met after darkness has fallen, at such close range that one who has
known them only by daylight is amazed at their boldness. As a rule,
the so-called savage beasts are always difficult of approach, being
more shy than any rabbit; while harmless creatures that we imagine
to be governed by terror give the impression at night that they are
frolicsome rather than fearful. Even the wood mice--clean, beautiful
little creatures, so delicately balanced that the sudden appearance of
danger may paralyze or kill them--seem to lose much of their natural
timidity as they run about among the twilight shadows. By day you see
them, if at all, only as vanishing streaks; by night you may hear them
climbing up one side of your tent and sliding down the other. They will
enter freely and, as I have often tested, will sit in your open palm,
as at a friendly table, and eat what you offer them.
Two rules of courtesy must be observed, however, when you entertain
such little guests. You must eschew mental excitement, which is
contagious; and you must never make a sudden motion.
One reason for the boldness of animals at night is that they apparently
recognize man’s helplessness, his lack of confidence in his own senses.
At times one may even think that an animal is playing with him, as
children are moved to play with one who is blindfolded. Such was my
impression, at least, when I went astray one night in making my way
back to camp. A half-moon was shining, giving enough light in the open
places, but sadly confusing matters in the forest depths, where one’s
eyes were never quite sure whether they were looking upon substance
or shadow. I had missed the trail, and was casting for it in circles,
hurrying as one does when lost, blundering through the woods with the
clumsiness that distinguishes man from all other creatures. Down into
a valley of gloom I went, only to find myself in surroundings that
were all strange and wild. Next I floundered through a stream, and was
climbing the bank when I saw something in front of me, something big,
motionless, and misty-white.
Now I had been seeing white things for an hour past, bleached rocks,
spots of moonlight, silver birches; but this was different. I knew
instantly that the thing was alive; for there is something in a living
animal that makes itself known, though your ordinary senses cannot tell
you why or how you know. For a long moment I faced the thing steadily;
but it was dead-still, and I could make nothing of it. As I started
forward, the misty-white spot enlarged to twice its size, narrowed
again, drifted away among the trees like a ghost. When I followed,
straining my eyes after it, I fell into a hidden branch of the stream
where water was deep and the mud bottomless. The white thing stood, as
if watching me, only a few yards beyond.
Yes, it was rather creepy just then. The chill in my spine was not of
the cold water when all the grisly doings of ha’nts, wanderlights and
banshees (tales that I heard in childhood and forgotten) came back in a
vivid troop. For a time I was as pagan as any of my old ancestors, and
as ready to believe in any kind of hobgoblin; only I must find out what
the mysterious thing was.
When I struggled out of the pool, the white spot floated up a hill in
front of me, noiselessly as an owl, and vanished in a thicket of fir.
As I smashed in after it, out it blew on the opposite side, making
me feel creepy again till a twig cracked. That was the first sound I
heard, and it told me that the thing had legs long enough to reach the
ground. Twice afterward I saw it close ahead, broadening, narrowing,
drifting away; but except that it was an animal, and a large one, I had
no notion of what I was following. Then it vanished for good, and on
my right was a gleam of the lake. I had my bearings then, and turning
to the left I soon found the lost trail, making an Indian compass of
broken twigs as I went.
At daybreak I was back at the place and following my Indian compass.
Near the fir thicket I found the track of a large deer, but was unable
to follow it on the hard ground. An hour later, as I watched the lake
shore, a buck white as snow stepped out. He was an albino, the first I
had ever met, and to this day I have never again seen so magnificent a
specimen. It was he, undoubtedly, who had played with me in the dark
woods, waiting till I came close to him, then moving on to watch my
flounderings from another vantage ground. The widening of the white
spot, which had so completely mystified me, was due to a momentary
glimpse of his broadside as he turned away.
A second reason for the animal’s boldness has already been suggested;
namely, that at night a man’s feeling undergoes a change. He is no
longer confident of his superior power; as eyes fail him he grows
doubtful of himself; and the wild animal is like certain dogs in that
he seems able to recognize one’s mental attitude. Hunters who call
moose will tell you that the bulls are extraordinarily wary after
dark, and that is often true; but for this wariness the hunter, not
the moose, is responsible. In the first place, your modern hunter goes
out with a guide; and two men make ten times as much noise as one, and
spread far more terror. Next, the hunter is eager to see, to shoot, to
kill; his excitement gets into his skin, gets into the guide and the
call, and a sensitive moose probably feels this contagion of excitement
as he draws near it; though it might be hard to explain why or how. As
Simmo the Indian says, “Moose don’t know _how_ he know somet’ing; he
jus’ know.”
