The Wilderness

“ Many hours have we been in the wilderness, and our heart yearns again for the cheerful dwellings of men. Sweet infant streamlet, that flows by our feet without a murmur, so shallow are yet thy waters—wilt thou—short as hitherto has been thy journeying—wilt thou be our guide out into the green valleys and the blue heaven, and the sight once more of the bright sunshine and the fair fleecy clouds? ”

“ Again the ruin rings with life, and the wilderness is a smiling garden, fruitful in human happiness. The voices of industry now cheer every corner of the solitary city, and the laugh of pleasure awakens the gloomy recesses of the forest with an inspiring feeling of gladness. ”

“ The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams. ”

“ How vast the distances appeared through that clear, sun-illumined atmosphere, and how pronounced and distinctive were the varied colors spread to the full vista of the eye, contrasts of shine and shadow no human brush, however daring, would venture to depict on canvas. A primitive land this, idealized by distance, vast in its wide, sweeping plains, its boundless sea, its leagues of glistening sand, and, bending over all, the deepest, darkest arch of blue that ever mirrored so fair a picture of the wilderness. ”

“ In the Wilderness. On over the stony hills called the Goulbi-n-Kebbi, where around us stretched, as far as our wearied eyes could penetrate, a trackless waste of yellow, sunlit sand; on across a desert peopled only with echoes, a wilderness where there was nothing but He, and where the hot, violent wind sent blinding clouds of dust into our faces at every step of our beasts; on over the rough rocks, where a little stunted herbage struggled for an existence, we pressed forward, scarcely halting throughout the blazing, breathless day. ”

“ Yet there is one relief to this vast forest solitude--like gems sleeping in a moss bed, lakes are everywhere glittering in the bright sunshine. How calm and trustingly they repose on the bosom of the wilderness! ”

“ Then, as dusk crept closer, and the great plain, along which the tired horses plodded, became one illimitable shadow out of which rose strange sounds of beasts and eerie night cries of birds, the spell of the wilderness renewed itself and she felt herself enveloped in world-old mystery. ”

“ Acre after acre of pine-forest, hill after hill of bowlders and bushes, valley after valley with threading streams at bottom, we crossed. Sometimes we came upon great fields of low berry-bearing bushes, under the majestic pines. There was something infinitely touching in the sight of these stores of tiny fruit for the feeble folk who live on wing and in nests in the wilderness. Clumps of the strange red snow-flower, too, we saw in the wildest and most desolate places. Surely there can be no flower on earth whose look so allies it to uncanny beings and powers. ”

“ You remember the great canoe birches by the wilderness river, whiter than the little tent that nestled beneath them, their wide bark banners waving in the wind, soft as the flutter of owls' wings that swept among them, shadow-like, in the twilight. A vague regret steals over you that our own wilderness is gone, and with it most of the shy folk that loved its solitudes. ”

“ The wilderness doth blossom like the rose, And change into a garden of the Lord! How silent everywhere! Alone and lost Here in the forest, there comes over me An inward awfulness. I recall the words Of the Apostle Paul: "In journeyings often, Often in perils in the wilderness, In weariness, in painfulness, in watchings, In hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness;" And I forget my weariness and pain, My watchings, and my hunger and my thirst. The Lord hath said that He will seek his flock In cloudy and dark days, and they shall dwell Securely in the wilderness, and sleep Safe in the woods! ”

“ The Wilderness breathes gentleness;—these waters bubbling free,
The gallant breeze that stirs the trees, form Heaven's own melody;
The far-stretched sky, with its bright eye, pours forth a tide of love
On every thing that here doth spring, on all that glows above.
But live with man,—his dark heart scan,—its paltry selfishness
Will show to thee, why men like me, love the lone Wilderness! ”

“ The wilderness experiences a sudden rise of all her streams and lakes. She feels ten thousand vermin gnawing at the base of her noblest trees. Many combining drag them off, jarring over the roots of the survivors, and tumble them into the nearest stream, till, the fairest having fallen, they scamper off to ransack some new wilderness, and all is still again. ”

“ He never lost this wilderness perspective. The wilderness means to Him alone with God, the false perspective, the flaming of near lights, the noise of men's shuffling feet all gone. And when He went out among men for work, that wilderness atmosphere went with Him. And when the crowds thickened, and work piled up, and dangers intensified, off He would go for a fresh bit of improvised wilderness. ”

“ Because of its size the wilderness also has a physical ambiency about it which most forms of beauty lack. One looks from outside at works of art and architecture, listens from outside to music or poetry. But when one looks at and listens to the wilderness he is encompassed by his experience of beauty, lives in the midst of his esthetic universe. ”

“ Another singular aspect of the wilderness is that it gratifies every one of the senses. There is unanimity in venerating the sights and sounds of the forest. But what are generally esteemed to be the minor senses should not be slighted. No one who has ever strolled in springtime through seas of blooming violets, or lain at night on boughs of fresh balsam, or walked across dank holms in early morning can omit odor from the joys of the primordial environment. ”

“ You will never enjoy doing for yourself, for your days will be crammed with unending labour.
It is but a little after seven. The long crimson shadows of the North Country are lifting across the aisles of the forest. You sit on a log, or lie on your back, and blow contented clouds straight up into the air. Nothing can disturb you now. The wilderness is yours, for you have taken from it the essentials of primitive civilization--shelter, warmth, and food. ”

“ Most obvious in the first category is the contribution which the wilderness makes to health. This involves something more than pure air and quiet, which are also attainable in almost any rural situation. But toting a fifty-pound pack over an abominable trail, snowshoeing across a blizzard-swept plateau or scaling some jagged pinnacle which juts far above timber all develop a body distinguished by a soundness, stamina and élan unknown amid normal surroundings. ”

