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the adirondacs.
a journal.

- dedicated to my fellow-travellers in august, 1858.
- Wise and polite,—and if I drew
- Their several portraits, you would own
- Chancer had no such worthy crew,
- Nor Boccace in Decameron.
- We crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends.
- Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks
- Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach
- The Adirondac lakes. At Martin's Beach
- We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide,—
- Ten men, ten guides, our company all told.
- Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac,
- With skies of benediction, to Round Lake,
- Where all the sacred mountains drew around us,
- Taháwus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead,
- And other Titans without muse or name.
- Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on,
- Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills.
- We made our distance wider, boat from boat,
- As each would hear the oracle alone.
- By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid
- Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets,
- Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower,
- Through scented banks of lilies white and gold,
- Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day,
- On through the Upper Saranac, and up
- Père Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass
- Winding through grassy shallows in and out,
- Two creeping miles of rushes, pads and sponge,
- To Follansbee Water and the Lake of Loons.
- Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed,
- Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge
- Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore.
- A pause and council: then, where near the head
- Due east a bay makes inward to the land
- Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank,
- And in the twilight of the forest noon
- Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard.
- We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts,
- Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof,
- Then struck a light and kindled the camp-fire.
- The wood was sovran with centennial trees,—
- Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir,
- Linden and spruce. In strict society
- Three conifers, white, pitch and Norway pine,
- Five-leaved, three-leaved and two-leaved, grew thereby.
- Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth,
- The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower.
- ‘Welcome!’ the wood-god murmured through the leaves,—
- ‘Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.’
- Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple-boughs,
- Which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire.
- Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks,
- Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor.
- Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft
- In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed,
- Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux,
- And greet unanimous the joyful change.
- So fast will Nature acclimate her sons,
- Though late returning to her pristine ways.
- Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold;
- And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned,
- Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds.
- Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air
- That circled freshly in their forest dress
- Made them to boys again. Happier that they
- Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind,
- At the first mounting of the giant stairs.
- No placard on these rocks warned to the polls,
- No door-bell heralded a visitor,
- No courier waits, no letter came or went,
- Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold;
- The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop,
- The falling rain will spoil no holiday.
- We were made freemen of the forest laws,
- All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends,
- Essaying nothing she cannot perform.
- In Adirondac lakes,
- At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded:
- Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make
- His brief toilette: at night, or in the rain,
- He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn:
- A paddle in the right hand, or an oar,
- And in the left, a gun, his needful arms.
- By turns we praised the stature of our guides,
- Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill
- To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp,
- To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs
- Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down:
- Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount,
- And wit to trap or take him in his lair.
- Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent,
- In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides;
- Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired
- Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve.
- Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!
- No city airs or arts pass current here.
- Tour rank is all reversed; let men of cloth
- Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls:
- They are the doctors of the wilderness,
- And we the low-prized laymen.
- In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test
- Which few can put on with impunity.
- What make you, master, fumbling at the oar?
- Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here.
- The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb;
- The oar, the guide's. Dare you accept the tasks
- He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes,
- Tell the sun's time, determine the true north,
- Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods
- To thread by night the nearest way to camp?
- Ask you, how went the hours?
- All day we swept the lake, searched every cove,
- North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay,
- Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer,
- Or whipping its rough surface for a trout;
- Or, bathers, diving from the rock at noon;
- Challenging Echo by our guns and cries;
- Or listening to the laughter of the loon;
- Or, in the evening twilight's latest red,
- Beholding the procession of the pines;
- Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack,
- In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter
- Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds
- Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist.
- Hark to that muffled roar! a tree in the woods
- Is fallen: but hush! it has not scared the buck
- Who stands astonished at the meteor light,
- Then turns to bound away,—is it too late?
- Our heroes tried their rifles at a mark,
- Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five;
- Sometimes their wits at sally and retort,
- With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle;
- Or parties scaled the near acclivities
- Competing seekers of a rumored lake,
- Whose unauthenticated waves we named
- Lake Probability,—our carbuncle,
- Long sought, not found.
- Two Doctors in the cam,
- Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brai.
- Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew,
- Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow and moth;
- Insatiate skill in water or in air
- Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss;.
- The while, one leaden pot of alcohol
- Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds.
- Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants,
- Orchis and gentian, fern and long whip-scirpus,
- Rosy polygonum, lake-margin's pride,
- Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge and moss,
- Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls.
- Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed,
- The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker
- Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp.
- As water poured through hollows of the hills
- To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets,
- So Nature shed all beauty lavishly
- From her redundant horn.
- Lords of this realm,
- Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day
- Rounded by hours where each outdid the last
- In miracles of pomp, we must be proud,
- As if associates of the sylvan gods.
- We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac,
- So pure the Alpine element we breathed,
- So light, so lofty pictures came and went.
- We trode on air, contemned the distant town,
- Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned
- That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge
- And how we should come hither with our sons,
- Hereafter,—willing they, and more adroit.
- Hard fare, hard bed and comic misery,—
- The midge, the blue-fly and the mosquito
- Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands:
