William J. Long

“ As I creep away, trying not to disturb the little comedy, I am startled by a rush behind me, and have glimpse of two deer bounding through the leafless woods. They take needlessly high jumps for such easy going, it seems; one has an impression that they are kicking up their heels in delight at being out of their winter yard, free to wander at will and find abundance of fresh food, tender and delicious, wherever they seek. A loon blows his wild bugle from the lake below. Multitudes of little warblers, the first ripple of a mighty wave, are sweeping northward with exultation, singing as they go. ”

“ Up and down goes the trail, now over hardwood ridges where great sugar maples stand wide apart, now through dim evergreen valleys or cedar swamps where one must feel his way; and at last, from the summit of a ridge, comes a gleam of blue ahead. It is the lake, eureka, I have found it, asleep amid its eternal hills! Over it bend the trees, as if they loved it. On every point stands a giant pine, like the king-man of old, lifting head and shoulders above his fellows. From the water’s edge the forest sweeps away grandly to the sky line. ”

“ No sooner does the sun rise than beavers, young and old, are all stirring eagerly, cleaning their [280] house, exploring the pond under the ice for a relish of lily roots, bringing in their daily fare of bark, and finally, when hunger and need of exercise are satisfied, gathering in the big living room for an hour of sociability. At such a time, if you approach softly from leeward and lay your ear to the lodge, you may hear a low, rapidly whispered thup-a, thup-a, thup-a, thup-a, which is made by the vibration of a beaver’s lips when he is surprised or pleased. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A wolf may sleep, but never his ears or his nose; that is the fascination of trailing him to his day bed.
I was resting on the crest of a ridge, the trail stretching northward along the summit, when a gloom swept over the woods, as if they had been brushed by a cloud. Then a breeze stirred, making moan in the evergreens, and a snowstorm came creeping up from the south. In a moment my good luck was changed; the wind had turned behind me while the game was still ahead, and one might as well climb after a squirrel as to stalk a wolf pack from windward. ”

“ He is always the last [114] to go to bed. Chipmunks that have been silently busy all day, and red squirrels that have been noisily idle, are now in their dens asleep. Something like a shadow passes before your face, swooping downward in quivering flight; you hear the scratching of tiny feet on bark, and there at your shoulder, looking at you with round inquisitive eye, is Molepsis the flying squirrel. He is the gentlest, the most lovable of his tribe, and he belongs to the night. You are watching him, your heart warming to the little fellow, when leaves rustle and a twig cracks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [142] 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. ”

“ There is life here, you see, and in the snow at your feet is the record of it, more interesting by far than any book of natural history. So with senses all alert we move onward to the rhythmic swish and click of the snowshoes, mile after lonely mile, now over mighty hardwood ridges that probably never before were marked by a man’s footprints, again pushing through dense evergreen [164] thickets to break out on the silent expanse of a caribou barren, a beaver pond, an unnamed lake; and hardly a rood of all this ground but offers a trail to follow and a story to read. Here is good hunting. ”

“ Searching the woods to the left, I soon find a blazed hemlock, and turn gladly from the lumber road into a trapper’s winter trail.
Here, save for an occasional old “blaze” on a tree, for which guiding signal one must look ahead sharply, there is no trace of man or his destruction. All is still, fragrant, beautiful, just as Nature left her handiwork. There is a sudden bumping of feet on soft earth, a flash of orange color, and I catch the waving of white flags as a deer and her fawns bound away. ”

“ It is the moment when we say that night is falling, when gray shadows rise from the lake to meet other shadows flowing down from the hills; and that is the moment when you can count most surely on hearing the first howl of a stirring wolf. It is a creepy sound in such a place or moment, especially when it is followed by the clamor of a pack, a cry that carries far over the silent places, and that may [71] come from the hills on either side or from the trail behind you. However far away it may be, there is always a menace in the wolf’s challenge; your nerves tingle as you stop to listen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whether by night or day, nothing can remain hidden from their bright yellow eyes. I would see a vague motion, as of wings, emerging from the silver radiance or melting away into it, like gleams and shadows in the eddy of a river under the moonlight. The wings would vanish going I knew not whither; but far and wide forest and lake and caribou barren would all be ringing to the heron’s challenge, Quoskh? Quoskh-quoskh? And I understood then why Indians call this bird the night’s question. ”

“ There is a moment of silence after the call, then a babel of voices, squeaky or whining or bumbling voices, as if little and big beavers were talking all at once.
As the short winter day fades into the long night, the gloom thickens in the arched living room. Voices are hushed; not a sound comes from the lodge, which is covered with a blanket of snow. In the forest an owl hoots, or a wolf wails to the sky, or a stealthy tread is heard as some night prowler climbs the lodge for a sniff at the ventilator. That hungry beast is only three or four feet away ”

“ Even the graceful canoe, which has borne you silently through a vast silence, seems part of a harmonious landscape. But that crude heap yonder, surely that is not the famous dwelling you have read about and longed to see! One look at the formless thing is enough to dispel all your illusions of beaver intelligence. You expected something rare, an abode finely or wonderfully wrought; you see a pile of sticks, big and scraggly, as if a huge hawk’s nest had tumbled out of a tree and landed upside down. ”

