The keenest of the sportsman's disappointments is not a blank day, nor a
series of misses, unaccountable or too well accountable to a blundering
hand or unsteady nerves, nor adverse weather, nor gun or tackle broken
in the midst of sport, nor perversity of dogs, nor uncongeniality of
comradeship, nor yet even the sudden cold or the spell of rheumatism
that prevents his taking the field on the allotted morning.
All these may be but for a day. To-morrow may bring game again to haunts
now untenanted, restore cunning to the awkward hand, steady the nerves,
mend the broken implement, make the dogs obedient and bring pleasanter
comrades or the comfortable lonesomeness of one's own companionship, and
to-morrow or next day or next week the cold and rheumatic twinges may
have passed into the realm of bygone ills.
For a year, perhaps for many years, he has yearned for a sight of some
beloved haunt, endeared to him by old and cherished associations. He
fancies that once more among the scenes of his youthful exploits there
will return to him something of the boyish ardor, exuberance of spirit
and perfect freedom from care that made the enjoyment of those happy
hours so complete. He imagines that a draught from the old spring that
bubbles up in the shadow of the beeches or from the moss-brimmed basin
of the trout brook will rejuvenate him, at least for the moment while
its coolness lingers on his palate, as if he quaffed Ponce de Leon's
undiscovered fountain. He doubts not that in the breath of the old woods
he shall once more catch that faint, indescribable, but unforgotten
aroma, that subtle savor of wildness, that has so long eluded him,
sometimes tantalizing his nostrils with a touch, but never quite inhaled
since its pungent elixir made the young blood tingle in his veins.
He has almost come to his own again, his long-lost possession in the
sunny realm of youth. It lies just beyond the hill before him, from
whose crest he shall see the nut-tree where he shot his first squirrel,
the southing slope where the beeches hide the spring, where he
astonished himself with the glory of killing his first grouse, and he
shall see the glint of the brook flashing down the evergreen dell and
creeping among the alder copses.
He does not expect to find so many squirrels or grouse or trout now as
thirty years ago, when a double gun was a wonder, and its possession the
unrealized dream of himself and his comrades, and none of them had ever
seen jointed rod or artificial fly, and dynamite was uninvented. Yet all
the game and fish cannot have been driven from nor exterminated in
haunts so congenial and fostering as these, by the modern horde of
gunners and anglers and by the latter-day devices of destruction, and he
doubts not that he shall find enough to satisfy the tempered ardor of
the graybeard.
Indeed, it is for something better than mere shooting or fishing that he
has come so far. One squirrel, flicking the leaves with his downfall,
one grouse plunging to earth midway in his thunderous flight, one trout
caught as he can catch him, now, will appease his moderate craving for
sport, and best and most desired of all, make him, for the nonce, a boy
again. He anticipates with quicker heartbeat the thrill of surprised
delight that choked him with its fullness when he achieved his first
triumph.
At last the hilltop is gained, but what unfamiliar scene is this which
has taken the place of that so cherished in his memory and so longed
for? Can that naked hillside slanting toward him from the further rim of
the valley, forlorn in the desolation of recent clearing, be the wooded
slope of the other day? Can the poor, unpicturesque thread of water that
crawls in feeble attenuation between its shorn, unsightly banks be the
wild, free brook whose voice was a continual song, every rod of whose
amber and silver course was a picture? Even its fringes of willow and
alders, useful for their shade and cover when alive, but cut down
worthless even for fuel, have been swept from its margin by the ruthless
besom of destruction, as if everything that could beautify the landscape
must be blotted out to fulfill the mission of the spoiler.
Near it, and sucking in frequent draughts from the faint stream, is a
thirsty and hungry little sawmill, the most obtrusive and most ignoble
feature of the landscape, whose beauty its remorseless fangs have gnawed
away. Every foot of the brook below it is foul with its castings, and
the fragments of its continual greedy feasting are thickly strewn far
and near. Yet it calls to the impoverished hills for more victims; its
shriek arouses discordant echoes where once resounded the music of the
brook, the song of birds, the grouse's drum call, and the mellow note of
the hound.
Though sick at heart with the doleful scene, the returned exile descends
to his harried domain hoping that he may yet find some vestige of its
former wealth, but only more disappointments reward his quest. Not a
trout flashes through the shrunken pools. The once limpid spring is a
quagmire among rotting stumps. The rough nakedness of the hillside is
clad only with thistles and fireweed, with here and there a patch of
blanched dead leaves, dross of the old gold of the beech's ancient
autumnal glory.
Of all he hoped for nothing is realized, and he finds only woful change,
irreparable loss. His heart heavy with sorrow and bursting with impotent
wrath against the ruthless spoiler, he turns his back forever on the
desolated scene of his boyhood's sports.
Alas! That one should ever attempt to retouch the time-faded but
beautiful pictures that the memory holds.