by birds that brave the northern winter cheerfully; good to breathe
deep of this keen air that blows over miles of spruce and balsam,
uncontaminated by any smell of man, sniffed only by the wild things! So
our day begins naturally with joy, as a day should begin which promises
good hunting.
An hour later we say good-by and good luck on the lake shore,
my friend heading northeast, and I due south, each with an ample
wilderness to himself. Bob swings off in front of a moose sled, to
which is strapped a camera and other duffle. While shooling through the
woods a few days ago we discovered a colony of beaver in a beautiful
spot, with a playground of open water in front of their lodges; now he
will arrange a booth, a string, and other mysteries of his craft, and
perhaps get a rare winter picture of the animals. Meanwhile I shall
get many pictures of the kind that a man carries with him forever, but
cannot show; for I travel light, with both hands free, having no other
object than to follow any inviting trail wherever it may lead. There
are stories with every one of these pictures--but first an explanation.
Since I am hunting alone to-day, bagging as game any woodsy impression
of the trail, the personal pronouns of this narrative will become sadly
jumbled before the day is done; and especially will the familiar “you”
or convenient “we” replace the obtrusive “I.” Such pronouns are always
used vaguely by a solitary man, for two reasons: first, because the
woods discourage all self-assertion, telling one through his natural
instincts to go softly, to merge himself bodily in his environment, to
be in spiritual harmony with his visible or invisible audience; and
second, because every wilderness voyageur, as a protection against the
overwhelming silence, has the habit of talking to that other self, at
once friendly and critical, who goes with him over every lonely way for
good company.
That last is natural enough, and wholesome so long as one does not talk
aloud or address that other self as a stranger. When a man in the woods
suddenly hears the sound of his own voice, or catches himself asking
that other, “Who are you?” it is a bad sign. It means that he has been
alone too much, that solitude is getting the best of him, that he needs
the medicine of human society. And now for the trail!
* * * * *
A fall of snow last night has wrought marvelous transformation in the
familiar world. The word of the Apocalypse, “Behold, I make all things
new,” is written on the face of the whole earth, which is like a book
fresh and clean from the press. Across its white pages go many tracks,
each telling its story or leading to some other story beyond; and to
read such records, even as a neophyte, is to enter into one of the
pleasures of the winter woods. The snow is a greater telltale than any
newspaper, and all its tales are true. No matter how shy the wood folk
may be, each must leave a trail, whether straight or crooked; and
the trails are ready to tell who passed this way, how he fared, what
adventure befell him, and how he played his big or little part in the
endless comedy of the woods.
The sun is rising as we strap on snowshoes and head blithely down the
lake, keeping close to the eastern shore with its deep shadows; for you
shall learn little of the wood folk until you learn to imitate them by
making yourself inconspicuous. A great tide of light rolls over the
level expanse and ripples up the western hills, showing rank upon rank
of giant spruces, each bearing his burden of new snow tenderly, as if
he loved it. Suddenly the morning breeze shakes them, filling the air
with diamond dust, through which the sunshine breaks in a thousand
fleeting rainbows.
Near at hand, under the hardwoods of this sheltered shore, the snow
has taken many shapes, noble or fantastic, at the hands of the eddying
wind; here a smooth page to catch the tale of wandering feet; there a
great dome, glistening white, which hides some shapeless thing beneath;
beyond that a shadowy cave with doorway light as air, into which leads
a single delicate track; and under the cliff, where the wind recoiled,
a fairyland of arches, towers, battlements, all fretted more delicately
than any lace. Every ugly or unsightly thing has been beautified, every
unclean thing washed whiter than wool. All this beautiful world,
breathless with the wonder of creation still upon it, this newborn
world over which the Infinite broods silently, is wholly ours to enter,
to possess, and to enjoy. Expectantly, as if something fair and good
must come to-day, and on tiptoe, as if any noise must profane such a
world of splendor and silence, we slip along between lake and woods,
marveling once more at the magic of the winter wilderness.
