The adventures of a nature guide

Front matter

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Preface

The individual interested in the world of outdoors, in many-sided natural history, finds entertainment everywhere in the wilderness, through all the seasons. Storm, sunshine, night, desert, stream, and forest are crowded with waiting attractions and moving scenes.

To have the most adventures and the greatest enjoyment in a given time, ramble the wilds alone and without a fishing-rod or a gun. The rambler is free to wander afar and to enjoy the multitude of adventures that come thick and fast upon him. The wilderness being the safety zone of the world these experiences are likely to be less dangerous than staying at home. The hunter, however, armed and killing, multiplies dangers, and in giving his attention to game wanders but little and enjoys less variety and fewer adventures.

The chapters in this book are filled with the experiences and adventures which came to me as a solitary and unarmed camper in the wilds of the continent. These and other experiences, together with inheritances not so tangible, produced definite results; I became a mountain climber and a peak guide. In doing this I developed nature guiding, that is, helping people to become happily acquainted with the life and wonders of wild nature.

x PREFACE

The people of the United States have within the past generation created national parks, state parks, city parks, and made wild-life reservations, recognizing their higher values to people, for their uses in education, recreation, and hopefulness. I wish that every park had a nature guide and that every wild place might early become a park.

There now are a number of Cabinet positions, each with a secretary to control and direct its work. But is it not time to have a Directory of Parks and Recreation, something for all time and for all people? Instead of one man directing this there should be a number, a board of directors, who are directly responsible to the public. This should be a department separate from and independent of all Cabinet positions and should outrank them.

A number of these chapters were written especially for this book. I appreciate the courtesy of the editors in allowing me to reproduce the articles which appeared in the following magazines: Snow-Blinded on the Summit, and Trees at Timberline, in Country Life; Waiting in the Wilderness, Censored Natural History News, Winter Mountaineering, Children of My Trail School, and Thunder and Lightning, in The Saturday Evening Post; A Day With a Nature Guide, in The Outlook; Play and Pranks of Wild Folk, and Naturalist Meets Prospector, in The American Boy; The White Cyclone, in Outing; and Wind Rapids on the Heights, in Harper's.

CHAPTER

Contents

I . Snow-Blinded on the Summit

II . Waiting in the Wilderness .

III . Winter Mountaineering

Chapter I

4 S I climbed up out of the dwarfed wood.

l-\ at timberline in the Rocky Mountains, and started across the treeless white summit, the terrific sun glare on the snow warned me of the danger of snow-blindness. I had lo t my snow glasses. But the wild attractions of the heights caused me to forget the care of my eyes and I lingered to look down into canons and to examine magnificent snow cornices. A number of mountain sheep also interested me. Then for half an hour I circled a confiding flock of ptarmigan and took picture after picture.

Through the clear air the sunlight poured with burning intensity. I was 12,000 feet above the sea. Around me there was not a dark crag nor even a tree to absorb the excess of light. A wilderness of high, rugged peaks stood about — splendid sunlit mountains of snow. To east and west they faced winter's noonday sun with great shadow mantles flowing from their shoulders.

As I started to hurry on across the pass I began to experience the scorching pains that go with scared, sunburnt eves — snow-blindness. Unfortunately, I had failed to take even the precaution of blackening my face, which would have dulled the glare. At the summit my eyes became so painful that I could endure the light only a lew seconds at a time. Occasionally I sat down and closed them tor a minute or two. Finally, while doing this, the lids adhered to the balls and the eyes swelled so that I could not open them.

Blind on the summit of the Continental Divide! I made a grab tor my useful staff which I had left standing beside me in the snow. In the fraction of a second that elapsed between thinking of the staff and finding it my brain woke up to the seriousness of the situation. To the nearest trees it was more than a mile, and the nearest house was many miles away across ridges of rough mountains. I had matches and a hatchet, but no provisions. Still, while well aware of my peril, I w:as only moderately excited, feeling no terror. Less startling incidents have shocked me more, narrow escapes from street automobiles have terrified me.

It had been a wondrous morning. The day cleared after a heavy fall of fluffy snow. I hid snowshoed up the slope through a ragged, snowcarpeted spruce forest, whose shadows wrought splendid black-and-white effects upon the shining floor. There were thousands of towering, slender spruces, each brilliantly laden with snow flowers, standing soft, white, and motionless in the sunlight

While I was looking at one of these artistically decorated trees, a mass of snow dropped upon me from its top, throwing me headlong and causing me to lose my precious eye-protecting snow gla But now I was blind.

