Entering the woods (and because you are alone, and therefore natural, something in their dim [[238]]aisles, their mysterious depths, their breathing silence, makes you go gently) you find yourself in an old logging-road, once a garish symbol of man’s destructiveness, but growing yearly more subdued, more beautiful, since Nature began her work of healing. The earth beneath your feet, the restful earth which the lumbermen left torn by iron tools or rent by dynamite, has again put on her soft-colored garments. Feathery beds of fern push boldly into the road from shadowy places; wild grasses fill all its sunny openings with their bloom and fragrance; and winding down through shade or sunshine comes a trail made by the feet of deer and moose. Already these timid animals have adopted the forgotten road as a runway; you may meet them here when you return in the evening twilight.
Everywhere beside the trail are old marks of the destroyer. Noble maples or cedars that were centuries growing have been slashed down, dismembered, thrust aside to decay, and all because they stood in the way of a lumber-boss who thought only of getting his cut of spruce down to the lake. To look upon such trees, dead and shorn of their beauty, is to feel pity or indignation; but Nature does not share your feeling, being too abundant of life and resource to waste any moment in regret. Already she is upbuilding what man [[239]]has torn down. Glaring ax-wounds have all disappeared under bandages of living moss; every fallen log has hidden its loss under a mantle of lichen, soft and gray, which speaks not of death but of life renewed.
Where the sun touches these prostrate giants a blush of delicate color spreads over them. See, it deepens as you look upon it curiously, and you examine it to find a multitude of “fairy-cups” on slender stems, each lifting its scarlet chalice to the light. Very soft and inviting seats they offer, yielding to your weight, sending up an odor as of crushed herbs; but do not accept the invitation. If you must halt to rest or to enjoy the stillness, sit not down on one of these mossy logs, but before it at a little distance, and let its blended colors be to your eye what the wind in the pine is to your ear, or the smell of hemlock to your nostrils. Then will all your senses delight in harmony, their natural birthright, while you rest by the way.
Where the old road winds about the end of a ridge, avoiding every steep pitch, young balsams are crowding thickly into it; where it turns downward to the lowlands, quick-growing alders claim it as their own; and as you leave the lake far behind it begins to divide interminably, each branch breaking into smaller branches, like the twigs of a tree as you trace them outward. The [[240]]twig ends with a bud in clear space; but the farther or landward end of a logging-road dwindles to a deer-path, the path to a rabbit-run, and the run vanishes in some gloomy cedar swamp or trackless thicket where is no outlook on any side.
It is in such places, while you puzzle over another man’s road instead of keeping your own trail straight, that you are most apt to get lost. Coming back you need have no fear of going astray, since all these trails lead to the main road, and thence downhill to the lake; but going forward it is well to steer clear of all branch roads, which lead nowhere and confuse the sense of direction.
Leaving the road behind, therefore, and heading still eastward, you cross a ridge where the hardwoods stand, as their ancestors stood, untouched by the tools of men. Immense trunks of beech or sugar-maple or yellow birch tower upward wide apart, the moss of centuries upon them; far overhead is a delicate tracery of leaves, a dance of light against the blue, and over all is the blessed silence.
Beyond the ridge the ground slopes downward to a uniform level. Soon the moss grows deeper underfoot, with a coolness that speaks of perpetual moisture. The forest becomes dense, almost bewildering; here a “black growth” of spruce or fir, there a tangle of moosewood, yonder a swale [[241]]where impenetrable alder-thickets make it impossible to hold a straight course. Because all this growth is useless to the lumberman, there is no cutting to be seen; but because I have passed this way before, instinctively following the same course like an animal, a faint winding trail begins to appear, with a bent twig or a blazed tree at every turn to give direction.
As you move forward more confidently, learning the woodsman’s way of looking far ahead to pick up the guiding signs before you come to them, the dim forest suddenly brightens; a wave of light runs in, saying as it passes overhead that you are near an opening. As if to confirm the message, the trail runs into a well-worn deer-path, which looks as if the animals that used it knew well where they were going. Clumps of delicate young larches spring up ahead; between them open filmy vistas, like windows draped in lace, and across one vista stretches a ribbon of silver. A few more steps and—there! my little pond is smiling at you, reflecting the blue deeps of heaven or the white of passing clouds from its setting of pale-green larch-trees and crimson mosses.
And now, if you are responsive, you shall have a new impression of this old world, the wonderful impression which a wilderness lake gives at the moment of discovery, but never again afterward. [[242]]As you emerge from cover of the woods, the pond seems to awaken like a sleeper. See, it returns your gaze, and on its quiet face is a look of surprise that you are here. Enjoy that first awakening look; for there is more of wisdom and pleasure in it, believe me, than in hurrying forth blindly intent on making a map or catching a trout, or doing something else that calls for sight to the neglect of insight. All sciences, including chartography and angling, can easily be learned by any man; but understanding is a gift of God, and it comes only to those who keep their hearts open.
Your own nature is here your best guide, and it shows you a surprising thing: that your old habitual impressions of the world have suddenly become novel and strange, as if this smiling landscape were but just created, and you were the first to look with seeing eyes upon the glory of it. It tells you, further, if you listen to its voice, that creation is all like this, under necessity to be beautiful, and that the beauty is still as delightful as when the evening and the morning were the first day. This dance of water, this rain of light, this shimmer of air, this upspringing of trees, this blue heaven bending over all—no artist ever painted such things; no poet ever sang or could sing them. Like a mother’s infinite tenderness, they await your appreciation, your silence, your [[243]]love; but they hide from your description in words or pigments.