Letters from an Oregon Ranch/Chapter 22
XXII
I want to tell you something more about our walks. Tom and I have a couple of light, tough cedar alpenstocks, which we regard as very helpful in hill climbing; and I like them for another reason. In the end of each is a very sharp spike, which I have secretly thought would be of service if I should chance to meet one of the furry folk of the forest, and find it necessary to engage him in single-handed combat.
When Di Vernon joined me on these excursions, it seemed but courteous to offer her one of them. She carried it twice; on its third presentation she remarked, “If it won’t hurt your feelings, I’d rather not take that pole.” Pole indeed! my nice, smooth, sand-papered, cedar alpenstock! Rather chagrined, I asked, “Why? Don t you like it?” “No; I don’t care much for it. You see I’m accustomed to the hills, have climbed them from childhood, and I really have no use for it.” I had observed that she carried it like a music-roll—under her arm.
“I’ll venture to say,” she added, “that you never have seen a native of the hills walking with one of these poles; only newcomers carry them.”
Copyright, Kiser Bros., Portland, Ore.
GIANT FIR-TREES, OREGON FORESTS
"We enter the dusky atmosphere of the big trees" (page 203)
Though humbled by this “plain talk to plain people,” I had my own reasons for clinging to my “pole,” and so I clung. I find, however, that I carry it less like a flagstaff, and note a growing tendency to trail it.
The walks here are all so interesting that we often have difficulty in deciding which to take. We sometimes leave it to the dogs. If they scamper away across the sodden, spongy meadow, we know they are bound for the canyon, and we cheerfully follow.
Near the stream we enter a narrow, winding path, padded with brown wet leaves, bordered by willow, maple, ash, and alder trees; while crowding among these grow smaller trees,—wild cherry, Indian peach, chittam vine bark and hazel, with elder, wild syringa, currant, and blackberry bushes; the wild rose, too, with an infinite variety of other shrubs that love to haunt the banks of Deer Leap.
This difficult path is made even more difficult in places by curving boughs of vine maple and the palm-like branches of young firs. We must needs advance crouchingly here, hoisting the green, sagging roof above our heads, learning through its showery protests that sagging is not its only defect.
Soon after escaping from this troublesome tangle, we enter the dusky atmosphere of the big trees. This canyon, Nell, is a wild and eerie region, a veritable “ghoul-haunted woodland of wier,” just the place for hobgoblins and spooks. I avoid hugging the trees lest a withered arm with bony hand should reach round and clutch me.
So far we have seen nothing more awesome than solemn brown owls perched high among the firs, silent and meditative as cowled monks. Occasionally at our approach one slips noiselessly away, though oftener he sits motionless, staring down with tragic eyes.
Here, there, and everywhere among these towering trees lie fallen ones. Some have tumbled head first into the canyon, their mighty roots, with tons of earth, reared high in air,—a hanging garden where green mosses grow, with low bushes, trailing vines, and even fine young firs, promising scions of a lordly race. Across these other unfortunates have fallen rampant, while still others are stretched prone upon the ground, half buried in woodland debris.
Here, too, are trees left headless and otherwise disfigured by fierce winds; and many fire sufferers also. Their jagged trunks, painted in motley colors, are left in shapes both fantastic and wonderful,—strange resemblances to man and beast, suggestive of the skill of some wandering wood-carver.
The dullest fancy must see in this burnt-wood exhibit the sculptured majesty of King Lear and the picturesquely posed Huguenot lovers; also our soldiers’ monument, where, poised upon a broken column, stands a fine military figure in full uniform, even to hat, epaulettes, and sword. Believing him to be a cavalry officer, we have named him General Forrest.
And, Nell, through a vista of trees may be seen emerging from the opposite wood a lady of most aristocratic bearing, wearing a picture hat with sweeping plumes of black, and a long black cloak bordered with silvery gray fur. As she stands in a twilighty place, she is known as Our Lady of the Gloaming.
I shall not expect you to believe the half of this, unless you yourself have somewhere seen the strange carvings and colorings of the fire artist.
