The conductor looked us both over. We were evidently not a bridal couple, and we didn't look quite like criminals—he gave us up.
When we saw a bit of country that looked attractive, we got off. That was something I had always wanted to do. All my life I have had to go to definite places, and my memory is full of tantalizing glimpses of the charming spots I have passed on the road and could never stop to explore. This time we really did it. We left the little railway station, sitting plain and useful beside the track, went up the road past a few farmhouses, over a fence and across a soft ploughed field, and down to the little river, willow-bordered, shallow, golden-brown, with here and there a deep pool under an overhanging hemlock or a shelving, fretted, bush-tangled bank.
We sat down in the sun on a willow log and put our rods together. Does anything sound prettier than the whir and click of the reel as one pulls out the line for the first time on an April day? We sat and looked at the world for a little, and let the wind, with just the faint chill of the vanishing snows still in it, blow over us, and the sun, that was making anemones and arbutus every minute, warm us through. It was almost too good to begin, this day that we had stolen. I felt like a child with a toothsome cake— "I'll put it away for a while and have it later."
But, after all, it was already begun. We had not stolen it, it had stolen us, and it held us in its power. Soon we wandered on, at first hastening for the mere joy of motion and the freshness of things; then, as the wind lessened and the sun shone hot in the hollows, loitering more and more, dropping a line here and there where a deep pool looked suggestive. Trout? Yes, we caught some. Jonathan pulled in a good many; I got enough to seem industrious. I seldom catch as many as Jonathan, though he tries to give me all the best holes; because really there are so many other things to attend to. Men seem to go fishing chiefly to catch fish. Jonathan spends half an hour working his rod and line through a network of bushes, briers, and vines, to drop it in a chosen spot in a pool. He swears gently as he works, but he works on, and usually gets his fish. I don't swear, so I know I could never carry through such an undertaking, and I don't try.
I did try once, when I was young and reckless. I headed the tip of my rod, like a lance in rest, for the most open spot I could see. For the fisherman's rule in the woods is not "Follow the flag," but "Follow your tip," and I tried to follow mine. This necessitated reducing myself occasionally to the dimensions of a filament, but I was elastic, and I persisted. The brambles neatly extracted my hat-pins and dropped them in the tangle about my feet; they pulled off my hat, but I pushed painfully forward. They tore at my hair; they caught an end of my tie and drew out the bow. Finally they made a simultaneous and well-planned assault upon my hair, my neck, my left arm, raised to push them back, and my right, extended to hold and guide that quivering, undulating rod. I was helpless, unless I wished to be torn in shreds. At that moment, as I stood poised, hot, baffled, smarting and stinging with bramble scratches, wishing I could swear like a man and have it out, the air was filled with the liquid notes of a wood thrush. I love the wood thrush best of all; but that he should choose this moment! It was the final touch.
I whistled the blue-jay note, which means "Come," and Jonathan came threshing through the brush, having left his rod.
"Where are you?" he called; "I can't see you."
"No, you can't," I responded unamiably. "You probably never will see me again, at least not in any recognizable form. Help me out!" The thrush sang again, one tree farther away. "No! First kill that thrush!" I added between set teeth, as a slight motion of mine set the brambles raking again.
"Why, why, my dear, what's this?" Then, as he caught sight of me, "Well! You are tied up! Wait; I'll get out my knife."
He cut here and there, and one after another, with a farewell stab or scratch, the maddening things reluctantly let go their hold. Meanwhile Jonathan made placid remarks about the proper way to go through brush. "You go too fast, you know. You can't hurry these things, and you can't bully them. I don't see how you manage to get scratched up so. I never do."