Chapter 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 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 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 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 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 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.

After that happy discovery I shifted my blind to another larch with low-drooping branches, beneath which one might rest comfortably and look out through a screen of lace upon a gathering of the deer. They are creatures of habit as well as of freedom; and one of their habits is to rest at regular intervals, the hours being hard to forecast, since they vary not only with the season of lengthening or shortening days, but also each month with the changes of the moon. Thus, when the moon fulls and weather is clear, deer are abroad most of the night. At dawn they seek their day-beds, instinctively removing far from where they have left their scent in feeding; and during the day they are apt to remain hidden save for one brief hour, when they take a comforting bite here or there, giving the impression that they eat now from habit rather than from hunger. As the moon wanes they change their hours to take advantage of its shining; and on the “dark of the moon” they browse only in the early part of the night, then rest many hours, and have two periods of feeding or roaming the next day.

Such seems to be the rule in the North, with plenty of exceptions to keep one guessing,—as in the November mating-season, when bucks are afoot at all hours; or during a severe storm, which keeps deer and all other wild animals close in their coverts.

Because of this regularity of habit at irregular hours, the only certainty about the salt-lick was that the animals would come if one waited long enough. As I watched expectantly from my larch bower, the morning shadows might creep up to me, halt, and lengthen away on the other side, while not a deer showed himself in the open. Then there would be a stir in the distant larches, a flash of bright color; a doe would emerge from one of the game-trails, hastening her springy steps as she neared the spring. As my eyes followed her, noting with pleasure her graceful poses, her unwearied alertness, her frequent turning of the head to one distant spot in the woods where she had left her fawn, there would come another flash of color from another trail, then two or three in a flecking of light and shadow, till half a dozen or more deer were gathered at the lick, some lapping the mud eagerly, others sipping, sipping, as if they could never have enough of the water. After a time they would slip away as they had come, singly or in groups; the spring would be deserted, and one could never tell how many hours or days might pass before another company began to gather.

However eager for salt they might be, the deer came or went in that mysteriously silent way of theirs, appearing without warning in one trail, or vanishing down another without a sound to mark their passing. Now and then, however, especially if one watched at the exquisite twilight hour, a very different entrance might be staged on the lonely bog,—a gay, prancing “here I come: get out of the way” kind of entrance, which made one glad he had stayed to witness it. On the slope of the nearest ridge your eye would catch an abrupt motion, the upward surge of a bough or the spring-back of a smitten bush; presently to your ears would come a rapid thudding of earth, or a sqush, sqush, sqush of water; the larches would burst open and a buck leap forth, flourishing broad antlers or kicking up mad heels as he went gamboling down the game-trail. If other deer were at the spring, they would throw up their heads, set their ears at the dancing buck, take a last quick sip from the spring, and move aside as he jumped in to muzzle the mud as if famished. For it was the mud rather than the water which first claimed his attention, no doubt because it held more of the magic salt. He often gave the impression, as he approached in high feather, that he had been tasting the stuff in anticipation and could hardly wait to get his tongue into it.

The first time I saw that frisky performance I went over to taste the mud for myself, but found little to distinguish it from the mud of any other peat-bog. The water from the spring was wholesome, with a faint taste of something I could not name; and I drank it repeatedly without learning its secret. That it held a charm of some kind, which chemistry might reveal, was evident from the fact that deer came from miles around to enjoy its flavor. Some of the trails could be traced clear across the bog to distant ridges and a broken country beyond; and in following these trails, to learn what creatures used them and where they came from, I repeatedly came upon a deer asleep in his day-bed. Whether the animals couched here before drinking at the spring, or after drinking, or “just by happentry” I could not tell.

Once the sleeper was a buck with noble antlers. He was resting beside a great log on the edge of an opening, half surrounded by dense fir thickets. I speak of him as asleep; but that is mere habit of speech or poverty of language. Of a score of wild birds or beasts that I have found “asleep” in the woods, not one seemed to lose touch with the waking world even for an instant. The buck’s eyelids were blinking, his head nodding heavily; yet all the while his feet were curled in readiness for an instant jump; and somehow those expressive feet gave the impression of being as wide awake as a squirrel. Occasionally as I watched him, fascinated by the rare sight, his head would drop almost to the ground, only to be jerked up with an air of immense surprise; then the sleepy fellow would stare in a filmy, unseeing, “who said I was asleep” kind of way at a little tree that stood in the opening. The stare would end with a slow closing of the eyelids, and in a moment he would be nodding again.