“ CHAPTER I Extent of the Wilderness—The First White Man—The Backbone of the Continent—A Vanished Sea and a Petrified Ocean—The Biggest Trees—The Spike of Gold.
The natural habitat of man is the wilderness. No matter how civilised he may become, his heart turns with longing to the woods, to the sea, and to the mountains. There he is unconventional; animals are his compeers, the forest his friend, the free-flowing stream nectar to his lips. Civilised peoples, after all, are but wanderers driven from the Garden of Eden by the sword of necessity. ”

“ Again we mount, and plunge into the wilderness. Evening draws in, and still we ride—in silence, for the joy of living is too deep for words. On a high hilltop we pause, enchanted by the vista opened suddenly at our feet. Deep in the darkening east a valley sleeps, veiled in a weird portentous purple mist.
Beside the next water we camp; that is, we cook our simple fare on a fire of dwarf willow and wild rose stems, hobble our broncos, roll ourselves in blankets and go to sleep under the friendly stars, lulled by the breeze that rustles in the grass, despite the heathen coyote’s evening hymn. ”

“ Then, when the earth and the rocks under our feet seem to shake, when the powers of Nature are let loose in all their might, when weak little man in his small tent, alone in the midst of all this violence, listens to the sounds, alone and abandoned like the sailor on a frail plank in the midst of a raging ocean, then it is that the wilderness sings its greatest, noblest, most wonderful song. ”

“ A fourth peculiarity about the wilderness is that it exhibits a dynamic beauty. A Beethoven symphony or a Shakespearean drama, a landscape by Corot or a Gothic cathedral, once they are finished become virtually static. But the wilderness is in constant flux. A seed germinates, and a stunted seedling battles for decades against the dense shade of the virgin forest. ”

“ It makes things much simpler to understand, when you are camped deep in the wilderness, and the night falls, and out of the misty darkness under the farther shore comes a wild shivering call that makes one's nerves tingle till he finds out about it—Where are you? O where are you? That is just like Hukweem.
Sometimes, however, he varies the cry, and asks very plainly: "Who are you? O who are you?" There was a loon on the Big Squattuk lake, where I camped one summer, which was full of inquisitiveness as a blue jay. ”

“ Furthermore, he declared that the wilderness and solitary place shall blossom as the rose, the weak hands and feeble knees be strengthened, the fearful be encouraged, the blind have their eyes opened, the deaf have their ears unstopped, the lame made to leap as an hart, the tongue of the dumb made to sing; in the wilderness shall waters break out and streams in the desert ”

“ There were no brick walls to limit the vision, no tall chimneys belching out smudges of black smoke to defile the atmosphere, no rushing crowd to distract. Nowhere does one get so close to God as in the wilderness. ”

“ I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. ”

“ Here we have the wilderness, its primeval forests, its sea-like lakes, its threading rivers, shrunken or swollen, its cataracts and its confluent streams, its marshy expanses, bluffs, and plains, and its resources, abundant or scant, for sustaining life of beasts or men, all touched in feature or full portrayal by the charming skill of those to whom the sight was novel and bewildering. ”

“ Had he reached yonder blood-stained shore, lined with infuriated savages, and found safe passage through them to the side of the woman he had once called wife, and then forgotten? Or had he found, instead, the solemn peace of death, amid the swirling waters of this vast inland sea, so many leagues to the westward of that sunny land he loved? These were the thoughts that shook me, as I leaned out above the rail, her dear hand always on my shoulder. Never have the circling years found voice, nor the redeemed wilderness made answer. ”

“ Tracing rivers to their fountains makes the most charming of travels. As the life-blood of the landscapes, the best of the wilderness comes to their banks, and not one dull passage is found in all their eventful histories. ”

“ And there we sat, we three, with the wonder upon us all, the young eagles at our feet, the cliff above, and, three hundred feet below, the spruce tops of the wilderness reaching out and away to the mountains beyond the big lake. [104] I sat perfectly still, which is the only way to reassure a wild creature; and soon I thought Cheplahgan had lost his fear in his anxiety for the little ones. But the moment I rose to go he was in the air again, circling restlessly above my head with his mate, the same wild fierceness in his eyes as he looked down. ”

“ No more fear or thought had he of being lost in the wilderness, than the ring-dove that flies from forest to forest in the winter season, and, without the aid even of vision, trusts to the instinctive wafting of her wings through the paths of ether. ”

“ CHAPTER V—THE WILDERNESS TRAIL.
It is a peculiarity of the wilderness, be it in the frozen north or under the blazing sun of the southwest, that it breeds in its dwellers and sojourners a stout and hardy independence and self-reliance that no other life can. In the midst of primitive solitudes, where man has to battle with nature for his means of life, every quality of hardiness and ingenuity that may have been dormant in civilization is called forth by that stern task-mistress, necessity. ”

“ But wheresoever we may venture to go in all this good world, nature is ever found richer and more beautiful than she seems, and nowhere may you meet with more varied and delightful surprises than in the byways and recesses of this sublime wilderness—lovely asters and abronias on the dusty plains, rose-gardens around the mountain wells, and resiny woods, where all seemed so desolate, adorning the hot foothills as well as the cool summits, fed by cordial and benevolent storms of rain and hail and snow ”

“ The wilderness has its romantic and unexplored solitudes, and the desert its interminable wastes, or its burning sirocco; but there is no comfort to exempt the mind from external annoyances. The ocean, tempest-tossed, prepares in the deep a watery shroud for the body by the same hand, with which it proffers a festival of sublimity to the soul. ”