The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
J >> John Muir >> The Story of My Boyhood and YouthEarly in summer we feasted on strawberries, that grew in rich beds
beneath the meadow grasses and sedges as well as in the dry sunny
woods. And in different bogs and marshes, and around their borders on
our own farm and along the Fox River, we found dewberries and
cranberries, and a glorious profusion of huckleberries, the
fountain-heads of pies of wondrous taste and size, colored in the
heart like sunsets. Nor were we slow to discover the value of the
hickory trees yielding both sugar and nuts. We carefully counted the
different kinds on our farm, and every morning when we could steal a
few minutes before breakfast after doing the chores, we visited the
trees that had been wounded by the axe, to scrape off and enjoy the
thick white delicious syrup that exuded from them, and gathered the
nuts as they fell in the mellow Indian summer, making haste to get a
fair share with the sapsuckers and squirrels. The hickory makes fine
masses of color in the fall, every leaf a flower, but it was the sweet
sap and sweet nuts that first interested us. No harvest in the
Wisconsin woods was ever gathered with more pleasure and care. Also,
to our delight, we found plenty of hazelnuts, and in a few places
abundance of wild apples. They were desperately sour, and we used to
fill our pockets with them and dare each other to eat one without
making a face,--no easy feat.
One hot summer day father told us that we ought to learn to swim. This
was one of the most interesting suggestions he had ever offered, but
precious little time was allowed for trips to the lake, and he seldom
tried to show us how. "Go to the frogs," he said, "and they will give
you all the lessons you need. Watch their arms and legs and see how
smoothly they kick themselves along and dive and come up. When you
want to dive, keep your arms by your side or over your head, and kick,
and when you want to come up, let your legs drag and paddle with your
hands."
We found a little basin among the rushes at the south end of the lake,
about waist-deep and a rod or two wide, shaped like a sunfish's nest.
Here we kicked and plashed for many a lesson, faithfully trying to
imitate frogs; but the smooth, comfortable sliding gait of our
amphibious teachers seemed hopelessly hard to learn. When we tried to
kick frog-fashion, down went our heads as if weighted with lead the
moment our feet left the ground. One day it occurred to me to hold my
breath as long as I could and let my head sink as far as it liked
without paying any attention to it, and try to swim under the water
instead of on the surface. This method was a great success, for at the
very first trial I managed to cross the basin without touching bottom,
and soon learned the use of my limbs. Then, of course, swimming with
my head above water soon became so easy that it seemed perfectly
natural. David tried the plan with the same success. Then we began to
count the number of times that we could swim around the basin without
stopping to rest, and after twenty or thirty rounds failed to tire us,
we proudly thought that a little more practice would make us about as
amphibious as frogs.
On the fourth of July of this swimming year one of the Lawson boys
came to visit us, and we went down to the lake to spend the great warm
day with the fishes and ducks and turtles. After gliding about on the
smooth mirror water, telling stories and enjoying the company of the
happy creatures about us, we rowed to our bathing-pool, and David and
I went in for a swim, while our companion fished from the boat a
little way out beyond the rushes. After a few turns in the pool, it
occurred to me that it was now about time to try deep water. Swimming
through the thick growth of rushes and lilies was somewhat dangerous,
especially for a beginner, because one's arms and legs might be
entangled among the long, limber stems; nevertheless I ventured and
struck out boldly enough for the boat, where the water was twenty or
thirty feet deep. When I reached the end of the little skiff I raised
my right hand to take hold of it to surprise Lawson, whose back was
toward me and who was not aware of my approach; but I failed to reach
high enough, and, of course, the weight of my arm and the stroke
against the overleaning stern of the boat shoved me down and I sank,
struggling, frightened and confused. As soon as my feet touched the
bottom, I slowly rose to the surface, but before I could get breath
enough to call for help, sank back again and lost all control of
myself. After sinking and rising I don't know how many times, some
water got into my lungs and I began to drown. Then suddenly my mind
seemed to clear. I remembered that I could swim under water, and,
making a desperate struggle toward the shore, I reached a point where
with my toes on the bottom I got my mouth above the surface, gasped
for help, and was pulled into the boat.
This humiliating accident spoiled the day, and we all agreed to keep
it a profound secret. My sister Sarah had heard my cry for help, and
on our arrival at the house inquired what had happened. "Were you
drowning, John? I heard you cry you couldna get oot." Lawson made
haste to reply, "Oh, no! He was juist haverin (making fun)."