With staff in hand, I stood for a minute or two planning the best manner to get along without eyes. My faculties were intensely awake. Serious situations in the wilds had more than once hefore this stimulated them to do their best. Temporary blindness is a good stimulus for the imagination and the memory— in fact, is good educational training for all the senses. However perilous my predicament during a mountain trip, the possibility of a fatal ending never even occurred to me. L< »< >king back now, I cannot but wonder at my matter-of-fact attitude concerning the perils in which that snow-blindness placed me.

I had planned to cross the pass and descend into a trail at timberline. The appearance of the slope down which I was to travel was distinctly in my mind from my impressions just before darkness settled over me.

Off I slowly started. I guided myself with information from feet and staff, feeling my way with the staff so as not to step off a cliff or walk overboard into a canon. In imagination I pictured myself following the shadow of a staff-bearing and slouch-hatted form. Did mountain sheep, curious and slightly suspicious, linger on crags to watch my slow and hesitating advance? Across the snow did the shadow of a soaring eagle coast and circle?

I must have wandered far from the direct course to timberline. Again and again I swung my staff to right and left hoping to strike a tree. I had travelled more than twice as long as it should have taken to reach timberline before I stood face to face with a low -growing tree that bristled up through the deep snow. But had I come out at the point for which I aimed — at the trail? This was the vital question.

The deep snow buried all trail blazes. Making my way from tree to tree I thrust an arm deep into the snow and felt of the bark, searching for a trail blaze. At last I found a blaze and going on a fewsteps I dug down again in the snow and examined a tree which I felt should mark the trail. This, too, was blazed.

Feeling certain that I was on the trail I went down the mountain through the forest for some minutes without searching for another blaze. When I did examine a number of trees not another blaze could I find. The topography since entering the forest and the size and character of the trees were such that I felt I was on familiar ground. But going on a few steps I came out on the edge of an unknown rocky cliff. I was now lost as well as blind.

During the hours I had wandered in reaching timberline I had had a vague feeling that I might

be travelling in a circle, and might return to trees on the western slope of the Divide up which I had climbed. When I walked out on the edge of the cliff the feeling that I had doubled to the western slope became insistent. If true, this was most serious. To reach the nearest house on the west side of the range would be extremely difficult, even though I should discover just where I was. But I believed I was somewhere on the eastern slope.

I tried to figure out the course I had taken. Had I, in descending from the heights, gone too far to the right or to the left? Though fairly well acquainted with the country along this timberline, I was unable to recall a rocky cliff at this point. My staff found no bottom and warned me that I was at a jumping-off place.

Increasing coolness indicated that night was upon me. But darkness did not matter, my light had failed at noon. Going back along my trail a short distance I avoided the cliff and started on through the night down a rocky, forested, and snow-covered slope. I planned to get into the bottom of a canon and follow downstream. Every few steps I shouted, hoping to attract the attention of a possible prospector, miner, or woodchopper. No voice answered. The many echoes, however, gave me an idea of the topography — of the mountain ridges and canons before me. I listened intently after each shout and noticed the direction from which the reply came, its intensity, and the cross echoes, and concluded that I was going down into the head of a deep, forest-walled canon, and, I

hoped, travelling eastward.

For points of the compass I appealed to the trees, hoping through my knowledge of woodcraft to orient myself. In the study of tree distribution

I had learned that the altitude might often he approximated and the points of the compass determined by noting the characteristic kinds of trees.

Canons of east and west trend in this locality carried mostly limber pines on the wall that fares south and mostly Engelmann spruces on the wall that faces the north. Believing that I was travelling eastward I turned to my right, climbed out of the canon, and examined a number of trees along the slope. Most of these were Engelmann spruces. The slope probably faced north. Turning about I descended this slope and ascended the opposite one. The trees on this were mostly limber pines. Hurrah! Limber pines are abundant only on southern slopes. With limber pines on my left and Engelmann spruces on my right, I was now satisfied that I was travelling eastward and must be on the eastern side of the range.

