The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
J >> John Muir >> The Story of My Boyhood and YouthAfter going over the course five or six times in the same free,
picturesque style, I gave place to brother David, whose performances
were much like my own. In a few weeks, however, or a month, we were
taking adventurous rides more than a mile long out to a big meadow
frequented by sandhill cranes, and returning safely with wonderful
stories of the great long-legged birds we had seen, and how on the
whole journey away and back we had fallen off only five or six times.
Gradually we learned to gallop through the woods without roads of any
sort, bareback and without rope or bridle, guiding only by leaning
from side to side or by slight knee pressure. In this free way we used
to amuse ourselves, riding at full speed across a big "kettle" that
was on our farm, without holding on by either mane or tail.
These so-called "kettles" were formed by the melting of large detached
blocks of ice that had been buried in moraine material thousands of
years ago when the ice-sheet that covered all this region was
receding. As the buried ice melted, of course the moraine material
above and about it fell in, forming hopper-shaped hollows, while the
grass growing on their sides and around them prevented the rain and
wind from filling them up. The one we performed in was perhaps seventy
or eighty feet wide and twenty or thirty feet deep; and without a
saddle or hold of any kind it was not easy to keep from slipping over
Jack's head in diving into it, or over his tail climbing out. This was
fine sport on the long summer Sundays when we were able to steal away
before meeting-time without being seen. We got very warm and red at
it, and oftentimes poor Jack, dripping with sweat like his riders,
seemed to have been boiled in that kettle.
In Scotland we had often been admonished to be bold, and this advice
we passed on to Jack, who had already got many a wild lesson from
Indian boys. Once, when teaching him to jump muddy streams, I made him
try the creek in our meadow at a place where it is about twelve feet
wide. He jumped bravely enough, but came down with a grand splash
hardly more than halfway over. The water was only about a foot in
depth, but the black vegetable mud half afloat was unfathomable. I
managed to wallow ashore, but poor Jack sank deeper and deeper until
only his head was visible in the black abyss, and his Indian fortitude
was desperately tried. His foundering so suddenly in the treacherous
gulf recalled the story of the Abbot of Aberbrothok's bell, which went
down with a gurgling sound while bubbles rose and burst around. I had
to go to father for help. He tied a long hemp rope brought from
Scotland around Jack's neck, and Tom and Jerry seemed to have all they
could do to pull him out. After which I got a solemn scolding for
asking the "puir beast to jump intil sic a saft bottomless place."
We moved into our frame house in the fall, when mother with the rest
of the family arrived from Scotland, and, when the winter snow began
to fly, the bur-oak shanty was made into a stable for Jack. Father
told us that good meadow hay was all he required, but we fed him corn,
lots of it, and he grew very frisky and fat. About the middle of
winter his long hair was full of dust and, as we thought, required
washing. So, without taking the frosty weather into account, we gave
him a thorough soap and water scouring, and as we failed to get him
rubbed dry, a row of icicles formed under his belly. Father happened
to see him in this condition and angrily asked what we had been about.
We said Jack was dirty and we had washed him to make him healthy.
He told us we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, "soaking the puir
beast in cauld water at this time o' year"; that when we wanted to
clean him we should have sense enough to use the brush and curry-comb.
[Illustration: OUR FIRST WISCONSIN HOME
On the hill near the shanty built in the summer of 1849]
In summer Dave or I had to ride after the cows every evening about
sundown, and Jack got so accustomed to bringing in the drove that when
we happened to be a few minutes late he used to go off alone at the
regular time and bring them home at a gallop. It used to make father
very angry to see Jack chasing the cows like a shepherd dog, running
from one to the other and giving each a bite on the rump to keep them
on the run, flying before him as if pursued by wolves. Father would
declare at times that the wicked beast had the deevil in him and would
be the death of the cattle. The corral and barn were just at the foot
of a hill, and he made a great display of the drove on the home
stretch as they walloped down that hill with their tails on end.
One evening when the pell-mell Wild West show was at its wildest, it
made father so extravagantly mad that he ordered me to "Shoot Jack!" I
went to the house and brought the gun, suffering most horrible mental
anguish, such as I suppose unhappy Abraham felt when commanded to slay
Isaac. Jack's life was spared, however, though I can't tell what
finally became of him. I wish I could. After father bought a span of
work horses he was sold to a man who said he was going to ride him
across the plains to California. We had him, I think, some five or six
years. He was the stoutest, gentlest, bravest little horse I ever saw.