I think Simmo is right, and that he has an explanation of the fact that
a sportsman who is most keen to kill in the calling season is often
the one who must wait longest for his chance; while to the man who
goes out unarmed opportunity comes with both hands full. Though I am
a very poor caller, measured by Simmo’s art, I have seldom found much
difficulty in bringing out a bull; but this may be due to the fact that
most of my calling has been done far from settlements, in regions where
moose are seldom hunted. Yet even in Maine, where moose are literally
hunted to death, during the summer or “closed” season they have no
more fear than in the remote wilderness. If you meet one on the trail
at night, he may come quite as near as you care to have him; and in
the early part of the mating season it is not unusual to have two or
three bulls answer the call. After the hunting season opens, it is much
more difficult to deceive the ungainly brutes; but the difficulty is
largely due to the fact that, because of the law which protects cows
and so makes them abundant, the bulls are already mated and no longer
interested in your wailing.
In the wilder region of northern New Brunswick, the first time I ever
tried to call moose a truculent old bull burst out of the woods and
chased me into my canoe. On another occasion I was sitting on a big
rock in the moonlight, “talking” to a young bull that answered but was
shy of showing himself, when a huge brute with magnificent antlers came
silently behind me, and would, I think, have poked me off my rock had
I not made a hasty exit. As I have never done any shooting at such
times, I do not know whether bulls would come as readily to my call if
there were a rifle behind it; but I do know, from repeated experiment,
that when I take others with me it is much harder to bring a bull into
the open than when I call alone.
Perhaps the chief reason for the fearlessness of wild beasts at night
is that their senses then become so acute as to produce almost perfect
self-reliance. In the daytime your eyes are better than theirs; but
after nightfall they have you at a disadvantage, and they seem to know
it. Not only do their eyes or ears tell them of your coming, but their
nostrils seem to detect your very quality or condition. This is not
theory, but experience. Repeatedly animals that run from me by day have
at night stood quietly beside the trail till I was almost upon them.
The nose of a beast is wonderful enough at any hour; but at night it is
to him what a lamp is to you, because the moist air is then laden with
odors which are quenched by the dry sunlight. No sooner does twilight
fall than the forest becomes a huge bouquet. If you test the matter,
you can soon learn to recognize every tree or shrub you pass by its
characteristic fragrance. You can wind a beast before you see him, and
can pick up from the dewy grass the musky odor of a deer, the heavy
smell of a moose, the pungent reek of a fox, long after one of these
animals has crossed the trail. Curiously enough, the pine and balsam
needles call in their odorous messengers with the night; many flowers
suspend their fragrant activity when they close their petals, and not
till the sun rises will they be known once more.
From such human experience one may judge what the sense of smell must
be to wild animals, which are better endowed in this respect, and
which daily cultivate a gift that we neglect. Watch any beast, your
dog for example, and note that he does not trust even his master till
his nose brings its perfect message. When a deer with his exquisite
nostrils passes through the night woods, finding at every step odors
which invite or check or warn him, the sensation must be like that of a
keen-eyed man who looks upon a landscape flooded with sunshine. Because
a man trusts only his sight (the least trustworthy of the senses) he is
timid in the darkness, and grows bold with the morning. For the same
psychological reason an animal, which trusts his nose, is wary in the
dry sunshine when odors are faintest, but grows confident when night
falls and the woods fill with messages that he understands perfectly.
The night is better also for hearing. Sounds travel farther, more
clearly and more accurately in the elastic air, and the animal’s
keen ears are then like another pair of eyes. Even a man’s ears grow
sensitive to the meaning of sounds that are mere cries or noises by
day, calling of owls far or near, hunting calls, assembly calls, food
calls, rain calls; hail or farewell of loons, answered by hail or
farewell from another lake far away over the hills; eager or querulous
barking of a mother fox, calling her cubs to the feast or chiding them
for their clumsy hunting. Above these and a hundred other wild calls
is that rushing sound of music which sweeps over the listening night
woods, like the surge and swell of a mighty organ at an immeasurable
distance.
