Part 11

When I marked that perfect fur I knew it was what I had long wanted as a rug. It needed only the pressure of a finger to make it mine, and the finger was curling on the trigger when, unfortunately, I began to think.

Silence enfolded the earth in its benediction, and I must shatter that blessed silence by gunpowder. Like a veil let down from heaven the moonlight rested on every tree, on the rough ground, on my old “Commoosie,” making all things beautiful; and I must spatter that pure veil with red. No, it was not a pleasant notion; night and solitude make a man sensitive, averse to noise, violence, discord of every kind. Even a bear might have some rights, if one were fair with him. He had done no harm in the woods, and meant no harm when he came to my camp. He was simply curious, like all natural beasts. Somehow it began to appear as a greedy, an atrocious thing to kill him just for his skin; at my own door, too, where he stood timidly looking in. Besides, a dead animal is no longer interesting. In the back of my head was the desire, always present when a wild beast appears, to know what he thinks or, if that be impossible, to know at least what he does. The experience, startling enough at first, had now turned to comedy, and I wanted to see how it would end.

Thus a small moment passed, while I tried the great beast for his life; through it ran a river of thought or sentiment with the rush and dance of rapids.

Once during the trial Mooween turned away, only to return quickly. I had moved a trifle, and he heard it. When he turned a second time something in his gait or motion said that he would not come back, that he no longer dared trust his neighborhood. As he disappeared I peeked around the corner of the “Commoosie.” Straight off he went to the edge of the clearing, where he sat upon his haunches, feeling safer with the woods only a jump away, and rocked his nose up and down to catch air from different currents, still hoping for some message that would tell him who or what I was. It was a wild region; he had probably never before met a man. Then he stood erect on his hind legs for a last look, dropped on all-fours, and vanished silently among the shadows. A moment later panic struck him like a bomb; away he ran with a great smashing of brush, as if all the dogs of a parish were after him.

* * * * *

If you are desirous of meeting or knowing wild animals, the hour following the evening twilight is the best time to be abroad. Toward midnight the wood folk all rest, as a rule, and through the small hours the coverts are profoundly quiet till just before the dawn. On a moonlit night birds and beasts are apt to be stirring at all hours, and then is the time to learn the language of the wild, the cries, barks, hootings, yellings, rustlings, which come to you as mere noises at first, but which have all definite meaning when you learn to interpret them. Yet even on moonlit nights such voices are rather exceptional. Wild birds and beasts go their ways in silence for the most part; the typical wilderness night is so quiet, so peaceful, that an occasional cry seems part of a mighty stillness.

On other than moonlit nights you will do well to travel by canoe, keeping close to shore so as to get the fragrance of the breathing woods. They are wonderful in darkness; but if you enter them, your chief concern will probably be to find your way out again, because the depths of a primeval forest are so pitch dark that human eyes are useless. Even on a trail you must look up steadily, keeping your course by the heavens, which are always lighter than the earth. If you strive to look ahead, you will certainly lose the narrow way; but to look up is to see between the black forest bulks on either hand a pathway of light, which corresponds to every turn and winding of the trail beneath. Better still, if you are in danger of losing the path, shut your eyes; keep them shut, and trust to the guidance of your own feet. They are more familiar with the touch of mother earth than you are aware, and they will tell you instantly when you are departing from a beaten trail. But avoid burglar-proof shoes, of the absurd “sportsman” variety, when you try this enlightening experiment.

There are other things than animals, you see, to be met in the night. Perhaps the most interesting creature you will ever meet is your natural self, which lies buried but not dead under a crust of artificial habit. To break that crust and come forth, like a moth from its dry chrysalis; to feel again the joy of human senses, awakened, vibrant, responsive to every message of earth; to cast aside unworthy fear and walk in one’s birthright of confidence; to know the companionship of the night, more mysterious and more lovely than the day,--all this is waiting for you in the darkened woods. Try it and see. Leave your camp on the first still, moonlit evening to follow the trail alone. Look up at the trees, all fairylike, with leaves of burnished silver set amid luminous shadows, and confess that you never saw a tree in its beauty before. Smell the fragrance of the moistened woods, like an old-fashioned garden of thyme and mignonette. Listen to the night, to its small voices, to its rushing harmonies, above all to its silences. Grow accustomed to a world on which darkness has fallen like refreshing rain, until you cast aside all hallucinations of terror or struggle, and learn for yourself how friendly, how restful nature is. And when the right night comes, when the tense stillness begins to tremble and all the woods grow musical, then you will wish that some great composer could hear what you hear, and put it upon the stringed instruments, and call it his symphony of silence.