He never seemed tired, could canter all day with a man about as heavy
as himself on his back, and feared nothing. Once fifty or sixty pounds
of beef that was tied on his back slid over his shoulders along his
neck and weighed down his head to the ground, fairly anchoring him;
but he stood patient and still for half an hour or so without making
the slightest struggle to free himself, while I was away getting help
to untie the pack-rope and set the load back in its place.
As I was the eldest boy I had the care of our first span of work
horses. Their names were Nob and Nell. Nob was very intelligent, and
even affectionate, and could learn almost anything. Nell was entirely
different; balky and stubborn, though we managed to teach her a good
many circus tricks; but she never seemed to like to play with us in
anything like an affectionate way as Nob did. We turned them out one
day into the pasture, and an Indian, hiding in the brush that had
sprung up after the grass fires had been kept out, managed to catch
Nob, tied a rope to her jaw for a bridle, rode her to Green Lake,
about thirty or forty miles away, and tried to sell her for fifteen
dollars. All our hearts were sore, as if one of the family had been
lost. We hunted everywhere and could not at first imagine what had
become of her. We discovered her track where the fence was broken
down, and, following it for a few miles, made sure the track was
Nob's; and a neighbor told us he had seen an Indian riding fast
through the woods on a horse that looked like Nob. But we could find
no farther trace of her until a month or two after she was lost, and
we had given up hope of ever seeing her again. Then we learned that
she had been taken from an Indian by a farmer at Green Lake because he
saw that she had been shod and had worked in harness. So when the
Indian tried to sell her the farmer said: "You are a thief. That is a
white man's horse. You stole her."
"No," said the Indian, "I brought her from Prairie du Chien and she
has always been mine."
The man, pointing to her feet and the marks of the harness, said: "You
are lying. I will take that horse away from you and put her in my
pasture, and if you come near it I will set the dogs on you." Then he
advertised her. One of our neighbors happened to see the advertisement
and brought us the glad news, and great was our rejoicing when father
brought her home. That Indian must have treated her with terrible
cruelty, for when I was riding her through the pasture several years
afterward, looking for another horse that we wanted to catch, as we
approached the place where she had been captured she stood stock still
gazing through the bushes, fearing the Indian might still be hiding
there ready to spring; and she was so excited that she trembled, and
her heartbeats were so loud that I could hear them distinctly as I sat
on her back, _boomp_, _boomp_, _boomp_, like the drumming of a
partridge. So vividly had she remembered her terrible experiences.
She was a great pet and favorite with the whole family, quickly
learned playful tricks, came running when we called, seemed to know
everything we said to her, and had the utmost confidence in our
friendly kindness.
We used to cut and shock and husk the Indian corn in the fall, until a
keen Yankee stopped overnight at our house and among other
labor-saving notions convinced father that it was better to let it
stand, and husk it at his leisure during the winter, then turn in the
cattle to eat the leaves and trample down the stalks, so that they
could be ploughed under in the spring. In this winter method each of
us took two rows and husked into baskets, and emptied the corn on the
ground in piles of fifteen to twenty basketfuls, then loaded it into
the wagon to be hauled to the crib. This was cold, painful work, the
temperature being oftentimes far below zero and the ground covered
with dry, frosty snow, giving rise to miserable crops of chilblains
and frosted fingers,--a sad change from the merry Indian-summer
husking, when the big yellow pumpkins covered the cleared
fields;--golden corn, golden pumpkins, gathered in the hazy golden
weather. Sad change, indeed, but we occasionally got some fun out of
the nipping, shivery work from hungry prairie chickens, and squirrels
and mice that came about us.
The piles of corn were often left in the field several days, and while
loading them into the wagon we usually found field mice in
them,--big, blunt-nosed, strong-scented fellows that we were taught to
kill just because they nibbled a few grains of corn. I used to hold
one while it was still warm, up to Nob's nose for the fun of seeing
her make faces and snort at the smell of it; and I would say: "Here,
Nob," as if offering her a lump of sugar. One day I offered her an
extra fine, fat, plump specimen, something like a little woodchuck, or
muskrat, and to my astonishment, after smelling it curiously and
doubtfully, as if wondering what the gift might be, and rubbing it
back and forth in the palm of my hand with her upper lip, she
deliberately took it into her mouth, crunched and munched and chewed
it fine and swallowed it, bones, teeth, head, tail, everything. Not a
single hair of that mouse was wasted. When she was chewing it she
nodded and grunted, as though critically tasting and relishing it.
