XII
Larch-trees and Deer
One of the subtler charms of my pond, a thing felt rather than seen, was a certain air of secrecy which seldom left it. In every wilderness lake lurks a mystery of some kind, which you cannot hope to penetrate,—a sense of measureless years, of primal far-off things, of uncouth creatures dead and gone that haunted its banks before the infancy of man; but on this little pond, with its sunny waters and open shore, the mystery was always pleasant, and at times provoking, as if it might be the place where an end of the rainbow rested.
Though small enough to give one a sense of possession (one can never feel that he owns a big [[257]]lake, or anything else which gives an impression of grandeur or sublimity), my pond had a mischievous way of hinting, when you were most comfortable, that it was hiding a secret; that it might show you, if it would, a much better scene than that you looked upon. It was shaped somewhat like an immense pair of spectacles, having two lobes that were flashing bright, with a narrow band of darker water between; and, what with its bending shores or intervening larches, you could never see the whole of it from any one place. So, like eyes that hide their subtlest lights of whim or fancy under glasses, it often seemed to be holding something in reserve, something which it would not reveal unless you searched for it. After watching awhile from one beautiful or restful spot, you began to feel or imagine that some comedy was passing unseen on the other half of the pond; and though you resisted the feeling at first, sooner or later you crept through the screen of larches to know if it were true.
On every side of the pond save one, where a bank of evergreen made velvet shadows intermingled with spots of heavenly blue, the shores were thickly spread with mosses, which began to color gloriously in midsummer, the colors deepening as the season waned, till the reflecting water appeared as the glimmering center of a gorgeous [[258]]Oriental rug. Along the edges of this rug, as a ragged fringe, stood groups of larches in irregular order,—little fairylike larches that bore their crown of leaves not as other trees bear them, heavily, but as a floating mist or nebula of sage green. Like New England ladies of a past age they seemed, each wearing a precious lace shawl which gave an air of daintiness to their sterling worth. When the time came for the leaves to fall, instead of rustling down to earth with a sound of winter, mournfully, they would scamper away on a merry wind, mingling their fragrance with that of the ripened grass; and then the twigs appeared plainly for the first time, with a little knot or twist in every twig, like toil-worn fingers that the lace had concealed.
Here or there amid this delicate new growth towered the ruin of a mighty tamarack, or ship-knee larch, such as men sought in the old clipper-ship days when they needed timbers lighter than oak, and even tougher to resist the pressure of the gale or the waves’ buffeting. Once, before the shipmen penetrated thus far into the wilderness, the tamaracks stood here in noble array, their heads under clouds, beckoning hungry caribou to feed from the lichens that streamed from their broad arms above the drifted snow; now most of them are under the moss, which covered them [[259]]tenderly when they fell. The few remaining ones stand as watch-towers for the hawks and eagles; their broken branches make strange sepia drawings of dragon-knots and hooked beaks on the blue sky. A tiny moth killed all these great larches; the caribou moved northward, leaving the country, and the deer moved in to take possession.
This and many other stories of the past my little pond told me, as I watched from its shores or followed the game-trails that were spread like a net about its edges. Back in the woods these trails wandered about in devious fashion, seeking good browse or easy traveling; while here or there a faint outgoing branch offered to lead you, if your eyes were keen, to the distant ridge where a big buck had his daily loafing-place. On the bog the trails went more circumspectly, uniting at certain places in a single deep path, a veritable path of ages, which was the only path that might safely be followed by any creature with more weight than a fox. The moment you ventured away from it the ground began to shiver, to quake alarmingly, to sink down beneath your feet. Only a thin mat of roots kept you afloat; the roots might anywhere part and drop you into black bottomless ooze, and close forever over your head. A queer place, one might think, for heavy beasts to gather, and so it was; but the old caribou-trails [[260]]or new deer-paths offered every one of them safe footing.
At first these game-trails puzzled me completely, being so many and so pointless. That they were in constant use was evident from the footprints in them, which were renewed almost every morning; yet I never once saw a deer approach the water to drink or feed. Something else attracted them; a highway from one feeding-ground to another, it might be, or the wider outlook which brings deer and caribou out of their dim woods to sightly places; but there was no certainty in the matter until the animals themselves revealed the secret. One day, when a young buck passed my hiding-place as if he were going somewhere, I followed him to the upper or southern end of the pond. There he joined four other deer, which were very busy about a certain spot, half hidden by low bushes, a couple of hundred yards back from the shore. And there they stayed, apparently eating or drinking, for a full half-hour or more.
When the deer were gone away, I went over and found a huge spring, to which converged a dozen deep trails. Like the hub of an immense wheel it seemed: the radiating paths were the spokes, and somewhere beyond the horizon was the unseen rim. From the depths of the spring came a surprising [[261]]volume of clear, coffee-colored water, bubbling over joyously as it leaped from the dark earth into the light, and then stealing quietly away under bending grasses to keep my pond brim full. Around the spring the earth was pitted by the feet of deer, and everywhere about its edges were holes lapped in the peat by eager tongues. Here, beyond a doubt, was what called so many animals to my pond,—a mineral spring or salt-lick, such as we read about in stories of pioneer days, when game was everywhere abundant, but such as one now rarely finds.