- But, on the second day, we heed them not,
- Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries,
- Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names.
- For who defends our leafy tabernacle
- From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,—
- Who but the midge, mosquito and the fly,
- Which past endurance sting the tender cit,
- But which we learn to scatter with a smudge,
- Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn?
- Our foaming ale we drank from hunters' pans,
- Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave
- Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread;
- All ate like abbots, and, if any missed
- Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss
- With hunters' appetite and peals of mirth.
- And Stillman, our guides' guide, and Commodore,
- Crusoe, Crusader, Pius Æneas, said aloud,
- “Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating
- Food indigestible”:—then murmured some,
- Others applauded him who spoke the truth.
- Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought
- Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday
- ‘Mid all the hints and glories of the home.
- For who can tell what sudden privacies
- Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry
- Of scholars furloughed from their tasks and let
- Into this Oreads’ fended. Paradise,
- As chapels in the city's thoroughfares,
- Whither gaunt Labor slips to wipe his brow
- And meditate a moment on Heaven's rest.
- Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke
- To each apart, lifting her lovely shows
- To spiritual lessons pointed home,
- And as through dreams in watches of the night,
- So through all creatures in their form and ways
- Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant,
- Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense
- Inviting to new knowledge, one with old.
- Hark to that petulant chirp! what aus the warbler?
- Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye.
- Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird,
- Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light,
- Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky?
- And presently the sky is changed; O world!
- What pictures and what harmonies are thine!
- The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene,
- So like the soul of me, what if 't were me?
- A melancholy better than all mirth.
- Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect,
- Or at the foresight of obscurer years?
- Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory.
- Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty
- Superior to all its gaudy skirts.
- And, that no day of life may lack romance,
- The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down
- A private beam into each several heart.
- Daily the bending skies solicit man,
- The seasons chariot him from this exile,
- The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair,
- The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,
- Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights
- Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.
- With a vermilion pencil mark the day
- When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs
- Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falla
- Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront
- Two of our mates returning with swift oars.
- One held a printed journal waving high Caught from a late-arriving traveller,
- Big with great news, and shouted the report
- For which the world had waited, now firm fact,
- Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea,
- And landed on our coast, and pulsating
- With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries
- From boat to boat, and to the echoes round,
- Greet the glad miracle. Thought's new-found path
- Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways,
- Match God's equator with a zone of art,
- And lift man's public action to a height
- Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses,
- When linkæd hemispheres attest his deed.
- We have few moments in the longest life
- Of such delight and wonder as there grew,—
- Nor yet unsuited to that solitude:
- A burst of joy, as if we told the fact
- To ears intelligent; as if gray rock
- And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know
- This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind;
- As if we men were talking in a vein
- Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs,
- And a prime end of the most subtle element
- Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves!
- Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops,
- Let them hear well! 't is theirs as much as ours.
- A spasm throbbing through the pedestals
- Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent,
- Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill
- To be a brain, or serve the brain of man.
- The lightning has run masterless too long;
- He must to school and learn his verb and noun
- And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage,
- Spelling with guided tongue man's messages
- Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea.
- And yet I marked, even in the manly joy
- Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat
- (Perchance I erred), a shade of discontent;
- Or was it for mankind a generous shame,
- As of a luck not quite legitimate,
- Since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part?
- Was it a college pique of town and gown,
- As one within whose memory it burned
- That not academicians, but some lout,
- Found ten years since the Californian gold?
- And now, again, a hungry company
- Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade,
- Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools
- Of science, not from the philosophers,
- Had won the brightest laurel of all time.
- 'T was always thus, and will be; hand and head
- Are ever rivals: but, though this be swift,
- The other slow,—this the Prometheus,
- And that the Jove,—yet, howsoever hid,
- It was from Jove the other stole his fire,
- And, without Jove, the good had never been,
- It is not Iroquois or cannibals,
- But ever the free race with front sublime,
- And these instructed by their wisest too,
- Who do the feat, and lift humanity.
- Let not him mourn who best entitled was,
- Nay, mourn not one: let him exult,
- Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant,
- And water it with wine, nor watch askance
- Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit:
- Enough that mankind eat and are refreshed.
- We flee away from cities, but we bring
- The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers,
- Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts,
- We praise the guide, we praise the forest life:
- But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore
- Of books and arts and trained experiment,
- Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz?
- O no, not we! Witness the shout that shook
- Wild Tupper Lake; witness the mute all-hail
- The joyful traveller gives, when on the verge
- Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears
- From a log-cabin stream Beethoven's notes
- On the piano, played with master's hand.
- ‘Well done!’ he cries; ‘the bear is kept at bay,
- The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire;
- All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold,
- This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall,
- This wild plantation will suffice to chase.
- Now speed the gay celerities of art,
- What in the desert was impossible
- Within four walls is possible again,—
- Culture and libraries, mysteries of skill,
- Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife
- Of keen competing youths, joined or alone
- To outdo each other and extort applause.
- Mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep.
- Twirl the old wheels! Time takes fresh start again,
- On for a thousand years of genius more.’
- The holidays were fruitful, but must end;
- One August evening had a cooler breath;
- Into each mind intruding duties crept;
- Under the cinders burned the fires of home;
- Nay, letters found us in our paradise:
- So in the gladness of the new event
- We struck our camp and left the happy hills.
- The fortunate star that rose on us sank not;
- The prodigal sunshine rested on the land,
- The rivers gambolled onward to the sea,
- And Nature, the inscrutable and mute,
- Permitted on her infinite repose
- Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons,
- As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed.

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the adirondacs. a journal. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 9 (Poems) [1909]

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the adirondacs. a journal.

the adirondacs.
a journal.