My father was a steadfast enthusiast on religious matters, and, of
course, attended almost every sort of church-meeting, especially
revival meetings. They were occasionally held in summer, but mostly
in winter when the sleighing was good and plenty of time available.
One hot summer day father drove Nob to Portage and back, twenty-four
miles over a sandy road. It was a hot, hard, sultry day's work, and
she had evidently been over-driven in order to get home in time for
one of these meetings. I shall never forget how tired and wilted she
looked that evening when I unhitched her; how she drooped in her
stall, too tired to eat or even to lie down. Next morning it was plain
that her lungs were inflamed; all the dreadful symptoms were just the
same as my own when I had pneumonia. Father sent for a Methodist
minister, a very energetic, resourceful man, who was a blacksmith,
farmer, butcher, and horse-doctor as well as minister; but all his
gifts and skill were of no avail. Nob was doomed. We bathed her head
and tried to get her to eat something, but she couldn't eat, and in
about a couple of weeks we turned her loose to let her come around the
house and see us in the weary suffering and loneliness of the shadow
of death. She tried to follow us children, so long her friends and
workmates and playmates. It was awfully touching. She had several
hemorrhages, and in the forenoon of her last day, after she had had
one of her dreadful spells of bleeding and gasping for breath, she
came to me trembling, with beseeching, heartbreaking looks, and after
I had bathed her head and tried to soothe and pet her, she lay down
and gasped and died. All the family gathered about her, weeping, with
aching hearts. Then dust to dust.
She was the most faithful, intelligent, playful, affectionate,
human-like horse I ever knew, and she won all our hearts. Of the many
advantages of farm life for boys one of the greatest is the gaining a
real knowledge of animals as fellow-mortals, learning to respect them
and love them, and even to win some of their love. Thus godlike
sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of
churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless
doctrine is taught that animals have neither mind nor soul, have no
rights that we are bound to respect, and were made only for man, to be
petted, spoiled, slaughtered, or enslaved.
At first we were afraid of snakes, but soon learned that most of them
were harmless. The only venomous species seen on our farm were the
rattlesnake and the copperhead, one of each. David saw the rattler,
and we both saw the copperhead. One day, when my brother came in from
his work, he reported that he had seen a snake that made a queer buzzy
noise with its tail. This was the only rattlesnake seen on our farm,
though we heard of them being common on limestone hills eight or ten
miles distant. We discovered the copperhead when we were ploughing,
and we saw and felt at the first long, fixed, half-charmed, admiring
stare at him that he was an awfully dangerous fellow. Every fibre of
his strong, lithe, quivering body, his burnished copper-colored head,
and above all his fierce, able eyes, seemed to be overflowing full of
deadly power, and bade us beware. And yet it is only fair to say that
this terrible, beautiful reptile showed no disposition to hurt us
until we threw clods at him and tried to head him off from a log fence
into which he was trying to escape. We were barefooted and of course
afraid to let him get very near, while we vainly battered him with the
loose sandy clods of the freshly ploughed field to hold him back until
we could get a stick. Looking us in the eyes after a moment's pause,
he probably saw we were afraid, and he came right straight at us,
snapping and looking terrible, drove us out of his way, and won his
fight.
Out on the open sandy hills there were a good many thick burly blow
snakes, the kind that puff themselves up and hiss. Our Yankee declared
that their breath was very poisonous and that we must not go near
them. A handsome ringed species common in damp, shady places was, he
told us, the most wonderful of all the snakes, for if chopped into
pieces, however small, the fragments would wriggle themselves together
again, and the restored snake would go on about its business as if
nothing had happened. The commonest kinds were the striped slender
species of the meadows and streams, good swimmers, that lived mostly
on frogs.
Once I observed one of the larger ones, about two feet long, pursuing
a frog in our meadow, and it was wonderful to see how fast the
legless, footless, wingless, finless hunter could run. The frog, of
course, knew its enemy and was making desperate efforts to escape to
the water and hide in the marsh mud. He was a fine, sleek yellow
muscular fellow and was springing over the tall grass in wide-arching
jumps. The green-striped snake, gliding swiftly and steadily, was
keeping the frog in sight and, had I not interfered, would probably
have tired out the poor jumper. Then, perhaps, while digesting and
enjoying his meal, the happy snake would himself be swallowed frog and
all by a hawk. Again, to our astonishment, the small specimens were
attacked by our hens. They pursued and pecked away at them until they
killed and devoured them, oftentimes quarreling over the division of
the spoil, though it was not easily divided.
