In New England Fields and Woods Part 5

XIX

TO A TRESPa.s.s SIGN

Scene, _A Wood. An old man with a fishing-rod speaks_:--

What strange object is this which I behold, incongruous in its staring whiteness of fresh paint and black lettering, its straightness of lines and abrupt irregularity amid the soft tints and graceful curves of this sylvan scene? As I live, a trespa.s.s sign!

Thou inanimate yet most impertinent thing, dumb yet commanding me with most imperative words to depart hence, how dost thou dare forbid my entrance upon what has so long been my own, even as it is the birds' and beasts' and fishes', not by lease or t.i.tle deed, but of natural right?

Hither from time immemorial have they come at will and so departed at no man's behest, as have I since the happy days when a barefoot boy I cast my worm-baited hook among the crystal foam bells, or bearing the heavy burden of my grandsire's rusty flint-lock, I stalked the wily grouse in the diurnal twilight of these thickets.

Here was I thrilled by the capture of my first trout; here exulted over the downfall of my first woodc.o.c.k; here, grown to man's estate, I learned to cast the fly; here beheld my first dog draw on his game, and here, year after year, till my locks have grown gray, have I come, sharp set with months of longing, to live again for a little while the carefree days of youth.

Never have I been bidden to depart but by storm or nightfall or satiety, until now thou confrontest me with thy impudent mandate, thou, thou contemptible, but yet not to be despised nor unheeded parallelogram of painted deal, with thy legal phrases and impending penalties; thou, the silent yet terribly impressive representative of men whose purses are longer than mine!

What is their right to this stream, these woods, compared with mine?

Theirs is only gained by purchase, confirmed by scrawled parchment, signed and sealed; mine a birthright, as always I hoped it might be of my sons and my sons' sons. What to the usurpers of our rights are these woods and waters but a place for the killing of game and fish? They do not love, as a man the roof-tree where-under he was born, these arches and low aisles of the woods; they do not know as I do every silver loop of the brook, every tree whose quivering reflection throbs across its eddies; its voice is only babble to their ears, the song of the pines tells them no story of bygone years.

Of all comers here, I who expected most kindly welcome am most inhospitably treated. All my old familiars, the birds, the beasts, and the fishes, may fly over thee, walk beneath thee, swim around thee, but to me thou art a wall that I may not pa.s.s.

I despise thee and spit upon thee, thou most impudent intruder, thou insolent sentinel, thou odious monument of selfishness, but I dare not lay hands upon thee and cast thee down and trample thee in the dust of the earth as thou shouldst of right be entreated. To rid myself of thy hateful sight, I can only turn my back upon thee and depart with sorrow and anger in my heart.

Mayst thou keep nothing but disappointment for the greedy wretches who set thee here.

XX

A GENTLE SPORTSMAN

All the skill of woodcraft that goes to the making of the successful hunter with the gun, must be possessed by him who hunts his game with the camera. His must be the stealthy, panther-like tread that breaks no twig nor rustles the fallen leaves. His the eye that reads at a glance the signs that to the ordinary sight are a blank or at most are an untranslatable enigma. His a patience that counts time as nothing when measured with the object sought. When by the use and practice of these, he has drawn within a closer range of his timid game than his brother of the gun need attain, he pulls trigger of a weapon that destroys not, but preserves its unharmed quarry in the very counterfeit of life and motion. The wild world is not made the poorer by one life for his shot, nor nature's peace disturbed, nor her nicely adjusted balance jarred.

He bears home his game, wearing still its pretty ways of life in the midst of its loved surroundings, the swaying hemlock bough where the grouse perched, the bending ferns about the deer's couch, the dew-beaded sedges where the woodc.o.c.k skulks in the shadows of the alders, the lichened trunks and dim vistas of primeval woods, the sheen of voiceless waterfalls, the flash of sunlit waves that never break.

His trophies the moth may not a.s.sail. His game touches a finer sense than the palate possesses, satisfies a n.o.bler appet.i.te than the stomach's craving, and furnishes forth a feast that, ever spread, ever invites, and never palls upon the taste.

Moreover, this gentlest of sportsmen is hampered by no restrictions of close time, nor confronted by penalties of trespa.s.s. All seasons are open for his bloodless forays, all woods and waters free to his harmless weapon.

Neither is he trammeled by any nice distinctions as to what may or may not be considered game. Everything counts in his score. The eagle on his craggy perch, the high-hole on his hollow tree, are as legitimate game for him as the deer and grouse. All things beautiful and wild and picturesque are his, yet he kills them not, but makes them a living and enduring joy, to himself and all who behold them.