I was very much ashamed of myself, and at night, after calmly
reviewing the affair, concluded that there had been no reasonable
cause for the accident, and that I ought to punish myself for so
nearly losing my life from unmanly fear. Accordingly at the very first
opportunity, I stole away to the lake by myself, got into my boat, and
instead of going back to the old swimming-bowl for further practice,
or to try to do sanely and well what I had so ignominiously failed to
do in my first adventure, that is, to swim out through the rushes and
lilies, I rowed directly out to the middle of the lake, stripped,
stood up on the seat in the stern, and with grim deliberation took a
header and dove straight down thirty or forty feet, turned easily,
and, letting my feet drag, paddled straight to the surface with my
hands as father had at first directed me to do. I then swam round the
boat, glorying in my suddenly acquired confidence and victory over
myself, climbed into it, and dived again, with the same triumphant
success. I think I went down four or five times, and each time as I
made the dive-spring shouted aloud, "Take that!" feeling that I was
getting most gloriously even with myself.
Never again from that day to this have I lost control of myself in
water. If suddenly thrown overboard at sea in the dark, or even while
asleep, I think I would immediately right myself in a way some would
call "instinct," rise among the waves, catch my breath, and try to plan
what would better be done. Never was victory over self more complete. I
have been a good swimmer ever since. At a slow gait I think I could
swim all day in smooth water moderate in temperature. When I was a
student at Madison, I used to go on long swimming-journeys, called
exploring expeditions, along the south shore of Lake Mendota, on
Saturdays, sometimes alone, sometimes with another amphibious explorer
by the name of Fuller.
My adventures in Fountain Lake call to mind the story of a boy who in
climbing a tree to rob a crow's nest fell and broke his leg, but as
soon as it healed compelled himself to climb to the top of the tree he
had fallen from.
Like Scotch children in general we were taught grim self-denial, in
season and out of season, to mortify the flesh, keep our bodies in
subjection to Bible laws, and mercilessly punish ourselves for every
fault imagined or committed. A little boy, while helping his sister to
drive home the cows, happened to use a forbidden word. "I'll have to
tell fayther on ye," said the horrified sister. "I'll tell him that ye
said a bad word." "Weel," said the boy, by way of excuse, "I couldna
help the word comin' into me, and it's na waur to speak it oot than to
let it rin through ye."
A Scotch fiddler playing at a wedding drank so much whiskey that on
the way home he fell by the roadside. In the morning he was ashamed
and angry and determined to punish himself. Making haste to the house
of a friend, a gamekeeper, he called him out, and requested the loan
of a gun. The alarmed gamekeeper, not liking the fiddler's looks and
voice, anxiously inquired what he was going to do with it. "Surely,"
said he, "you're no gan to shoot yoursel." "No-o," with characteristic
candor replied the penitent fiddler, "I dinna think that I'll juist
exactly kill mysel, but I'm gaun to tak a dander doon the burn (brook)
wi' the gun and gie mysel a deevil o' a fleg (fright)."
One calm summer evening a red-headed woodpecker was drowned in our
lake. The accident happened at the south end, opposite our memorable
swimming-hole, a few rods from the place where I came so near being
drowned years before. I had returned to the old home during a summer
vacation of the State University, and, having made a beginning in
botany, I was, of course, full of enthusiasm and ran eagerly to my
beloved pogonia, calopogon, and cypripedium gardens, osmunda
ferneries, and the lake lilies and pitcher-plants. A little before
sundown the day-breeze died away, and the lake, reflecting the wooded
hills like a mirror, was dimpled and dotted and streaked here and
there where fishes and turtles were poking out their heads and
muskrats were sculling themselves along with their flat tails making
glittering tracks. After lingering a while, dreamily recalling the
old, hard, half-happy days, and watching my favorite red-headed
woodpeckers pursuing moths like regular flycatchers, I swam out
through the rushes and up the middle of the lake to the north end and
back, gliding slowly, looking about me, enjoying the scenery as I
would in a saunter along the shore, and studying the habits of the
animals as they were explained and recorded on the smooth glassy
water.
