Part 9
“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.
Just over the low ridge yonder is another lake; and under the ledge which you see cropping out is a spring-hole that never freezes. It is nearer than the mouth of the inlet, though the traveling looks much harder, uphill through deep snow. With the wolf in sight, coming up the lake like a cyclone, Keeonekh takes a desperate chance, knowing his advantage if he can top the ridge. Both trails go up the bank by a natural runway, otter and wolf sinking shoulder-deep at every jump. The wolf is gaining here at a frightful rate, one of his flying leaps covering two or three of the otter’s. Nose to tail, they reach the top, where Keeonekh springs aside from the runway and plunges headlong over the ledge. One clean slide of thirty feet, and with a final convulsive leap he lands on the edge-ice of the spring-hole. It breaks under his impact; down he goes in a swirl of black water.
The trail now brings a smile or a chuckle, for we follow Malsun the wolf. Here he hesitates at the brink of the ledge, slippery where snow has melted by day or frozen by night; looking down the almost perpendicular slope, he sees the glistening body of Keeonekh glance away from under his nose. Malsun will sit on his tail and slide down an ordinary bank, but he balks at this icy ledge. It is too steep; and the black ice below, with water lapping over its broken edges, looks dangerous. Turning from the ledge, he leaps down the runway and creeps around to the farther side of the spring-hole, where he stands waiting expectantly. Keeonekh is under water, and can go where he pleases; he can even cross the lake to another spring-hole, if need be, since he has learned the trick of breathing under the ice. But the wolf, who has no notion of such possibilities in a mere beast, thinks that whoever goes into water must soon come out again, and waits for Keeonekh to reappear.
Malsun is not a patient waiter, being too much like a dog. Soon a doubt enters his head, then a suspicion which sends him sniffing around the edges of the spring-hole to be sure the game did not slip away while he was coming down the runway. “No, nothing went away from here,” he says. “Nothing could possibly go away without telling my nose about it.”
The uneasy trail, weaving here and there, shows that Malsun is more puzzled than ever. Suddenly a notion strikes him, a cunning notion that his game is hiding somewhere, waiting for a chance to continue the flight. He trots off to the woods, as if going away; but no sooner is he hidden than he creeps back behind a stump, where he can see the spring-hole without being seen. He is a young wolf, sure enough; the cub habit of stalking things, like a cat, is still strong in him; but his patience is no better than before. He fidgets, changes position; after watching awhile, as you see by a depression in the snow, he goes to have another sniff around the spring-hole. Then he turns away reluctantly and lopes off eastward, probably to rejoin the pack, which we heard howling in this direction last night.
We shall follow him later, to see what else he chased and how he fared; but now a heavy blue shadow drawn across the second lake demands attention. It is trail of some kind; but most wilderness trails are devious, and this goes straight as a string from one wooded point to another on the opposite shore. From this distance it looks like an artificial roadway; we must see who made it.
The shadow, as we draw near it, turns into a path beaten deep in the snow; so deep that, in places near shore, it would easily hide the animals that made use of it. On either side are curious marks or scratches, all slanting one way; in the fresh snow at the bottom are tracks which say that a pair of large beavers have gone back and forth many times. That is an amazing thing, since Hamoosabik the builder, as Simmo calls him, ought now to be safe in his winter lodge, especially in a wolf and lynx country like this. He is a clumsy creature on land or ice; he is courting sudden death to be more than a few jumps from open water at this hungry time of year.
Following the path to the nearer woods, on our right, we find that the beavers have been felling poplar trees and trimming branches into convenient lengths for transportation. The heavy butts lie where they fell, but all smaller pieces have disappeared, showing that the animals are gathering a new supply of food. I have known beavers, driven by necessity, to leave their winter lodge and forage in the woods, eating where they could; but here are no signs of feeding, and no peeled sticks such as a beaver leaves when he has eaten the good bark.
The cutting has been done near a brook, which you hear singing to itself under its blanket of snow and ice. To the brook go several snow tunnels, each starting beside the stump of a fallen poplar, and examination brings out this interesting bit of animal foresight: wherever the beavers fell a tree, they also dig a tunnel leading to the unseen brook. The digging was first in order, and its purpose was to furnish a way of escape should the beavers be surprised at their work.
