The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
J >> John Muir >> The Story of My Boyhood and YouthIt was far too common a practice among us to carry off a young lark
just before it could fly, place it in a cage, and fondly, laboriously
feed it. Sometimes we succeeded in keeping one alive for a year or
two, and when awakened by the spring weather it was pitiful to see the
quivering imprisoned soarer of the heavens rapidly beating its wings
and singing as though it were flying and hovering in the air like its
parents. To keep it in health we were taught that we must supply it
with a sod of grass the size of the bottom of the cage, to make the
poor bird feel as though it were at home on its native meadow,--a
meadow perhaps a foot or at most two feet square. Again and again it
would try to hover over that miniature meadow from its miniature sky
just underneath the top of the cage. At last, conscience-stricken, we
carried the beloved prisoner to the meadow west of Dunbar where it was
born, and, blessing its sweet heart, bravely set it free, and our
exceeding great reward was to see it fly and sing in the sky.
In the winter, when there was but little doing in the fields, we
organized running-matches. A dozen or so of us would start out on
races that were simply tests of endurance, running on and on along a
public road over the breezy hills like hounds, without stopping or
getting tired. The only serious trouble we ever felt in these long
races was an occasional stitch in our sides. One of the boys started
the story that sucking raw eggs was a sure cure for the stitches. We
had hens in our back yard, and on the next Saturday we managed to
swallow a couple of eggs apiece, a disgusting job, but we would do
almost anything to mend our speed, and as soon as we could get away
after taking the cure we set out on a ten or twenty mile run to prove
its worth. We thought nothing of running right ahead ten or a dozen
miles before turning back; for we knew nothing about taking time by
the sun, and none of us had a watch in those days. Indeed, we never
cared about time until it began to get dark. Then we thought of home
and the thrashing that awaited us. Late or early, the thrashing was
sure, unless father happened to be away. If he was expected to return
soon, mother made haste to get us to bed before his arrival. We
escaped the thrashing next morning, for father never felt like
thrashing us in cold blood on the calm holy Sabbath. But no
punishment, however sure and severe, was of any avail against the
attraction of the fields and woods. It had other uses, developing
memory, etc., but in keeping us at home it was of no use at all.
Wildness was ever sounding in our ears, and Nature saw to it that
besides school lessons and church lessons some of her own lessons
should be learned, perhaps with a view to the time when we should be
called to wander in wildness to our heart's content. Oh, the blessed
enchantment of those Saturday runaways in the prime of the spring! How
our young wondering eyes reveled in the sunny, breezy glory of the
hills and the sky, every particle of us thrilling and tingling with
the bees and glad birds and glad streams! Kings may be blessed; we
were glorious, we were free,--school cares and scoldings, heart
thrashings and flesh thrashings alike, were forgotten in the fullness
of Nature's glad wildness. These were my first excursions,--the
beginnings of lifelong wanderings.
II
A NEW WORLD
Stories of America--Glorious News--Crossing the Atlantic--The
New Home--A Baptism in Nature--New Birds--The Adventures of
Watch--Scotch Correction--Marauding Indians.
Our grammar-school reader, called, I think, "Maccoulough's Course of
Reading," contained a few natural-history sketches that excited me
very much and left a deep impression, especially a fine description of
the fish hawk and the bald eagle by the Scotch ornithologist Wilson,
who had the good fortune to wander for years in the American woods
while the country was yet mostly wild. I read his description over and
over again, till I got the vivid picture he drew by heart,--the
long-winged hawk circling over the heaving waves, every motion watched
by the eagle perched on the top of a crag or dead tree; the fish hawk
poising for a moment to take aim at a fish and plunging under the
water; the eagle with kindling eye spreading his wings ready for
instant flight in case the attack should prove successful; the hawk
emerging with a struggling fish in his talons, and proud flight; the
eagle launching himself in pursuit; the wonderful wing-work in the
sky, the fish hawk, though encumbered with his prey, circling higher,
higher, striving hard to keep above the robber eagle; the eagle at
length soaring above him, compelling him with a cry of despair to drop
his hard-won prey; then the eagle steadying himself for a moment to
take aim, descending swift as a lightning-bolt, and seizing the
falling fish before it reached the sea.