STORIES OF THE TRAIL

Dawn comes to the big woods, a winter dawn, fair and wondrous still. It finds our little “Commoosie” nestled among the evergreens, its back to a protecting ledge, its open front to the lake. We are half asleep after restful hours of sleeping when a persistent hammering floats through our dreams and rouses us as the day is breaking.

The hammering comes from the birds’ table, now bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, where a woodpecker is impatiently calling for his daily fare. Chickadees repeat his call softly, and a pine grosbeak, perched on a projecting roof pole, bends his head to look into the “Commoosie” with its two lazy sleepers. Outside, the snow is four feet deep; the mercury huddles below the zero mark; the dead fire sends a thin column of smoke straight up into air that sparkles with frost as the light runs in through the evergreens. It is early spring by the almanac, but the world we look on gives no sign of it.

“Hello!” says Bob, poking a head out of his sleeping bag as a louder reveille rattles on the table. “Your friends out there want their breakfast.”

“Well, breakfast is a good thing,” I answer, “and hospitality is here the chief of virtues. Suppose you stir the fire and cook a bite for them. Trout, bacon, toast and coffee will just suit that woodpecker, and I’ll be content with whatever he leaves.” Then we crawl forth to rub our faces with snow, a tribute to civilization which has the effect of shocking sleep out of us, and take a look at the woods, the sky, the lake all white and still under its soft mantle.

Oh, but it is good to be alive in such an hour; good to be awakened by birds that brave the northern winter cheerfully; good to breathe deep of this keen air that blows over miles of spruce and balsam, uncontaminated by any smell of man, sniffed only by the wild things! So our day begins naturally with joy, as a day should begin which promises good hunting.

An hour later we say good-by and good luck on the lake shore, my friend heading northeast, and I due south, each with an ample wilderness to himself. Bob swings off in front of a moose sled, to which is strapped a camera and other duffle. While shooling through the woods a few days ago we discovered a colony of beaver in a beautiful spot, with a playground of open water in front of their lodges; now he will arrange a booth, a string, and other mysteries of his craft, and perhaps get a rare winter picture of the animals. Meanwhile I shall get many pictures of the kind that a man carries with him forever, but cannot show; for I travel light, with both hands free, having no other object than to follow any inviting trail wherever it may lead. There are stories with every one of these pictures--but first an explanation.

Since I am hunting alone to-day, bagging as game any woodsy impression of the trail, the personal pronouns of this narrative will become sadly jumbled before the day is done; and especially will the familiar “you” or convenient “we” replace the obtrusive “I.” Such pronouns are always used vaguely by a solitary man, for two reasons: first, because the woods discourage all self-assertion, telling one through his natural instincts to go softly, to merge himself bodily in his environment, to be in spiritual harmony with his visible or invisible audience; and second, because every wilderness voyageur, as a protection against the overwhelming silence, has the habit of talking to that other self, at once friendly and critical, who goes with him over every lonely way for good company.

That last is natural enough, and wholesome so long as one does not talk aloud or address that other self as a stranger. When a man in the woods suddenly hears the sound of his own voice, or catches himself asking that other, “Who are you?” it is a bad sign. It means that he has been alone too much, that solitude is getting the best of him, that he needs the medicine of human society. And now for the trail!

* * * * *

A fall of snow last night has wrought marvelous transformation in the familiar world. The word of the Apocalypse, “Behold, I make all things new,” is written on the face of the whole earth, which is like a book fresh and clean from the press. Across its white pages go many tracks, each telling its story or leading to some other story beyond; and to read such records, even as a neophyte, is to enter into one of the pleasures of the winter woods. The snow is a greater telltale than any newspaper, and all its tales are true. No matter how shy the wood folk may be, each must leave a trail, whether straight or crooked; and the trails are ready to tell who passed this way, how he fared, what adventure befell him, and how he played his big or little part in the endless comedy of the woods.

The sun is rising as we strap on snowshoes and head blithely down the lake, keeping close to the eastern shore with its deep shadows; for you shall learn little of the wood folk until you learn to imitate them by making yourself inconspicuous. A great tide of light rolls over the level expanse and ripples up the western hills, showing rank upon rank of giant spruces, each bearing his burden of new snow tenderly, as if he loved it. Suddenly the morning breeze shakes them, filling the air with diamond dust, through which the sunshine breaks in a thousand fleeting rainbows.