To put a final check upon this — for a blind or lost man sometimes manages to do exactly the opposite of what he thinks he is doing — I examined lichen growths on the rocks and moss growths on the trees. In the deep canon I dug down into the snow and examined the faces of low-lying boulders. With the greatest care I felt the lichen growth on the rocks. These verified the information that I had from the trees — but none too well. Then I felt over the moss growth, both long and short, on the trunks and lower limbs of trees, but this testimony was not absolutely convincing. The moss growth was so nearly even all the way around the trunk that I concluded that the surrounding topography must be such as to admit the light freely from all quarters, and also that the wall or slope on my right must be either a gentle one or else a low one and somewhat broken. I climbed to make sure. In a few minutes I was on a terrace — as I expected. Possibly back on the right lay a basin that might be tributary to this canon. The reports made by the echoes of my shoutings said that this was true. A few minutes of travel down the canon and I came to the expected incoming stream, which made its swift presence heard beneath its cover of ice and snow.

A short distance farther down the canon I examined a number of trees that stood in thick growth on the lower part of what I thought was the southern slope. Here the character of the moss and lichens and their abundant growth on the northerly sides of the trees verified the testimony of the tree distribution and of previous moss and lichen growths. I was satisfied as to the points of the compass. I was on the extern side of the Continental Divide travelling eastward.

After three or lour hours of slow descending I reached the bottom. Steep walls rose on both right and left. The enormous rock masses and the

entanglements of fallen and leaning trees made progress difficult. Feeling that if I continued in

the bottom of the canon I might come to a precipitous place down which I would be unable to descend, I tried to walk along one of the side walls, and thus keep above the bottom. But the walls were too steep and I got into trouble.

Out on a narrow, snow-corniced ledge I walked. The snow gave way beneath me and down I went over the ledge. As I struck, feet foremost, one snowshoe sank deeply. I wondered, as I wiggled out, if I had landed on another ledge. I had. Not desiring to have more tumbles, I tried to climb back up on the ledge from which I had fallen, but I could not do it. The ledge was broad and short and there appeared to be no safe way off. As I explored again my staff encountered the top of a dead tree that leaned against the ledge. Breaking a number of dead limbs off I threw them overboard. Listening as the)' struck the snow below I concluded that it could not be more than thirty feet to the bottom.

I let go my staff and dropped it after the limbs. Then, without taking off snowshoes, I let myself down the limbless trunk. I could hear water

SNOW-BLINDED ON THE SUMMIT u

running beneath the ice and snow. I recovered my staff and resumed the journey.

In time the canon widened a little and travelling became easier. I had just paused to give a shout when a rumbling and crashing high up the righthand slope told me that a snowslide was plunging down. Whether it would land in the canon before me or behind me or on top of me could not be guessed. The awful smashing and crashing and roar proclaimed it of enormous size and indicated that trees and rocky debris were being swept onward with it. During the few seconds that I stood awaiting my fate, thought after thought raced through my brain as I recorded the ever-varying crashes and thunders of the wild, irresistible slide.

With terrific crash and roar the snowslide swept into the canon a short distance in front of me. I was knocked down by the outrush or concussion of air and for several minutes was nearly smothered with the whirling, settling snow-dust and rock powder which fell thickly all around. The air cleared and I went on.

I had gone only a dozen steps when I came upon the enormous wreckage brought down by the slide. Snow, earthy matter, rocks, and splintered trees were flung in fierce confusion together. For three or four hundred feet this accumulation filled the canon from wall to wall and was fifty or sixty feel high. The slide wreckage smashed the ice and dammed the stream. As I started to climb across this snowy debris a shattered place in the ice beneath gave way and dropped me into the water, but my long staff caught and by clinging to it I saved myself from going in above my hips. My snowshoes caught in the shattered iee and while I tried to get my feet free a mass of snow fell upon me and nearly broke my hold. Shaking oil the snow I put forth all my strength and finally pulled my feet free of the iee and crawled out upon the debris. This was a close call and at last 1 was thoroughly, briefly, frightened.

As the wreckage was a mixture of broken trees, stones, and compacted snow I could not use my snowshoes, so I took them off to carry them till over the debris. Once across I planned to pause and build a fire to dry my icy clothes.

With difficulty I worked my way up and across. Much of the snow was compressed almost to ice by the force of contact, and in this icy cement many kinds of w reckage were set in wild disorder. While descending a steep place in this mass, carrying snowshoes under one arm, the footing gave way and I fell. I suffered no injury but lost one of the snowshoes. For an hour or longer I searched, without finding it.

The night was intensely cold and in the search my feet became almost frozen. In order to rub them I was about to take off my shoes when I came upon something warm. It proved to be a dead mountain sheep with one horn smashed off. VI sat with my feet beneath its warm carcass and my hands upon it, I thought how but a few minutes before the animal had been alive on the heights with all its ever wide-awake senses vigilant for its preservation; yet I, wandering blindly, had caped with my life when the snowslide swept into the canon. The night was calm, but of zero temperature or lower. It probably was crystal dear. As I sat warming my hands and feet on the proud master of the crags I imagined the bright, clear sky crowded thick with stars. I pictured to myself the dark slope down which the slide had come. It appeared to reach up close to the frosty stars.