[Illustration: CLOCK. THE STAR HAND RISING AND SETTING WITH THE SUN
ALL THE YEAR
Invented by the author in his boyhood]
On the way back, when I was within a hundred rods or so of the end of
my voyage, I noticed a peculiar plashing disturbance that could not, I
thought, be made by a jumping fish or any other inhabitant of the
lake; for instead of low regular out-circling ripples such as are made
by the popping up of a head, or like those raised by the quick splash
of a leaping fish, or diving loon or muskrat, a continuous struggle
was kept up for several minutes ere the outspreading, interfering
ring-waves began to die away. Swimming hastily to the spot to try to
discover what had happened, I found one of my woodpeckers floating
motionless with outspread wings. All was over. Had I been a minute or
two earlier, I might have saved him. He had glanced on the water I
suppose in pursuit of a moth, was unable to rise from it, and died
struggling, as I nearly did at this same spot. Like me he seemed to
have lost his mind in blind confusion and fear. The water was warm,
and had he kept still with his head a little above the surface, he
would sooner or later have been wafted ashore. The best aimed flights
of birds and man "gang aft agley," but this was the first case I had
witnessed of a bird losing its life by drowning.
Doubtless accidents to animals are far more common than is generally
known. I have seen quails killed by flying against our house when
suddenly startled. Some birds get entangled in hairs of their own
nests and die. Once I found a poor snipe in our meadow that was unable
to fly on account of difficult egg-birth. Pitying the poor mother, I
picked her up out of the grass and helped her as gently as I could,
and as soon as the egg was born she flew gladly away. Oftentimes I
have thought it strange that one could walk through the woods and
mountains and plains for years without seeing a single blood-spot.
Most wild animals get into the world and out of it without being
noticed. Nevertheless we at last sadly learn that they are all subject
to the vicissitudes of fortune like ourselves. Many birds lose their
lives in storms. I remember a particularly severe Wisconsin winter,
when the temperature was many degrees below zero and the snow was
deep, preventing the quail, which feed on the ground, from getting
anything like enough of food, as was pitifully shown by a flock I
found on our farm frozen solid in a thicket of oak sprouts. They were
in a circle about a foot wide, with their heads outward, packed close
together for warmth. Yet all had died without a struggle, perhaps more
from starvation than frost. Many small birds lose their lives in the
storms of early spring, or even summer. One mild spring morning I
picked up more than a score out of the grass and flowers, most of them
darling singers that had perished in a sudden storm of sleety rain and
hail.
In a hollow at the foot of an oak tree that I had chopped down one
cold winter day, I found a poor ground squirrel frozen solid in its
snug grassy nest, in the middle of a store of nearly a peck of wheat
it had carefully gathered. I carried it home and gradually thawed and
warmed it in the kitchen, hoping it would come to life like a pickerel
I caught in our lake through a hole in the ice, which, after being
frozen as hard as a bone and thawed at the fireside, squirmed itself
out of the grasp of the cook when she began to scrape it, bounced off
the table, and danced about on the floor, making wonderful springy
jumps as if trying to find its way back home to the lake. But for the
poor spermophile nothing I could do in the way of revival was of any
avail. Its life had passed away without the slightest struggle, as it
lay asleep curled up like a ball, with its tail wrapped about it.
IV
A PARADISE OF BIRDS
Bird Favorites--The Prairie Chickens--Water-Fowl--A Loon on
the Defensive--Passenger Pigeons.
The Wisconsin oak openings were a summer paradise for song birds, and
a fine place to get acquainted with them; for the trees stood wide
apart, allowing one to see the happy homeseekers as they arrived in
the spring, their mating, nest-building, the brooding and feeding of
the young, and, after they were full-fledged and strong, to see all
the families of the neighborhood gathering and getting ready to leave
in the fall. Excepting the geese and ducks and pigeons nearly all our
summer birds arrived singly or in small draggled flocks, but when
frost and falling leaves brought their winter homes to mind they
assembled in large flocks on dead or leafless trees by the side of a
meadow or field, perhaps to get acquainted and talk the thing over.
Some species held regular daily meetings for several weeks before
finally setting forth on their long southern journeys. Strange to say,
we never saw them start. Some morning we would find them gone.
Doubtless they migrated in the night time. Comparatively few species
remained all winter, the nuthatch, chickadee, owl, prairie chicken,
quail, and a few stragglers from the main flocks of ducks, jays,
hawks, and bluebirds. Only after the country was settled did either
jays or bluebirds winter with us.
The brave, frost-defying chickadees and nuthatches stayed all the year
wholly independent of farms and man's food and affairs.
With the first hints of spring came the brave little bluebirds,
darling singers as blue as the best sky, and of course we all loved
them. Their rich, crispy warbling is perfectly delightful, soothing
and cheering, sweet and whisperingly low, Nature's fine love touches,
every note going straight home into one's heart. And withal they are
hardy and brave, fearless fighters in defense of home. When we boys
approached their knot-hole nests, the bold little fellows kept
scolding and diving at us and tried to strike us in the face, and
oftentimes we were afraid they would prick our eyes. But the boldness
of the little housekeepers only made us love them the more.