We watched the habits of the swift-darting dragonflies, wild bees,
butterflies, wasps, beetles, etc., and soon learned to discriminate
between those that might be safely handled and the pinching or
stinging species. But of all our wild neighbors the mosquitoes were
the first with which we became very intimately acquainted.
The beautiful meadow lying warm in the spring sunshine, outspread
between our lily-rimmed lake and the hill-slope that our shanty stood
on, sent forth thirsty swarms of the little gray, speckledy, singing,
stinging pests; and how tellingly they introduced themselves! Of
little avail were the smudges that we made on muggy evenings to drive
them away; and amid the many lessons which they insisted upon teaching
us we wondered more and more at the extent of their knowledge,
especially that in their tiny, flimsy bodies room could be found for
such cunning palates. They would drink their fill from brown, smoky
Indians, or from old white folk flavored with tobacco and whiskey,
when no better could be had. But the surpassing fineness of their
taste was best manifested by their enthusiastic appreciation of boys
full of lively red blood, and of girls in full bloom fresh from cool
Scotland or England. On these it was pleasant to witness their
enjoyment as they feasted. Indians, we were told, believed that if
they were brave fighters they would go after death to a happy country
abounding in game, where there were no mosquitoes and no cowards. For
cowards were driven away by themselves to a miserable country where
there was no game fit to eat, and where the sky was always dark with
huge gnats and mosquitoes as big as pigeons.
We were great admirers of the little black water-bugs. Their whole
lives seemed to be play, skimming, swimming, swirling, and waltzing
together in little groups on the edge of the lake and in the meadow
springs, dancing to music we never could hear. The long-legged
skaters, too, seemed wonderful fellows, shuffling about on top of the
water, with air-bubbles like little bladders tangled under their hairy
feet; and we often wished that we also might be shod in the same way
to enable us to skate on the lake in summer as well as in icy winter.
Not less wonderful were the boatmen, swimming on their backs, pulling
themselves along with a pair of oar-like legs.
Great was the delight of brothers David and Daniel and myself when
father gave us a few pine boards for a boat, and it was a memorable
day when we got that boat built and launched into the lake. Never
shall I forget our first sail over the gradually deepening water, the
sunbeams pouring through it revealing the strange plants covering the
bottom, and the fishes coming about us, staring and wondering as if
the boat were a monstrous strange fish.
The water was so clear that it was almost invisible, and when we
floated slowly out over the plants and fishes, we seemed to be
miraculously sustained in the air while silently exploring a veritable
fairyland.
We always had to work hard, but if we worked still harder we were
occasionally allowed a little spell in the long summer evenings about
sundown to fish, and on Sundays an hour or two to sail quietly without
fishing-rod or gun when the lake was calm. Therefore we gradually
learned something about its inhabitants,--pickerel, sunfish, black
bass, perch, shiners, pumpkin-seeds, ducks, loons, turtles, muskrats,
etc. We saw the sunfishes making their nests in little openings in the
rushes where the water was only a few feet deep, ploughing up and
shoving away the soft gray mud with their noses, like pigs, forming
round bowls five or six inches in depth and about two feet in
diameter, in which their eggs were deposited. And with what beautiful,
unweariable devotion they watched and hovered over them and chased
away prowling spawn-eating enemies that ventured within a rod or two
of the precious nest!
The pickerel is a savage fish endowed with marvelous strength and
speed. It lies in wait for its prey on the bottom, perfectly
motionless like a waterlogged stick, watching everything that moves,
with fierce, hungry eyes. Oftentimes when we were fishing for some
other kinds over the edge of the boat, a pickerel that we had not
noticed would come like a bolt of lightning and seize the fish we had
caught before we could get it into the boat. The very first pickerel
that I ever caught jumped into the air to seize a small fish dangling
on my line, and, missing its aim, fell plump into the boat as if it
had dropped from the sky.
Some of our neighbors fished for pickerel through the ice in
midwinter. They usually drove a wagon out on the lake, set a large
number of lines baited with live minnows, hung a loop of the lines
over a small bush planted at the side of each hole, and watched to see
the loops pulled off when a fish had taken the bait. Large quantities
of pickerel were often caught in this cruel way.