A wavy line of blue shadows under the western shore beckons us, and we
cross over to pick up our first trail. A curious trail it is, showing
a few deep tracks close together, followed by a long groove in the
snow; then more tracks, another groove, and so up the lake as far as
you can see. Keeonekh the otter left that record; there is no other
like it in the woods. He is wooing a mate now, and being a young otter,
as the tracks show, he is looking for her in distant places. Thus
instinctively he avoids the danger of inbreeding with otters that are
more or less related to him; and in this he is like most other wild
animals and birds, which scatter widely when looking for their mates.
Wherever you go at this season in this untraveled wilderness, you find
Keeonekh neglecting his habitual play (he is the most playful of all
wild creatures) for endless, erratic journeys over the ice or through
the woods, where he seems a little out of place. Being a fisherman,
he is at home only in the water, where he is all celerity and grace;
but his legs are short and his body heavy for traveling on dry land.
On the snow he does better, and puts rhythm into his motion by taking
two or three quick jumps to get momentum, and then sliding forward on
his belly. Where the surface is level his slides are short, from two
to six feet, according to the speed at which he is going; but he takes
advantage of every slope to make much longer distances.
Once I trailed an otter that went over a high bluff to the river below;
his trail showed a clean slide of two hundred feet, and the pitch was
so steep that I dared not follow. Keeonekh was in a hurry that time,
for I was too close behind him for comfort. He hurled himself at top
speed over the bluff, and went down like a bolt. In the intervals of
travel or fishing he may seek his favorite bank, where he slides for
hours at a stretch just for the fun of the thing. That explains why
every otter caught in the spring has the glistening outer hairs, or
king fur, completely worn away on the under side of his body: he has
been sliding downhill too much from a furrier’s viewpoint.
For a mile or more we follow the otter’s trail up the lake,
slide-jump-jump, slide-jump-jump, as if he were moving to waltz music.
“You are taking your time, Keeonekh,” I say; “but you are leaving an
uncommonly crooked trail, dodging in and out like a thieving mink;
which is not like you or your breed. Why are you at such pains to hide
your tracks? Ah, yes, I remember; last night when you passed this way
the wolves were howling.”
As a rule the otter travels boldly, being well able to take care of
himself; but here the trail holds close to shore, curving in or out
with the banks, taking advantage of every bush or ledge to keep under
cover. Suddenly Keeonekh begins to hurry; he is alarmed, no doubt about
it. See, his jumps lengthen, he spatters the snow wildly, making us
cast about for the cause. There is nothing here to account for his
flight; but yonder, over under the eastern shore, are blue shadows
wide apart in the snow, which show where some other beast came leaping
down from the woods. We shall name that beast presently, for where the
lake narrows far ahead his trail sweeps into the one we are following.
Holding to the otter’s course, our stride lengthens as we see how
desperately he is running. No waltz time now, but a headlong rush for
safety.
Near the inlet, whither he has been heading since he struck the lake,
Keeonekh darts to a projecting stub, where black ice and moist snow
speak of moving water, and begins to dig furiously. Here is one of his
refuge holes, such as otters keep open in winter near good fishing
grounds; but the frost has sealed it since his last visit, and he has
no time now to break through. The other trail veers round this spot
in a great curve, the flying arc of which betokens speed, and we go
over to find the tracks of a wolf coming at a fast clip up the inlet,
sixteen feet to the jump. No wonder Keeonekh hurries; that wolf is
after him. But why does he not head straight for open water, where he
will be safe? A brook enters the lake ahead; one can both see and hear
that it is free of ice.
Turning sharply from his course, leaving lake and open inlet behind
him, Keeonekh streaks away for the woods of the eastern shore. Surely
he has lost his head; he has no chance either at running or fighting
with a brute of that stride and fang behind him. It’s all over with him
now, you think, and you are sorry; for though you try to keep open mind
for all creatures, when it comes to a choice between wolf and otter
your sympathy is wholly with the fisherman. But spare your feelings a
moment; you never know the end of a story till you come to the end of
the trail. To follow Keeonekh is to learn that he still has his head
on, and that he knows the country more intimately than we do.