None of the bird people of Wisconsin welcomed us more heartily than
the common robin. Far from showing alarm at the coming of settlers
into their native woods, they reared their young around our gardens as
if they liked us, and how heartily we admired the beauty and fine
manners of these graceful birds and their loud cheery song of _Fear
not, fear not, cheer up, cheer up_. It was easy to love them for they
reminded us of the robin redbreast of Scotland. Like the bluebirds
they dared every danger in defense of home, and we often wondered that
birds so gentle could be so bold and that sweet-voiced singers could
so fiercely fight and scold.
Of all the great singers that sweeten Wisconsin one of the best known
and best loved is the brown thrush or thrasher, strong and able
without being familiar, and easily seen and heard. Rosy purple
evenings after thundershowers are the favorite song-times, when the
winds have died away and the steaming ground and the leaves and
flowers fill the air with fragrance. Then the male makes haste to the
topmost spray of an oak tree and sings loud and clear with delightful
enthusiasm until sundown, mostly I suppose for his mate sitting on the
precious eggs in a brush heap. And how faithful and watchful and
daring he is! Woe to the snake or squirrel that ventured to go nigh
the nest! We often saw him diving on them, pecking them about the head
and driving them away as bravely as the kingbird drives away hawks.
Their rich and varied strains make the air fairly quiver. We boys
often tried to interpret the wild ringing melody and put it into
words.
After the arrival of the thrushes came the bobolinks, gushing,
gurgling, inexhaustible fountains of song, pouring forth floods of
sweet notes over the broad Fox River meadows in wonderful variety and
volume, crowded and mixed beyond description, as they hovered on
quivering wings above their hidden nests in the grass. It seemed
marvelous to us that birds so moderate in size could hold so much of
this wonderful song stuff. Each one of them poured forth music enough
for a whole flock, singing as if its whole body, feathers and all,
were made up of music, flowing, glowing, bubbling melody
interpenetrated here and there with small scintillating prickles and
spicules. We never became so intimately acquainted with the bobolinks
as with the thrushes, for they lived far out on the broad Fox River
meadows, while the thrushes sang on the tree-tops around every home.
The bobolinks were among the first of our great singers to leave us in
the fall, going apparently direct to the rice-fields of the Southern
States, where they grew fat and were slaughtered in countless numbers
for food. Sad fate for singers so purely divine.
One of the gayest of the singers is the redwing blackbird. In the
spring, when his scarlet epaulets shine brightest, and his little
modest gray wife is sitting on the nest, built on rushes in a swamp,
he sits on a nearby oak and devotedly sings almost all day. His rich
simple strain is _baumpalee_, _baumpalee_, or _bobalee_ as interpreted
by some. In summer, after nesting cares are over, they assemble in
flocks of hundreds and thousands to feast on Indian corn when it is in
the milk. Scattering over a field, each selects an ear, strips the
husk down far enough to lay bare an inch or two of the end of it,
enjoys an exhilarating feast, and after all are full they rise
simultaneously with a quick birr of wings like an old-fashioned church
congregation fluttering to their feet when the minister after giving
out the hymn says, "Let the congregation arise and sing." Alighting on
nearby trees, they sing with a hearty vengeance, bursting out without
any puttering prelude in gloriously glad concert, hundreds or
thousands of exulting voices with sweet gurgling _baumpalees_ mingled
with chippy vibrant and exploding globules of musical notes, making a
most enthusiastic, indescribable joy-song, a combination unlike
anything to be heard elsewhere in the bird kingdom; something like
bagpipes, flutes, violins, pianos, and human-like voices all bursting
and bubbling at once. Then suddenly some one of the joyful
congregation shouts Chirr! Chirr! and all stop as if shot.
The sweet-voiced meadowlark with its placid, simple song of
_peery-eery-odical_ was another favorite, and we soon learned to
admire the Baltimore oriole and its wonderful hanging nests, and the
scarlet tanager glowing like fire amid the green leaves.
But no singer of them all got farther into our hearts than the little
speckle-breasted song sparrow, one of the first to arrive and begin
nest-building and singing. The richness, sweetness, and pathos of this
small darling's song as he sat on a low bush often brought tears to
our eyes.
