Large Fierce Mammal

“Eddie’s room and contents … was a marvel and a revelation.” ~ The Tent Dwellers, Chapter 4 (NOTE: Any resemblance between Eddie (left) and me is strictly coincidental. ~ LFM)

Near the end of August back in 2010, I published a piece here titled Being in the Wild: The Original Control/Alt/Delete. While I make no pretense that my meagre efforts are on a par with those of the worthy Albert Bigelow Paine (10 July 1861 – 9 April 1937); friend, companion, and biographer of none less than Mark Twain; its inspiration and setting comes out of the same neck of the woods as his wondrous and splendid homage to adventure in the backwoods of Nova Scotia – The Tent Dwellers. Courtesy of Project Gutenberg, you can read this most excellent tome in its entirety here, but before you do behold these snippets:

Then he unfolded to me a marvelous plan. It was a place in Nova Scotia—he had been there once before, only, this time he was going a different route, farther into the wilderness, the deep unknown, somewhere even the guides had never been. Perhaps stray logmen had been there, or the Indians; sportsmen never. There had been no complete surveys, even by the government. Certain rivers were known by their outlets, certain lakes by name. It was likely that they formed the usual network and that the circuit could be made by water, with occasional carries. Unquestionably the waters swarmed with trout. A certain imaginative Indian, supposed to have penetrated the unknown, had declared that at one place were trout the size of one’s leg. ~ The Tent Dwellers, Chapter 1

… When the wind beats up and down the park, and the trees are bending and cracking with ice; when I know that once more the still places of the North are white and the waters fettered—I shall shut my eyes and see again the ripple and the toss of June, and hear once more the under voices of the falls. And some day I shall return to those far shores, for it is a place to find one’s soul.

Yet perhaps I should not leave that statement unqualified, for it depends upon the sort of a soul that is to be found. The north wood does not offer welcome or respond readily to the lover of conventional luxury and the smaller comforts of living. Luxury is there, surely, but it is the luxury that rewards effort, and privation, and toil. It is the comfort of food and warmth and dry clothes after a day of endurance—a day of wet, and dragging weariness, and bitter chill. It is the bliss of reaching, after long, toilsome travel, a place where you can meet the trout—the splendid, full-grown wild trout, in his native home, knowing that you will not find a picnic party on every brook and a fisherman behind every tree. Finally, it is the preciousness of isolation, the remoteness from men who dig up and tear down and destroy, who set whistles to tooting and bells to jingling—who shriek themselves hoarse in the market place and make the world ugly and discordant, and life a short and fevered span in which the soul has a chance to become no more than a feeble and crumpled thing. And if that kind of a soul pleases you, don’t go to the woods. It will be only a place of mosquitoes, and general wetness, and discomfort. You won’t care for it. You will hate it. But if you are willing to get wet and stay wet—to get cold and stay cold—to be bruised, and scuffed, and bitten—to be hungry and thirsty and to have your muscles strained and sore from unusual taxation: if you will welcome all these things, not once, but many times, for the sake of moments of pure triumph and that larger luxury which comes with the comfort of the camp and the conquest of the wilderness, then go! The wilderness will welcome you, and teach you, and take you to its heart. And you will find your own soul there; and the discovery will be worth while! ~ The Tent Dwellers, Chapter 29

With those words, Albert Bigelow Paine chose in 1908 to begin and end a work that is still avidly read and admired by those of us who understand its meaning. If you read the book through, you’ll note the beautiful verses that introduce each chapter. That won’t stop me from sharing a few of them here – those that reflect on the planning, preparation, and sheer liberating joy of starting out on such an adventure:

Come, shape your plans where the fire is bright,
And the shimmering glasses are –
When the woods are white in the winter’s night,
Under the northern star.

And let us buy for the days of spring,
While yet the north winds blow!
For half the joy of the trip, my boy,
Is getting your traps to go.

Now the gorges break and the streamlets wake
And the sap begins to flow,
And each green bud that stirs my blood
Is a summons, and I must go.

Now, the day is at hand, prepare, prepare—
Make ready the boots and creel,
And the rod so new and the fly-book, too,
The line and the singing reel.

Then away to the heart of the deep unknown,
Where the trout and the wild moose are –
Where the fire burns bright, and tent gleams white
Under the northern star.

Nearer the fire the shadows creep –
The brands burn dim and red –
While the pillow of sleep lies soft and deep
Under a weary head.

Now, Dawn her gray green mantle weaves
To the lilt of a low refrain –
The drip, drip, drip of the lush green leaves
After a night of rain.

Where the trail leads back from the water’s edge –
Tangled and overgrown –
Shoulder your load and strike the road
Into the deep unknown.

~ The Tent Dwellers, Chapters 1 – 8 ~