The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
J >> John Muir >> The Story of My Boyhood and YouthPartridge drumming was another great marvel. When I first heard the
low, soft, solemn sound I thought it must be made by some strange
disturbance in my head or stomach, but as all seemed serene within, I
asked David whether he heard anything queer. "Yes," he said, "I hear
something saying _boomp_, _boomp_, _boomp_, and I'm wondering at it."
Then I was half satisfied that the source of the mysterious sound must
be in something outside of us, coming perhaps from the ground or from
some ghost or bogie or woodland fairy. Only after long watching and
listening did we at last discover it in the wings of the plump brown
bird.
The love-song of the common jack snipe seemed not a whit less
mysterious than partridge drumming. It was usually heard on cloudy
evenings, a strange, unearthly, winnowing, spiritlike sound, yet
easily heard at a distance of a third of a mile. Our sharp eyes soon
detected the bird while making it, as it circled high in the air over
the meadow with wonderfully strong and rapid wing-beats, suddenly
descending and rising, again and again, in deep, wide loops; the tones
being very low and smooth at the beginning of the descent, rapidly
increasing to a curious little whirling storm-roar at the bottom, and
gradually fading lower and lower until the top was reached. It was
long, however, before we identified this mysterious wing-singer as the
little brown jack snipe that we knew so well and had so often watched
as he silently probed the mud around the edges of our meadow stream
and spring-holes, and made short zigzag flights over the grass
uttering only little short, crisp quacks and chucks.
The love-songs of the frogs seemed hardly less wonderful than those of
the birds, their musical notes varying from the sweet, tranquil,
soothing peeping and purring of the hylas to the awfully deep low-bass
blunt bellowing of the bullfrogs. Some of the smaller species have
wonderfully clear, sharp voices and told us their good Bible names in
musical tones about as plainly as the whip-poor-will. _Isaac, Isaac;
Yacob, Yacob; Israel, Israel_; shouted in sharp, ringing, far-reaching
tones, as if they had all been to school and severely drilled in
elocution. In the still, warm evenings, big bunchy bullfrogs bellowed,
_Drunk! Drunk! Drunk! Jug o' rum! Jug o' rum_! and early in the
spring, countless thousands of the commonest species, up to the throat
in cold water, sang in concert, making a mass of music, such as it
was, loud enough to be heard at a distance of more than half a mile.
Far, far apart from this loud marsh music is that of the many species
of hyla, a sort of soothing immortal melody filling the air like
light.
We reveled in the glory of the sky scenery as well as that of the
woods and meadows and rushy, lily-bordered lakes. The great
thunderstorms in particular interested us, so unlike any seen in
Scotland, exciting awful, wondering admiration. Gazing awe-stricken,
we watched the upbuilding of the sublime cloud-mountains,--glowing,
sun-beaten pearl and alabaster cumuli, glorious in beauty and majesty
and looking so firm and lasting that birds, we thought, might build
their nests amid their downy bosses; the black-browed storm-clouds
marching in awful grandeur across the landscape, trailing broad gray
sheets of hail and rain like vast cataracts, and ever and anon
flashing down vivid zigzag lightning followed by terrible crashing
thunder. We saw several trees shattered, and one of them, a punky old
oak, was set on fire, while we wondered why all the trees and
everybody and everything did not share the same fate, for oftentimes
the whole sky blazed. After sultry storm days, many of the nights were
darkened by smooth black apparently structureless cloud-mantles which
at short intervals were illumined with startling suddenness to a fiery
glow by quick, quivering lightning-flashes, revealing the landscape in
almost noonday brightness, to be instantly quenched in solid
blackness.
But those first days and weeks of unmixed enjoyment and freedom,
reveling in the wonderful wildness about us, were soon to be mingled
with the hard work of making a farm. I was first put to burning brush
in clearing land for the plough. Those magnificent brush fires with
great white hearts and red flames, the first big, wild outdoor fires I
had ever seen, were wonderful sights for young eyes. Again and again,
when they were burning fiercest so that we could hardly approach near
enough to throw on another branch, father put them to awfully
practical use as warning lessons, comparing their heat with that of
hell, and the branches with bad boys. "Now, John," he would
say,--"now, John, just think what an awful thing it would be to be
thrown into that fire:--and then think of hellfire, that is so many
times hotter. Into that fire all bad boys, with sinners of every sort
who disobey God, will be cast as we are casting branches into this
brush fire, and although suffering so much, their sufferings will
never never end, because neither the fire nor the sinners can die."