Just over the low ridge yonder is another lake; and under the ledge
which you see cropping out is a spring-hole that never freezes. It is
nearer than the mouth of the inlet, though the traveling looks much
harder, uphill through deep snow. With the wolf in sight, coming up
the lake like a cyclone, Keeonekh takes a desperate chance, knowing
his advantage if he can top the ridge. Both trails go up the bank by
a natural runway, otter and wolf sinking shoulder-deep at every jump.
The wolf is gaining here at a frightful rate, one of his flying leaps
covering two or three of the otter’s. Nose to tail, they reach the top,
where Keeonekh springs aside from the runway and plunges headlong over
the ledge. One clean slide of thirty feet, and with a final convulsive
leap he lands on the edge-ice of the spring-hole. It breaks under his
impact; down he goes in a swirl of black water.
The trail now brings a smile or a chuckle, for we follow Malsun the
wolf. Here he hesitates at the brink of the ledge, slippery where
snow has melted by day or frozen by night; looking down the almost
perpendicular slope, he sees the glistening body of Keeonekh glance
away from under his nose. Malsun will sit on his tail and slide down
an ordinary bank, but he balks at this icy ledge. It is too steep; and
the black ice below, with water lapping over its broken edges, looks
dangerous. Turning from the ledge, he leaps down the runway and creeps
around to the farther side of the spring-hole, where he stands waiting
expectantly. Keeonekh is under water, and can go where he pleases; he
can even cross the lake to another spring-hole, if need be, since he
has learned the trick of breathing under the ice. But the wolf, who has
no notion of such possibilities in a mere beast, thinks that whoever
goes into water must soon come out again, and waits for Keeonekh to
reappear.
Malsun is not a patient waiter, being too much like a dog. Soon a doubt
enters his head, then a suspicion which sends him sniffing around the
edges of the spring-hole to be sure the game did not slip away while he
was coming down the runway. “No, nothing went away from here,” he says.
“Nothing could possibly go away without telling my nose about it.”
The uneasy trail, weaving here and there, shows that Malsun is more
puzzled than ever. Suddenly a notion strikes him, a cunning notion
that his game is hiding somewhere, waiting for a chance to continue
the flight. He trots off to the woods, as if going away; but no sooner
is he hidden than he creeps back behind a stump, where he can see the
spring-hole without being seen. He is a young wolf, sure enough; the
cub habit of stalking things, like a cat, is still strong in him; but
his patience is no better than before. He fidgets, changes position;
after watching awhile, as you see by a depression in the snow, he
goes to have another sniff around the spring-hole. Then he turns away
reluctantly and lopes off eastward, probably to rejoin the pack, which
we heard howling in this direction last night.
We shall follow him later, to see what else he chased and how he fared;
but now a heavy blue shadow drawn across the second lake demands
attention. It is trail of some kind; but most wilderness trails are
devious, and this goes straight as a string from one wooded point to
another on the opposite shore. From this distance it looks like an
artificial roadway; we must see who made it.
The shadow, as we draw near it, turns into a path beaten deep in the
snow; so deep that, in places near shore, it would easily hide the
animals that made use of it. On either side are curious marks or
scratches, all slanting one way; in the fresh snow at the bottom are
tracks which say that a pair of large beavers have gone back and forth
many times. That is an amazing thing, since Hamoosabik the builder, as
Simmo calls him, ought now to be safe in his winter lodge, especially
in a wolf and lynx country like this. He is a clumsy creature on land
or ice; he is courting sudden death to be more than a few jumps from
open water at this hungry time of year.
Following the path to the nearer woods, on our right, we find that
the beavers have been felling poplar trees and trimming branches into
convenient lengths for transportation. The heavy butts lie where they
fell, but all smaller pieces have disappeared, showing that the animals
are gathering a new supply of food. I have known beavers, driven by
necessity, to leave their winter lodge and forage in the woods, eating
where they could; but here are no signs of feeding, and no peeled
sticks such as a beaver leaves when he has eaten the good bark.
The cutting has been done near a brook, which you hear singing to
itself under its blanket of snow and ice. To the brook go several
snow tunnels, each starting beside the stump of a fallen poplar, and
examination brings out this interesting bit of animal foresight:
wherever the beavers fell a tree, they also dig a tunnel leading to the
unseen brook. The digging was first in order, and its purpose was to
furnish a way of escape should the beavers be surprised at their work.