Not less exciting and memorable was Audubon's wonderful story of the
passenger pigeon, a beautiful bird flying in vast flocks that darkened
the sky like clouds, countless millions assembling to rest and sleep
and rear their young in certain forests, miles in length and breadth,
fifty or a hundred nests on a single tree; the overloaded branches
bending low and often breaking; the farmers gathering from far and
near, beating down countless thousands of the young and old birds from
their nests and roosts with long poles at night, and in the morning
driving their bands of hogs, some of them brought from farms a hundred
miles distant, to fatten on the dead and wounded covering the ground.
In another of our reading-lessons some of the American forests were
described. The most interesting of the trees to us boys was the sugar
maple, and soon after we had learned this sweet story we heard
everybody talking about the discovery of gold in the same
wonder-filled country.
One night, when David and I were at grandfather's fireside solemnly
learning our lessons as usual, my father came in with news, the most
wonderful, most glorious, that wild boys ever heard. "Bairns," he
said, "you needna learn your lessons the nicht, for we're gan to
America the morn!" No more grammar, but boundless woods full of
mysterious good things; trees full of sugar, growing in ground full
of gold; hawks, eagles, pigeons, filling the sky; millions of birds'
nests, and no gamekeepers to stop us in all the wild, happy land. We
were utterly, blindly glorious. After father left the room,
grandfather gave David and me a gold coin apiece for a keepsake, and
looked very serious, for he was about to be deserted in his lonely old
age. And when we in fullness of young joy spoke of what we were going
to do, of the wonderful birds and their nests that we should find, the
sugar and gold, etc., and promised to send him a big box full of that
tree sugar packed in gold from the glorious paradise over the sea,
poor lonely grandfather, about to be forsaken, looked with downcast
eyes on the floor and said in a low, trembling, troubled voice, "Ah,
poor laddies, poor laddies, you'll find something else ower the sea
forbye gold and sugar, birds' nests and freedom fra lessons and
schools. You'll find plenty hard, hard work." And so we did. But
nothing he could say could cloud our joy or abate the fire of
youthful, hopeful, fearless adventure. Nor could we in the midst of
such measureless excitement see or feel the shadows and sorrows of his
darkening old age. To my schoolmates, met that night on the street, I
shouted the glorious news, "I'm gan to Amaraka the morn!" None could
believe it. I said, "Weel, just you see if I am at the skule the
morn!"
Next morning we went by rail to Glasgow and thence joyfully sailed
away from beloved Scotland, flying to our fortunes on the wings of the
winds, care-free as thistle seeds. We could not then know what we were
leaving, what we were to encounter in the New World, nor what our
gains were likely to be. We were too young and full of hope for fear
or regret, but not too young to look forward with eager enthusiasm to
the wonderful schoolless bookless American wilderness. Even the
natural heart-pain of parting from grandfather and grandmother Gilrye,
who loved us so well, and from mother and sisters and brother was
quickly quenched in young joy. Father took with him only my sister
Sarah (thirteen years of age), myself (eleven), and brother David
(nine), leaving my eldest sister, Margaret, and the three youngest of
the family, Daniel, Mary, and Anna, with mother, to join us after a
farm had been found in the wilderness and a comfortable house made to
receive them.
In crossing the Atlantic before the days of steamships, or even the
American clippers, the voyages made in old-fashioned sailing-vessels
were very long. Ours was six weeks and three days. But because we had
no lessons to get, that long voyage had not a dull moment for us boys.
Father and sister Sarah, with most of the old folk, stayed below in
rough weather, groaning in the miseries of seasickness, many of the
passengers wishing they had never ventured in "the auld rockin'
creel," as they called our bluff-bowed, wave-beating ship, and, when
the weather was moderately calm, singing songs in the evenings,--"The
Youthful Sailor Frank and Bold," "Oh, why left I my hame, why did I
cross the deep," etc. But no matter how much the old tub tossed about
and battered the waves, we were on deck every day, not in the least
seasick, watching the sailors at their rope-hauling and climbing work;
joining in their songs, learning the names of the ropes and sails, and
helping them as far as they would let us; playing games with other
boys in calm weather when the deck was dry, and in stormy weather
rejoicing in sympathy with the big curly-topped waves.