But the lost snowshoe must be found, wallowing through the deep mountain snow with only one snowshoe would be almost hopeless. I had vainly searched the surface and lower wreckage projections but made one more search. This proved successful. The shoe had slid for a short distance, struck an obstacle, bounced upward over smashed logs, and lay about four feet above the general surface. A few moments more and I was beyond the snowslide wreckage. Again on snowshoes, staff in hand, I continued feeling my way down the mountain.

My ice-stiffened trousers and chilled limbs were not good travelling companions, and at the first cliff that I encountered I stopped to make a tire.

I gathered two or three armfuls of dead limbs, with the aid of my hatchet, and soon had a lively blaze going. But the beat increased the pain in my eyes, so with clothes only partly dried, I went on. Repeatedly through the night I applied snow to my eyes trying to subdue the fiery torment.

From timberline I bad travelled downward through a green forest mostly of Engelmann spruce with a scattering of fir and limber pine. I frequently felt of the tree trunks. But a short time after leaving my camp-fire I came to the edge of an extensive region that bad been burned over. For more than an hour I travelled through dead standing trees, on many of which only the barb bad been burned away; on otbers the fire bad burned more deeply.

Pausing on the way down, I thrust my staff into the snow and leaned against a tree to hold snow against my burning eyes. While I was doing this two owls hooted happily to each other and I listened to their contented calls with satisfaction.

Hearing the pleasant, low call of a chickadee I listened. Apparently he was dreaming and talking in his sleep. The dream must have been a happy one, for every note was cheerful. Realizing that he probably was in an abandoned woodpecker nesting hole, I tapped on the dead tree against which I was leaning. This was followed by a chorus of lively, surprised chirpings, and one, two, three! — then several — chickadees Hew out of a hole a lew

SNOW-BLINDED ON THE SI MMIT 15

inches above my head. Sorry to have disturbed them I went on down the slope.

At last I felt the morning sun in my face, With increased light my eyes became extremely painful.

For a time I relaxed upon the snow, finding it difficult to believe that I had been travelling all night in complete darkness. While lying here I caught the scent of smoke. There was no mistaking it. It was the smoke of burning aspen, a wood much burned in the cook-stoves of mountain people. Eagerly I rose to find it. I shouted again and again but there was no response. Under favourable conditions, keen nostrils may detect aspen-wood smoke for a distance of two or three miles.

The compensation of this accident was an intense stimulus to my imagination — perhaps our most useful intellectual faculty. My eyes, always keen and swift, had ever supplied me with almost an excess of information. But with them suddenly closed my imagination became the guiding faculty. I did creative thinking. With pleasure I restored the views and scenes of the morning before. Any one seeking to develop the imagination would find a little excursion afield, with eyes voluntarily blindfolded, a most telling experience.

Down the mountainside I went, hour after hour. My ears caught the chirp of birds and the fall of icicles which ordinarily I would hardly have heard. My nose was constantly and keenly analyzing the air. With touch and clasp I kept in contact with the trees. Again my nostrils picked up aspen smoke. This time it was much stronger. Perhaps I was near a house! But the whirling air currents gave me no clue as to the direction from which the smoke came, and only echoes responded to my call.

All my senses worked willingly in seeking wireless news to substitute for the eyes. My nose readily detected odours and smoke. My ears were more vigilant and more sensitive than usual. My fingers, too, were responsive from the instant that my eyes failed. Delightfully eager they were, as I felt the snow-buried trees, hoping with touch to discover possible trail blazes. My feet also were quickly, steadily alert to translate the topography.

Occasionally a cloud shadow passed over. In imagination I often pictured the appearance of these clouds against the blue sky and tried to estimate the size of each by the number of seconds its shadow took to drift across me.

Mid-afternoon, or later, my nose suddenly detected the odour of an ancient corral. This was a sign of civilization. A few minutes later my staff came in contact with the corner of a cabin. J shouted " Hello !" but heard no answer. I continued feeling until I came to the door and found that a board was nailed across it. The cabin was locked and deserted ! I broke in the door.

