Large Fierce Mammal

“You know, I often say that the world’s a crazy place – “crazy” in a good sense, and in the sense that, for example, when you walk in the forest or over the fields, or elsewhere, you never know what you’re going to come across.” ~ Laurie Lacey

One morning in the early autumn of my 17th year, I set forth to walk one of my favourite forest trails that led through one of my favourite forests. In those days most of my sorties were to places that were within walking distance of where I lived with my parents in the “old town” section of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, but this was never a hardship because walking ten minutes in a straight line in any direction from anywhere in Lunenburg would put you either on the shore or in the woods somewhere.

My trail on this day was the one that led more or less parallel to the shore of Lunenburg’s Back Harbour through a dim world of gnarled softwoods, moss, and ferns, occasionally crossed by small rivulets in deep scored stream beds that ran when water levels were sufficiently high, as they were that autumn, coming as it did at the end of an unusually wet summer. Throughout these woods were century old signs of cultivation long since devoured by Nature – lines of piled stones that once marked the edges of pastures and tilled fields, abandoned orchards, and the foundations of buildings that though painstakingly assembled through force of muscle, had long since been stripped of their crowning glory as need slipped into forgetfulness.

At the intended end of my trail that day lay an old cottage that had been discovered and more or less reassembled by a ragamuffin band of back to the land hippies fleeing the draft of the Vietnam War. They had lived there a couple of years, even opened one of the first ever “health food” stores to see the light of day on the south shore of this ever so straight laced province with its ever so proud history of rum running in the days of prohibition. By the time my tale unfolds, they had been gone over a year to who knows where, and I knew from previous expeditions that Nature’s creatures were making short work of the old place.

I’ve never seen the axe since, so this image of a Gränsfors Bruks double bit axe will have to serve to illustrate what I found. The one that was briefly mine that day was shinier. Click the image to enlarge.

From trail head to destination was the work of a leisurely hour. The morning was crisp but promised to warm as the sun ascended, and the woods were entangled with mist that gradually burned away. The trail wound through what had clearly once been an area harvested for its trees, and it was when I came abreast of a long since cut out area of old mossy stumps that opened into a clearing to the left of my track that a gleam caught my eye and I turned to see what it was. There, sparkling in the weak though boldening sunshine was a full size, double bit felling axe of the type a lumberjack might use to topple trees far larger than the one in whose rotted remnants it stood embedded.

My first inclination was to believe that the owner of this fine instrument must be somewhere nearby, and I stepped toward it in search of its owner. Drawing near the axe I saw that it was in pristine condition. It looked new in fact, and close inspection failed to disclose any maker’s mark or other identifying feature. It was simple and beautifully crafted steel hafted with wonderfully straight grained wood, and the edge that wasn’t embedded in the stump was as sharp as sharp can be.

I called out for its owner but heard no reply. I called again as I inspected the axe’s surroundings, coming to realize that other than the cut made by its blade where it had been embedded in the ancient stump, there were absolutely no other signs of wood cutting anywhere in sight.

On a whim, I pulled the axe out of the stump and hefted it. Checking the heretofore embedded edge, I found it to be as sharp as the opposite edge and, shouldering it, I continued on my journey.

No more than five minutes later, I caught the sound ahead of a large dog baying in the way that hunting hounds do, although this dog sounded much larger than any hound I had ever heard. Pausing, I determined that the wind was in my face so whatever animal I had heard would be upwind and therefore unlikely to have smelled me unless the winds were playing games. Even in those days I understood the importance of stealth so I felt certain I had not been heard. Nevertheless, a large dog seemed to be hunting these same woods at some distance ahead and to my right.

I continued on my way, this time even more stealthily. A few minutes later I heard the dog baying again – but this time so close as to be almost upon me, and it was answered by another! The sounds were still ahead, but nearly directly ahead.

Not my knife, but one just like it. Click the picture to enlarge it.

By this time I had reached a point where the path ran straight and level for a distance of about 80 meters. Heart pounding, I stopped to evaluate my situation as I took care to make no movement while studying the way ahead with every one of my straining senses. On my belt was a Vietnam War era pilot survival knife with a 5 inch blade that had always been carried as a tool. Although I understood its application as a weapon if it came to that, in my mind at that moment it had never seemed so small and inadequate. In my hand was the axe, keen and mysterious of origin. Under me were my feet which, fleet though they may have been, I knew to be nowhere near capable of removing me from this canine danger if I was, in fact, being hunted by a pack of feral dogs.

Standing in the path I perceived movement ahead that, as I stood frozen, became a large and shaggy dog, white as snow. The dog sniffed the ground and then looked off the trail to my left from where it was immediately joined by another of its kind, almost identical in every respect but one – the second dog was as black as a shadow.

As I watched, both dogs milled around, sniffing the ground and the air, looking in every direction, but most particularly toward me as I stood exposed but knowing that, as long as I remained immobile, at this distance they would be unlikely to detect my presence. It was when they both stood shoulder to shoulder, growling quietly as they stared the 80 meters down the path toward me taking tentative steps, that I tightened my grip on the haft of the felling axe and determined to take what toll I could before I died.

I recall that there was a period of peace the measure of which I make no pretense of grasping, as I stood at one end of that fateful trail facing my adversaries at the other. Most of all I remember that the pounding heart I had previously feared would alert the dogs to my presence was now a strong, subtle rhythm in my chest as I stood ready to receive their onslaught.

And then, as quickly as they had come upon me, both dogs raised their heads with pricked ears as though called by a master I could not hear, and charged away to the right of the trail. I stood a while in guarded silence anticipating their return but only the sounds of Nature at work came to my ears. I considered the options remaining for the day and decided to make my way home. the day having provided more than a few matters worthy of meditation.

It was when I reached the edge of the forest where the trail opened onto an overgrown pasture that I stopped to look at my timely companion as it balanced in my hand, and consider how it came to be there. To the side of the trail, in plain sight of anyone heading in to where the axe had been found, I embedded it in yet another mossy stump for its owner to find.