Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

Good-by, my Day; and hail! You go, yet you stay forever. You have taught me something of the nature of eternity, of the day of the Lord that is as a thousand years, and of the thousand years that are as one day.

NIGHT LIFE OF THE WILDERNESS

TWILIGHT is deepening into dusk as you leave camp to follow the silent trail. The long summer day has had its lesson, broken short off, as all lessons are before we learn them; now what of the night?

With the sunset a subtle change comes over the big woods; they are fragrant and profoundly still. Trees that were massed in the sunshine now seem more individual, standing with outstretched arms, praying their myriad prayer; and viewing them against the sky you see their delicate grace as well as their strength. The birds have long been quiet, all but the robin, who on the tip of the tallest evergreen, where he can see a gleam of afterglow, pours out a strangely wild song. He is always the last to go to bed. Chipmunks that have been silently busy all day, and red squirrels that have been noisily idle, are now in their dens asleep. Something like a shadow passes before your face, swooping downward in quivering flight; you hear the scratching of tiny feet on bark, and there at your shoulder, looking at you with round inquisitive eye, is Molepsis the flying squirrel. He is the gentlest, the most lovable of his tribe, and he belongs to the night. You are watching him, your heart warming to the little fellow, when leaves rustle and a twig cracks.

If your ears were better trained, you would know now what is passing, since no two animals rustle the leaves or snap a twig in precisely the same way. Lacking such lore of the woods, you halt at the first sound, straining your eyes in the gloom. The rustle draws nearer; and there in the shadow stands Hetokh the buck, observing you keenly and asking, “Who are you, Pilgrim, and whither does your trail lead?”

There is no fear in his alert poise, you see; nor does he whirl and bound away in alarm, as you expect him to do, because you know him only by daylight. Receiving no answer, he goes his own way, but haltingly, looking back as he disappears. Then Molepsis loses interest in you, or remembers his small affairs; he runs to the top of his tree, launches himself out in slanting flight, and is swallowed up in the immensity of the dusk. Such a little life to trust itself so boldly in a great darkness!

Again the trail is before you, silent but never lifeless; it seems always to be listening. As you follow it onward, you are wiser than before, having learned the odor of a deer and the meaning of a tiny shadow that often passes before your face in the twilight. You are also more sympathetic, and richer by two happy memories; for the flying squirrel has softened your heart to all innocent creatures, and that questioning pose of the buck has awakened a desire to know more of the real animal, the living mysterious anima of him, not the babble of his death or the jargon of his bones that fill our books of hunting or of science. Meanwhile Kook’skoos the great horned owl is sounding for rain, and his voice is no longer a foreboding; it is a call, an invitation to come and learn.

And speaking of learning, you will not follow the twilight trail very far before it is impressed on your mind that the wild creature you surprise or startle by day is very different from the creature that surprises and often startles you by night. He has at first all the advantage, being at home in dark woods where you are a wary stranger. Then, as you grow familiar with the dusk, more in tune with its harmony, you begin to appreciate this distinction: by day you see a strange wild animal at a distance; by night you may meet him as a fellow traveler on the same road of mystery. This natural equality, this laying aside of all killing or collecting for a live-and-let-live policy, is absolutely essential if you would learn anything worth knowing about the wood folk.