But those terrible fire lessons quickly faded away in the blithe
wilderness air; for no fire can be hotter than the heavenly fire of
faith and hope that burns in every healthy boy's heart.
Soon after our arrival in the woods some one added a cat and puppy to
the animals father had bought. The cat soon had kittens, and it was
interesting to watch her feeding, protecting, and training them. After
they were able to leave their nest and play, she went out hunting and
brought in many kinds of birds and squirrels for them, mostly ground
squirrels (spermophiles), called "gophers" in Wisconsin. When she got
within a dozen yards or so of the shanty, she announced her approach
by a peculiar call, and the sleeping kittens immediately bounced up
and ran to meet her, all racing for the first bite of they knew not
what, and we too ran to see what she brought. She then lay down a few
minutes to rest and enjoy the enjoyment of her feasting family, and
again vanished in the grass and flowers, coming and going every
half-hour or so. Sometimes she brought in birds that we had never seen
before, and occasionally a flying squirrel, chipmunk, or big fox
squirrel. We were just old enough, David and I, to regard all these
creatures as wonders, the strange inhabitants of our new world.
The pup was a common cur, though very uncommon to us, a black and
white short-haired mongrel that we named "Watch." We always gave him a
pan of milk in the evening just before we knelt in family worship,
while daylight still lingered in the shanty. And, instead of attending
to the prayers, I too often studied the small wild creatures playing
around us. Field mice scampered about the cabin as though it had been
built for them alone, and their performances were very amusing. About
dusk, on one of the calm, sultry nights so grateful to moths and
beetles, when the puppy was lapping his milk, and we were on our
knees, in through the door came a heavy broad-shouldered beetle about
as big as a mouse, and after it had droned and boomed round the cabin
two or three times, the pan of milk, showing white in the gloaming,
caught its eyes, and, taking good aim, it alighted with a slanting,
glinting plash in the middle of the pan like a duck alighting in a
lake. Baby Watch, having never before seen anything like that beetle,
started back, gazing in dumb astonishment and fear at the black
sprawling monster trying to swim. Recovering somewhat from his fright,
he began to bark at the creature, and ran round and round his
milk-pan, wouf-woufing, gurring, growling, like an old dog barking at
a wild-cat or a bear. The natural astonishment and curiosity of that
boy dog getting his first entomological lesson in this wonderful world
was so immoderately funny that I had great difficulty in keeping from
laughing out loud.
Snapping turtles were common throughout the woods, and we were
delighted to find that they would snap at a stick and hang on like
bull-dogs; and we amused ourselves by introducing Watch to them,
enjoying his curious behavior and theirs in getting acquainted with
each other. One day we assisted one of the smallest of the turtles to
get a good grip of poor Watch's ear. Then away he rushed, holding his
head sidewise, yelping and terror-stricken, with the strange buglike
reptile biting hard and clinging fast,--a shameful amusement even for
wild boys.
As a playmate Watch was too serious, though he learned more than any
stranger would judge him capable of, was a bold, faithful watch-dog,
and in his prime a grand fighter, able to whip all the other dogs in
the neighborhood. Comparing him with ourselves, we soon learned that
although he could not read books he could read faces, was a good judge
of character, always knew what was going on and what we were about to
do, and liked to help us. We could run nearly as fast as he could, see
about as far, and perhaps hear as well, but in sense of smell his nose
was incomparably better than ours. One sharp winter morning when the
ground was covered with snow, I noticed that when he was yawning and
stretching himself after leaving his bed he suddenly caught the scent
of something that excited him, went round the corner of the house, and
looked intently to the westward across a tongue of land that we called
West Bank, eagerly questioning the air with quivering nostrils, and
bristling up as though he felt sure that there was something dangerous
in that direction and had actually caught sight of it. Then he ran
toward the Bank, and I followed him, curious to see what his nose had
discovered. The top of the Bank commanded a view of the north end of
our lake and meadow, and when we got there we saw an Indian hunter
with a long spear, going from one muskrat cabin to another,
approaching cautiously, careful to make no noise, and then suddenly
thrusting his spear down through the house. If well aimed, the spear
went through the poor beaver rat as it lay cuddled up in the snug nest
it had made for itself in the fall with so much far-seeing care, and
when the hunter felt the spear quivering, he dug down the mossy hut
with his tomahawk and secured his prey,--the flesh for food, and the
skin to sell for a dime or so. This was a clear object lesson on dogs'
keenness of scent. That Indian was more than half a mile away across a
wooded ridge. Had the hunter been a white man, I suppose Watch would
not have noticed him.