The captain occasionally called David and me into his cabin and asked
us about our schools, handed us books to read, and seemed surprised to
find that Scotch boys could read and pronounce English with perfect
accent and knew so much Latin and French. In Scotch schools only pure
English was taught, although not a word of English was spoken out of
school. All through life, however well educated, the Scotch spoke
Scotch among their own folk, except at times when unduly excited on
the only two subjects on which Scotchmen get much excited, namely
religion and politics. So long as the controversy went on with fairly
level temper, only gude braid Scots was used, but if one became angry,
as was likely to happen, then he immediately began speaking severely
correct English, while his antagonist, drawing himself up, would say:
"Weel, there's na use pursuing this subject ony further, for I see ye
hae gotten to your English."
As we neared the shore of the great new land, with what eager wonder
we watched the whales and dolphins and porpoises and seabirds, and
made the good-natured sailors teach us their names and tell us stories
about them!
There were quite a large number of emigrants aboard, many of them
newly married couples, and the advantages of the different parts of
the New World they expected to settle in were often discussed. My
father started with the intention of going to the backwoods of Upper
Canada. Before the end of the voyage, however, he was persuaded that
the States offered superior advantages, especially Wisconsin and
Michigan, where the land was said to be as good as in Canada and far
more easily brought under cultivation; for in Canada the woods were so
close and heavy that a man might wear out his life in getting a few
acres cleared of trees and stumps. So he changed his mind and
concluded to go to one of the Western States.
On our wavering westward way a grain-dealer in Buffalo told father
that most of the wheat he handled came from Wisconsin; and this
influential information finally determined my father's choice. At
Milwaukee a farmer who had come in from the country near Fort
Winnebago with a load of wheat agreed to haul us and our formidable
load of stuff to a little town called Kingston for thirty dollars. On
that hundred-mile journey, just after the spring thaw, the roads over
the prairies were heavy and miry, causing no end of lamentation, for
we often got stuck in the mud, and the poor farmer sadly declared that
never, never again would he be tempted to try to haul such a cruel,
heart-breaking, wagon-breaking, horse-killing load, no, not for a
hundred dollars. In leaving Scotland, father, like many other
homeseekers, burdened himself with far too much luggage, as if all
America were still a wilderness in which little or nothing could be
bought. One of his big iron-bound boxes must have weighed about four
hundred pounds, for it contained an old-fashioned beam-scales with a
complete set of cast-iron counterweights, two of them fifty-six pounds
each, a twenty-eight, and so on down to a single pound. Also a lot of
iron wedges, carpenter's tools, and so forth, and at Buffalo, as if on
the very edge of the wilderness, he gladly added to his burden a big
cast-iron stove with pots and pans, provisions enough for a long
siege, and a scythe and cumbersome cradle for cutting wheat, all of
which he succeeded in landing in the primeval Wisconsin woods.
A land-agent at Kingston gave father a note to a farmer by the name of
Alexander Gray, who lived on the border of the settled part of the
country, knew the section-lines, and would probably help him to find a
good place for a farm. So father went away to spy out the land, and
in the mean time left us children in Kingston in a rented room. It
took us less than an hour to get acquainted with some of the boys in
the village; we challenged them to wrestle, run races, climb trees,
etc., and in a day or two we felt at home, carefree and happy,
notwithstanding our family was so widely divided. When father returned
he told us that he had found fine land for a farm in sunny open woods
on the side of a lake, and that a team of three yoke of oxen with a
big wagon was coming to haul us to Mr. Gray's place.
We enjoyed the strange ten-mile ride through the woods very much,
wondering how the great oxen could be so strong and wise and tame as
to pull so heavy a load with no other harness than a chain and a
crooked piece of wood on their necks, and how they could sway so
obediently to right and left past roadside trees and stumps when the
driver said _haw_ and _gee_. At Mr. Gray's house, father again left us
for a few days to build a shanty on the quarter-section he had
selected four or five miles to the westward. In the mean while we
enjoyed our freedom as usual, wandering in the fields and meadows,
looking at the trees and flowers, snakes and birds and squirrels. With
the help of the nearest neighbors the little shanty was built in less
than a day after the rough bur-oak logs for the walls and the
white-oak boards for the floor and roof were got together.
