The Third Trail
MY BROTHERHOOD
To-day is Sunday, and I have just returned from a week’s hike up the mysterious little creek that runs past my cabin. It seems good to be home again, and Nuts and Spoony and Wild Bill, the blue jay, have given me a royal welcome, and I am almost convinced my pop-eyed moose-bird friends are trying to tell me who was the thief in my cabin while I was gone. On that “to-morrow” when I had promised myself another day of writing, the Wanderlust came to me, and I packed up a kit and a week’s supply of grub and started out to explore my creek. It is a very individual sort of creek—it has character, even, if it hasn’t a name. It comes out of deep, dark, and unexplored masses of forest to the north, and I have fancied it bringing down all sorts of romance and tragedy out of the hidden places if it could only talk. So I went to the end of it to find out its secrets for myself. And there was so much of interest that I could fill a book with it. I don’t think any other white feet have ever traveled up this creek, which I now call “Lonesome.” Surely not even an Indian has been along it for at least a generation, for I did not find the mark of an ax or sign of a fire or vestige of deadfall or trap-house.
But it did take me forty miles back into a country of such savage wilderness and dense forests that I have almost determined to build me another cabin there a little later, if for no other reason than to live for a while with the hundreds of owls that inhabit certain parts of it. I have never seen so many owls anywhere in the Northland, and I figure this is because the big snow-shoe rabbits have been multiplying for several years past, and now exist there literally in thousands. At many places along the creek, the earth was beaten hard by their furred feet. By all the signs, I have predicted that next year, or the year after, the “seven-year rabbit-plague” will come along and kill off ninety out of every hundred. Then the owls will scatter, and most of the lynxes and foxes and wolves will wander off into other hunting grounds, for the rabbit is the staff of life of the flesh-eating birds and beasts of the big northern forests, just as all the world over wheat is the mainstay of human stomachs.
But I am wandering a bit from the point in mind—which is to say that, in leaving on my journey of exploration, I forgot to close the window of my cabin, and through that open window entered the rascally thief whom the pair of moose-birds are trying to tell me about. I think Bill knows also, but I don’t believe he would give a brother robber away, even if he did have four feet and a tail. By tracks and two or three other signs, I know the thief is a wolverine, who, like the pack-rat over in the mountains, steals almost entirely for the fun of it. This mischief-making humorist, among other things, has carried away a hat, one of my two frying-pans, several tins, half a slab of bacon, and my favorite fish-cleaning knife during my absence. But I know this clever fellow’s ways, and have hope that I shall soon recover my property if I keep my eyes open and listen with both my ears.
And I shall not kill him, no matter how red-handed—or red-footed—I catch him. A few years ago, I would have planned to ambush him with a rifle. But now I have the desire to become as intimate with him as possible and learn a little more definitely what he wants with a knife, a skillet, and my pans. I feel that, for his theft, he should in some way be rewarded and not slain, for he has added to my interest in life by rousing a keen and harmless curiosity. His is only one way in which nature is constantly adding fullness of life and greater contentment to my years. Everywhere, even to the smallest things under my feet and at my hand, I am learning more and more of the marvelous ways and life of all creation, and the more I learn the more I am convinced that I am simply an atom in its vast brotherhood, and I am finding a great happiness by making myself actually a part of it.
Heretofore, I have been a self-expatriated spark of life, so to speak; in my human egoism, I have held myself apart from all other sparks of life that were not formed in my own poor and unlovely shape—and, even then, I considered myself considerably better than those who did not happen to be of my particular color and breed.
Two very simple things are adding to my pleasure in life this early afternoon, and illustrate the point I have in mind—if one can bow one’s head down to the level of understanding. I am writing again between the two big spruce trees, but during my week of absence other sparks of life have, in a way, taken possession of my table. From between two of the hewn saplings that form the top of this table, where the big storm of wind must have flung a bit of earth and a seed, a tender green sprout of something has started to grow. It is a single spear now, not of grass, and its green is the whitish green of the lower part of an asparagus shoot. To me, it seems fairly to pulse with life, and I have the very foolish feeling within me that nature planned this little surprise for me while I was away, and that, if I give it a bit of brotherly attention, I am going to have a flower on my table, not transplanted or plucked, but there deliberately through friendship for me. However foolish this notion may be, it is a very pleasant one to have, and its effect is to bring me much nearer to the Creator of things than any sermon I could hear preached from a pulpit; for I am not listening merely to words about God, but I am looking directly at a physical part of God, and I find a great satisfaction in this faith.
A second interesting thing that has happened to my table is that it has become a plain across which now runs the trail of a big tribe of ants. These ants, I have found, climb up the farthest right-hand support of my table and proceed straight across to the big spruce on my left, up which they disappear; and a returning file of the workers come down the spruce and hit it “cross-country” to the table-leg again. They don’t seem to be bearing any burdens, yet they move with precision and purpose, and I have come to understand that, when ants move in this way, they have something very definite in mind. I am convinced they are moving from one fortress home to another, or at least that every “working” individual in the tribe is personally investigating some new discovery that has been made either up the spruce or in the direction of the creek. Later, I will know more about it.
But the point that impresses itself upon me most is that, in my destroying days, I would have swept the friendly little green sprout from its cradle, and would have driven the ant tribe from my property, destroying as many of them as possible. Again I want to emphasize that I am not a crank, or narrow-minded in my religion of “live and let live.” If this same tribe of ants had invaded my cabin, and were preying on things necessary to me, I would destroy them or drive them away. That is my nature-given privilege—to protect myself and what is mine. It is also the privilege of every other spark of life. These same ants, were I to stand on their fortress, would attack me desperately. But now they do not molest me. And I do not molest them. It is the beautiful law of “live and let live”—so long as the necessity for destruction does not arise.
When I sat down at my typewriter an hour ago, I had planned to begin immediately the telling of what I have wandered somewhat away from—the story of a few incidents which helped to bring about my own regeneration, and which at last impressed upon me this great Golden Rule of all nature—live and let live. The big dramatic climax in that part of my life happened over in the British Columbia mountains, where my love of adventure has taken me on many long journeys.