Tale XLIX: Fisher and Porcupine
All Indians are born liars when it comes to getting the better of a white trader. But outside of business, they are strictly truthful, especially when telling stories about animal life. A few years ago, a Chippewayan told me the following yarn, which I believe is true.
One winter, the Indian was on his way to his trapline on snow-shoes when he came across a medium sized fisher and a porcupine. He watched them at a distance without being seen.
The porcupine was huddled in a ball, every quill sticking out. The fisher, mad with hunger, was circling around, unable to find a weak spot in the prickly armor. After a while, the fisher chose a spot a few feet away from the porcupine and began digging a hole or tunnel through the snow, straight for its quarry. Every few minutes, the fisher would stop, go to the porcupine, run around it, and even scratch snow on its back so as to show that he was still there and prevent the other animal from moving away. That went on for a long time. Finally, the tunnel was ended. With unerring instinct the fisher had stopped his digging when he felt that he had reached a spot exactly beneath the porcupine’s neck. With a jerk upwards of his hard little snout, the fisher pierced the crust of snow, and before poor “Porky” could guess what was happening, he had him by the throat, far from the reach of the murderous quills.
Tale L: The Call of the Wild North of Fifty-three
You men who live in cities—who toil, day in and day out, in the thick of noisy, teeming multitudes, under artificial lights, under roofs, behind glass, in offices and factories far away from the sun and the air, the light and the wind—don’t you feel at times something tugging at your heart-strings?
Don’t you feel a great longing for something new, something clean, something different from what you have been accustomed to? Don’t you hear, now and then, a whispering coming from nowhere in particular and calling you? Calling and calling in the middle of the night when you lie awake; in the flush of dawn when you catch a gleam of the sky from your open window; in the evening when your work is done and when you find yourself going home? Do you know what I mean? Have you felt it?
It is the “Call of the Wild”, the oldest call of all—the call coming to you through generations and generations who have ignored it.
Some people may laugh; others may wonder. But the man who has answered that call will never forget it. He may return to civilization. He may cling to the memory of the discomforts and hardships only. He may endeavor not to wipe out of his mind the haunting feeling of solitude and loneliness which gripped him at times in the bleak wilderness through which he roamed. But sooner or later, the longing to go back there will come to him again and, if he cannot do so, he will always regret it.