To this charming hut, in the sunny woods, overlooking a flowery
glacier meadow and a lake rimmed with white water-lilies, we were
hauled by an ox-team across trackless carex swamps and low rolling
hills sparsely dotted with round-headed oaks. Just as we arrived at
the shanty, before we had time to look at it or the scenery about it,
David and I jumped down in a hurry off the load of household goods,
for we had discovered a blue jay's nest, and in a minute or so we were
up the tree beside it, feasting our eyes on the beautiful green eggs
and beautiful birds,--our first memorable discovery. The handsome
birds had not seen Scotch boys before and made a desperate
screaming as if we were robbers like themselves; though we left the
eggs untouched, feeling that we were already beginning to get rich,
and wondering how many more nests we should find in the grand sunny
woods. Then we ran along the brow of the hill that the shanty stood
on, and down to the meadow, searching the trees and grass tufts and
bushes, and soon discovered a bluebird's and a woodpecker's nest, and
began an acquaintance with the frogs and snakes and turtles in the
creeks and springs.
[Illustration: MUIR'S LAKE (FOUNTAIN LAKE) AND THE GARDEN MEADOW
Sketched from the roof of the Bur-Oak Shanty]
This sudden plash into pure wildness--baptism in Nature's warm
heart--how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us,
wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismal
grammar ashes and cinders so long thrashed into us. Here without
knowing it we still were at school; every wild lesson a love lesson,
not whipped but charmed into us. Oh, that glorious Wisconsin
wilderness! Everything new and pure in the very prime of the spring
when Nature's pulses were beating highest and mysteriously keeping
time with our own! Young hearts, young leaves, flowers, animals, the
winds and the streams and the sparkling lake, all wildly, gladly
rejoicing together!
Next morning, when we climbed to the precious jay nest to take another
admiring look at the eggs, we found it empty. Not a shell-fragment was
left, and we wondered how in the world the birds were able to carry
off their thin-shelled eggs either in their bills or in their feet
without breaking them, and how they could be kept warm while a new
nest was being built. Well, I am still asking these questions. When I
was on the Harriman Expedition I asked Robert Ridgway, the eminent
ornithologist, how these sudden flittings were accomplished, and he
frankly confessed that he didn't know, but guessed that jays and many
other birds carried their eggs in their mouths; and when I objected
that a jay's mouth seemed too small to hold its eggs, he replied that
birds' mouths were larger than the narrowness of their bills
indicated. Then I asked him what he thought they did with the eggs
while a new nest was being prepared. He didn't know; neither do I to
this day. A specimen of the many puzzling problems presented to the
naturalist.
We soon found many more nests belonging to birds that were not half so
suspicious. The handsome and notorious blue jay plunders the nests of
other birds and of course he could not trust us. Almost all the
others--brown thrushes, bluebirds, song sparrows, kingbirds,
hen-hawks, nighthawks, whip-poor-wills, woodpeckers, etc.--simply
tried to avoid being seen, to draw or drive us away, or paid no
attention to us.
We used to wonder how the woodpeckers could bore holes so perfectly
round, true mathematical circles. We ourselves could not have done it
even with gouges and chisels. We loved to watch them feeding their
young, and wondered how they could glean food enough for so many
clamorous, hungry, unsatisfiable babies, and how they managed to give
each one its share; for after the young grew strong, one would get
his head out of the door-hole and try to hold possession of it to meet
the food-laden parents. How hard they worked to support their
families, especially the red-headed and speckledy woodpeckers and
flickers; digging, hammering on scaly bark and decaying trunks and
branches from dawn to dark, coming and going at intervals of a few
minutes all the livelong day!
We discovered a hen-hawk's nest on the top of a tall oak thirty or
forty rods from the shanty and approached it cautiously. One of the
pair always kept watch, soaring in wide circles high above the tree,
and when we attempted to climb it, the big dangerous-looking bird came
swooping down at us and drove us away.
We greatly admired the plucky kingbird. In Scotland our great ambition
was to be good fighters, and we admired this quality in the handsome
little chattering flycatcher that whips all the other birds. He was
particularly angry when plundering jays and hawks came near his home,
and took pains to thrash them not only away from the nest-tree but
out of the neighborhood. The nest was usually built on a bur oak near
a meadow where insects were abundant, and where no undesirable visitor
could approach without being discovered. When a hen-hawk hove in
sight, the male immediately set off after him, and it was ridiculous
to see that great, strong bird hurrying away as fast as his clumsy
wings would carry him, as soon as he saw the little, waspish kingbird
coming. But the kingbird easily overtook him, flew just a few feet
above him, and with a lot of chattering, scolding notes kept diving
and striking him on the back of the head until tired; then he alighted
to rest on the hawk's broad shoulders, still scolding and chattering
as he rode along, like an angry boy pouring out vials of wrath. Then,
up and at him again with his sharp bill; and after he had thus driven
and ridden his big enemy a mile or so from the nest, he went home to
his mate, chuckling and bragging as if trying to tell her what a
wonderful fellow he was.
