead. It is the lake, _eureka_, I have
found it, asleep amid its eternal hills! Over it bend the trees, as if
they loved it. On every point stands a giant pine, like the king-man
of old, lifting head and shoulders above his fellows. From the water’s
edge the forest sweeps away grandly to the sky line. A moose and her
ungainly calf are feeding on the farther shore. Some animal that I
cannot name slips unseen into the cover; a brood of wild ducks stretch
their necks, alert and questioning, as I appear in the open.
It is a little lake, and therefore companionable, a perfect place to
spend the day and find the hours too short. Searching out a pretty spot
where I can see without being seen, I rest at ease, enjoying the quiet
beauty of the lake; enjoying also the rare blessing of silence. I have
been awake and keenly alive since the birds called me, ages ago; a
thousand tongues, voices, messages, have been heard and understood; yet
not a solitary word has been spoken, not once has the exquisite peace
been disturbed. The _plash_ yonder, behind the rock where I cannot see
what made it, is hardly a sound; like everything else one hears, it
seems like a fragment of the great stillness. It reminds me, however,
that when I return to camp two questions will be asked: the first, Did
you find the lake? and the second, Are there any trout in it? It seems
a pity, almost a profanation, to disturb such a place by human noises;
I would rather be quiet; but I have promised to answer that second
question.
In a swampy spot I find some dry cedars near the lake shore. Though
dead, they are standing on their own roots; they are therefore
weathered, and will float like corks. Soon I have cut enough for a
dozen logs, with cross-pieces, and have gathered them at the water’s
edge. One should be true Indian now, I suppose, and bind the raft
together with bark; but to do that it is necessary to kill or scar a
living tree, which is a thing I never do if it can be avoided; so I
use some spikes which I have brought in my pocket. The only objection
to such civilized implements is that the loud hammering seems horribly
out of place. The first time I drive a spike I look around guiltily, as
if I had been breaking the law. When the work is done and I push out
bravely on my homely craft, I know how the man felt who found himself
afloat for the first time on his own invention. It is a good feeling
which makes one understand his old ancestors.
Yes, the trout are surely here; but the sun has risen over the hills
and the day is bright. A few fingerlings answer as I cast in the shadow
of the rocks; they chivvy the feathered lure a moment (for I do not
care to catch trout to-day, nor such little fellows at any time), and
flash away unharmed to the depths. Farther out from shore, out from
under the lee of the hills, the water is ruffled by a light breeze; so
I push in that direction, lengthening my cast as I go. The fly lights
in the very center of a “catspaw”; there is a gleam of red-gold under
it, followed by a terrific rush. Aha! a big one. Though I had intended
merely to locate the trout without striking them, no fisherman ever
trained himself so fine that he could withhold the snap of his wrist
at an unexpected rise like that. Involuntarily I strike; the hook goes
solidly home; the reel sets up a shrill yell of exultation as the line
flies out.
I shall play this trout to a standstill, then unhook him tenderly
without lifting him from the water, and let him go when I see how big
he is. Yes, of course; I am not fishing to-day. But as the beautiful
fish comes in, fighting every inch of the way, threatening to part my
delicate leader as he darts under the raft, something reminds me that
man must eat, and that a trout can be well broiled on a split stick, a
green fir preferred, to give him an added woodsy flavor. Fortunately
there is a pinch of salt in my pocket, put there in hopeful expectancy
of the unexpected.
Killing the trout as mercifully as such a thing can be done, I run
a string through his red gills, and tie him to my loose-jointed
craft. Then, just to see if there are any more like him (and to avoid
temptation) I break my hook at the bend, leaving only a harmless bit of
steel on the fly. Here comes a cloud-shadow, drifting up the lake. I
wait for it, and cast again in the same place. _Yi-yi_, what a fool I
was to break that hook! The flashing rise that follows my cast is such
as a fisherman dreams of in his sleep.
There must be a spring hereabouts, I think; such trouty vim and dash at
this season bespeak living water. The raft drifts over the spot where
my fish rose, and I stretch out to become as one of the logs, shading
my eyes with my hands to exclude the upper light. There to the left
I dimly discern a ring of white sand; in the middle, where the water
rolls in ceaseless commotion, boils up a spring as big as my hat. As
the raft grows quiet, shadows glide in from all directions to rest on
the rim of sand. Shades of Izaak Walton, look at them! My trout weighs
two pounds; but I wish I had let him alone and waited for a big one.
The shadows dart away at the first motion of my head; but they will
come back, and one has only to bring his raft within casting distance
to have wonderful fishing. This is a sure-thing place, one of the few I
have found in drifting over many northern lakes, and I must locate it
past forgetting. Carefully I take the ranges: big pine east and larch
stub west; hawk’s nest south and split rock north. Where the imaginary
lines cross is the hidden spring with its treasures. No fear that I
shall miss it when I come again!