This art gallery of Nature’s is half screened from our path by naked branches of young oaks, through which a rain of gray moss is falling, giving an agreeable touch of desolation to our surroundings. For your sake I am willing to admit that forest statuary seen through so ghostly a drop-curtain may, from its vagueness, possibly receive an extra dash of glamour.
The farther up the canyon we go the denser and darker grow the woods. In that time of rain and mist it was often almost like night there, and still as death, unless the dogs got on track of some wild thing and set the echoes flying. In that case the yelping and yowling of Shady, the hound, must have made even the wood-nymphs strike for tall timber.
Sometimes through a small clearing we catch a glimpse of “high Cromla’s head piercing dark clouds, with squally winds in their skirts,” and see gray mists rolling stormily through the hills. That picture, with the roar of the mountain stream, is like a page from Ossian. The pool of memory is stirred. Half unconsciously we listen for the trembling harp-strings and tuneful voices of “aged bards with gray hair on the breeze,” for the horn of the hunter and the clash of steely mail.
If from out the tall pointed firs should come “slowly stalking dark-browed warriors with bossy shields and helmeted heads with red eyes rolling silently,” I’d blanch not, only stand with spiked pole uplifted and await the onslaught. As for those very thin, dim ghosts of Ardven, with robes of flying mist, I’d fear them as little “as the rising breeze that whirls the gray beard of the thistle.”
Having once surrendered to the mood inspired by the wild scenery of my beloved Oregon hills, I should feel little surprise if, at the next turn of our winding trail, we came face to face with “the fair maids of Woody Morven, with hair like the mist on Cromla, when it curls in the breeze and shines in the sun.” And even less should I be surprised, if through the tall fern thickets surrounding us should appear “the branching heads of dark-brown hinds, flying from stern hunters with bows of bended yew and the panting gray dogs—long-bounded sons of the chase.”
Di, as a devotee of Scott, thinks the stage setting calls for kilted Highlanders, with plumed bonnets and tasselled horns, for red-faced monks and jolly friars, for winding bugles, baying hounds, screaming bagpipes, and all that sort of thing.
Farther up the canyon at the right of our path is a deep cleft in the hills, and there in a most romantic spot a spring of pure, sparkling water gushes from mossy rocks half hidden by ferns and buckthorn.
We always make a detour through this picturesque glen to drink of this water from cups fashioned of leaves. We could, of course, bring with us a more satisfactory drinking-cup, but that would savor too much of civilization,—a thing we cannot brook.
Oh, Nell, if only you could see this crystal spring and its wild environment! I’m sure it would suggest to you, as to us, the “fairy well haunted by the White Lady.” One has but to imagine that overshadowing buckthorn to be holly—which it so closely resembles—and the illusion is complete.
Standing there one day, I said to Di: “I have a mind to call up an apparition, if you think you can look on it and live.”
Stepping forward, bowing solemnly to holly and spring, I repeated the well-known incantation,—
“Thrice to the holly brake,
Thrice to the well,
I bid thee awake,
White Maid of Avenel!”
But that golden-girdled spirit failed to appear.
“The Lady seems not to be at home, Di.”
“No wonder. You forgot a very important part of the spell. Now watch me.” Thereupon that intrepid damsel stalked through the oozy moss to the very edge of the fountain, where, with clasped hands and “red eyes rolling” wildly about the glen, she muttered,—
“It is the place, the season, and the hour!”
Then, gravely removing the rubber boot from her right foot, balancing herself on the left, she bowed as impressively as could be expected from one in that stork-like attitude, thrice to the holly and thrice to the well, invoking the spirit in tones more awful than those of the ghost in “Hamlet,” using both verses of the charm to make all sure. Again we waited. Nothing was seen, nothing heard, save the hurrying waters of Deer Leap.
“By my knightly word, this is strange!” exclaimed the petitioner, drawing on her boot. “Though I bethink me now I should have brought hither me good steel blade, or, lacking that, should at least have waved a bulrush or a hazel wand.”
“If you’d like to try again, Di, and think a cedar—”
“Good gracious! Do you think I’d try to lure a wood maiden from her haunts with a spiked pole? Anyway, come to think about it, I don’t want her to appear, for now we have the freedom of her drawing-room, and can stare around to our hearts’ content.”