This first spring, while some of the birds were still building their
nests and very few young ones had yet tried to fly, father hired a
Yankee to assist in clearing eight or ten acres of the best ground for
a field. We found new wonders every day and often had to call on this
Yankee to solve puzzling questions. We asked him one day if there was
any bird in America that the kingbird couldn't whip. What about the
sandhill crane? Could he whip that long-legged, long-billed fellow?
"A crane never goes near kingbirds' nests or notices so small a bird,"
he said, "and therefore there could be no fighting between them." So
we hastily concluded that our hero could whip every bird in the
country except perhaps the sandhill crane.
We never tired listening to the wonderful whip-poor-will. One came
every night about dusk and sat on a log about twenty or thirty feet
from our cabin door and began shouting "Whip poor Will! Whip poor
Will!" with loud emphatic earnestness. "What's that? What's that?" we
cried when this startling visitor first announced himself. "What do
you call it?"
"Why, it's telling you its name," said the Yankee. "Don't you hear it
and what he wants you to do? He says his name is 'Poor Will' and he
wants you to whip him, and you may if you are able to catch him." Poor
Will seemed the most wonderful of all the strange creatures we had
seen. What a wild, strong, bold voice he had, unlike any other we had
ever heard on sea or land!
A near relative, the bull-bat, or nighthawk, seemed hardly less
wonderful. Towards evening scattered flocks kept the sky lively as
they circled around on their long wings a hundred feet or more above
the ground, hunting moths and beetles, interrupting their rather slow
but strong, regular wing-beats at short intervals with quick quivering
strokes while uttering keen, squeaky cries something like _pfee_,
_pfee_, and every now and then diving nearly to the ground with a loud
ripping, bellowing sound, like bull-roaring, suggesting its name;
then turning and gliding swiftly up again. These fine wild gray
birds, about the size of a pigeon, lay their two eggs on bare ground
without anything like a nest or even a concealing bush or grass-tuft.
Nevertheless they are not easily seen, for they are colored like the
ground. While sitting on their eggs, they depend so much upon not
being noticed that if you are walking rapidly ahead they allow you to
step within an inch or two of them without flinching. But if they see
by your looks that you have discovered them, they leave their eggs or
young, and, like a good many other birds, pretend that they are sorely
wounded, fluttering and rolling over on the ground and gasping as if
dying, to draw you away. When pursued we were surprised to find that
just when we were on the point of overtaking them they were always
able to flutter a few yards farther, until they had led us about a
quarter of a mile from the nest; then, suddenly getting well, they
quietly flew home by a roundabout way to their precious babies or
eggs, o'er a' the ills of life victorious, bad boys among the worst.
The Yankee took particular pleasure in encouraging us to pursue them.
Everything about us was so novel and wonderful that we could hardly
believe our senses except when hungry or while father was thrashing
us. When we first saw Fountain Lake Meadow, on a sultry evening,
sprinkled with millions of lightning-bugs throbbing with light, the
effect was so strange and beautiful that it seemed far too marvelous
to be real. Looking from our shanty on the hill, I thought that the
whole wonderful fairy show must be in my eyes; for only in fighting,
when my eyes were struck, had I ever seen anything in the least like
it. But when I asked my brother if he saw anything strange in the
meadow he said, "Yes, it's all covered with shaky fire-sparks." Then I
guessed that it might be something outside of us, and applied to our
all-knowing Yankee to explain it. "Oh, it's nothing but
lightnin'-bugs," he said, and kindly led us down the hill to the edge
of the fiery meadow, caught a few of the wonderful bugs, dropped them
into a cup, and carried them to the shanty, where we watched them
throbbing and flashing out their mysterious light at regular
intervals, as if each little passionate glow were caused by the
beating of a heart. Once I saw a splendid display of glow-worm light
in the foothills of the Himalayas, north of Calcutta, but glorious as
it appeared in pure starry radiance, it was far less impressive than
the extravagant abounding, quivering, dancing fire on our Wisconsin
meadow.