In the cabin I found a stove and wood. As

SNOW-BLINDED ON THE SUMMIT i7

soon as I had a fire going I dropped snow upon the stove and steamed my painful eyes. After two hours or more of this steaming they became more comfortable. Two strenuous days and one toilsome night had made me extremely drowsy. Sitting down upon the floor near the stove I leaned against the wall and fell asleep. But the fire burned itself out. In the night I awoke nearly frozen and unable to rise. Fortunately, I had on my mittens, otherwise my fingers probably would have frozen. By rubbing my hands together, then rubbing my arms and legs, I finally managed to limber myself, and though unable to rise, I succeeded in starting a new fire. It was more than an hour before I ceased shivering; then, as the room began to warm, my legs came back to life and again I could walk.

I was hungry. This was my first thought of jfood since becoming blind. If there was anything to eat in the cabin, I failed to find it. Searching my pockets I found a dozen or more raisins and with these I broke my sixty-hour fast. Then I had another sleep, and it must have been near noon when I awakened. Again I steamed the eye pain into partial submission.

Going to the door I stood and listened. A campibird only a few feet away spoke gently and conifidingly. Then a crested jay called impatiently. 'The camp-bird alighted on my shoulder. I tried ;to explain to the birds that there was nothing to eat. The prospector who had lived in this cabin evidently had been friendly with the bird neighbours. I wished that I might know him.

Again I could smell the smoke of aspen wood. Several shouts evoked echoes — nothing more. I stood listening and wondering whether to stay in the cabin or to venture forth and try to follow the snow-filled roadway that must lead down through the woods from the cabin. Wherever this open way led I could follow. But of course I must take care not to lose it.

In the nature of things I felt that I must be three or four miles to the south of the trail which I had planned to follow down the mountain. I wished I might see my long and crooked line of footmarks in the snow from the summit to timberline.

Hearing the open water in rapids close to the cabin, I went out to try for a drink. I advanced slowly, blind-man fashion, feeling the way with my long staff. As I neared the rapids, a water ouzel, which probably had lunched in the open water, sang with all his might. I stood still as he repeated his liquid, hopeful song. On the spot I shook off procrastination and decided to try to find a place where someone lived.

After writing a note explaining why I had smashed in the door and used so much wood, I readjusted my snowshoes and started down through the woods. I suppose it must have been late afternoon.

I found an open way that had been made into a road. The woods were thick and the open roadway readily guided me. Feeling and thrusting with my staff, I walked for some time at normal pace. Then I missed the way. I searched carefully, right, left, and before me for the utterly lost road. It had forked, and I had continued on the short stretch that came to an end in the woods by an abandoned prospect hole. As I approached close to this the snow caved in, nearly carrying me along with it. Confused by blinded eyes and the thought of oncoming night, perhaps, I had not used my wits. When at last I stopped to think I figured out the situation. Then I followed my snowshoe tracks back to the main road and turned into it.

For a short distance the road ran through dense woods. Several times I paused to touch the trees each side with my hands. When I emerged from the woods, the pungent aspen smoke said that I must at last be near a human habitation. In fear of passing it I stopped to use my ears. As I stood listening, a little girl gently, curiously, asked:

"Are you going to stay here to-night ?"

WAITING in the wilderness, that is, lingering in a spot frequently visited by wild life, appears to be one of the easiest and most delightful ways of getting acquainted with nature and the ways of the wild.

Going repeatedly to the same place means the visiting of an old scene in which changes are constantly taking place during your absence and in which the beginning of something new may occur while you are there. So, to have a really intimate and happy acquaintance and a most thorough appreciation of the wild world stage, one must revisit the same stage again and again.

Chapter II

THEY were a pair of hairy woodpeckers engaged in examining a fourteen-inch dead aspen. As it was nesting time I lingered to watch them. After taking a number of grubs from beneath the bark of the tree the birds centred their woodpecking work at one spot, about a man's height above the roots.

Mrs. Woodpecker pecked a number of tiny holes or dots, forming a circle about two inches in diameter. Then she pecked and hammered away within this circle. Presently this space began to take on the form of a doorway or entrance hole to a nest. Chips and broken bits flew. The birds worked rapidly, one at a time. While Mrs. Woodpecker worked her mate watched near by and tried two or three times to take a hand, but she thrust him aside and kept on pecking and hammering until at last she grew tired and his turn came. After three hours a sizable impression was made in the tree and both birds flew away into the aspen grove. I waited half an hour, but they did not come back. After spending more than an hour looking over a beaver house on the bank of a brook, distant a stone's throw, I returned to the aspen, but the woodpeckers were still away.