Mother Nature doesn’t mind us; she knows that we are just a couple of tired mortals from out the workaday world, who have strayed into her leafy courts for an hour’s forgetfulness of the fever called living; knows, too, that the air of her great sanitarium is apt slightly to affect the brain of her visitors; has learned to expect nonsense, and to accept it with placid indifference.
But even the sanest could hardly stand in this deep, narrow ravine and not think of a city drawing-room in gala-day attire.
Across the lower end hangs a leafy portière; through its seine-like meshes flash the silvery waters of Deer Leap, the upper one banked high with firs and hemlock; a charming background for the fern-fringed fountain, its entire floor carpeted with thick green moss, which extends up the side walls, forming an effective dado; logs and stumps upholstered in the same material—massive divans and hassocks—scattered conveniently about, awaiting the arrival of our lady’s guests, the merry foresters.
When I speak of mossy logs, Nell, you mustn’t think they are like ours at home, splotched here and there with that thin, dry, scaly stuff. Here, in the rainy season, they are swathed in it, as completely hidden as if slipped into cases of—I was going to say plush, but that’s too smooth and shiny for this intricate moss; fashioned of millions of tiny, twisted, curving ferns, it looks more like curled astrakhan or some rich fur.
We lifted a piece of the White Lady’s carpet, about a square yard, just to see if she could turn it when she cleaned house, carefully replacing it, you may be sure, patting down the edges that the desecration might not be noted, and, oh, how beautiful it was, Nell! Nature couldn’t make a lovelier thing if she tried! Heavy as a fleece of wool, so deep and so soft, as luxurious as any Persian prayer-rug.
Now you are saying, “Katharine doesn’t know a blessed thing about a Persian prayer-rug!” You are mistaken. Haven’t I read that beautiful poem of Mr. Aldrich’s, describing his, beginning,—
“Made smooth some centuries ago
By praying Eastern devotees,
Blurred by those dusky, naked feet,
And somewhat worn by shuffling knees
In Ispahan.”
Now what do you think? And that’s not all. I once saw one with my own eyes at the World’s Fair in Chicago, guarded by a red-turbaned, saffron-tinted gentleman, of countenance so sinister I thought as I looked at him: “My Yellow Peril, no prayer-rug is ever going to suffer much wear and tear through your devotional exercises!” Now see how far afield I am! I honestly believe an incredulous friend is a sharper trial than a thankless child!
We one day found a perfect little bracket shelf, just the color of old ivory, its outer surface all written over with a fine tracery of sepia-tinted hieroglyphics. We half feared, as we pried and pulled it from the tree, that we were carrying off a love sonnet in secret cipher left there by some forest-haunting Orlando of the hills for his Rosalind. This was Di’s find. Not long ago I saw it in her dining-room, fastened to the wall, holding a little squatty brown and yellow jug, from which trailed two or three pretty nasturtium vines, with their flaming blossoms.
Another time we took from an old stump a most striking facsimile of the bust of Shakespeare. It was of plastic material, much like paraffine wax, only cameo-tinted, and exquisite. As this was my discovery, I brought it home and gave it a background of black velvet.
But I must stop this rambling talk, and I will stop right now, by wishing you a happy Christmas and a glad New Year. I came near forgetting it. It is hard to realize the nearness of the holiday season, when one lives in the woods, hearing no Christmas talk, seeing none of the flutter and excitement of it, and the weather so far from Christmasy.
For several days dense fogs have enveloped the land. To-day even the hills are blotted out, and the fog creeping nigher has built a high wall of gray around yard and orchard,—one we can neither see through nor over. We feel like castaways on some lonely island, with the vague sea about us.
And yet we know somewhere beyond this grayness Christmas bells are ringing and Christmas carols singing.
You’ll keep the day with festal cheer, and be to-night in a whirl of festivity. We’ll have the biggest, crackliest, snappiest Yule log we can find, and the brightest blaze a Rochester burner can produce—and then what? Why, just let me tell you. Three brand-new books, a dozen magazines, sent us some weeks ago by a blessed saint and kept by us as a special treat for the holiday season. I can hardly wait till night. Just to think of those new books with uncut pages gives me a kindly “peace on earth, good will to man” feeling.
Good-bye. God bless us, every one.
THE END.