XXI

JULY DAYS

The woods are dense with full-grown leaf.a.ge. Of all the trees, only the ba.s.swood has delayed its blossoming, to crown the height of summer and fill the sun-steeped air with a perfume that calls all the wild bees from hollow tree and scant woodside gleaning to a wealth of honey gathering, and all the hive-dwellers from their board-built homes to a finer and sweeter pillage than is offered by the odorous white sea of buckwheat. Half the flowers of wood and fields are out of bloom.

Herdsgra.s.s, clover and daisy are falling before the mower. The early grain fields have already caught the color of the sun, and the ta.s.seling corn rustles its broad leaves above the rich loam that the woodc.o.c.k delights to bore.

The dwindling streams have lost their boisterous clamor of springtide and wimple with subdued voices over beds too shallow to hide a minnow or his poised shadow on the sunlit shallows. The sharp eye of the angler probes the green depths of the slowly swirling pools, and discovers the secrets of the big fish which congregate therein.

The river has marked the stages of its decreasing volume with many lines along its steep banks. It discloses the muskrat's doorway, to which he once dived so gracefully, but now must clumsily climb to. Rafts of driftwood bridge the shallow current sunk so low that the lithe willows bend in vain to kiss its warm bosom. This only the swaying trails of water-weeds and rustling sedges toy with now; and swift-winged swallows coyly touch. There is not depth to hide the scurrying schools of minnows, the half of whom fly into the air in a curving burst of silver shower before the rush of a pickerel, whose green and mottled sides gleam like a swift-shot arrow in the downright sunbeams.

The sandpiper tilts along the shelving sh.o.r.e. Out of an embowered harbor a wood duck convoys her fleet of ducklings, and on the ripples of their wake the anch.o.r.ed argosies of the water lilies toss and cast adrift their cargoes of perfume. Above them the green heron perches on an overhanging branch, uncouth but alert, whether sentinel or scout, flapping his awkward way along the ambient bends and reaches. With slow wing-beats he signals the coming of some more lazily moving boat, that drifts at the languid will of the current or indolent pull of oars that grate on the golden-meshed sand and pebbles.

Lazily, unexpectantly, the angler casts his line, to be only a convenient perch for the dragonflies; for the fish, save the affrighted minnows and the hungry pickerel, are as lazy as he. To-day he may enjoy to the full the contemplative man's recreation, nor have his contemplations disturbed by any finny folk of the under-water world, while dreamily he floats in sunshine and dappled shadow, so at one with the placid waters and quiet sh.o.r.es that wood duck, sandpiper, and heron scarcely note his un.o.btrusive presence.

No such easy and meditative pastime attends his brother of the gun who, sweating under the burden of lightest apparel and equipment, beats the swampy covers where beneath the sprawling alders and arching fronds of fern the woodc.o.c.k hides. Not a breath stirs the murky atmosphere of these depths of shade, hotter than sunshine; not a branch nor leaf moves but with his struggling pa.s.sage, or marking with a wake of waving undergrowth the course of his unseen dog.

Except this rustling of branches, sedges and ferns, the thin, continuous piping of the swarming mosquitoes, the busy tapping and occasional harsh call of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r, scarcely a sound invades the hot silence, till the wake of the hidden dog ceases suddenly and the waving brakes sway with quickening vibrations into stillness behind him. Then, his master draws cautiously near, with gun at a ready and an unheeded mosquito drilling his nose, the fern leaves burst apart with a sudden shiver, and a woodc.o.c.k, uttering that shrill unexplained twitter, upsprings in a halo of rapid wing-beats and flashes out of sight among leaves and branches.

As quick, the heelplate strikes the alert gunner's shoulder, and, as if in response to the shock, the short unechoed report jars the silence of the woods. As if out of the cloud of sulphurous smoke, a shower of leaves flutter down, with a quicker patter of dry twigs and shards of bark, and among all these a brown clod drops lifeless and inert to mother earth.

A woodc.o.c.k is a woodc.o.c.k, though but three-quarters grown; and the shot one that only a quick eye and ready hand may accomplish; but would not the achievement have been more worthy, the prize richer, the sport keener in the gaudy leaf.a.ge and bracing air of October, rather than in this sweltering heat, befogged with clouds of pestering insects, when every step is a toil, every moment a torture? Yet men deem it sport and glory if they do not delight in its performance. The anxious note and behavior of mother song-birds, whose poor little hearts are in as great a flutter as their wings concerning their half-grown broods, hatched coincidently with the woodc.o.c.k, is proof enough to those who would heed it, that this is not a proper season for shooting. But in some northerly parts of our wide country it is woodc.o.c.k now or never, for the birds bred still further northward are rarely tempted by the cosiest copse or half-sunned hillside of open woods to linger for more than a day or two, as they fare southward, called to warmer days of rest and frostless moonlit nights of feeding under kindlier skies.