When he was about six or seven years old, he not only became cross, so
that he would do only what he liked, but he fell on evil ways, and was
accused by the neighbors who had settled around us of catching and
devouring whole broods of chickens, some of them only a day or two out
of the shell. We never imagined he would do anything so grossly
undoglike. He never did at home. But several of the neighbors declared
over and over again that they had caught him in the act, and insisted
that he must be shot. At last, in spite of tearful protests, he was
condemned and executed. Father examined the poor fellow's stomach in
search of sure evidence, and discovered the heads of eight chickens
that he had devoured at his last meal. So poor Watch was killed simply
because his taste for chickens was too much like our own. Think of the
millions of squabs that preaching, praying men and women kill and eat,
with all sorts of other animals great and small, young and old, while
eloquently discoursing on the coming of the blessed peaceful,
bloodless millennium! Think of the passenger pigeons that fifty or
sixty years ago filled the woods and sky over half the continent, now
exterminated by beating down the young from the nests together with
the brooding parents, before they could try their wonderful wings; by
trapping them in nets, feeding them to hogs, etc. None of our fellow
mortals is safe who eats what we eat, who in any way interferes with
our pleasures, or who may be used for work or food, clothing or
ornament, or mere cruel, sportish amusement. Fortunately many are too
small to be seen, and therefore enjoy life beyond our reach. And in
looking through God's great stone books made up of records reaching
back millions and millions of years, it is a great comfort to learn
that vast multitudes of creatures, great and small and infinite in
number, lived and had a good time in God's love before man was
created.
The old Scotch fashion of whipping for every act of disobedience or of
simple, playful forgetfulness was still kept up in the wilderness, and
of course many of those whippings fell upon me. Most of them were
outrageously severe, and utterly barren of fun. But here is one that
was nearly all fun.
Father was busy hauling lumber for the frame house that was to be got
ready for the arrival of my mother, sisters, and brother, left behind
in Scotland. One morning, when he was ready to start for another load,
his ox-whip was not to be found. He asked me if I knew anything about
it. I told him I didn't know where it was, but Scotch conscience
compelled me to confess that when I was playing with it I had tied it
to Watch's tail, and that he ran away, dragging it through the grass,
and came back without it. "It must have slipped off his tail," I said,
and so I didn't know where it was. This honest, straightforward little
story made father so angry that he exclaimed with heavy, foreboding
emphasis: "The very deevil's in that boy!" David, who had been playing
with me and was perhaps about as responsible for the loss of the whip
as I was, said never a word, for he was always prudent enough to hold
his tongue when the parental weather was stormy, and so escaped nearly
all punishment. And, strange to say, this time I also escaped, all
except a terrible scolding, though the thrashing weather seemed darker
than ever. As if unwilling to let the sun see the shameful job,
father took me into the cabin where the storm was to fall, and sent
David to the woods for a switch. While he was out selecting the
switch, father put in the spare time sketching my play-wickedness in
awful colors, and of course referred again and again to the place
prepared for bad boys. In the midst of this terrible word-storm,
dreading most the impending thrashing, I whimpered that I was only
playing because I couldn't help it; didn't know I was doing wrong;
wouldn't do it again, and so forth. After this miserable dialogue was
about exhausted, father became impatient at my brother for taking so
long to find the switch; and so was I, for I wanted to have the thing
over and done with. At last, in came David, a picture of open-hearted
innocence, solemnly dragging a young bur-oak sapling, and handed the
end of it to father, saying it was the best switch he could find. It
was an awfully heavy one, about two and a half inches thick at the
butt and ten feet long, almost big enough for a fence-pole. There
wasn't room enough in the cabin to swing it, and the moment I saw it I
burst out laughing in the midst of my fears. But father failed to see
the fun and was very angry at David, heaved the bur-oak outside and
passionately demanded his reason for fetching "sic a muckle rail like
that instead o' a switch? Do ye ca' that a switch? I have a gude mind
to thrash you insteed o' John." David, with demure, downcast eyes,
looked preternaturally righteous, but as usual prudently answered
never a word.