The raft moves heavily shoreward and lands at the mouth of a little
brook. There I broil the lordly trout, noting with satisfaction that
his flesh is pink as a salmon’s; also I make a dipper of tea, and
spread a birch-bark cloth, on which is a feast for a freeman. As I eat
in thankfulness, after dousing my fire to kill all scent of smoke, the
moose and her calf come circumspectly out of the woods; a deer appears
on the opposite shore, stepping daintily; the wild ducks glide out of
their hiding place, and I am one with the silent wilderness again.
Now comes the best time of all, the time when one remembers the
traveler who came to a place where it was always afternoon. At one
moment I am lost in the immense tranquillity of the woods; the next
I am following some little comedy which begins with a flutter of
wings or a rustle of feet on leaves, and which runs on till the actors
discover that a stranger is watching them.
Slowly, imperceptibly, my lovely day slips away to join all the other
days; each moment of it is like a full hour of life; each hour, when
it is past, seems but a fleeting moment. From an endless period of
alternate watching and reverie I start up with the consciousness that
the sun is below the western hills, that shadows are growing long, that
I have a dim trail to follow before I find familiar landmarks again.
As I hurry along, picking up the blazed spots with difficulty in the
fading light, at times over-running the trail, there comes now and
then a tingling of the skin, as at the touch of cold, when I pass
through darkening thickets where the night life begins to stir and
rustle. If the philosopher Hume had ever followed this or any other
wilderness trail after sundown, he would have found under his own
skin some illustrative matter for his central doctrine. He sought to
tell what the mind of man is by determining its contents at any one
instant, as if its continuity and identity were of no consequence. Had
he lived in the woods, he must have noticed that there are moments
on a darkening trail when the mind seems to be reduced to an acute
point of attraction, at the tip of which, like an electric spark, is
a sense-impression. One becomes at such a time a veritable part of
wild nature; a multitude of sights, sounds and flavors that ordinarily
pass unnoticed are each one bringing its warning, its challenge, its
question. A man’s dull ears grow keen; the pupils of his eyes expand
like an animal’s; his nose resumes its almost forgotten function
of taking messages from the air; his whole skin becomes a delicate
receiving instrument, like the skins of the lower orders; and the
strange “sixth sense” of unseen things, which most animals possess,
begins to stir in its long sleep. The flow of thought is suspended;
reason retreats to its hidden spring, and one grows sensitive all over,
alert and responsive in every fiber of his nature. Such is the way of a
man alone in the woods at night.
If this be the way the higher animals live continually (and I think
it is), I heartily envy them their aliveness. It is alleged that they
live a life of ceaseless fear; but fear is almost wholly mental or
imaginative, and is therefore beyond the animal’s horizon. All wild
creatures are naturally timid, but they have no means of knowing what
fear is. That which our naturalists thoughtlessly call fear in an
animal (doubtless because civilized and imaginative man, having no wild
experience, is himself fearful in the dark woods) is in reality only
exquisite sensitiveness to physical and pleasurable impressions.
It is almost dark when I reach the old lumber road, thankful that I
need no longer search out the trapper’s trail, and turn down the open
way to the lake. Yet I go more cautiously, more cat-footedly, because a
few minutes ago a hidden deer stood watching my approach till I could
have touched him with the fishing rod. He reminds me that most animals
are now at their ease, and that twilight is the best time to come near
them. The birds are asleep, all save the owls; but I hear many a faint
stir or lisp of surprise as my shoulder brushes a thicket.
Presently I come to an open spot beside the road, where trees and
underbrush have been cut away. A hundred roots or stubs rise above
the ground, looking all alike in the gloom; yet somehow I am aware,
without knowing why or how, that one motionless object is different
from all the rest. I fix attention upon it, and approach softly, nearer
and nearer. My eyes say that it is only a lump, dark and silent; my
ears and nose tell me nothing. There is no sound, no motion, no form
even to suggest what huddles there in the dark; but I know it is a
living thing. I bend forward to touch it--_Br-r-r-room!_ With a roar of
whirring wings a cock partridge bursts away like a bomb, giving me a
terrible shock.
I never saw that explosive fellow before; but I ought to have guessed
who he was, because several times I have surprised a solitary cock
grouse asleep amid stubs of his own size, or else leaning against a
huge stump, where he looks precisely like an extra root in the dusk.
Meanwhile mother partridges with their broods are roosting higher, some
in thick alders where the leaves hide them, others close against the
stem of a spruce or cedar, where it is hard for eyes to distinguish
them even in broad daylight.
At the foot of a hill, where a jumper trail enters the logging road
from the right, I hear a strange cry from the opposite side, and stop
to learn what it is. For several minutes I wait, hearing the cry
at intervals, till I have located it far away on a ridge and have
recognized it as the voice of a cub-bear.