Near at hand, under the hardwoods of this sheltered shore, the snow has taken many shapes, noble or fantastic, at the hands of the eddying wind; here a smooth page to catch the tale of wandering feet; there a great dome, glistening white, which hides some shapeless thing beneath; beyond that a shadowy cave with doorway light as air, into which leads a single delicate track; and under the cliff, where the wind recoiled, a fairyland of arches, towers, battlements, all fretted more delicately than any lace. Every ugly or unsightly thing has been beautified, every unclean thing washed whiter than wool. All this beautiful world, breathless with the wonder of creation still upon it, this newborn world over which the Infinite broods silently, is wholly ours to enter, to possess, and to enjoy. Expectantly, as if something fair and good must come to-day, and on tiptoe, as if any noise must profane such a world of splendor and silence, we slip along between lake and woods, marveling once more at the magic of the winter wilderness.

A wavy line of blue shadows under the western shore beckons us, and we cross over to pick up our first trail. A curious trail it is, showing a few deep tracks close together, followed by a long groove in the snow; then more tracks, another groove, and so up the lake as far as you can see. Keeonekh the otter left that record; there is no other like it in the woods. He is wooing a mate now, and being a young otter, as the tracks show, he is looking for her in distant places. Thus instinctively he avoids the danger of inbreeding with otters that are more or less related to him; and in this he is like most other wild animals and birds, which scatter widely when looking for their mates.

Wherever you go at this season in this untraveled wilderness, you find Keeonekh neglecting his habitual play (he is the most playful of all wild creatures) for endless, erratic journeys over the ice or through the woods, where he seems a little out of place. Being a fisherman, he is at home only in the water, where he is all celerity and grace; but his legs are short and his body heavy for traveling on dry land. On the snow he does better, and puts rhythm into his motion by taking two or three quick jumps to get momentum, and then sliding forward on his belly. Where the surface is level his slides are short, from two to six feet, according to the speed at which he is going; but he takes advantage of every slope to make much longer distances.

Once I trailed an otter that went over a high bluff to the river below; his trail showed a clean slide of two hundred feet, and the pitch was so steep that I dared not follow. Keeonekh was in a hurry that time, for I was too close behind him for comfort. He hurled himself at top speed over the bluff, and went down like a bolt. In the intervals of travel or fishing he may seek his favorite bank, where he slides for hours at a stretch just for the fun of the thing. That explains why every otter caught in the spring has the glistening outer hairs, or king fur, completely worn away on the under side of his body: he has been sliding downhill too much from a furrier’s viewpoint.

For a mile or more we follow the otter’s trail up the lake, slide-jump-jump, slide-jump-jump, as if he were moving to waltz music. “You are taking your time, Keeonekh,” I say; “but you are leaving an uncommonly crooked trail, dodging in and out like a thieving mink; which is not like you or your breed. Why are you at such pains to hide your tracks? Ah, yes, I remember; last night when you passed this way the wolves were howling.”

As a rule the otter travels boldly, being well able to take care of himself; but here the trail holds close to shore, curving in or out with the banks, taking advantage of every bush or ledge to keep under cover. Suddenly Keeonekh begins to hurry; he is alarmed, no doubt about it. See, his jumps lengthen, he spatters the snow wildly, making us cast about for the cause. There is nothing here to account for his flight; but yonder, over under the eastern shore, are blue shadows wide apart in the snow, which show where some other beast came leaping down from the woods. We shall name that beast presently, for where the lake narrows far ahead his trail sweeps into the one we are following. Holding to the otter’s course, our stride lengthens as we see how desperately he is running. No waltz time now, but a headlong rush for safety.

Near the inlet, whither he has been heading since he struck the lake, Keeonekh darts to a projecting stub, where black ice and moist snow speak of moving water, and begins to dig furiously. Here is one of his refuge holes, such as otters keep open in winter near good fishing grounds; but the frost has sealed it since his last visit, and he has no time now to break through. The other trail veers round this spot in a great curve, the flying arc of which betokens speed, and we go over to find the tracks of a wolf coming at a fast clip up the inlet, sixteen feet to the jump. No wonder Keeonekh hurries; that wolf is after him. But why does he not head straight for open water, where he will be safe? A brook enters the lake ahead; one can both see and hear that it is free of ice.

Turning sharply from his course, leaving lake and open inlet behind him, Keeonekh streaks away for the woods of the eastern shore. Surely he has lost his head; he has no chance either at running or fighting with a brute of that stride and fang behind him. It’s all over with him now, you think, and you are sorry; for though you try to keep open mind for all creatures, when it comes to a choice between wolf and otter your sympathy is wholly with the fisherman. But spare your feelings a moment; you never know the end of a story till you come to the end of the trail. To follow Keeonekh is to learn that he still has his head on, and that he knows the country more intimately than we do.