How far was it to Turtlepond? I asked. “Seven or eight miles.” And the road? Could he tell me how to get there? Oh, yes; and he began. But I was soon quite lost. He knew the way too well, and I gave over trying to follow him, saying to myself that I would procure directions, when the time came, from some one in the village. The man was very neighborly and kind, invited me to get up behind him and ride, gave me his name, answered all my questions, and rode away. Here, then, were ravens with something like certainty and well within reach (“ra-vĕns,” my new acquaintance had been careful to say, with no slurring of the second vowel), and, Dr. —— to the contrary notwithstanding, I would yet see them.
The next morning, with a luncheon in my pocket and a minute itinerary in my notebook, I set out for Turtlepond. Important things must be attended to promptly. “You will be lucky if you find it,” said the man who had laid out my route, by way of a godspeed; and I half believed him. He did not add, what I knew was on his tongue, “You will be luckier still if you find a raven;” as to that, also, he was welcome to his opinion. Ravens or no ravens, I meant to enjoy myself. What could a man want better than a long, unhurried day in those romantic mountain roads, with a bird singing from every bush, and new and lovely flowers inviting his hand at every turn? With fair weather and in a fair country, walking is its own reward.
To put the town behind me was the work of a few minutes. After that my way ran through the woods, although for the first half of the distance, at least, there was never more than a mile or two without a clearing and a house. This part of the road grew familiar to me afterward, I traveled it so often; and now, as I take it once more in my mind, I can see it in all its windings. Here, as the land begins to decline from the plateau, or mountain shoulder, on which the village nestles, stands a line of towering conical hemlocks,—a hundred and fifty feet tall, at a moderate guess. Out of them came the nasal, high-pitched, highly characteristic ank, ank, ank of my first Canadian nuthatch,—my first one in North Carolina, I mean. That, by the bye, was on this very trip to Turtlepond. I had been on the watch for him, and put him into my bird list with peculiar satisfaction. He was like a fellow Yankee, as was also the brown creeper that dwelt near by. This same row of hemlocks—beside a brook, as Southern hemlocks always are, with a thicket of laurel and rhododendron underneath—was also one of the haunts of the olive-sided flycatcher, another Northerner, who chooses the loftiest perch he can find from which to deliver his wild quit-quequeeo. Should this Carolinian representative of a boreal species ever be promoted to the dignity of subspecific rank, as has happened to some of his neighbors, I should bid for the honor of naming him,—the hemlock flycatcher.
By the time I reached this point, on a sultry morning, I was commonly ready for a breathing-spell, and by good luck here was a most convenient log, on which I used to sit, listening to the bird chorus, and waylaying any socially disposed mountaineer who might chance to come along on his way to the town; for Highlands, whatever an outsider may think of it, is in its own measure and degree a veritable metropolis.[4] The only man who ever failed to halt in response to my greeting was a very canonical-looking parson. He was traveling up to Zion in a “buggy,” and not unlikely was meditating his next Sunday’s sermon.
If the religious condition of a community is to be estimated by the number of its meeting-houses, let me say in passing, then Highlands ought to be a very suburb of the New Jerusalem. Its population cannot be more than three or four hundred, but its churches are legion. “Yes,” said a sprightly young lady, to whom the subject was mentioned, “if there were only one or two more, we might all have one apiece.” Baptists, Methodists (of different sorts,—species and subspecies), Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Adventists, Unitarians,—all the sects seemed to be provided for, though I am not sure about the Catholics and the Swedenborgians. It is queer how conscientiously particular, and almost private, the worship of God is made. The Almighty must be a great lover of mint, anise, and cummin, one would say. I was reminded again and again of that sweet old Scripture: “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”
This digression, though suggested by the recollection of my serious-faced clergyman, is not to be taken as reflecting in any wise upon him or upon his calling. He was trying to do his duty, I have no question. If he felt obliged to have a pulpit and a uniform of his own, it was not that he differed from other people, but that other people differed from him. May his work prosper, and his days be long! He was traveling in a buggy, as I have said. Had he been on foot, no doubt he might have been readier to stop a minute to chat with an inquisitive stranger,—as ready, perhaps, as a more venerable pilgrim who happened along a few minutes later, and who not only stopped, but sat down, and, so to speak, paid me a visit: a little man, bent with his seventy-three years (he told me his age almost at once), who had come ten miles on foot that morning. In one hand he carried a live turkey,—with its legs tied, of course,—and in the other a chicken. Poor things, they were making their last journey. It was a “very hot day,” the old man thought. His cotton shirt was flung wide open for coolness, and as he mopped his face, having put down his burdens and taken off his hat, he talked in a cheerful, honest voice, most agreeable to listen to. Life was still a pleasant experience to him, as it seemed. I doubt whether he had ever tired of it for a day. He would sell the turkey and the chicken, buy a little tobacco and perhaps one or two other necessaries, and then trudge the ten miles home again. It is a great thing to have a market for one’s produce, and a greater thing to be contented with one’s lot.
Not far beyond this favorite resting-place—tempting even in the retrospect, as the reader perceives—is a house with a good-sized clearing, through which meanders a trout-stream, to the endless comfort of one of the younger boys of the family. I saw him angling there, one day, with shining success. What a good time he was having! He could hardly bait the hook fast enough. I leaned over the fence and watched him out of pure sympathy (he did not see me, I think, though there was nothing in the world between us—except the fish), and afterward I mentioned the circumstance to his father. “Oh, he is a great fisherman,” was the proud response. For a boy that is a boy a trout-brook is better than all the toy-shops. The good man and his wife (New York State people, who had moved here twelve years before) treated me most hospitably when I came to know them, but on this first morning, having far to go, I went by without calling, pausing only to note the chebec of a least flycatcher, which seemed to be at home in their orchard trees. Its name is still Number 60 in my North Carolina list.
Another bend in the road, and I came within sight of the first of two mills. These had figured at considerable length in my chart of directions, and near them, as I now remember, I fell into some uncertainty as to how this chart was to be interpreted. I turned aside, therefore, to inquire of the second miller; but before I could reach him a blue yellow-backed warbler began singing from a treetop; and as he was my first specimen here, I must out with my opera-glass and find him. The miller surveyed my proceedings with unashamed curiosity, but he answered my questions, none the less, and for still another stage I kept on with the comfortable assurance that I was headed for Turtlepond.
If I failed to arrive there, it should not be for want of using my tongue. From the time I left Highlands I had inquired my way of every man I met. For one thing, I relish natural country talk; and if there is to be conversation, it must somehow be opened. I kept in mind, too, the skepticism of my Highlands informant, and by unhappy experience I had learned how easy it is, in cases of this kind, to go astray through some misunderstanding of question or answer.
So I sauntered along, with frequent interruptions, of course (that was part of the game),—here for a bird, there for a flower, a tree, or a bit of landscape. I recall especially great numbers of the tiny yellow lady’s-slipper and beds of the white-flowered clintonia—the latter a novelty to me—just coming into bloom. Then, by and by, the road began a long, sidelong ascent of a mountain; but at the last moment, when I seemed to have left human habitations behind me for good, I saw across the narrow valley through the forest—the branches at this height being still in the bud—two men at work in a ploughed field. Here was one more opportunity to assure myself against contingencies, and with a loud “hullo” I gained their attention. Was this the road to Turtlepond? I shouted. Yes, they shouted back (a man who could not lift up his voice would be poorly off in that country); I was to keep on and on as far as the schoolhouse, just beyond which I must be sure to turn to the right. Very good, said I to myself, here is something definite; and again I faced the mountain road.