In the open

by Stanton Davis Kirkham

Here in the Sierras we live in a wickiup, a sort of a roofless wigwam. The camp overlooks the forest in which the cañons and ranges are as folds and wrinkles. Neighbors are few, for animals conceal themselves, while song-birds are not properly of the forest, but seek the clearing and the settlement. An Oregon snowbird has her nest near by and comes hopping about on her marketing expeditions. A pair of lazuli-finches also live on the edge of the clearing, and the male is, perhaps, the most beautiful bird in the forest. His demure little mate is seldom seen, as she is preoccupied with her domestic cares, but he constantly flits about in the chaparral, where he gleams in the sunlight like a jewel.

One other neighbor we have, an Audubon hermit-thrush, which might be a voice merely—like Echo haunting the mountain—and no bird at all. He appears to sing in the twilight only, and his song, like that of all thrushes, is spiritual and unworldly. A single white lily, tall and branching, stands near the camp, and day after day opens its ghostly racemes in the dusk to white moths which come flitting out of the forest like winged Psyches; and with the opening of the spirit-like flower comes the vesper song of the thrush.

Night in the forest is a spell, an enchantment. It descends suddenly and envelopes us in darkness, tangible and real. The wickiup stands at the edge of a little clearing, and, as we roll ourselves in our blankets, we seem to float in inky blackness, while the pines are like beetling cliffs against the starlit heavens. Darkness and light confront each other; it is as if we hovered between them and had made our camp for the night on the borderland. But with the dawn, that luminous world has vanished and we are again under the familiar pines.

One is impressed most by the wonderful stillness of the night. Not only is the world blotted out in the enveloping darkness, but it is voiceless, and there prevails absolute silence. Rarely this is broken by the yapping of coyotes, or a dry twig snaps sharply under the foot of some animal.

Not until the wind rises does the forest recover its voice. During the day there is always music; it is as constant as noise in the city. Impalpable currents descend from the empyrean to caress only the tops of the tallest pines, coming no nearer to earth than this, and while all is silent below there arises a distant chant in the tree tops, which have been touched by an invisible hand and made to respond to moods of the sky. Full and resonant, yet with that muffled quality of tone which makes it appear always to come from a distance, the rhythmic force of this chant sways one like the vibrations of an orchestra. Starting at some center, as if at a signal, these tremulous waves of sound recede farther and farther into the forest and die away in a sigh.

Here the tendency grows on one to wander in the early morning and again in late afternoon, to become crepuscular, like the animals, and to stay in camp in the middle of the day. Deer do not stir abroad in the heat, nor do fish bite, nor birds sing. This love of dawn and twilight is partly inspired by fear of man, but it is none the less natural. At daybreak the deer go down the cañons to the salt-licks, as surreptitiously as nymphs going to bathe. It is their witching hour, as midnight is the owls'.

To arise at dawn should be an occasion; to make it usual would mean the sacrifice of the more subtle impressions, the mind is so readily blunted by the habitual.

Like a black mantle the great forest lies over the earth as I roll myself in my blankets beside the fire. That little flaring light appears to be the only one in this dark wilderness, reclaiming a minute portion of space and making it habitable. Wherever one may be in the forest, it is only necessary to gather a few dry sticks and strike a match. The signal summons the genii, servant of the woodsman. More properly one should use a flint, or rub two sticks together. He allies himself with man against the hosts of darkness and defies the wilderness; a merry fellow, his laugh may be heard in the crackling flames. All through the night he entertains with his merry gossip and with pictures he shows in the fire. At times he reveals his own glowing face in the embers, but quickly assumes the head of a bear or a lynx, or melts away in the flames, to reappear presently in another spot.

When I awake, the morning-star hangs low in the heavens like a great lamp, its light an infinitely pure and serene radiance with no suggestion of heat or combustion, made to appeal to some higher vision. A heap of cold gray ashes is all that is left of the fire, in the center a single glowing spot, which may have been the eye of the genii of the night. The black mantle has been lifted, and the earth is illumined by a faint glow, as if solely by the reflected rays of that planet. Unspeakably soft is this light, the forerunner of the dawn, in which the forest is bathed and from which one derives a peculiar satisfaction.