Some wooden tent-pins inclosing a few square yards of ground half
covered with a bed of evergreen twigs, matted but still fresh and
odorous, a litter of paper and powder-smirched rags, empty cans and
boxes, a few sticks of fire wood, a blackened, primitive wooden crane,
with its half-charred supporting crotches, and a smouldering heap of
ashes and dying brands, mark the place of a camp recently deserted.
Coming upon it by chance, one could not help a feeling of loneliness,
something akin to that inspired by the cold hearthstone of an empty
house, or the crumbling foundations of a dwelling long since fallen to
ruin. What days and nights of healthful life have been spent here. What
happy hours, never to return, have been passed here. What jokes have
flashed about, what merry tales have been told, what joyous peals of
laughter rung, where now all is silence. But no one is there to see it.
A crow peers down from a treetop to discover what pickings he may glean,
and a mink steals up from the landing, which bears the keelmarks of
lately departed boats, both distrustful of the old silence which the
place has so suddenly resumed; and a company of jays flit silently
about, wondering that there are no intruders to assail with their
inexhaustible vocabulary.
A puff of wind rustles among the treetops, disturbing the balance of the
crow, then plunges downward and sets aflight a scurry of dry leaves, and
out of the gray ashes uncoils a thread of smoke and spins it off into
the haze of leaves and shadows. The crow flaps in sudden alarm, the mink
takes shelter in his coign of vantage among the driftwood, and the jays
raise a multitudinous clamor of discordant outcry. The dry leaves alight
as if by mischievous guidance of evil purpose upon the dormant embers,
another puff of wind arouses a flame that first tastes them, then licks
them with an eager tongue, then with the next eddying breath scatters
its crumbs of sparks into the verge of the forest. These the rising
breeze fans till it loads itself with a light burden of smoke, shifted
now here, now there, as it is trailed along the forest floor, now
climbing among the branches, then soaring skyward.
Little flames creep along the bodies of fallen trees and fluffy windrows
of dry leaves, toying like panther kittens with their assured prey, and
then, grown hungry with such dainty tasting, the flames upburst in a mad
fury of devouring. They climb swifter than panthers to treetops, falling
back they gnaw savagely at tree roots, till the ancient lords of the
forest reel and topple and fall before the gathering wind, and bear
their destroyer still onward.
The leeward woods are thick with a blinding, stifling smoke, through
which all the wild creatures of the forest flee in terror, whither they
know not--by chance to safety, by equal chance perhaps to a terrible
death in the surging deluge of fire. The billows of flame heave and
dash with a constant insatiate roar, tossing ever onward a red foam of
sparks and casting a jetsam of lurid brands upon the ever-retreating
strand that is but touched with the wash of enkindling, when it is
overrun by the sea of fire.
The ice-cold springs grow hot in its fierce overwhelming wave, the
purling rills hiss and boil and shrink before it, then vanish from their
seared beds. All the living greenness of the forest is utterly
consumed--great trees that have stood like towers, defying the
centuries, with the ephemeral verdure of the woodland undergrowth; and
to mark the place of all this recent majesty and beauty, there is but
smouldering ruin and black and ashen waste. Little farms but lately
uncovered to the sun out of the wilderness, cosy homesteads but newly
builded, are swept away, and with them cherished hopes and perhaps
precious lives. What irreparable devastation has been wrought by the
camp-fire run wild!
Meanwhile the careless begetters of this havoc are making their
leisurely way toward the outer world of civilization, serenely noting
that the woods are on fire, and complacently congratulating themselves
that the disaster did not come to spoil their outing; never once
thinking that by a slight exercise of that care which all men owe the
world, this calamity, which a century cannot repair, might have been
avoided.