It is commonly believed that this thrilling harmony of the night is
from within, from overstrained nerves of the ear; but I think, on the
contrary, that it is wholly objective, as real as the vibration of
a wind harp or a ’cello string or any other instrument. I take one
person into the big woods at night, and say to him: “Listen; what do
you hear?” And he answers, “I hear nothing.” I take another person,
and say: “Listen; what do you hear?” And a great wonder comes into
his face as he answers: “I hear music. What is it?” When I am alone
in the woods my ears are always tense; but on some nights the rushing
harmony is everywhere, while on other nights I cannot hear it, listen
as I will. Only when conditions are just right, when the air is like a
stretched wire, do the woods begin to sing. Then from a distance comes
a faint vibration; from the waterfall, it may be, or from some mountain
edge purring under a current of air, or from ten-million trembling
needles in a swaying grove of pines. The hanging leaves feel it and
begin to stir rhythmically; shells of hardwood, dry and resonant as
violins, fall to humming with the movement, and suddenly all the forest
is musical. The strangest thing about this eerie, wonderful melody is
that, when you change position to hear better, it vanishes altogether,
and hours may pass before you hear it again.
Amid such conditions, which awaken even human senses from their long
sleep, the animal is at home, and his ability to locate sounds is
almost beyond belief. You may have heard much of moose-calling, the
wailing of the guide, the tingling answer, the approach, the shot,
the barbarous end; but the most astonishing thing about moose-calling
I have never heard mentioned; namely, that the distant bull seems to
locate your first call as accurately as if he had watched you all the
way to your chosen position. And this is the way of it:
You leave camp at moonrise and make your way silently to a little bog
lying amid endless barrens, lakes, forests,--an unmapped wilderness
without road or trail, in which one might lose a city. From your
hiding place, a thicket exactly like a thousand others near or far,
you begin to call, very softly at first, because a bull may be near
and listening. When nothing stirs to your trumpet you grow bolder,
sending forth the weird bellow of a cow-moose. Away it goes, whining
over forest and barren, rousing up innumerable echoes; in the tense,
startled air it seems that such a cry must carry to the ends of the
earth. The silence grows more pronounced after that; it begins to be
painful when, from a mountain looming far away against the sky, there
floats down the ghost of a sound, _quoh!_ so small that the buzz of a
chilled mosquito fairly drowns it. You strain your ears, thinking you
were deceived; but no, the bull answers again; he is beginning to talk.
Listen!
Now you can hear his voice and something else, something almost
fairylike,--a rustling, faint as the stir of a mouse in the grass, and
_tock!_ an elfin report, as the bull hits a stub in his rush and sends
it crackling down.
That fellow will come if you coax him properly. Indeed, if he is not
mated, he is bound to come and is already on his way. But the moon
is obscured now, and the light very dim. If you would see your bull
clearly, or measure his antlers, or learn a new thing, go away quickly
without another sound. At daybreak you shall find him not only on
this particular bog, which is as a pin point in the vast expanse, but
waiting expectantly near the very thicket where you were calling.
With such senses to guide him, to tell him of your every step as you
go blundering through the night, no wonder that a wild animal grows
serenely confident. Even the black bear, more timid than deer or
moose, sheds something of his aloofness when night falls and his nose
or ears become as penetrating searchlights. Ordinarily a bear avoids
you; should you meet him accidentally his every action says, “I do
desire that we may be better strangers.” But if you enter his territory
without disturbing him, he will sometimes let curiosity get the better
of discretion, and draw near to question you in the friendly darkness.
Once on a canoe journey I found myself breaking all rules of travel
by making a belated camp, having passed the sunset hour and crossed a
large lake in order to sleep at an old camp ground of mine, a lovely
spot, endeared by happy memories. The night was chill, the moon shining
full and clear, when I arrived at the familiar place and searched it
all over, as a man always searches a place where he once camped,
looking for something that he never finds, that he does not even name.
Then I repaired my old “Commoosie,” made a fragrant bed of fir boughs,
and was thinking of supper when, on the farther side of a bay, two
bull-moose started a rumpus, grunting, smashing brush, clanging their
antlers like metal blades as they charged each other savagely; all this
to win the favor of a mate that cared nothing for either of them.