It was a hard job in those days to bring up Scotch boys in the way
they should go; and poor overworked father was determined to do it if
enough of the right kind of switches could be found. But this time, as
the sun was getting high, he hitched up old Tom and Jerry and made
haste to the Kingston lumber-yard, leaving me unscathed and as
innocently wicked as ever; for hardly had father got fairly out of
sight among the oaks and hickories, ere all our troubles,
hell-threatenings, and exhortations were forgotten in the fun we had
lassoing a stubborn old sow and laboriously trying to teach her to go
reasonably steady in rope harness. She was the first hog that father
bought to stock the farm, and we boys regarded her as a very wonderful
beast. In a few weeks she had a lot of pigs, and of all the queer,
funny, animal children we had yet seen, none amused us more. They were
so comic in size and shape, in their gait and gestures, their merry
sham fights, and the false alarms they got up for the fun of
scampering back to their mother and begging her in most persuasive
little squeals to lie down and give them a drink.
After her darling short-snouted babies were about a month old, she
took them out to the woods and gradually roamed farther and farther
from the shanty in search of acorns and roots. One afternoon we heard
a rifle-shot, a very noticeable thing, as we had no near neighbors, as
yet. We thought it must have been fired by an Indian on the trail that
followed the right bank of the Fox River between Portage and
Packwaukee Lake and passed our shanty at a distance of about three
quarters of a mile. Just a few minutes after that shot was heard,
along came the poor mother rushing up to the shanty for protection,
with her pigs, all out of breath and terror-stricken. One of them was
missing, and we supposed of course that an Indian had shot it for
food. Next day, I discovered a blood-puddle where the Indian trail
crossed the outlet of our lake. One of father's hired men told us that
the Indians thought nothing of levying this sort of blackmail whenever
they were hungry. The solemn awe and fear in the eyes of that old
mother and those little pigs I never can forget; it was as
unmistakable and deadly a fear as I ever saw expressed by any human
eye, and corroborates in no uncertain way the oneness of all of us.
III
LIFE ON A WISCONSIN FARM
Humanity in Oxen--Jack, the Pony--Learning to Ride--Nob and
Nell--Snakes--Mosquitoes and their Kin--Fish and
Fishing--Considering the Lilies--Learning to Swim--A Narrow
Escape from Drowning and a Victory--Accidents to Animals.
Coming direct from school in Scotland while we were still hopefully
ignorant and far from tame,--notwithstanding the unnatural profusion
of teaching and thrashing lavished upon us,--getting acquainted with
the animals about us was a never-failing source of wonder and delight.
At first my father, like nearly all the backwoods settlers, bought a
yoke of oxen to do the farm work, and as field after field was
cleared, the number was gradually increased until we had five yoke.
These wise, patient, plodding animals did all the ploughing, logging,
hauling, and hard work of every sort for the first four or five
years, and, never having seen oxen before, we looked at them with the
same eager freshness of conception as we did at the wild animals. We
worked with them, sympathized with them in their rest and toil and
play, and thus learned to know them far better than we should had we
been only trained scientific naturalists. We soon learned that each ox
and cow and calf had individual character. Old white-faced Buck, one
of the second yoke of oxen we owned, was a notably sagacious fellow.
He seemed to reason sometimes almost like ourselves. In the fall we
fed the cattle lots of pumpkins and had to split them open so that
mouthfuls could be readily broken off. But Buck never waited for us to
come to his help. The others, when they were hungry and impatient,
tried to break through the hard rind with their teeth, but seldom with
success if the pumpkin was full grown. Buck never wasted time in this
mumbling, slavering way, but crushed them with his head. He went to
the pile, picked out a good one, like a boy choosing an orange or
apple, rolled it down on to the open ground, deliberately kneeled in
front of it, placed his broad, flat brow on top of it, brought his
weight hard down and crushed it, then quietly arose and went on with
his meal in comfort. Some would call this "instinct," as if so-called
"blind instinct" must necessarily make an ox stand on its head to
break pumpkins when its teeth got sore, or when nobody came with an
axe to split them. Another fine ox showed his skill when hungry by
opening all the fences that stood in his way to the corn-fields.