It is plain now that we are following an uncommonly cunning pair of animals; that they are working in great danger to transport food-wood to their lodge (which must be on the other side of the lake), and that the curious marks beside their path were made by projecting ends of sticks that they carried crosswise in their teeth. Since beavers store an ample food supply in autumn, some misfortune must have sent this pair abroad in the snow; but why do they not eat their bark where they find it? That they know the danger of crossing an expanse of ice, where they may be caught under their burden by prowling enemies, becomes increasingly apparent as we follow the trail. It heads straight across the narrowest part of the lake to a wooded point, where it turns southward, hiding under banks or underbrush, and then cuts across a bay to the open mouth of a large brook.
Here the beavers have their winter home in a great domed lodge. Around the open water are tracks made by three generations of beaver, and these with the uncommonly big house tell us that the family is a large one. Probably their bark soured under water, the wood having been cut early with too much sap, and they were compelled to go afield for a fresh supply. It is hard, perhaps impossible, for a man to judge what went on in their troubled heads when the need of food grew imperative; but a little memory and some study of the trail bring out two facts to make one thoughtful. The first fact, from memory, is that old and young members of a beaver family habitually work together in gathering their winter store of food; the second, from the trail, is that this particular family is not following its habitual or instinctive custom. Though there are kits and well-grown yearlings in the lodge, only two of the largest beavers have gone forth on their dangerous foraging.
An inviting trail leads up beside the brook, and we follow it to find where several of the family have been cutting a huge yellow birch this very morning. That this tree was intended for food is most improbable; the branches are untouched, and beavers do not care for yellow-birch bark at any season. Had they been driven to such fare by necessity, there are smaller trees with more tender bark near the lodge. They have cut this tough tree for exercise, I think. Their teeth grow rapidly, and unless cutting edges are worn down to the proper bevel they soon grow troublesome. That is why a beaver often comes out beside his lodge, if he can possibly reach open water, and cuts for an hour or two at the butt of a tree to keep his teeth in trim. If he is unable to reach open water, he may find himself in need of heroic treatment when the ice breaks up. I once found a beaver that had starved to death simply because his cutting teeth had grown so long, overlapping below and above, that he could not open his mouth wide enough to separate them and so peel the bark from his food-wood.
Farther up the brook the trail of a solitary beaver leaves the path and heads away into a swamp. Step by step we follow him, till he finds a young cedar tree and cuts it down. That is an odd proceeding, since beavers never eat cedar bark for food. See, as the tree falls he jumps aside to be clear of the butt, which has a trick of lashing out and knocking over anything in its path. Then he mogs around to the very tip, where he eats a few of the greenest sprays, filled with pungent oil of cedar. This for medicine, undoubtedly, which some beavers seem to need in winter, perhaps because of their scant exercise and restricted diet.
The lodge looms up finely across the stream, inviting a closer inspection. It is an enormous structure for a single family, higher than my head and full twelve feet in diameter. An old wolf trail leads to the top on one side, a fresh lynx trail on the other, showing where these hungry prowlers climbed up on tiptoe, as if stalking game, for a smell of the odors that steamed through the beavers’ ventilator. A ravenous smell it must have been to them, like the smell of frying onions to a hungry man. There is hardly a flesh-eating animal in the north that will not leave any other game for a taste of musky beaver. Neither wolf nor lynx attempted to dig the game out, you see; they merely sniffed and passed on; and that, too, tells a story. When they were cubs, perhaps, both animals tried to dig a beaver out of some other lodge like this, only to find that the thick walls of sticks and grass, cemented by frozen mud, were too strong to be breached by any beast in the wilderness.
At thought of these hungry brutes, some vague hint of a nearer hunger floats in and turns our mind to minnows; for that bit of open water looks fishy, and if we can catch a minnow there, we are sure of a good breakfast. There are plenty of trout in the lake by the home camp; but lately they have shown a capricious appetite for minnows, which are more precious here than rubies. To catch a trout is easy enough. All you need do is to place a slanting twig over the hole from which we get drinking water, tie a bit of cloth to your line for a flag, stick this into the split upper end of the twig, and sit comfortably by the fire till your flag is jerked into the hole; whereupon you run quickly and pull out your trout, a fat, delicious trout that tastes as if he had been raised on milk and honey. But first you must catch a minnow for bait, and that calls for a fisherman.