The Writings of John Burroughs — Volume 05: Pepacton

John Burroughs

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• Publié par: shuem
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 37
• Langue: English

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Title: The Writings of John BurroughsAuthor: John Burroughs
Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7441] [This
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THE WRITINGS OF JOHN BURROUGHS
WITH PORTRAITS AND MANY
ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME V
PEPACTON
PREFACEI HAVE all the more pleasure in calling my book
after the title of the first chapter, "Pepacton,"
because this is the Indian name of my native
stream. In its watershed I was born and passed my
youth, and here on its banks my kindred sleep.
Here, also, I have gathered much of the harvest,
poor though it be, that I have put in this and in
previous volumes of my writings.
The term "Pepacton" is said to mean "marriage of
the waters;" and with this significance it suits my
purpose well, as this book is also a union of many
currents.
The Pepacton rises in a deep cleft or gorge in the
mountains, the scenery of which is of the wildest
and ruggedest character. For a mile or more there
is barely room for the road and the creek at the
bottom of the chasm. On either hand the
mountains, interrupted by shelving, overhanging
precipices, rise abruptly to a great height. About
half a century ago a pious Scotch family, just
arrived in this country, came through this gorge.
One of the little boys, gazing upon the terrible
desolation of the scene, so unlike in its savage and
inhuman aspects anything he had ever seen at
home, nestled close to his mother, and asked with
bated breath, "Mither, is there a God here?"
Yet the Pepacton is a placid current, especially in
its upper portions, where my youth fell; but all its
tributaries are swift mountain brooks fed by springs
the best in the world. It drains a high pastoral
country lifted into long, round-backed hills andrugged, wooded ranges by the subsiding impulse
of the Catskill range of mountains, and famous for
its superior dairy and other farm products. It is
many long years since, with the restlessness of
youth, I broke away from the old ties amid those
hills; but my heart has always been there, and why
should I not come back and name one of my books
for the old stream?
CONTENTS
I. PEPACTON: A SUMMER VOYAGE II.
SPRINGS III. AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE IV.
NATURE AND THE POETS. V. NOTES BY THE
WAY VI. FOOTPATHS…. VII. A BUNCH OF
HERBS VIII. WINTER PICTURES INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FRINGED GENTIAN
From a photograph by
Herbert W. Gleason
THE ASA GRAY SPRING.
From a photograph by
Herbert W. Gleason
KINGBIRD
From a drawing by L. A.
Fuertes
RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD
From a photograph by
Herbert W. Gleason
IN THE ORCHARD From a drawing by Charles
H. Woodbury
A MUSKRAT'S NEST
From a photograph by
Herbert W. Gleason
A FIELD PATH
From a photograph by
Clifton Johnson
PEPACTON
I
A SUMMER VOYAGE
WHEN one summer day I bethought me of a
voyage down the east or Pepacton branch of the
Delaware, I seemed to want some excuse for the
start, some send-off, some preparation, to give the
enterprise genesis and head. This I found in
building my own boat. It was a happy thought. How
else should I have got under way, how else should
I have raised the breeze? The boat-building
warmed the blood; it made the germ take; itwhetted my appetite for the voyage. There is
nothing like serving an apprenticeship to fortune,
like earning the right to your tools. In most
enterprises the temptation is always to begin too
far along; we want to start where somebody else
leaves off. Go back to the stump, and see what an
impetus you get. Those fishermen who wind their
own flies before they go a-fishing,—how they bring
in the trout; and those hunters who run their own
bullets or make their own cartridges,— the game is
already mortgaged to them.
When my boat was finished—and it was a very
simple affair—I was as eager as a boy to be off; I
feared the river would all run by before I could wet
her bottom in it. This enthusiasm begat great
expectations of the trip. I should surely surprise
Nature and win some new secrets from her. I
should glide down noiselessly upon her and see
what all those willow screens and baffling curves
concealed. As a fisherman and pedestrian I had
been able to come at the stream only at certain
points: now the most private and secluded retreats
of the nymph would be opened to me; every bend
and eddy, every cove hedged in by swamps or
passage walled in by high alders, would be at the
beck of my paddle.
Whom shall one take with him when he goes a-
courting Nature? This is always a vital question.
There are persons who will stand between you and
that which you seek: they obtrude themselves;
they monopolize your attention; they blunt your
sense of the shy, half- revealed intelligences aboutyou. I want for companion a dog or a boy, or a
person who has the virtues of dogs and boys,—
transparency, good-nature, curiosity, open sense,
and a nameless quality that is akin to trees and
growths and the inarticulate forces of nature. With
him you are alone, and yet have company; you are
free; you feel no disturbing element; the influences
of nature stream through him and around him; he
is a good conductor of the subtle fluid. The quality
or qualification I refer to belongs to most persons
who spend their lives in the open air,—to soldiers,
hunters, fishers, laborers, and to artists and poets
of the right sort. How full of it, to choose an
illustrious example, was such a man as Walter
Scott!
But no such person came in answer to my prayer,
so I set out alone.
It was fit that I put my boat into the water at
Arkville, but it may seem a little incongruous that I
should launch her into Dry Brook; yet Dry Brook is
here a fine large trout stream, and I soon found its
waters were wet enough for all practical purposes.
The Delaware is only one mile distant, and I chose
this as the easiest road from the station to it. A
young farmer helped me carry the boat to the
water, but did not stay to see me off; only some
calves feeding alongshore witnessed my
embarkation. It would have been a godsend to
boys, but there were no boys about. I stuck on a
rift before I had gone ten yards, and saw with
misgiving the paint transferred from the bottom of
my little scow to the tops of the stones thus early inthe journey. But I was soon making fair headway,
and taking trout for my dinner as I floated along.
My first mishap was when I broke the second joint
of my rod on a bass, and the first serious
impediment to my progress was when I
encountered the trunk of a prostrate elm bridging
the stream within a few inches of the surface. My
rod mended and the elm cleared, I anticipated
better sailing when I should reach the Delaware
itself; but I found on this day and on subsequent
days that the Delaware has a way of dividing up
that is very embarrassing to the navigator. It is a
stream of many minds: its waters cannot long
agree to go all in the same channel, and whichever
branch I took I was pretty sure to wish I had taken
one of the others. I was constantly sticking on rifts,
where I would have to dismount, or running full tilt
into willow banks, where I would lose my hat or
endanger my fishing-tackle. On the whole, the
result of my first day's voyaging was not
encouraging. I made barely eight miles, and my
ardor was a good deal dampened, to say nothing
about my clothing. In mid-afternoon I went to a
well-to-do-looking farmhouse and got some milk,
which I am certain the thrifty housewife skimmed,
for its blueness infected my spirits, and I went into
camp that night more than half persuaded to
abandon the enterprise in the morning. The
loneliness of the river, too, unlike that of the fields
and woods, to which I was more accustomed,
opp