“ There is a stir beyond him; from behind a yellow birch a hen-grouse appears and glides on, pretending to be merely passing this way; while the drummer pretends not to see her or to be interested in anything save his own performance. So it seems to me, watching the play through the branches of a low fir. Thunder-maker drums again, as if his mate were yet to come; while the audience moves coyly away, picking at a seed here or there, till she enters the shadowy underbrush. There she hides and remains motionless, where she can see without being seen. ”

“ From the secret entrance to his den a tunnel pushes outward under the snowdrifts, a cunning runway that hides beneath twisted roots before it ventures up to the surface. On every pleasant day Chick’weesep makes use of that outlet to enjoy the world from the sunny side of a ledge. There he can safely watch all that passes in the woods; while rock ferns that are always green serve to hide him or to rest his eyes from the blinding glare of sunlight on the snow. ”

“ So it happens in winter, when an otter passes a beaver dam that has a run of water beneath it or through the spillway, that he always raises a whillilew there, splashing merrily about in the enjoyment of his own sensations. To the beaver, living in his lodge nearby, any sudden splashing of that kind means just one thing, and a fearful thing,—a break in the dam. In the autumn, or while waters are open, a broken dam is easily mended; but in midwinter even a small break may be hopeless, since the beavers cannot get through the ice of their pond to repair the damage. ”

“ It is your own notion, harsh and artificial, which you get not from Nature but from modern books, that is without warrant of reason or observation. The accepted fashion now is to put yourself in the skin of a fox running before the dogs, or of a buck that springs up alert at the hunting howl of a wolf, and from your own fears, your vivid imagination, your weak legs or weak heart, and your ignorance of animal psychology, to fill the quiet woods with advancing terror and tragedy. ”

“ Slowly, imperceptibly, my lovely day slips away to join all the other days; each moment of it is like a full hour of life; each hour, when it is past, seems but a fleeting moment. From an endless period of alternate watching and reverie I start up with the consciousness that the sun is below the western hills, that shadows are growing long, that I have a dim trail to follow before I find familiar landmarks again. ”

“ On the way back to camp not a cry, not a rustle disturbed the perfect stillness. The moon shone wondrously clear, making magic of the familiar woods; the lake began whispering to its banks; the air trembled at times to that rushing sound of music which is heard only on still nights in dense forest, and which always fills one with wonder, as if hearing at last the old harmony of the spheres. All around the trail or the gliding canoe the great wilderness stood silent, alert, listening. ”

“ Keeonekh enters [210] a lake that the beavers are using for winter quarters, and glides like a shadow over the fishing grounds. In deep water beyond the inlet he jumps his game, and follows it hither and yon through the gloom under the ice. The chase may take him far from the opening; but for that he has no concern, feeling sure of himself and of his locality. It is his business to know every den and air hole in the lake, as it is a wolf’s business to know every rabbit swamp and deer yard within forty miles, since his life may at any moment depend on knowing just such things. ”

“ The uncanny creatures have their rumpus to themselves, one answering another, while other wood folk go their quiet ways through the dusk without a sign that they are touched by the disturbance. But at last comes an evening when something creeps into the owl’s voice that was not there before; no sooner does he begin to hoot than every bird or beast that hears must lift his head to cry answer. At such times even the taciturn bears will break their long silence, and go whooping through the woods in obedience to some weird impulse which the owl was first to feel. ”

“ Then for an hour, it seems, or until I am almost frozen, I use all my fisherman’s art with a bent pin, a morsel of meat, a thread and a moosewood twig; after which I wriggle ashore proudly, holding up one minnow a good inch-and-a-half long. Letting him freeze in the snow while we kindle a fire and brew a dipper of tea for lunch, I carry him off in an outside pocket, where he will keep cold enough until we need him. Sport is a matter of sentiment, and is nine-tenths imagination; but real enjoyment is born of necessity. ”

“ As I hurry along, picking up the blazed spots with difficulty in the fading light, at times over-running the trail, there comes now and then a tingling of the skin, as at the touch of cold, when I pass through darkening thickets where the night life begins to stir and rustle. If the philosopher Hume had ever followed this or any other wilderness trail after sundown, he would have found under his own skin some illustrative matter for his central doctrine. ”

“ You leave camp at moonrise and make your [129] way silently to a little bog lying amid endless barrens, lakes, forests,—an unmapped wilderness without road or trail, in which one might lose a city. From your hiding place, a thicket exactly like a thousand others near or far, you begin to call, very softly at first, because a bull may be near and listening. When nothing stirs to your trumpet you grow bolder, sending forth the weird bellow of a cow-moose. Away it goes, whining over forest and barren, rousing up innumerable echoes ”

“ It is a small domicile, and as six or eight beavers may occupy the one, low living room, it is fortunate that they instinctively keep it very clean, and that the aroma of musk or castor fills it at all times with penetrating, antiseptic odors.
It is early autumn when a beaver family begins to think of the lodge as of a home; not an old home, but a new one, for Hamoosabik is strangely typical of America in that he is forever moving somewhere else or building a new house. All summer long the beavers lead a nomad life, wandering up or down the wilderness streams on endless exploration ”

“ There is no game in sight; the woods are still, the snow unmarked by any trail; but we are moving cautiously, lifting the snowshoes so as to avoid all noise. Somewhere on that densely wooded hillside across the valley is a deer yard; our eyes are searching far ahead, trying to pick up a moving shadow, when with startling suddenness comes a rumble, a roar, a violent upheaval of snow, and out from underfoot bursts a whirring, booming thing that scares us stiff. Through the flurry of snow the thing looks like a bomb and sounds like an explosion ”