Part 14

If unto this humble night wanderer is vouchsafed a life beyond his brief earthly existence, imagine him in that unhunted, trapless paradise of uncounted eggs and callow nestlings, grinning a wide derisive smile as he beholds what fools we mortals be, so fooled by ourselves and one another.

XXXIII

A CAMP-FIRE RUN WILD

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.

XXXIV

THE DEAD CAMP-FIRE

A heap of ashes, a few half-burned brands, a blackened pair of crotched sticks that mark the place of the once glowing heart of the camp, furnish food for the imagination to feed upon or give the memory an elusive taste of departed pleasures.

If you were one of those who saw its living flame and felt its warmth, the pleasant hours passed here come back with that touch of sadness which accompanies the memory of all departed pleasures and yet makes it not unwelcome. What was unpleasant, even what was almost unendurable, has nearly faded out of remembrance or is recalled with a laugh.

It was ten years ago, and the winds and fallen leaves of as many autumns have scattered and covered the gray heap. If it was only last year, you fancy that the smell of fire still lingers in the brands. How vividly return to you the anxious deliberation with which the site was chosen with a view to all attainable comfort and convenience, and the final satisfaction that followed the establishment of this short-lived home, short-lived but yet so much a home during its existence. Nothing contributed so much to make it one as the camp-fire. How intently you watched its first building and lighting, how labored for its maintenance with awkwardly-wielded axe, how you inhaled the odors of its cookery and essayed long-planned culinary experiments with extemporized implements, over its beds of coals, and how you felt the consequent exaltation of triumph or mortification of failure.

All these come back to you, and the relighting of the fire in the sleepy dawn, the strange mingling of white sunlight and yellow firelight when the sun shot its first level rays athwart the camp, the bustle of departure for the day's sport, the pleasant loneliness of camp-keeping with only the silent woods, the crackling fire, and your thoughts for company; the incoming at nightfall and the rekindling of the fire, when the rosy bud of sleeping embers suddenly expanded into a great blossom of light whose petals quivered and faded and brightened among the encircling shadows of the woods. You laugh again at the jokes that ran around that merry circle and wonder again and again at the ingenuity with which small performances were magnified into great exploits, little haps into strange adventure, and with which bad shots and poor catches were excused.

At last came breaking camp, the desolation of dismantling and leave-taking. How many of you will ever meet again? How many of those merry voices are stilled forever, from how many of those happy faces has the light of life faded?

Who lighted this camp-fire? Years have passed since it illumined the nightly gloom of the woods, for moss and lichens are creeping over the charred back-log. A green film is spread over the ashes, and thrifty sprouts are springing up through them.

You know that the campers were tent-dwellers, for there stand the rows of rotten tent pins inclosing a rusty heap of mould that once was a fragrant couch of evergreens inviting tired men to rest,--or you know they spent their nights in a shanty, for there are the crumbling walls, the fallen-in roof of bark which never again will echo song or jest.

This pile of fish-bones attests that they were anglers, and skillful or lucky ones, for the pile is large. If you are an ichthyologist, you can learn by these vestiges of their sport whether they satisfied the desire of soul and stomach with the baser or the nobler fishes; perhaps a rotting pole, breaking with its own weight, may decide whether they fished with worm or fly; but whether you relegate them to the class of scientific or unscientific anglers, you doubt not they enjoyed their sport as much in one way as in the other.

You know that they were riflemen, for there is the record of their shots in the healing bullet wounds on the trunk of a great beech. For a moment you may fancy that the woods still echo the laughter that greeted the shot that just raked the side of the tree; but it is only the cackle of a yellow-hammer.

There is nothing to tell you who they were, whence they came, or whither they went; but they were campers, lovers of the great outdoor world, and so akin to you, and you bid them hail and farewell without a meeting.

XXXV

OCTOBER DAYS

Fields as green as when the summer birds caroled above them, woods more gorgeous with innumerable hues and tints of ripening leaves than a blooming parterre, are spread beneath the azure sky, whose deepest color is reflected with intenser blue in lake and stream. In them against this color are set the scarlet and gold of every tree upon their brinks, the painted hills, the clear-cut mountain peaks, all downward pointing to the depths of this nether sky.

Overhead, thistledown and the silken balloon of the milkweed float on their zephyr-wafted course, silver motes against the blue; and above them are the black cohorts of crows in their straggling retreat to softer climes. Now the dark column moves steadily onward, now veers in confusion from some suspected or discovered danger, or pauses to assail with a harsh clangor some sworn enemy of the sable brotherhood. Their gay-clad smaller cousins, the jays, are for the most part silently industrious among the gold and bronze of the beeches, flitting to and fro with flashes of blue as they gather mast, but now and then finding time to scold an intruder with an endless variety of discordant outcry.

How sharp the dark shadows are cut against the sunlit fields, and in their gloom how brightly shine the first fallen leaves and the starry bloom of the asters. In cloudy days and even when rain is falling the depths of the woods are not dark, for the bright foliage seems to give forth light and casts no shadows beneath the lowering sky.

The scarlet maples burn, the golden leaves of poplar and birch shine through the misty veil, and the deep purple of the ash glows as if it held a smouldering fire that the first breeze might fan into a flame, and through all this luminous leafage one may trace branch and twig as a wick in a candle flame. Only the evergreens are dark as when they bear their steadfast green in the desolation of winter, and only they brood shadows.