When I marked that perfect fur I knew it was what I had long wanted as a rug. It needed only the pressure of a finger to make it mine, and the finger was curling on the trigger when, unfortunately, I began to think.
Silence enfolded the earth in its benediction, and I must shatter that blessed silence by gunpowder. Like a veil let down from heaven the moonlight rested on every tree, on the rough ground, on my old “Commoosie,” making all things beautiful; and I must spatter that pure veil with red. No, it was not a pleasant notion; night and solitude make a man sensitive, averse to noise, violence, discord of every kind. Even a bear might have some rights, if one were fair with him. He had done no harm in the woods, and meant no harm when he came to my camp. He was simply curious, like all natural beasts. Somehow it began to appear as a greedy, an atrocious thing to kill him just for his skin; at my own door, too, where he stood timidly looking in. Besides, a dead animal is no longer interesting. In the back of my head was the desire, always present when a wild beast appears, to know what he thinks or, if that be impossible, to know at least what he does. The experience, startling enough at first, had now turned to comedy, and I wanted to see how it would end.
Thus a small moment passed, while I tried the great beast for his life; through it ran a river of thought or sentiment with the rush and dance of rapids.
Once during the trial Mooween turned away, only to return quickly. I had moved a trifle, and he heard it. When he turned a second time something in his gait or motion said that he would not come back, that he no longer dared trust his neighborhood. As he disappeared I peeked around the corner of the “Commoosie.” Straight off he went to the edge of the clearing, where he sat upon his haunches, feeling safer with the woods only a jump away, and rocked his nose up and down to catch air from different currents, still hoping for some message that would tell him who or what I was. It was a wild region; he had probably never before met a man. Then he stood erect on his hind legs for a last look, dropped on all-fours, and vanished silently among the shadows. A moment later panic struck him like a bomb; away he ran with a great smashing of brush, as if all the dogs of a parish were after him.
If you are desirous of meeting or knowing wild animals, the hour following the evening twilight is the best time to be abroad. Toward midnight the wood folk all rest, as a rule, and through the small hours the coverts are profoundly quiet till just before the dawn. On a moonlit night birds and beasts are apt to be stirring at all hours, and then is the time to learn the language of the wild, the cries, barks, hootings, yellings, rustlings, which come to you as mere noises at first, but which have all definite meaning when you learn to interpret them. Yet even on moonlit nights such voices are rather exceptional. Wild birds and beasts go their ways in silence for the most part; the typical wilderness night is so quiet, so peaceful, that an occasional cry seems part of a mighty stillness.
On other than moonlit nights you will do well to travel by canoe, keeping close to shore so as to get the fragrance of the breathing woods. They are wonderful in darkness; but if you enter them, your chief concern will probably be to find your way out again, because the depths of a primeval forest are so pitch dark that human eyes are useless. Even on a trail you must look up steadily, keeping your course by the heavens, which are always lighter than the earth. If you strive to look ahead, you will certainly lose the narrow way; but to look up is to see between the black forest bulks on either hand a pathway of light, which corresponds to every turn and winding of the trail beneath. Better still, if you are in danger of losing the path, shut your eyes; keep them shut, and trust to the guidance of your own feet. They are more familiar with the touch of mother earth than you are aware, and they will tell you instantly when you are departing from a beaten trail. But avoid burglar-proof shoes, of the absurd “sportsman” variety, when you try this enlightening experiment.
There are other things than animals, you see, to be met in the night. Perhaps the most interesting creature you will ever meet is your natural self, which lies buried but not dead under a crust of artificial habit. To break that crust and come forth, like a moth from its dry chrysalis; to feel again the joy of human senses, awakened, vibrant, responsive to every message of earth; to cast aside unworthy fear and walk in one’s birthright of confidence; to know the companionship of the night, more mysterious and more lovely than the day,—all this is waiting for you in the darkened woods. Try it and see. Leave your camp on the first still, moonlit evening to follow the trail alone. Look up at the trees, all fairylike, with leaves of burnished silver set amid luminous shadows, and confess that you never saw a tree in its beauty before. Smell the fragrance of the moistened woods, like an old-fashioned garden of thyme and mignonette. Listen to the night, to its small voices, to its rushing harmonies, above all to its silences. Grow accustomed to a world on which darkness has fallen like refreshing rain, until you cast aside all hallucinations of terror or struggle, and learn for yourself how friendly, how restful nature is. And when the right night comes, when the tense stillness begins to tremble and all the woods grow musical, then you will wish that some great composer could hear what you hear, and put it upon the stringed instruments, and call it his symphony of silence.
