A Hermit's Wild Friends; or, Eighteen Years in the Woods

by Mason Augustus Walton

I did not get home until after dark. Supper over, I turned to my note-book, and the record made was a sorry one. Expense three dollars, without a pound of meat that I could eat, or the memory of sport enjoyed, to offset, and besides, I had barely escaped with my life.

This I thought was due to my love of the gun. There was another waste of time which I laid to the door of the gun. I would feel uneasy mornings, until at last I would compromise with myself, by thinking that I would go out for two hours, and then certainly return and put away the gun. I am sorry to have to admit that it was usually the gloom of night that sent me back to the cabin. I hardly think that the gun should be held wholly guilty. My love for nature, and the keen enjoyment of finding wild flowers, little wayward brooks, or huge masses of bed rock hid away in the deep recesses of the woods, accounted for much of the time spent. However, I sold my gun, and did my hunting with note-book and pencil.

The pupils from the High School botanical class flocked to the woods about my cabin in search for flowers to identify and mount.

I was employed by the parents of some of these pupils to gather specimens and tag them with their Latin names. This method saved the pupil a lot of trouble, but it did not tend to advance the knowledge of botany. It occupied some of my time in the spring months, and gave me the pleasure of searching the woods without thinking that I was wasting my time.

It must be remembered that during my eighteen years of hermit life, I have been obliged to earn my living expenses, and to feed the wild things that come to my cabin dooryard as well. Referring to my note-book, I find that the last item foots up nearly four hundred dollars, but there are some rebates. I mounted one raccoon, many birds and squirrels, the receipts for which lessened the debtor side of the ledger.

I find that my note-book is filled with notes on flowers and other things besides birds. Early in the spring, or at other times, when the frost was coming out of the ground, I noticed that the stones, or small rocks, in the grassy highway did not fit their beds. There would be a space around each stone; the width of the space would be gauged by the shape of the stone. If the stone was conical, the space would be quite noticeable. If round, the space was much smaller. I suppose the cause was expansion, owing to the freezing of the ground. It was the water in the ground that expanded, carrying the dirt and rocks with it. Under the influence of a thaw, the rocks dropped back to their beds, leaving a space because the part of the rock above the ground is almost always smaller than the part underground. That is, a rock stands on its base and not on its apex.

Another thing that has puzzled me is the behavior of dead pine-limbs. One would suppose a dead limb ought to remain decently quiet and not move about like some living thing. I had occasion to make a path through a thick growth of small pines. The dead limbs extended on each tree from the ground to a height of ten feet. I broke off the limbs so I could pass under them without trouble. After the path was completed, it turned cold for two days. When I undertook to pass that way during the cold spell, the dead limbs were so much depressed that I was obliged to break the path anew.

I experimented on dead limbs at different times, and found it was a fact that lifeless pine-limbs will fall in cold and rise in warm weather. I am unable to give a reason for this movement.

On my way to the city, the first wild flower to greet me in the spring is the snowy white bloom of the shadbush, or June-berry, as it is called here. It grows in great masses all along the old highway. Bond's Hill is pretty well covered with a variety unknown to any botany. I have referred this variety of the Amelanchier to some of our professors in botany. I suppose in time it will find its place in the botanical works. It grows like the dwarf blueberry, fruiting when less than a foot in height. Some patches of this low variety cover two square rods or more.