Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

All this is at variance with the prevalent notion that timid beasts spend their nights in a state of terror; but never mind that notion now. It is pure delusion. You will learn from the night woods that the alleged terror of animals is, like their imaginary struggle for existence, the distorted reflection of a human and most unnatural experience. A lone man in the woods after nightfall is like one who has lost his birthright of confidence in nature. His spine goes chilly at every rustling; his overstrained eyes irritate his whole nervous system, which becomes “like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh”; whereupon his imagination conjures up a world of savage beasts and other hallucinations. When he returns to his fire-lighted camp, there to think of small or large creatures roaming the dusk from which he has just escaped with trembling, he easily attributes to them his own human fears or terrors. It does not occur to our fevered fancy that the animal is abroad because he prefers the dusk to the daylight, or that he has, as we shall see, an excellent reason for his preference. The simple fact is that of fear, in any human sense, the wild animal is wholly and happily ignorant.

Let me emphasize, therefore, as the first lesson of the night woods, that they have no fear in them, except such as you carry in your own heart. Banish that fear, and you shall speedily learn this other lesson: by day your civilized man is by force of habit an intruder, a meddlesome adventurer who makes noises and disturbs the peace; but by night his transgressions are covered; he is peaceable because powerless, unable to use his inventions, and nature accepts him as part of a reasonable universe in which sizes vary but rights are all equal. Gradually his spirit, set free from its worldly business, expands into the immensity around him. From the stars and the still night he absorbs tranquillity; and then it is that the animal seems to recognize his changed disposition and meets him unafraid. This, I think, is the most illuminating experience that comes to a man who enters into the spirit of the night, that the wild animal has little or no fear of him.

One evidence of this is the fact that you can come much nearer to an animal by night than by day. Though all his senses are then much better than yours, he will often wait beside trail or waterway till you are almost upon him, when he is apt to startle you as he breaks away. He has sensed you long before you became aware of him, and has been watching you closely; but your approach, timid and halting in the uncertain light, has disarmed his suspicion. Another plain piece of evidence is that the same timid creatures which this morning fled from you, as if you had a demon, will to-night come confidently to your tenting ground, so near that you may be awakened by their low calls or their soft footsteps.

You may think that this careless approach is due to the animal’s ignorance, that he cannot smell you because the scent of men, as of all birds or beasts, is very faint in sleep; and so I thought till I learned better. I think now that it is not the smell of man, but of something variable in man, which arouses an animal’s suspicion. Before a little child, who certainly has the man scent, most timid beasts show no fear whatever, but only a lively curiosity.

Near a permanent camp of mine I once constructed a roof of bark, a shelter open on all sides, wherein to tie trout-flies and do other woodsy work in stormy weather. Soon I noticed fresh tracks all about; then I kept vegetables in the shed, with salt and other things that deer like. One rainy night I heard sounds out there, and crept from my tent to investigate. Some animal slipped away as I approached; but so black was the night that I could not see the shelter till I went beyond and viewed it against the open lake. Presently a shadow glided past to stand under the roof; my nose told me it was a deer, and behind it trotted two smaller shadows that were her fawns. They smelled me, no doubt, and I think they also saw me, their eyes being better than mine in such light; but they showed no alarm until I walked past them on my way to the tent. Then they ran away, but without their usual warning cries, and within a few minutes I heard the doe calling her little ones under the roof again.

These deer are but types of many other timid animals that may be met after darkness has fallen, at such close range that one who has known them only by daylight is amazed at their boldness. As a rule, the so-called savage beasts are always difficult of approach, being more shy than any rabbit; while harmless creatures that we imagine to be governed by terror give the impression at night that they are frolicsome rather than fearful. Even the wood mice—clean, beautiful little creatures, so delicately balanced that the sudden appearance of danger may paralyze or kill them—seem to lose much of their natural timidity as they run about among the twilight shadows. By day you see them, if at all, only as vanishing streaks; by night you may hear them climbing up one side of your tent and sliding down the other. They will enter freely and, as I have often tested, will sit in your open palm, as at a friendly table, and eat what you offer them.

Two rules of courtesy must be observed, however, when you entertain such little guests. You must eschew mental excitement, which is contagious; and you must never make a sudden motion.

One reason for the boldness of animals at night is that they apparently recognize man’s helplessness, his lack of confidence in his own senses. At times one may even think that an animal is playing with him, as children are moved to play with one who is blindfolded. Such was my impression, at least, when I went astray one night in making my way back to camp. A half-moon was shining, giving enough light in the open places, but sadly confusing matters in the forest depths, where one’s eyes were never quite sure whether they were looking upon substance or shadow. I had missed the trail, and was casting for it in circles, hurrying as one does when lost, blundering through the woods with the clumsiness that distinguishes man from all other creatures. Down into a valley of gloom I went, only to find myself in surroundings that were all strange and wild. Next I floundered through a stream, and was climbing the bank when I saw something in front of me, something big, motionless, and misty-white.

Now I had been seeing white things for an hour past, bleached rocks, spots of moonlight, silver birches; but this was different. I knew instantly that the thing was alive; for there is something in a living animal that makes itself known, though your ordinary senses cannot tell you why or how you know. For a long moment I faced the thing steadily; but it was dead-still, and I could make nothing of it. As I started forward, the misty-white spot enlarged to twice its size, narrowed again, drifted away among the trees like a ghost. When I followed, straining my eyes after it, I fell into a hidden branch of the stream where water was deep and the mud bottomless. The white thing stood, as if watching me, only a few yards beyond.

Yes, it was rather creepy just then. The chill in my spine was not of the cold water when all the grisly doings of ha’nts, wanderlights and banshees (tales that I heard in childhood and forgotten) came back in a vivid troop. For a time I was as pagan as any of my old ancestors, and as ready to believe in any kind of hobgoblin; only I must find out what the mysterious thing was.