The humanity we found in them came partly through the expression of
their eyes when tired, their tones of voice when hungry and calling
for food, their patient plodding and pulling in hot weather, their
long-drawn-out sighing breath when exhausted and suffering like
ourselves, and their enjoyment of rest with the same grateful looks as
ours. We recognized their kinship also by their yawning like ourselves
when sleepy and evidently enjoying the same peculiar pleasure at the
roots of their jaws; by the way they stretched themselves in the
morning after a good rest; by learning languages,--Scotch, English,
Irish, French, Dutch,--a smattering of each as required in the
faithful service they so willingly, wisely rendered; by their
intelligent, alert curiosity, manifested in listening to strange
sounds; their love of play; the attachments they made; and their
mourning, long continued, when a companion was killed.
When we went to Portage, our nearest town, about ten or twelve miles
from the farm, it would oftentimes be late before we got back, and in
the summer-time, in sultry, rainy weather, the clouds were full of
sheet lightning which every minute or two would suddenly illumine the
landscape, revealing all its features, the hills and valleys, meadows
and trees, about as fully and clearly as the noonday sunshine; then as
suddenly the glorious light would be quenched, making the darkness
seem denser than before. On such nights the cattle had to find the way
home without any help from us, but they never got off the track, for
they followed it by scent like dogs. Once, father, returning late from
Portage or Kingston, compelled Tom and Jerry, our first oxen, to leave
the dim track, imagining they must be going wrong. At last they
stopped and refused to go farther. Then father unhitched them from the
wagon, took hold of Tom's tail, and was thus led straight to the
shanty. Next morning he set out to seek his wagon and found it on the
brow of a steep hill above an impassable swamp. We learned less from
the cows, because we did not enter so far into their lives, working
with them, suffering heat and cold, hunger and thirst, and almost
deadly weariness with them; but none with natural charity could fail
to sympathize with them in their love for their calves, and to feel
that it in no way differed from the divine mother-love of a woman in
thoughtful, self-sacrificing care; for they would brave every danger,
giving their lives for their offspring. Nor could we fail to
sympathize with their awkward, blunt-nosed baby calves, with such
beautiful, wondering eyes looking out on the world and slowly getting
acquainted with things, all so strange to them, and awkwardly learning
to use their legs, and play and fight.
Before leaving Scotland, father promised us a pony to ride when we got
to America, and we saw to it that this promise was not forgotten. Only
a week or two after our arrival in the woods he bought us a little
Indian pony for thirteen dollars from a store-keeper in Kingston who
had obtained him from a Winnebago or Menominee Indian in trade for
goods. He was a stout handsome bay with long black mane and tail, and,
though he was only two years old, the Indians had already taught him
to carry all sorts of burdens, to stand without being tied, to go
anywhere over all sorts of ground fast or slow, and to jump and swim
and fear nothing,--a truly wonderful creature, strangely different
from shy, skittish, nervous, superstitious civilized beasts. We turned
him loose, and, strange to say, he never ran away from us or refused
to be caught, but behaved as if he had known Scotch boys all his
life; probably because we were about as wild as young Indians.
One day when father happened to have a little leisure, he said, "Noo,
bairns, rin doon the meadow and get your powny and learn to ride him."
So we led him out to a smooth place near an Indian mound back of the
shanty, where father directed us to begin. I mounted for the first
memorable lesson, crossed the mound, and set out at a slow walk along
the wagon-track made in hauling lumber; then father shouted: "Whup him
up, John, whup him up! Make him gallop; gallopin' is easier and better
than walkin' or trottin'." Jack was willing, and away he sped at a
good fast gallop. I managed to keep my balance fairly well by holding
fast to the mane, but could not keep from bumping up and down, for I
was plump and elastic and so was Jack; therefore about half of the
time I was in the air.
After a quarter of a mile or so of this curious transportation, I
cried, "Whoa, Jack!" The wonderful creature seemed to understand
Scotch, for he stopped so suddenly I flew over his head, but he stood
perfectly still as if that flying method of dismounting were the
regular way. Jumping on again, I bumped and bobbed back along the
grassy, flowery track, over the Indian mound, cried, "Whoa, Jack!"
flew over his head, and alighted in father's arms as gracefully as if
it were all intended for circus work.