FASTING IN THE WILDERNESS
"So great is the good I look for, that every hardship delights me."
—St. Francis.
The period of our country's history in which these characters were formed was one of tremendous moral earnestness. In that struggle in which man pitted himself against primeval forest and aboriginal inhabitant, the strongest types of manhood and womanhood were evolved, and those who conceived the idea of living a righteous life set themselves to its realization with the same energy with which they addressed themselves to the conquest of nature itself. To multitudes of them, this present world took a place that in the fullest sense of the word was secondary to that other world in which they lived by anticipation.
David Corson was only one of many who, to a degree which in these less earnest or at least more materialistic times appears incredible, had determined to trample the world under their feet. He awoke next morning with an unabated purpose and at an early hour set resolutely about its execution. He bade a brave farewell to Pepeeta, exhorted her to seek with him that preparation of heart which alone could fit them for the future, and then with a bag of provisions over his shoulder and an axe in his hand started forth to carry out a plan which he had formed in the night.
At the head of the little valley where Pepeeta had built her gypsy fire, and experienced her great disillusionment, was a piece of timber land belonging to his mother's estate. He determined to make a clearing there and establish a home for himself and Pepeeta.
He wisely calculated that the accomplishment of this arduous task would occupy his mind and strength through the year of expiation which he had condemned himself to pass.
It is one of the most impressive spectacles of human life to see a man enter a primeval forest and set himself to subdue nature with no implement but an axe! Those of us who require so many luxuries and who know how to maintain existence only by the use of so many curious and powerful pieces of mechanism would think ourselves helpless indeed in the center of a wilderness with nothing but an axe or a rifle!
No such apprehensions troubled the heart of the young woodsman, for from his earliest childhood he had handled that primitive implement and knew its exhaustless possibilities. He was young and strong, for reckless as his recent life had been, the real sources of his physical vitality had not been depleted.
When David had passed out of sight of the house and entered the precincts of the quiet forest, there surged up from his heart those mighty impulses and irresistible tides of energy which are the sublime inheritance of youth. He counted off the months and they seemed to him like days. Already he heard the monarchs of the forest fall beneath his blows, already he saw the walls of his log cabin rising in an opening of the vast wilderness, already he beheld Pepeeta standing in the open door. The vast panorama of this virgin world began to unroll itself to his delighted vision. The splendid spectacle of a morning as new and wonderful as if there had never been another, drew his thoughts away from himself and his cares. The dew was sparkling on the grass; the meadow larks were singing from every quarter of the fields through which he was passing; the great limbs of the trees were tossed by the fresh breezes of June. Everywhere were color, music, fragrance, motion. The burden rolled from his heart; remorse and guilt faded like dreams; the sad past lost its hold; the present and the future were radiant! To even the worst of men, in such surroundings, there come moments of exemption from the ennui and shame of life, and to this deep soul which had issued, purified, from the fires through which it had passed, they lengthened into glorious hours, hours such as kindled on the lips of the poet those exultant and exquisite words:
"The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
"The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his heaven—
All's right with the world!"
He climbed a steep hillside, descended into a secluded and beautiful valley, pressed his way through dense underbrush, and while the day was still young stood on the spot where he had determined to lay the foundation of his cabin.
Two ranges of hills came together and enclosed it as if in giant arms. Two pure crystal springs issued from clefts in the bases of these hills, and after flowing towards each other for perhaps a quarter of a mile, mingled their waters in a brawling brook. It was at the point of their junction that David had determined to erect that primitive structure which has afforded a home to so many families in our American wildernesses. He threw his bundle down and gazed with admiration on the scene.
Here was the virgin and unprofaned loveliness of Nature. He felt her charm and prostrated himself before her shrine. But he rendered to that invisible spirit of which these forms were only an imperfect manifestation, a worship deeper still, and by an instinct of pure adoration lifted his face toward the sky.
Having refreshed his soul by this communion, he drank a deep draught of the sparkling water at the point where the rivulets met. Then he threw off his coat, took his axe in hand and selected a tree on which to begin his attack.