Silently I paddled over in my canoe, ran close to the fighting brutes,
and watched till one drove the other out of hearing. When I returned it
was over-late for cooking; so I supped of pilot-bread with dried fruit,
and turned in to sleep without lighting a fire. The splash of a feeding
trout in the shallows and the wild call of a bear, _hey’-oo!_ like a
person lost or demented, were the last sounds I heard.
A man in the open sleeps lightly, in some subconscious way keeping
track of what goes on around him. Suddenly, as if someone had touched
me, I was broad awake with every sense alert. Behind the great log
which lay as a threshold across the open front of the “Commoosie”
something moved; a shadow rose up, and there, sharply defined in the
moonlight, stood a huge bear. His forepaws rested lightly on the log;
his head was raised, his whole body drawn to its utmost tension. Eyes,
ears, nose, every sense and fiber of him seemed to question the sleeper
with intense wonder.
When you surprise a brute like that, or especially when he surprises
you, the rule is to freeze in your tracks; but you need not memorize
it, since instinct will attend to the matter perfectly if you follow it
without question. If you must move before he does, ignore the animal;
turn half away (never move directly toward or from him) and walk
quietly off at a tangent, as if going about your own affairs. But here
the bear had me wholly at a disadvantage. Except to start fair upright,
any move was impossible under the blankets, and a sudden motion would
certainly throw the brute into a panic; in which event he might bolt
away or bolt into the “Commoosie.” You can never be sure what a
startled animal will do at close quarters. So I lay still, following an
instinctive rather than a rational decision.
Presently the bear glided away, but falteringly, and I knew that he was
not satisfied. Without a sound I reached for my heavy revolver, gripped
it, and lay as I was before. Very soon the bear’s head reappeared; like
a shadow his bulk moved across the opening, and again he raised himself
on the threshold for a look. He probably smelled me, as I certainly
smelled him, rank and doggy; but a sleeping man gives off very little
scent (of a non-alarming kind, I think), and Mooween’s inquisitiveness
had made a bold beast out of a timid one. He had a fine autumn coat;
the short velvety fur rippled or gleamed as the moonlight touched it,
giving to its lustrous black an apparent fringe of frosty white, like
the pelt of a silver fox.
When I marked that perfect fur I knew it was what I had long wanted as
a rug. It needed only the pressure of a finger to make it mine, and the
finger was curling on the trigger when, unfortunately, I began to think.
Silence enfolded the earth in its benediction, and I must shatter
that blessed silence by gunpowder. Like a veil let down from heaven
the moonlight rested on every tree, on the rough ground, on my old
“Commoosie,” making all things beautiful; and I must spatter that pure
veil with red. No, it was not a pleasant notion; night and solitude
make a man sensitive, averse to noise, violence, discord of every kind.
Even a bear might have some rights, if one were fair with him. He had
done no harm in the woods, and meant no harm when he came to my camp.
He was simply curious, like all natural beasts. Somehow it began to
appear as a greedy, an atrocious thing to kill him just for his skin;
at my own door, too, where he stood timidly looking in. Besides, a
dead animal is no longer interesting. In the back of my head was the
desire, always present when a wild beast appears, to know what he
thinks or, if that be impossible, to know at least what he does. The
experience, startling enough at first, had now turned to comedy, and I
wanted to see how it would end.
Thus a small moment passed, while I tried the great beast for his life;
through it ran a river of thought or sentiment with the rush and dance
of rapids.
Once during the trial Mooween turned away, only to return quickly.
I had moved a trifle, and he heard it. When he turned a second time
something in his gait or motion said that he would not come back, that
he no longer dared trust his neighborhood. As he disappeared I peeked
around the corner of the “Commoosie.” Straight off he went to the edge
of the clearing, where he sat upon his haunches, feeling safer with
the woods only a jump away, and rocked his nose up and down to catch
air from different currents, still hoping for some message that would
tell him who or what I was. It was a wild region; he had probably never
before met a man. Then he stood erect on his hind legs for a last look,
dropped on all-fours, and vanished silently among the shadows. A moment
later panic struck him like a bomb; away he ran with a great smashing
of brush, as if all the dogs of a parish were after him.
