And now Pup knows that there is no bottom to a woodchuck’s burrow. But do I fully realize that there is no bottom to the woodchuck? I have been almost fatally slow over this lesson. Yet this is the writer’s first and most important lesson, no matter what his theme.
“I have been studying the woodchuck all my life,” said my old friend Burroughs to me, “and there is no getting to the bottom of him!” He made that great discovery early; eighty-four years of study confirmed it; and from early to late Burroughs never lacked for things to write about or failed of his urge to write. There was no bottom to his woodchuck.
Others have made this discovery concerning other things: the philosophers, of truth; the poets, of men and flowers; the prophets, of God. But the writer must find it true of all things, of all his own things, from woodchucks to God. There is nothing new in this discovery. It simply makes all things new to the discoverer. The skeptical, the shallow, the fool who says in his heart there is nothing but bowels to a woodchuck—what would he at four-and-eighty find at Woodchuck Lodge to write about? He might have all knowledge and a pen with which he could remove mountains, but, lacking wonder, that power to invest things with new and infinite significance, he would see no use in removing the mountains and turning them into steppes and pampas and peopled plains.
All creative work, whether by brush or pen or hoe, is somehow making mountains into men, out of the dust an image, in our own likeness created, in the likeness of God. It may be woodchuck dust, or dandelion dust, or the shining dust of stars; touched with a creative, interpreting pen the dust takes human shape and breathes a breath divine. A woodchuck pelt makes an excellent fur for a winter coat; the rest of him makes an excellent roast for a dinner; but it is what still remains, the wonder of him, which makes for sermon and for song.
How hard a lesson that has been for me to learn! And so slow have I been learning it that little time is left for me to preach or sing. If only I had known early that Mullein Hill was as good as Helicon; that the people of Hingham were as interesting as the people of Cranford; that Hingham has a natural history as rich and as varied as Selborne! My very friends have helped to mislead and hinder me: “I don’t see what you find to write about up here!” they exclaim, looking out with commiseration over the landscape, as if Wellfleet or Washington or Wausau were better for books than Hingham! Hanover may be better for ducks than Scituate; but Hingham is as good as Hanover or Heaven for books.
One of my friends started for Hanover once for a day of hunting—but I will let him tell the story:
“We were on our way to Hanover, duck hunting,” he said, “and at Assinippi took the left fork of the road and kept going. But was this left fork the right road? [An ancient doubt which had brought many a traveler before them to confusion and a halt.] It was early morning, raw and dark and damp. No one was stirring in the farmhouses straggling along the road, and we were turning to go back to the forks when the kitchen door of the near-by house opened and a gray-bearded man appeared with a milk-pail on his elbow.
“‘Is this the road to Hanover?’ we called.
“The man backed into the kitchen door, put down his milk-pail, came out again, carefully closing the door behind him, and started down the walk toward the front gate. He opened the gate, turned and latched it behind him as carefully as he had latched the kitchen door, and, stepping out into the road, approached our carryall. Looking up, then down the road intently, he hitched his right foot to the hub of our front wheel, spat precisely into the dust, and, fixing his face steadfastly toward Cape Cod, answered: