HAMLIN GARLAND JOYS OF THE TRAIL Hamlin Garland, born in West Salem, Wisconsin, in 1860, has been for many years one of our foremost men of letters. His "A Son of the Middle Border" in 1917 and "A Daughter of the Middle Border" in 1921, are the latest of a long series of volumes from his pen that began with, "Main-Traveled Roads" in 1890. This address has been delivered on various occasions at Camp Fire Clubs and at a Convocation of the University of Chicago. EACH year the number of those who know the trail and its life steadily lessen, and it may be that some of you are minded at the outset to ask: "What is a trail ?" On its material side it is a path, capable only of receiving horses or men in single file. It is only twelve or fourteen inches wide, and may be merely a smoothing of the sod; or it may be a deep scar in the solid rock, the record of centuries of travel, like the burro trails of Laguna and Walpi. In the woods of Wisconsin it may be a "carry" around a rapid; in Montana, an elk-run leading to a "lick" or waterhole. Insignificant as a thread, far-flung upon the earth, it may unite great watersheds, linking valley to valley. To come upon it in the tangled wood is an exceeding great joy. It is a reassuring clew in the cedar swamp, a promise of water in the sand, a thread of human purpose on the hill. It is the beginning of helpfulness among animals, the evidence of coöperation among men. To the man of macadam it seems aimless. It wavers, appears to vacillate, uncertain of its mind; and yet it attacks most difficult places. For all its apparent irresolution, it is a brave little road, discreet and persistent, venturing where the wagonroad dare not follow. It may be called the vedette of civilization. To the lover of nature these highways of the primitive hunter are incomparably more satisfying than the white man's modification of them, because they were constructed with such widely different design. The red pathfinder saved toil; minutes were not important; he carried no clock. The railroad king, the man of commerce, has a contempt for labor that he can command; time is the element of value to him. Therefore his iron ways deflect from those of his guides. Employing the compass, his engineers shorten curves, fill ravines, and slash across the hills. His steel is laid athwart the bodies of murdered trees. His progress is a desolation. His iron horses howl through gashed and devastated lands, spreading fire and ruin as they go. The scars they leave never heal. The Cheyenne laid out his trail by means of a star on the shoulder of a mountain. Therefore it loops its way across a valley, by most gentle curves. It approaches a hill with caution and follows a lakeside with leisure. It goes out of its way to skirt a wood, to observe a tarn. The dead body of every tree is respected; hardly is a shrub disturbed. Nature proceeds unobstructedly in her seedings and harvestings, so considerate, so gentle, so accommodating in this trail-so patient of hindrances, and so shy! Like a Chippewa lodge, the trail is an adjustment to the wilderness, never a ravage. Silent as a serpent, it slips from thicket to thicket. It does not rive, nor uproot, nor crush. It is a purple ribbon in the valley, a silken strand on the hillside. It is dappled with brown and gold beneath the pines. In the meadow grass it disappears! The blood of the trailer leaps under the spur of keenly remembered joys, as he turns from the dusty, rectilinear turnpike into the hills. You are done with the dust of the crowd, the noise of traffic, the hustle of the highway, when you "hit the trail." All that nature has hidden from the engine and the cart she displays to him who rides the mountain path. Flowers are at your feet; fruits caress your hand; all her shyest, most delicate plants, scents, and blooms are offered at every curve. Mountains shift and change, alluring to ever-widening horizon line, beckoning to ever more entrancing vista. It is a curious and pleasurable fact that in the Rocky Mountains, nature grows more beautiful as you climb. Starting at six thousand feet in the sagebrush and cactus, among hot, dry rocks, the trails hasten to green and grassy slopes, where a hundred glorious flowers bloom. All the thorny, spiny, bitter plants are left below, and the columbine, the aster, the painter's brush, and scores of others equally beautiful, spread their petals to the gentle wind. At eight thousand feet every cañon grows musical with water. Bluebells, the shooting star, or the most delicate ferns may bloom along the very edge in safety. The passing feet of your ponies hardly stir the leaves. To one who is a son of Illinois or Iowa a trip into the White River Plateau is like a return to the past. The storied savannas of Ohio and Kentucky and Minnesota are lost, cut and buried by the plow; but high in this glorious park in Colorado, ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, you may meet them again; the trail will lead you to them. All day and many days I rode, My pony's head set toward the sea. It was mid-August in the calendar, but here it was Junesuperb, dewy, fragrant, flashing June; such a magician is the trail. It is able to push spring into autumn, and set the violet and the goldenrod together! To our Pilgrim fathers the wilderness was possessed of the devil, and the red people were his imps. God held but feeble dominion in the forest. We of to-day consider the wood a refuge and the mountain a throne of glory. We admit that the Sioux is as human as ourselves. Even the wolf and the bear have their defenders, who say that no wild animal is really malevolent; only hungry, or at bay, or fighting to save himself from extinction. This change of sentiment is esteemed a growth in grace, in imagination, and so it is. There is a subtle joy in tracing out these ancient channels of woodland travel. I love to put myself in the footprints of the archetypal man. It is good discipline to reason back to the traveler's point of view, to come at the courage which inspired him and the wisdom which directed him in his wanderings. Here my knowledge of historical and urban concerns no longer avails me. My native perception is put to the full test. I am beleaguered of the forest, as are the fawns and the pheasants. Darkness is a menace; and when I camp at night, I creep to covert, like the coney, with a sense of exposure to the elements which exalts me or appalls me according to my rede. It is marvelous what instincts are played upon by the wind in the trees at midnight, as you lie down in your blanket far in the forest. You disclose your kinship to the hare as well as to the fox and the lynx. Your senses sharpen. Your caution expands into fear. In every rustling leaf you hear the stir of a snake, the step of a wolf. In the passing breeze is the sinuous approach of an enemy. On every side you fancy the lisp of stealthy circling feet. At such moments fire comes to have a mystic, friendly face. Do you know the splendors of the campfire? Have you seen it bloom in the cold, gray damp of an autumn night like a mighty rose? Have you heard the chirp and whisper-the mysterious singing of the flaming pine branches? If you have, you know its splendid solace. You are able to divine the protection which that ancient good spirit Red Flame flung between the houseless, hairy man of the Stone Age and the evil elements swarming upon him. It is a child of the sun, reproducing in the midnight forest the burning heat of the noonday. It is at once a shield and a sword. It disperses mimic stars to the bleak, oppressive skies. It beats back the darkness, laughing like Loki, defying the dragons, holding the werewolves at bay. The sun is long Snow is in the You make your camp late, we will suppose. set. All is cold and desolate. Rain is falling. air. Chilled and bent, you grope deep among the coverts of fir, gathering a few dry cones, breaking minute tips of branches. These you heap in a little mound, kneeling as in the act of conjuring some hidden spirit, some good genius of the wood. Then of a sudden out of the blackest licks a little red flame. It is the tongue-tip of the good beast Fire gnawing his way to freedom. A light arises. The shadows flee. The wind begins to snarl again, in desperate fury; but the brave blaze answers with a crescendo roar of jubilant light. The frost retreats like a circling pack of white wolves. The flame leaps higher! The icy branches of the trees above you suddenly appear lined in high relief against a blue-black sky, and lo, you find yourself glad and grateful, in a palace of scarlet and orange and green, a house of refuge, fragile as a bubble, but so magical that no savage beast dares to set a foot therein. Leagued with leaping flame you are invincible. Fire draws a shining line between ourselves and the brute. It proclaims man's mastery of the elements, his kingship. Circling the centuries, you approach the burning tree from the emberless awe of the caveman's desolate night. The discovery of the Rocky Mountains developed a new and more adventurous trailer than the plains of the forest. Hunters like Jim Bridger, pathfinders like Kit Carson and Fremont, explorers of the quality of Pike and Lewis and Clark, all came at the call of this mighty and implacable land. We are accustomed to hear it said that our forefathers found America a trackless waste; but this was true only in respect of wagon roads and turnpikes. So far from being a "horrific desert," it was, indeed, a beautiful and bounteous land, a wellinhabited country even in winter, covered by a network of intersecting trails, over which the Penobscot and the Delaware lightly trod. These paths connected rivers, lakes, and villages, and led to the most promising game fields. Fish filled the streams, and deer and partridges swarmed in the thickets. The dearth and danger lay mainly in the pilgrims. They were unskilled in woodcraft and uninstructed of the trail. They were indeed tenderfeet. As they gained in courage and insight, they made use of the experience of their aboriginal neighbors. They became pioneers. No one leader had laid out the primitive paths they trod; on the contrary, they were the product of the combined skill of generations of men-red hunters, who camped many moons in the woods, feeling their way to new hunting grounds. The |