Our beautiful lake, named Fountain Lake by father, but Muir's Lake by
the neighbors, is one of the many small glacier lakes that adorn the
Wisconsin landscapes. It is fed by twenty or thirty meadow springs, is
about half a mile long, half as wide, and surrounded by low
finely-modeled hills dotted with oak and hickory, and meadows full of
grasses and sedges and many beautiful orchids and ferns. First there
is a zone of green, shining rushes, and just beyond the rushes a zone
of white and orange water-lilies fifty or sixty feet wide forming a
magnificent border. On bright days, when the lake was rippled by a
breeze, the lilies and sun-spangles danced together in radiant beauty,
and it became difficult to discriminate between them.
On Sundays, after or before chores and sermons and Bible-lessons, we
drifted about on the lake for hours, especially in lily time, getting
finest lessons and sermons from the water and flowers, ducks, fishes,
and muskrats. In particular we took Christ's advice and devoutly
"considered the lilies"--how they grow up in beauty out of gray lime
mud, and ride gloriously among the breezy sun-spangles. On our way
home we gathered grand bouquets of them to be kept fresh all the week.
No flower was hailed with greater wonder and admiration by the
European settlers in general--Scotch, English, and Irish--than this
white water-lily (_Nymphaea odorata_). It is a magnificent plant, queen
of the inland waters, pure white, three or four inches in diameter,
the most beautiful, sumptuous, and deliciously fragrant of all our
Wisconsin flowers. No lily garden in civilization we had ever seen
could compare with our lake garden.
The next most admirable flower in the estimation of settlers in this
part of the new world was the pasque-flower or wind-flower (_Anemone
patens_ var. _Nuttalliana_). It is the very first to appear in the
spring, covering the cold gray-black ground with cheery blossoms.
Before the axe or plough had touched the "oak openings" of Wisconsin,
they were swept by running fires almost every autumn after the grass
became dry. If from any cause, such as early snowstorms or late rains,
they happened to escape the autumn fire besom, they were likely to be
burned in the spring after the snow melted. But whether burned in the
spring or fall, ashes and bits of charred twigs and grass stems made
the whole country look dismal. Then, before a single grass-blade had
sprouted, a hopeful multitude of large hairy, silky buds about as
thick as one's thumb came to light, pushing up through the black and
gray ashes and cinders, and before these buds were fairly free from
the ground they opened wide and displayed purple blossoms about two
inches in diameter, giving beauty for ashes in glorious abundance.
Instead of remaining in the ground waiting for warm weather and
companions, this admirable plant seemed to be in haste to rise and
cheer the desolate landscape. Then at its leisure, after other plants
had come to its help, it spread its leaves and grew up to a height of
about two or three feet. The spreading leaves formed a whorl on the
ground, and another about the middle of the stem as an involucre, and
on the top of the stem the silky, hairy long-tailed seeds formed a
head like a second flower. A little church was established among the
earlier settlers and the meetings at first were held in our house.
After working hard all the week it was difficult for boys to sit still
through long sermons without falling asleep, especially in warm
weather. In this drowsy trouble the charming anemone came to our help.
A pocketful of the pungent seeds industriously nibbled while the
discourses were at their dullest kept us awake and filled our minds
with flowers.
The next great flower wonders on which we lavished admiration, not
only for beauty of color and size, but for their curious shapes, were
the cypripediums, called "lady's-slippers" or "Indian moccasins." They
were so different from the familiar flowers of old Scotland. Several
species grew in our meadow and on shady hillsides,--yellow,
rose-colored, and some nearly white, an inch or more in diameter, and
shaped exactly like Indian moccasins. They caught the eye of all the
European settlers and made them gaze and wonder like children. And so
did calopogon, pogonia, spiranthes, and many other fine plant people
that lived in our meadow. The beautiful Turk's-turban (_Lilium
superbum_) growing on stream-banks was rare in our neighborhood, but
the orange lily grew in abundance on dry ground beneath the bur-oaks
and often brought Aunt Ray's lily-bed in Scotland to mind. The
butterfly-weed, with its brilliant scarlet flowers, attracted flocks
of butterflies and made fine masses of color. With autumn came a
glorious abundance and variety of asters, those beautiful plant stars,
together with goldenrods, sunflowers, daisies, and liatris of
different species, while around the shady margin of the meadow many
ferns in beds and vaselike groups spread their beautiful fronds,
especially the osmundas (_O. claytoniana, regalis_, and _cinnamomea_)
and the sensitive and ostrich ferns.