There are three vines that belong to the ancient forest. Elsewhere they
will not grow, though the soil prepared for them be never so rich, the
shade of the arbour built for them never so closely and cunningly woven.
Their delicate, thread-like roots take no hold upon the earth tilled and
troubled by the fingers of man. The fine sap that steals through their
long, slender limbs pauses and fails when they are watered by human
hands. Silently the secret of their life retreats and shrinks away and
hides itself.
But in the woods, where falling leaves and crumbling tree-trunks and
wilting ferns have been moulded by Nature into a deep, brown humus,
clean and fragrant--in the woods, where the sunlight filters green
and golden through interlacing branches, and where pure moisture of
distilling rains and melting snows is held in treasury by never-failing
banks of moss--under the verdurous flood of the forest, like sea-weeds
under the ocean waves, these three little creeping vines put forth their
hands with joy, and spread over rock and hillock and twisted tree-root
and mouldering log, in cloaks and scarves and wreaths of tiny evergreen,
glossy leaves.
One of them is adorned with white pearls sprinkled lightly over its robe
of green. This is Snowberry, and if you eat of it, you will grow wise
in the wisdom of flowers. You will know where to find the yellow violet,
and the wake-robin, and the pink lady-slipper, and the scarlet sage, and
the fringed gentian. You will understand how the buds trust themselves
to the spring in their unfolding, and how the blossoms trust themselves
to the winter in their withering, and how the busy bands of Nature are
ever weaving the beautiful garment of life out of the strands of death,
and nothing is lost that yields itself to her quiet handling.
Another of the vines of the forest is called Partridge-berry. Rubies are
hidden among its foliage, and if you eat of this fruit, you will grow
wise in the wisdom of birds. You will know where the oven-bird secretes
her nest, and where the wood-cock dances in the air at night; the
drumming-log of the ruffed grouse will be easy to find, and you will
see the dark lodges of the evergreen thickets inhabited by hundreds
of warblers. There will be no dead silence for you in the forest, any
longer, but you will hear sweet and delicate voices on every side,
voices that you know and love; you will catch the key-note of the silver
flute of the woodthrush, and the silver harp of the veery, and the
silver bells of the hermit; and something in your heart will answer to
them all. In the frosty stillness of October nights you will see the
airy tribes flitting across the moon, following the secret call that
guides them southward. In the calm brightness of winter sunshine,
filling sheltered copses with warmth and cheer, you will watch the
lingering blue-birds and robins and song-sparrows playing at summer,
while the chickadees and the juncos and the cross-bills make merry in
the windswept fields. In the lucent mornings of April you will hear your
old friends coming home to you, Phoebe, and Oriole, and Yellow-Throat,
and Red-Wing, and Tanager, and Cat-Bird. When they call to you and greet
you, you will understand that Nature knows a secret for which man has
never found a word--the secret that tells itself in song.
The third of the forest-vines is Wood-Magic. It bears neither flower nor
fruit. Its leaves are hardly to be distinguished from the leaves of the
other vines. Perhaps they are a little rounder than the Snowberry’s,
a little more pointed than the Partridge-berry’s; sometimes you might
mistake them for the one, sometimes for the other. No marks of warning
have been written upon them. If you find them it is your fortune; if you
taste them it is your fate.
For as you browse your way through the forest, nipping here and there a
rosy leaf of young winter-green, a fragrant emerald tip of balsam-fir, a
twig of spicy birch, if by chance you pluck the leaves of Wood-Magic and
eat them, you will not know what you have done, but the enchantment of
the tree-land will enter your heart and the charm of the wildwood will
flow through your veins.
You will never get away from it. The sighing of the wind through the
pine-trees and the laughter of the stream in its rapids will sound
through all your dreams. On beds of silken softness you will long for
the sleep-song of whispering leaves above your head, and the smell of
a couch of balsam-boughs. At tables spread with dainty fare you will be
hungry for the joy of the hunt, and for the angler’s sylvan feast. In
proud cities you will weary for the sight of a mountain trail; in great
cathedrals you will think of the long, arching aisles of the woodland;
and in the noisy solitude of crowded streets you will hone after the
friendly forest.
This is what will happen to you if you eat the leaves of that little
vine, Wood-Magic. And this is what happened to Luke Dubois.
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