The dusk is now heavy in the sleeping woods; not a breath of air stirs;
the silence is intense. I am listening for the bear, when suddenly
comes a feeling that something is near or watching me. Where it is,
what it is, I have absolutely no notion; but the sense-of-presence
grows stronger, and I trust it because I have seldom known it to be
wrong. I search the lumber road up and down, but there is nothing to
be seen. I search the woods on both sides, slowly, minutely, but there
is no sound. Then, as I turn to the jumper trail that comes winding
down the hill behind me, a current of air drifts in; my nose begins to
recognize a faint odor.
A few yards up the trail is a huge black object, an upturned tree with
a mat of soil clinging to its roots. Yes, it is a root, surely; but
there is something in its shadow. I watch it, bending slightly so as
to get the outline against the sky; and there, clearly showing now
above the root, are the antlers of a bull-moose. He is still as a rock,
pointing ears and ungainly nose straight at me. Undoubtedly he was
coming down the trail when he saw a motion in the road ahead, and froze
in his tracks to find out about it. He knows now that he is seen, and
that one of us must move. For a full minute we stare at each other;
then he takes a nervous step, swings broadside to the trail, and turns
his head for another look. Big as he is, not a sound marks his going;
he takes a few springy, silent steps up the trail, and fades into the
gloom of the big woods.
So I come to the canoe at last, and cross the pond and run the stream,
which is now a veritable tunnel with a tattered ribbon of sky overhead.
As I cross the big lake campward, the evening star is sparkling like
a great jewel on the pointed tip of a spruce, which towers above his
fellows on the crown of the western hills. Overhead passes a sound of
hurrying wings; a loon calls far away, and again these wild sounds are
as fragments of a mighty stillness. Under the gliding canoe the waters
are quiet, as if in slumber; but in the distance you can hear them
talking to the shore with a voice that is now a whisper, again a faint
echo of music. On every side the woods come closer, as if to look upon
their reflection in the inky mirror; and they seem to be waiting, to be
listening. Over all this silent, expectant world some sublime presence,
living but unseen, is brooding upon the mystery of life.
And at last I, too, begin to brood. For the first time in uncounted
hours comes a touch of relaxation, a quieting of the alert senses, the
well-done of a perfect day. I quote softly from Lanier:
“And now from the vast of the Lord shall the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men;
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep?”
As I double the point toward which the canoe has long been heading, a
light flashes cheerily out of the dark woods; the camp fire sends out
its invitation, and a voice calls, “Welcome home!” Though my “good
lonesome” is ended, and better things are waiting, I must still turn
for a last look at the sleeping lake, to watch the ultimate glimmer of
twilight fade and vanish over the western steeps.
Good-by, my Day; and hail! You go, yet you stay forever. You have
taught me something of the nature of eternity, of the day of the Lord
that is as a thousand years, and of the thousand years that are as one
day.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
NIGHT LIFE OF THE WILDERNESS
Twilight is deepening into dusk as you leave camp to follow the silent
trail. The long summer day has had its lesson, broken short off, as all
lessons are before we learn them; now what of the night?
With the sunset a subtle change comes over the big woods; they are
fragrant and profoundly still. Trees that were massed in the sunshine
now seem more individual, standing with outstretched arms, praying
their myriad prayer; and viewing them against the sky you see their
delicate grace as well as their strength. The birds have long been
quiet, all but the robin, who on the tip of the tallest evergreen,
where he can see a gleam of afterglow, pours out a strangely wild song.
He is always the last to go to bed. Chipmunks that have been silently
busy all day, and red squirrels that have been noisily idle, are now
in their dens asleep. Something like a shadow passes before your face,
swooping downward in quivering flight; you hear the scratching of tiny
feet on bark, and there at your shoulder, looking at you with round
inquisitive eye, is Molepsis the flying squirrel. He is the gentlest,
the most lovable of his tribe, and he belongs to the night. You are
watching him, your heart warming to the little fellow, when leaves
rustle and a twig cracks.
If your ears were better trained, you would know now what is passing,
since no two animals rustle the leaves or snap a twig in precisely the
same way. Lacking such lore of the woods, you halt at the first sound,
straining your eyes in the gloom. The rustle draws nearer; and there
in the shadow stands Hetokh the buck, observing you keenly and asking,
“Who are you, Pilgrim, and whither does your trail lead?”
There is no fear in his alert poise, you see; nor does he whirl and
bound away in alarm, as you expect him to do, because you know him only
by daylight. Receiving no answer, he goes his own way, but haltingly,
looking back as he disappears. Then Molepsis loses interest in you, or
remembers his small affairs; he runs to the top of his tree, launches
himself out in slanting flight, and is swallowed up in the immensity
of the dusk. Such a little life to trust itself so boldly in a great
darkness!
