Finally, in the lowest of whispers, your nature tells you that the most impressive and still most natural thing in this quiet scene is the conscious life that broods silently over it. As the little pond seems to awaken, to be alive and sentient, so also does that noble tree yonder when you view it for the first time, or that delicate orchid wafting its fragrance over the lonely bog. Each reflects something greater than itself, and it is that greater “something” which appeals to you when you enter the solitude. Your impressions here are those of the first man, a man who found many beautiful things in a garden, and God walking among them in the cool of the day. Call the brooding life God or the Infinite or the Unknown or the Great Spirit or the Great Mystery—what you will; the simple fact is that you have an impression of a living Being, who first speaks to you in terms of personality that you understand.
So much, and more, of eternal understanding you may have if you but tarry a moment under these larches with an open mind. Then, when you have honored your first impression, which will abide with you always, you may trace out the physical features of my pond at leisure. Just here it is not very wide; your eye easily overlooks it to rest [[244]]with pleasure on a great mound of moss, colored as no garden of flowers was ever colored, swelling above the bog on the farther shore. On either hand the water sparkles wider away, disappearing around a bend with an invitation to come and see. To the left it ends in velvety shadow under a bank of evergreen; to the right it seems to merge into the level shore, where shadow melts with substance in a belt of blended colors. A few yards back from the shore groups of young larches lift their misty-green foliage above the caribou moss; they seem not to be rooted deep in the earth, but to be all standing on tiptoe, as if to look over the brim of my pond and see their own reflections. Everywhere between these larch groups are shadowy corridors; and in one of them your eye is caught by a spot of bright orange. The spot moves, disappears, flashes out again from the misty green, and a deer steps forth to complete the wilderness picture with the grace of life.
Such is my pond, hidden away in the heart of a caribou bog, which is itself well hidden in dense forest. Before I found it the wild ducks had made it a summer home from time immemorial; and now, since I disturb it no more, it is possessed in peace by a family of beavers; yet I still think of it as mine, not by grace of any artificial law or deed, but by the more ancient right of possession [[245]]and enjoyment. A hundred lakes by which I have tented are greater or more splendid; but the first charm of any wilderness scene is its solitude, and on these greater lakes the impression of solitude may be broken by the flash of a paddle-blade in the sun, or the chuck of an ax under the twilight, or the gleam of a camp-fire through the darkness. But here on my pond you may know how Adam felt when he looked abroad: no raft has ever ruffled its surface; no ax-stroke or moan of smitten tree has ever disturbed its quiet; no camp-fire has ever gleamed on its waters. Its solitude is still that of the first day; and it has no name, save for the Indian word that came unbidden at the moment of finding it, like another Sleeping Beauty, in the woods.
Do you ask how I came to find my pond? Not by searching, but rather by the odd chance of being myself lost. I had gone astray one afternoon, and was pushing through some black growth when an alarm rose near at hand. A deer whistled loudly, crying “Heu! heu! heu!” as he jumped away, and on the heels of his cry came a quacking of flushed ducks.
Till that moment I thought I knew where I was; but the quacking brought doubt, and then bewilderment. If a duck tells you anything in the woods, he tells you of water, plenty of it; but the [[246]]map showed no body of water nearer than Big Pine Pond, which I had fished that day, and which should be three or four miles behind me. Turning in the direction of the alarm, I soon broke out of the cover upon a caribou bog, a mysterious expanse never before suspected in that region, and before me was the gleam of water in the sunshine. “A pond, a new one, and what a beauty!” I thought with elation, as I caught its awakening look and feasted my eyes on its glory of color. Then I gave it an Indian name and hurried away; for I was surely off my course, and the hour was late for lingering in strange woods. Somewhere to the west of me was the home lake; so westward I headed, making a return-compass of bent twigs, till I set my feet in a branch of the old logging-road. And that chance trail is the one I have ever since followed.
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