[CHAPTER] 2
Now, in the early summer, the trees stood still under the blue sky, they held their arms out wide and received the power of the sun as it streamed down on them. The bushes in the thicket were coming into bloom with stars of white or red or yellow. On many of them the buds of fruit were beginning to be seen again, countless many of them were sitting on the fine tips of the branches, tender and firm and resolute they looked like little clenched fists. The colourful stars of many different flowers came up out of the ground so that the earth, in the subdued light of the forest, was a spray of silent but vigorous and gay colours. Everywhere there was the smell of the fresh foliage, of flowers, of the soil and of green wood. When morning broke, and when the sun went down, the whole wood was alive with a thousand voices, and all day from morning to evening the bees sang, the wasps buzzed, and the bumble-bees buzzed even louder through the fragrant stillness.
That is what the days were like when Bambi experienced his earliest childhood.
He followed his mother onto a narrow strip that led between the bushes. It was so pleasant to walk here! The dense foliage stroked his sides gently, and bent slightly to the side. Everywhere you looked the path seemed to be blocked and locked, but it was possible to go forward in the greatest comfort. There were routes like this in the woods, they formed a network going all through the forest. Bambi’s mother knew them all, and whenever he stood in front of what seemed to him like an impenetrable green wall she would immediately seek out the place where the path began.
Bambi asked her questions. He was very fond of asking his mother questions. For him, it was the nicest thing in the world to keep asking her questions and to listen to whatever answer she gave. Bambi was not at all surprised that he always thought of one question after another to ask her. It seemed entirely natural to him; it was such a delight for him. It was also a delight to wait, curious, until the answer came, and whatever the answer was he was always satisfied with it. There were times, of course, when he did not understand the answer he was given but that was nice too because he could always ask more questions whenever he wanted to. Sometimes he stopped asking questions and that was nice too because then he was busy trying to understand what he had been told and would work it out in his own way. He often felt certain that his mother had not given him a complete answer, that she deliberately avoided saying everything she knew. And that was very nice, as it left behind a certain kind of curiosity still in him, a feeling of something mysterious and pleasing that ran through him, an expectation that made him uneasy but cheerful.
Now he asked, “Who owns this path, mother?”
His mother answered, “We do.”
Bambi continued asking. “You and me?”
“Yes.”
“Both of us?”