Again the trail is before you, silent but never lifeless; it seems
always to be listening. As you follow it onward, you are wiser than
before, having learned the odor of a deer and the meaning of a tiny
shadow that often passes before your face in the twilight. You are also
more sympathetic, and richer by two happy memories; for the flying
squirrel has softened your heart to all innocent creatures, and that
questioning pose of the buck has awakened a desire to know more of the
real animal, the living mysterious _anima_ of him, not the babble of
his death or the jargon of his bones that fill our books of hunting
or of science. Meanwhile Kook’skoos the great horned owl is sounding
for rain, and his voice is no longer a foreboding; it is a call, an
invitation to come and learn.
And speaking of learning, you will not follow the twilight trail very
far before it is impressed on your mind that the wild creature you
surprise or startle by day is very different from the creature that
surprises and often startles you by night. He has at first all the
advantage, being at home in dark woods where you are a wary stranger.
Then, as you grow familiar with the dusk, more in tune with its
harmony, you begin to appreciate this distinction: by day you see a
strange wild animal at a distance; by night you may meet him as a
fellow traveler on the same road of mystery. This natural equality,
this laying aside of all killing or collecting for a live-and-let-live
policy, is absolutely essential if you would learn anything worth
knowing about the wood folk.
All this is at variance with the prevalent notion that timid beasts
spend their nights in a state of terror; but never mind that notion
now. It is pure delusion. You will learn from the night woods that
the alleged terror of animals is, like their imaginary struggle for
existence, the distorted reflection of a human and most unnatural
experience. A lone man in the woods after nightfall is like one who
has lost his birthright of confidence in nature. His spine goes chilly
at every rustling; his overstrained eyes irritate his whole nervous
system, which becomes “like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and
harsh”; whereupon his imagination conjures up a world of savage beasts
and other hallucinations. When he returns to his fire-lighted camp,
there to think of small or large creatures roaming the dusk from which
he has just escaped with trembling, he easily attributes to them his
own human fears or terrors. It does not occur to our fevered fancy that
the animal is abroad because he prefers the dusk to the daylight, or
that he has, as we shall see, an excellent reason for his preference.
The simple fact is that of fear, in any human sense, the wild animal is
wholly and happily ignorant.
Let me emphasize, therefore, as the first lesson of the night woods,
that they have no fear in them, except such as you carry in your own
heart. Banish that fear, and you shall speedily learn this other
lesson: by day your civilized man is by force of habit an intruder,
a meddlesome adventurer who makes noises and disturbs the peace; but
by night his transgressions are covered; he is peaceable because
powerless, unable to use his inventions, and nature accepts him as part
of a reasonable universe in which sizes vary but rights are all equal.
Gradually his spirit, set free from its worldly business, expands into
the immensity around him. From the stars and the still night he absorbs
tranquillity; and then it is that the animal seems to recognize his
changed disposition and meets him unafraid. This, I think, is the most
illuminating experience that comes to a man who enters into the spirit
of the night, that the wild animal has little or no fear of him.
One evidence of this is the fact that you can come much nearer to
an animal by night than by day. Though all his senses are then much
better than yours, he will often wait beside trail or waterway till
you are almost upon him, when he is apt to startle you as he breaks
away. He has sensed you long before you became aware of him, and has
been watching you closely; but your approach, timid and halting in the
uncertain light, has disarmed his suspicion. Another plain piece of
evidence is that the same timid creatures which this morning fled from
you, as if you had a demon, will to-night come confidently to your
tenting ground, so near that you may be awakened by their low calls or
their soft footsteps.
You may think that this careless approach is due to the animal’s
ignorance, that he cannot smell you because the scent of men, as of
all birds or beasts, is very faint in sleep; and so I thought till I
learned better. I think now that it is not the smell of man, but of
something variable in man, which arouses an animal’s suspicion. Before
a little child, who certainly has the man scent, most timid beasts show
no fear whatever, but only a lively curiosity.
Near a permanent camp of mine I once constructed a roof of bark, a
shelter open on all sides, wherein to tie trout-flies and do other
woodsy work in stormy weather. Soon I noticed fresh tracks all about;
then I kept vegetables in the shed, with salt and other things that
deer like. One rainy night I heard sounds out there, and crept from my
tent to investigate. Some animal slipped away as I approached; but so
black was the night that I could not see the shelter till I went beyond
and viewed it against the open lake. Presently a shadow glided past
to stand under the roof; my nose told me it was a deer, and behind it
trotted two smaller shadows that were her fawns. They smelled me, no
doubt, and I think they also saw me, their eyes being better than mine
in such light; but they showed no alarm until I walked past them on my
way to the tent. Then they ran away, but without their usual warning
cries, and within a few minutes I heard the doe calling her little ones
under the roof again.