Outings at Odd Times

by Charles C. Abbott

To many, perhaps, a wood-pile is but a pile of wood; but it is something more. Can you not see that the ground is depressed, as though the earth had been beaten down by the continued blows of axe and beetle? Do you not notice that the outlying weeds are different from those that are scattered elsewhere about the dooryard? Here, there is not only a wood-pile now, but there has been one for many a long year, perhaps for more than a century. Turn up the soil and you will find it black; examine it with a lens, and you will find it filled with wood fiber in every stage of decomposition. Dig deeper and you will find many a relic of a by-gone generation. Pewter buttons that once shone like silver, the pride of beaux who, though Quakers, loved a smart-looking coat; buckles worn at the knee and upon the shoes; bits of spectacle rims that once held circular glasses of enormous diameter; a thousand odds and ends, indeed, of metal, glass, and china, discarded, one by one, as they were broken; for the wood-pile was a dust-heap as well, and the last resting-place of every small object that could not be burned.

My own earliest recollection of outdoor sport is of “playing house” about the generous heap of gnarly logs and crooked branches that had been brought from the woods during the winter. At some convenient corner the loose earth would be scooped away, water brought until the hollow was filled, and a long row of mud pies molded in clamshells, the product of a happy morning’s work. It was usually when thus engaged that some curious object would be brought to light and referred for explanation to the wood-chopper, if he were present. I can see two old men now, whose sole occupation in their later years, so far as I can recall, was to split wood. These two men, Uz Gaunt and Miles Overfield, were “master hands with an axe,” as they promptly said of themselves. With one foot resting upon the chopping-block, and leaning upon his axe, Uz or Miles would critically examine whatever I had found; and then, after silently gazing into the distance to recall the past, with what an air of wisdom would the information be forthcoming! Nor would either of these old men ever promptly resume his labor. Such an interruption was sure to call up a flood of memories, and delightful stories of long ago made me quite forget my play. Nothing that my own or another’s brain could suggest ever equaled in interest these old men’s stories. I can not clearly recall a single one of them now, but simply the effect they produced and the sad fact that, in their estimation, the present never favorably compared with the days when they were young. And is it not ever so? If I have learned nothing else since then I have learned this—that the glorious future to which as a child I looked forward has proved everything but what my fancy painted.

There was a comic side to my interviews with the wood-choppers which I recall even now with grim satisfaction, for I think it was right that I outwitted an unreasonably cross-grained aunt. Often my heart was sorely troubled because, in the midst of a most exciting story, Aunt would call out, “Thee is hindering Miles at his work; he doesn’t like to be bothered;” all of which was in the interest of the work being done, and not Miles’s comfort. Not like to be bothered, indeed! Neither he nor Uz disapproved of loitering, for both were old, and Aunt knew this as well as they. Before summer was over, a stratagem was devised that succeeded admirably. I had merely to take my place on the off side of the wood-pile, where I was quite out of sight, and Miles or Uz would work, oh, so diligently! at the light wood for half a day, which needed next to no exertion, and all the while could talk as freely as when taking his nooning. Perhaps it was not well, but, young as I then was, I learned that in human nature the real and the apparent are too often as widely apart as the poles.

The wild life that forty years ago lurked in the woods and swamps of the old farm was not different from what is still to be found there, but there has been a great decrease in the numbers of many forms. The wild cat and fox, perhaps, may be considered as really extinct, although both are reported at long intervals in the immediate neighborhood. These, it is certain, are stragglers—the former from the mountains to north, the latter from the pine regions toward the sea-coast. But it has not been long since the raccoon was regularly hunted during the moonlit winter nights and the opposum found security in half the hollow trees along the hillside. The dreaded skunk was then abundant. None of these, however, can be said to be of common occurrence now, and their discovery produces a ripple of excitement at present, while in my early days their capture excited scarcely a word of comment. Then the old wood-pile was not infrequently the hiding-place of one or more of these “varmints,” which raided the hen-roost, kept the old dog in a fever of excitement, and baffled the trapping skill of the oldest “hands” upon the farm. Now, at best, when the last sticks are cut and stored in the woodshed, the burrow of a rat is all we find.

With what glee do I still recall an autumn evening, years ago, when the unusually furious barking of the old mastiff brought the whole family to the door! In the dim twilight the dog could be seen dashing at and retreating from the wood-pile, and at once the meaning of the hubbub was apparent. Some creature had taken refuge there. A lantern was brought, and as every man wished to be the hero of the hour, my aunt held the light. The wood-pile was surrounded; every stick was quickly overturned, and finally a skunk was dislodged. Confused or attracted by the light, I do not know which, the “varmint” made straightway for the ample skirts of the old lady, followed by the dog, and, in a second, skunk, dog, lady, and lantern were one indistinguishable mass. My aunt proved the heroine of the evening, nor did the men object. I often pause at the very spot, and fancy that “the scent of the roses” doth “hang round it still.”

A wood-pile, if it be not too near the house, has many attractions for birds of various kinds, and I am at a loss to know why the whip-poor-will should, of recent years, have forsaken it. Formerly, the first of these birds heard in early spring was that which perched upon the topmost stick and whistled his trisyllabic monologue from dark to dawn. Now they frequent only the retired woodland tracts. Various insect-eating birds continually come and go, attracted by the food they find in the decayed wood, but the house-wren remains throughout its summer sojourn here—that is, from April to October; while during the colder months the winter wren takes the other’s place. These little brown birds are exceedingly alike in appearance, in habits, and in size, and I shall never forget my communicating the fact that they were not the same to Miles Overfield. It was almost my last conversation with him.

“Not the same?” he exclaimed. “You might as well tell me that a snow-bird isn’t a chippy in its winter dress!”

“They are not, indeed!” I replied, astonished to hear so remarkable a statement.

“So you set up book-learnin’ against me about such things as that, eh?” Miles remarked, with unlimited scorn in both his voice and manner; and from that time I lost favor in his eyes. Such crude ideas concerning our common birds are still very common, nor is it to be wondered at. Knowledge of local natural history is still at a discount. Is there a country school where even its barest rudiments are taught?

The heaped-up logs that, burning brightly, made cheery my room when I sat down for a quiet evening’s meditation, are now a bed of ashes and lurid coals. They typify the modern wood-piles about our farms—mere heaps of refuse sticks and windfall branches of our dooryard trees. Fit for kindling, perhaps, but never for a generous fire upon an open hearth. As I linger over them, the irrecoverable past, with all its pleasures to the fore, comes back with painful vividness. The fantastic shapes of the ruddy coals, the caverns in the loose ashes, the shadows of the andirons, the filmy thread of smoke, are a landscape to my fancy, upon which my eyes can never dwell again. In the faint moaning of the wind that fills the chimney corner I hear a voice, long stilled, whose music led me dancing through the world. Place and people are alike changed. “All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.”