It is plain now that we are following an uncommonly cunning pair of
animals; that they are working in great danger to transport food-wood
to their lodge (which must be on the other side of the lake), and
that the curious marks beside their path were made by projecting ends
of sticks that they carried crosswise in their teeth. Since beavers
store an ample food supply in autumn, some misfortune must have sent
this pair abroad in the snow; but why do they not eat their bark where
they find it? That they know the danger of crossing an expanse of
ice, where they may be caught under their burden by prowling enemies,
becomes increasingly apparent as we follow the trail. It heads straight
across the narrowest part of the lake to a wooded point, where it turns
southward, hiding under banks or underbrush, and then cuts across a bay
to the open mouth of a large brook.
Here the beavers have their winter home in a great domed lodge. Around
the open water are tracks made by three generations of beaver, and
these with the uncommonly big house tell us that the family is a large
one. Probably their bark soured under water, the wood having been cut
early with too much sap, and they were compelled to go afield for a
fresh supply. It is hard, perhaps impossible, for a man to judge what
went on in their troubled heads when the need of food grew imperative;
but a little memory and some study of the trail bring out two facts
to make one thoughtful. The first fact, from memory, is that old and
young members of a beaver family habitually work together in gathering
their winter store of food; the second, from the trail, is that this
particular family is not following its habitual or instinctive custom.
Though there are kits and well-grown yearlings in the lodge, only two
of the largest beavers have gone forth on their dangerous foraging.
An inviting trail leads up beside the brook, and we follow it to find
where several of the family have been cutting a huge yellow birch this
very morning. That this tree was intended for food is most improbable;
the branches are untouched, and beavers do not care for yellow-birch
bark at any season. Had they been driven to such fare by necessity,
there are smaller trees with more tender bark near the lodge. They have
cut this tough tree for exercise, I think. Their teeth grow rapidly,
and unless cutting edges are worn down to the proper bevel they soon
grow troublesome. That is why a beaver often comes out beside his
lodge, if he can possibly reach open water, and cuts for an hour or two
at the butt of a tree to keep his teeth in trim. If he is unable to
reach open water, he may find himself in need of heroic treatment when
the ice breaks up. I once found a beaver that had starved to death
simply because his cutting teeth had grown so long, overlapping below
and above, that he could not open his mouth wide enough to separate
them and so peel the bark from his food-wood.
Farther up the brook the trail of a solitary beaver leaves the path
and heads away into a swamp. Step by step we follow him, till he finds
a young cedar tree and cuts it down. That is an odd proceeding, since
beavers never eat cedar bark for food. See, as the tree falls he jumps
aside to be clear of the butt, which has a trick of lashing out and
knocking over anything in its path. Then he mogs around to the very
tip, where he eats a few of the greenest sprays, filled with pungent
oil of cedar. This for medicine, undoubtedly, which some beavers
seem to need in winter, perhaps because of their scant exercise and
restricted diet.
The lodge looms up finely across the stream, inviting a closer
inspection. It is an enormous structure for a single family, higher
than my head and full twelve feet in diameter. An old wolf trail leads
to the top on one side, a fresh lynx trail on the other, showing where
these hungry prowlers climbed up on tiptoe, as if stalking game, for
a smell of the odors that steamed through the beavers’ ventilator. A
ravenous smell it must have been to them, like the smell of frying
onions to a hungry man. There is hardly a flesh-eating animal in the
north that will not leave any other game for a taste of musky beaver.
Neither wolf nor lynx attempted to dig the game out, you see; they
merely sniffed and passed on; and that, too, tells a story. When they
were cubs, perhaps, both animals tried to dig a beaver out of some
other lodge like this, only to find that the thick walls of sticks and
grass, cemented by frozen mud, were too strong to be breached by any
beast in the wilderness.