It was an enormous oak which, with roots struck deep into the soil and branches lifted high and spread wide in the air, had maintained itself successfully against innumerable foes for perhaps a thousand years. He reflected long before he struck, for to him as to all lovers of nature there is a certain inviolable sacredness about a tree.
"Should you see me at the point of death," said Rousseau, "carry me under the shade of an oak and I am persuaded I shall recover."
David was a lover of trees. From the summits of the hills he had often gazed down upon the forests and observed how "all the tree tops lay asleep like green waves on the sea." He had harvested the fruits of the apple and peach, clubbed the branches of the walnut, butternut and beach, and boiled the sap of the maple. He had seen the trees offer their hospitable shelter to the birds and the squirrels, had basked beneath their umbrageous shadows and had listened to their whispers in the summer, and to their wild music "when winter, that grand old harper, smote his thunder-harp of pines."
It cost him pain to lay violent hands on a thing so sacred; nevertheless he swung his axe in the air and a loud reverberating blow broke the immense solitude. There are many kinds of music; but there is none fuller of life and power and primal energy than the ring of the woodsman's axe as blow after blow, through hour after hour, falls rhythmically upon the wound which he cuts in the great hole of a forest monarch.
The gash deepened and widened, the chips flew in showers and the woodchopper's craft, long unpracticed, came back to him with every stroke. The satisfying consciousness of skill and power filled him with a sort of ecstasy. Just as the sun reached the zenith and looked down to see what devastation was being wrought in this solitude, the giant trembled; the blade had struck a vital place; he reeled, leaned forward, lurched, plunged headlong, and with a roar that resounded through the wide reaches of the forest, fell prone upon the ground.
The woodsman wiped the perspiration from his brow and smiled. The appetite of the pioneer had been whetted with his work. He kindled a fire, boiled a pot of coffee, fried a half dozen slices of bacon, remembered his sickly appetite in the luxurious restaurants of great cities, and laughed aloud for joy—wild, unbounded joy—the joy of primitive manhood, of health, of strength, of hope. And then he stretched himself on the ground and looked up into the blue sky through the opening he had made in the green canopy above him and through which the sun was gazing with bold, free glances on the face of the modest valley and whispering amorously of its love.
Those glances fell soft and warm on his own upturned countenance, and the rays of life-giving power penetrated the inmost core of his being, finding their way by some mysterious alchemy through the medium of matter into the very citadel of the spirit itself. They imparted a new life. He basked in them until he fell asleep, and when he awakened he felt anew the joy of mere physical existence; he rose, shook himself like a giant, and resumed his work.
He now began to prepare for himself a temporary booth which should shelter him until he had erected his cabin; and the rest of the day was consumed in this enterprise. At its close this simple task was done, so easy is it to provide a shelter for him who seeks protection and not luxury! Having once more satisfied his hunger, he built a fire in front of his rude booth, and lay down in its genial rays, his head upon a pillow of moss. The stillness of the cool, quiet evening was broken only by the crackling of the flames, the quiet murmurs of the two little rills which whispered to each other startled interrogations as to the meaning of this rude invasion, the hoot of owls in the tall tree tops, and the stealthy tread of some of the little creatures of the forest who prowled around, while seeking their prey, to discover, if possible, the meaning of this great light, and the strange noises with which their forest world had resounded.
There came to the recumbent woodsman a deep and quiet peace. He felt a new sense of having been in some way taken back into the fraternity of the unfallen creatures of the universe, and into the all-embracing arms of the great Father. He fell asleep with pure thoughts hovering over the surface of his mind, like a flock of swallows above a crystal lake. And Nature did take him back into that all-enfolding heart where there is room and a welcome for all who do not alienate themselves. Her latchstrings are always out, and forests, fields, mountains, oceans, deserts even, have a silent, genial welcome for all who enter their open doors with reverence, sympathy and yearning. A man asleep alone in a vast wilderness! How easy it would be for Nature to forget him and permit him to sleep on forever! What gives him his importance there amid those giant trees? Why should sun, moon, stars, gravity, heat, cold, care for him? How can the hand that guides the constellations—those vast navies of the infinite sea—pause to touch the eyelids of this atom when the time comes for him to rise?