The little cheery, modest chickadee midget, loved by every innocent
boy and girl, man and woman, and by many not altogether innocent, was
one of the first of the birds to attract our attention, drawing nearer
and nearer to us as the winter advanced, bravely singing his faint
silvery, lisping, tinkling notes ending with a bright _dee, dee, dee_!
however frosty the weather.
The nuthatches, who also stayed all winter with us, were favorites
with us boys. We loved to watch them as they traced the bark-furrows
of the oaks and hickories head downward, deftly flicking off loose
scales and splinters in search of insects, and braving the coldest
weather as if their little sparks of life were as safely warm in
winter as in summer, unquenchable by the severest frost. With the help
of the chickadees they made a delightful stir in the solemn winter
days, and when we were out chopping we never ceased to wonder how
their slender naked toes could be kept warm when our own were so
painfully frosted though clad in thick socks and boots. And we
wondered and admired the more when we thought of the little midgets
sleeping in knot-holes when the temperature was far below zero,
sometimes thirty-five degrees below, and in the morning, after a
minute breakfast of a few frozen insects and hoarfrost crystals,
playing and chatting in cheery tones as if food, weather, and
everything was according to their own warm hearts. Our Yankee told us
that the name of this darling was Devil-downhead.
Their big neighbors the owls also made good winter music, singing out
loud in wild, gallant strains bespeaking brave comfort, let the frost
bite as it might. The solemn hooting of the species with the widest
throat seemed to us the very wildest of all the winter sounds.
Prairie chickens came strolling in family flocks about the shanty,
picking seeds and grasshoppers like domestic fowls, and they became
still more abundant as wheat-and corn-fields were multiplied, but also
wilder, of course, when every shotgun in the country was aimed at
them. The booming of the males during the mating-season was one of the
loudest and strangest of the early spring sounds, being easily heard
on calm mornings at a distance of a half or three fourths of a mile.
As soon as the snow was off the ground, they assembled in flocks of a
dozen or two on an open spot, usually on the side of a ploughed field,
ruffled up their feathers, inflated the curious colored sacks on the
sides of their necks, and strutted about with queer gestures something
like turkey gobblers, uttering strange loud, rounded, drumming
calls,--_boom! boom! boom!_ interrupted by choking sounds. My brother
Daniel caught one while she was sitting on her nest in our corn-field.
The young are just like domestic chicks, run with the mother as soon
as hatched, and stay with her until autumn, feeding on the ground,
never taking wing unless disturbed. In winter, when full-grown, they
assemble in large flocks, fly about sundown to selected
roosting-places on tall trees, and to feeding-places in the
morning,--unhusked corn-fields, if any are to be found in the
neighborhood, or thickets of dwarf birch and willows, the buds of
which furnish a considerable part of their food when snow covers the
ground.
The wild rice-marshes along the Fox River and around Pucaway Lake were
the summer homes of millions of ducks, and in the Indian summer, when
the rice was ripe, they grew very fat. The magnificent mallards in
particular afforded our Yankee neighbors royal feasts almost without
price, for often as many as a half-dozen were killed at a shot, but we
seldom were allowed a single hour for hunting and so got very few. The
autumn duck season was a glad time for the Indians also, for they
feasted and grew fat not only on the ducks but on the wild rice, large
quantities of which they gathered as they glided through the midst of
the generous crop in canoes, bending down handfuls over the sides, and
beating out the grain with small paddles.
The warmth of the deep spring fountains of the creek in our meadow
kept it open all the year, and a few pairs of wood ducks, the most
beautiful, we thought, of all the ducks, wintered in it. I well
remember the first specimen I ever saw. Father shot it in the creek
during a snowstorm, brought it into the house, and called us around
him, saying: "Come, bairns, and admire the work of God displayed in
this bonnie bird. Naebody but God could paint feathers like these.
Juist look at the colors, hoo they shine, and hoo fine they overlap
and blend thegether like the colors o' the rainbow." And we all agreed
that never, never before had we seen so awfu' bonnie a bird. A pair
nested every year in the hollow top of an oak stump about fifteen feet
high that stood on the side of the meadow, and we used to wonder how
they got the fluffy young ones down from the nest and across the
meadow to the lake when they were only helpless, featherless midgets;
whether the mother carried them to the water on her back or in her
mouth. I never saw the thing done or found anybody who had until this
summer, when Mr. Holabird, a keen observer, told me that he once saw
the mother carry them from the nest tree in her mouth, quickly coming
and going to a nearby stream, and in a few minutes get them all
together and proudly sail away.