* * * * *
If you are desirous of meeting or knowing wild animals, the hour
following the evening twilight is the best time to be abroad. Toward
midnight the wood folk all rest, as a rule, and through the small
hours the coverts are profoundly quiet till just before the dawn. On a
moonlit night birds and beasts are apt to be stirring at all hours, and
then is the time to learn the language of the wild, the cries, barks,
hootings, yellings, rustlings, which come to you as mere noises at
first, but which have all definite meaning when you learn to interpret
them. Yet even on moonlit nights such voices are rather exceptional.
Wild birds and beasts go their ways in silence for the most part; the
typical wilderness night is so quiet, so peaceful, that an occasional
cry seems part of a mighty stillness.
On other than moonlit nights you will do well to travel by canoe,
keeping close to shore so as to get the fragrance of the breathing
woods. They are wonderful in darkness; but if you enter them, your
chief concern will probably be to find your way out again, because
the depths of a primeval forest are so pitch dark that human eyes are
useless. Even on a trail you must look up steadily, keeping your
course by the heavens, which are always lighter than the earth. If
you strive to look ahead, you will certainly lose the narrow way; but
to look up is to see between the black forest bulks on either hand a
pathway of light, which corresponds to every turn and winding of the
trail beneath. Better still, if you are in danger of losing the path,
shut your eyes; keep them shut, and trust to the guidance of your own
feet. They are more familiar with the touch of mother earth than you
are aware, and they will tell you instantly when you are departing
from a beaten trail. But avoid burglar-proof shoes, of the absurd
“sportsman” variety, when you try this enlightening experiment.
There are other things than animals, you see, to be met in the
night. Perhaps the most interesting creature you will ever meet is
your natural self, which lies buried but not dead under a crust of
artificial habit. To break that crust and come forth, like a moth
from its dry chrysalis; to feel again the joy of human senses,
awakened, vibrant, responsive to every message of earth; to cast aside
unworthy fear and walk in one’s birthright of confidence; to know the
companionship of the night, more mysterious and more lovely than the
day,--all this is waiting for you in the darkened woods. Try it and
see. Leave your camp on the first still, moonlit evening to follow
the trail alone. Look up at the trees, all fairylike, with leaves of
burnished silver set amid luminous shadows, and confess that you never
saw a tree in its beauty before. Smell the fragrance of the moistened
woods, like an old-fashioned garden of thyme and mignonette. Listen to
the night, to its small voices, to its rushing harmonies, above all to
its silences. Grow accustomed to a world on which darkness has fallen
like refreshing rain, until you cast aside all hallucinations of terror
or struggle, and learn for yourself how friendly, how restful nature
is. And when the right night comes, when the tense stillness begins to
tremble and all the woods grow musical, then you will wish that some
great composer could hear what you hear, and put it upon the stringed
instruments, and call it his symphony of silence.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
STORIES OF THE TRAIL
Dawn comes to the big woods, a winter dawn, fair and wondrous still.
It finds our little “Commoosie” nestled among the evergreens, its back
to a protecting ledge, its open front to the lake. We are half asleep
after restful hours of sleeping when a persistent hammering floats
through our dreams and rouses us as the day is breaking.
The hammering comes from the birds’ table, now bare as Mother Hubbard’s
cupboard, where a woodpecker is impatiently calling for his daily fare.
Chickadees repeat his call softly, and a pine grosbeak, perched on a
projecting roof pole, bends his head to look into the “Commoosie” with
its two lazy sleepers. Outside, the snow is four feet deep; the mercury
huddles below the zero mark; the dead fire sends a thin column of
smoke straight up into air that sparkles with frost as the light runs
in through the evergreens. It is early spring by the almanac, but the
world we look on gives no sign of it.
“Hello!” says Bob, poking a head out of his sleeping bag as a louder
reveille rattles on the table. “Your friends out there want their
breakfast.”
“Well, breakfast is a good thing,” I answer, “and hospitality is here
the chief of virtues. Suppose you stir the fire and cook a bite for
them. Trout, bacon, toast and coffee will just suit that woodpecker,
and I’ll be content with whatever he leaves.” Then we crawl forth to
rub our faces with snow, a tribute to civilization which has the effect
of shocking sleep out of us, and take a look at the woods, the sky, the
lake all white and still under its soft mantle.