At thought of these hungry brutes, some vague hint of a nearer hunger
floats in and turns our mind to minnows; for that bit of open water
looks fishy, and if we can catch a minnow there, we are sure of a good
breakfast. There are plenty of trout in the lake by the home camp; but
lately they have shown a capricious appetite for minnows, which are
more precious here than rubies. To catch a trout is easy enough. All
you need do is to place a slanting twig over the hole from which we get
drinking water, tie a bit of cloth to your line for a flag, stick this
into the split upper end of the twig, and sit comfortably by the fire
till your flag is jerked into the hole; whereupon you run quickly and
pull out your trout, a fat, delicious trout that tastes as if he had
been raised on milk and honey. But first you must catch a minnow for
bait, and that calls for a fisherman.
Spreading some brush to distribute my weight, for the ice here is
dangerous, I crumble a bit of bread from our lunch into the open
water--this to attract any minnow that happily may dwell in the
beavers’ playground. Suddenly a flash of silver flickers in the black
water amid the sinking crumbs. It inspires hope, tingling and electric,
like that which thrills one when the swirl of a noble salmon follows
his cast. Then for an hour, it seems, or until I am almost frozen, I
use all my fisherman’s art with a bent pin, a morsel of meat, a thread
and a moosewood twig; after which I wriggle ashore proudly, holding up
one minnow a good inch-and-a-half long. Letting him freeze in the snow
while we kindle a fire and brew a dipper of tea for lunch, I carry him
off in an outside pocket, where he will keep cold enough until we need
him. Sport is a matter of sentiment, and is nine-tenths imagination;
but real enjoyment is born of necessity. Never a big salmon, of all
that I have taken on the fly, was so well angled for or gave so much
solid satisfaction as that tiny minnow.
* * * * *
We shall cruise in strange woods for the rest of the day, taking a hint
from Malsun the wolf when he left the otter’s spring-hole. Turning
away from the lake, we head rapidly northeast through broken country,
on a course which may bring us to the trail of the wolves we heard
howling in the night. Malsun was heading this way when we left his
trail, and a wolf always knows where to find his pack.
Over a hillock we go, and across a white-faced bog bordered by ghostly
larches, so wild, so lonely, that it seems nothing ever breathed here
since the world began. Nature seems dead, her form shrouded in snow,
her lips sealed with ice; but she is only playing with us, having
slipped on another of her many masks. Though nothing moves here, though
your snowshoes glide on hour after hour and start no bird or beast,
there is life near you at every instant, an eager, abundant life, which
finds health and cheerfulness in these apparently desolate places. That
you cannot see it is part of the winter game; wild life is too alert
now, and much too secretive, to reveal itself to any careless eye.
Beyond the bog an immense ridge of hardwood sweeps upward to the sky
line. As we climb it, we cross a succession of delicate trails that
seem to move onward at a stealthy fox trot. No wonder that Indians
call the maker of such a trail Eleemos the sly one! A dozen foxes have
crossed the ridge this morning, probably between dawn and sunrise.
That seems too many for one locality until you consult the snow, which
says that most of the “sly ones” are heading the same way, and that
they are no longer hunting, but moving to a definite goal. In the
ledges yonder, which front the sunshine, are probably two or three
dens that have been used by generations of foxes; and the cubs, after
hunting far afield, come back every morning to pass the day near the
familiar place or, it may be, near familiar companions, as young foxes
commonly do in regions where they are not disturbed by hunting.
Would you like to see one of these wilderness foxes? Then come, follow
this dainty trail. It was made by a young dog fox (his habits betray
him), and we shall not be long in finding his day bed.
For a half-mile or more Eleemos holds steadily on his course, stopping
once to listen and spring aside when he heard a wood mouse squeak under
a fallen pine. See, there is a pinkish tinge in the snow where he
dropped a morsel of his small game, and lapped it to the last smell.
That does not mean necessarily that Eleemos was very hungry. A fox
will stop to catch a mouse when his stomach is so full that you wonder
how it can hold any more. One October day, when hunting with a gun,
I called a fox by a mouselike squeaking. His stomach was tight as a
drum; when I opened it I found that Eleemos had already eaten three or
four mice, two birds, some stuff I could not name, and part of a young
muskrat.