The promotion from all-day picnics to a two weeks’ camping-trip is like
going from school to college. By this time a natural process of
evolution has raised the first rod to something lighter and more
flexible,—a fly-rod, so to speak, but not a bigoted one,—just a
serviceable, unprejudiced article, not above using any kind of bait that
may be necessary to catch the fish. The father has received the new
title of “governor,” indicating not less, but more authority, and has
called in new instructors to carry on the boy’s education: real
Adirondack guides—old Sam Dunning and one-eyed Enos, the last and
laziest of the Saranac Indians. Better men will be discovered for later
trips, but none more amusing, and none whose woodcraft seems more
wonderful than that of this queerly matched team, as they make the first
camp in a pelting rain-storm on the shore of Big Clear Pond. The
pitching of the tents is a lesson in architecture, the building of the
camp-fire a victory over damp nature, and the supper of potatoes and
bacon and fried trout a veritable triumph of culinary art.
At midnight the rain is pattering persistently on the canvas; the fronts
flaps are closed and tied together; the lingering fire shines through
them, and sends vague shadows wavering up and down: the governor is
rolled up in his blankets, sound asleep. It is a very long night for the
boy.
What is that rustling noise outside the tent? Probably some small
creature, a squirrel or a rabbit. Rabbit stew would be good for
breakfast. But it sounds louder now, almost loud enough to be a
fox,—there are no wolves left in the Adirondacks, or at least only a
very few. That is certainly quite a heavy footstep prowling around the
provision-box. Could it be a panther,—they step very softly for their
size,—or a bear perhaps? Sam Dunning told about catching one in a trap
just below here. (Ah, my boy, you will soon learn that there is no spot
in all the forests created by a bountiful Providence so poor as to be
without its bear story.) Where was the rifle put? There it is, at the
foot of the tent-pole. Wonder if it is loaded?
“_Waugh-ho! Waugh-ho-o-o-o!_”
The boy springs from his blankets like a cat, and peeps out between the
tent-flaps. There sits Enos, in the shelter of a leaning tree by the
fire, with his head thrown back and a bottle poised at his mouth. His
lonely eye is cocked up at a great horned owl on the branch above him.
Again the sudden voice breaks out:
“_Whoo! whoo! whoo cooks for you all?_”
Enos puts the bottle down, with a grunt, and creeps off to his tent.
“De debbil in dat owl,” he mutters. “How he know I cook for dis camp?
How he know ’bout dat bottle? Ugh!”
There are hundreds of pictures that flash into light as the boy goes on
his course, year after year, through the woods. There is the luxurious
camp on Tupper’s Lake, with its log cabins in the spruce-grove, and its
regiment of hungry men who ate almost a deer a day; and there is the
little bark shelter on the side of Mount Marcy, where the governor and
the boy, with baskets full of trout from the Opalescent River, are
spending the night, with nothing but a fire to keep them warm. There is
the North Bay at Moosehead, with Joe La Croix (one more Frenchman who
thinks he looks like Napoleon) posing on the rocks beside his canoe, and
only reconciled by his vanity to the wasteful pastime of taking
photographs while the big fish are rising gloriously out at the end of
the point. There is the small spring-hole beside the Saranac River,
where Pliny Robbins and the boy caught twenty-three noble trout,
weighing from one to three pounds apiece, in the middle of a hot August
afternoon, and hid themselves in the bushes whenever they heard a party
coming down the river, because they did not care to attract company; and
there are the Middle Falls, where the governor stood on a long spruce
log, taking two-pound fish with the fly, and stepping out at every cast
a little nearer to the end of the log, until it slowly tipped with him,
and he settled down into the river.
Among such scenes as these the boy pursued his education, learning many
things that are not taught in colleges; learning to take the weather as
it comes, wet or dry, and fortune as it falls, good or bad; learning
that a meal which is scanty fare for one becomes a banquet for
two—provided the other is the right person; learning that there is some
skill in everything, even in digging bait, and that what is called luck
consists chiefly in having your tackle in good order; learning that a
man can be just as happy in a log shanty as in a brownstone mansion, and
that the very best pleasures are those that do not leave a bad taste in
the mouth. And in all this the governor was his best teacher and his
closest comrade.
Dear governor, you have gone out of the wilderness now, and your steps
will be no more beside these remembered little rivers—no more, forever
and forever. You will not come in sight around any bend of this clear
Swiftwater stream where you made your last cast; your cheery voice will
never again ring out through the deepening twilight where you are
lingering for your disciple to catch up with you; he will never again
hear you call: “Hallo, my boy! What luck? Time to go home!” But there is
a river in the country where you have gone, is there not?—a river with
trees growing all along it—evergreen trees; and somewhere by those shady
banks, within sound of clear running waters, I think you will be
dreaming and waiting for your boy, if he follows the trail that you have
shown him even to the end.
1895.
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