While the nighthawk's monotonous cry and intermittent boom and the indistinct voice of the whippoorwill ring out in the late twilight of the July evenings, the alarmed, half-guttural chuckle of the gra.s.s plover is heard, so early migrating in light marching order, thin in flesh but strong of wing, a poor prize for the gunner whose ardor outruns his humanity and better judgment. Lean or fat, a plover is a plover, but would that he might tarry with us till the plump gra.s.shoppers of August and September had clothed his breast and ribs with fatness.

Well, let him go, if so soon he will. So let the woodc.o.c.k go, to offer his best to more fortunate sportsmen. What does it profit us to kill merely for the sake of killing, and have to show therefor but a beggarly account of bones and feathers? Are there not grouse and quail and woodc.o.c.k waiting for us, and while we wait for them can we not content ourselves with indolent angling by shaded streams in these melting days of July rather than contribute the blaze and smoke of gunpowder to the heat and murkiness of midsummer? If we must shed blood let us tap the cool veins of the fishes, not the hot arteries of brooding mother birds and their fledgelings.

XXII

CAMPING OUT

"Camping out" is becoming merely a name for moving out of one's permanent habitation and dwelling for a few weeks in a well-built lodge, smaller than one's home, but as comfortable and almost as convenient; with tables, chairs and crockery, carpets and curtains, beds with sheets and blankets on real bedsteads, a stove and its full outfit of cooking utensils, wherefrom meals are served in the regular ways of civilization. Living in nearly the same fashion of his ordinary life, except that he wears a flannel shirt and a slouch hat, and fishes a little and loafs more than is his ordinary custom, our "camper" imagines that he is getting quite close to the primitive ways of hunters and trappers; that he is living their life with nothing lacking but the rough edges, which he has ingeniously smoothed away. He is mistaken. In ridding himself of some of its discomforts, he has lost a great deal of the best of real camp life; the spice of small adventure, and the woodsy flavor that its half-hardships and makeshift appliances give it. If one sleeps a little cold under his one blanket on his bed of evergreen twigs, though he does not take cold, he realizes in some degree the discomfort of Boone's bivouac when he cuddled beside his hounds to keep from freezing--and feels slightly heroic. His slumbers are seasoned with dreams of the wild woods, as the balsamic perfume of his couch steals into his nostrils; his companions' snores invade his drowsy senses as the growl of bears, and the thunderous whir of grouse bursting out of untrodden thickets. When he awakes in the gray of early morning he finds that the few hours of sleep have wrought a miracle of rest, and he feels himself nearer to nature when he washes his face in the brook, than when he rinses off his sleepiness in bowl or basin. The water of the spring is colder and has a finer flavor when he drinks it from a birch bark cup of his own making. Tea made in a frying-pan has an aroma never known to such poor mortals as brew their tea in a teapot, and no mill ever ground such coffee as that which is tied up in a rag and pounded with a stone or hatchet-head. A sharpened stick for a fork gives a zest to the bit of pork "frizzled" on as rude a spit and plattered on a clean chip or a sheet of bark, and no fish was ever more toothsome than when broiled on a gridiron improvised of green wands or roasted Indian fashion in a cleft stick.

What can make amends for the loss of the camp-fire, with innumerable pictures glowing and shifting in its heart, and conjuring strange shapes out of the surrounding gloom, and suggesting unseen mysteries that the circle of darkness holds behind its rim? How are the wells of conversation to be thawed out by a black stove, so that tales of hunters' and fishers' craft and adventure shall flow till the measure of man's belief is overrun? How is the congenial spark of true companionship to be kindled when people brood around a stove and light their pipes with matches, and not with coals s.n.a.t.c.hed out of the camp-fire's edge, or with twigs that burn briefly with baffling flame?

But it will not be long before it will be impossible to get a taste of real camping without taking long and expensive journeys, for every available rod of lake sh.o.r.e and river bank is being taken up and made populous with so-called camps, and the comfortable freedom and seclusion of a real camp are made impossible there. One desiring that might better pitch his tent in the back woodlot of a farm than in any such popular resort. This misnamed camping out has become a fashion which seems likely to last till the sh.o.r.es are as thronged as the towns, and the woods are spoiled for the real campers, whom it is possible to imagine seeking in the summers of the future a seclusion in the cities that the forests and streams no longer can give them.

Yet, let it be understood that make-believe camping is better than no camping. It cannot but bring people into more intimate relations with nature than they would be if they stayed at home, and so to better acquaintance with our common mother, who deals so impartially with all her children.

XXIII

THE CAMP-FIRE