It appears that I saw about a dozen plants which had accompanied man as far into the woods as Chesuncook, and had naturalized them...selves there, in 1853. Plants begin thus early to spring by the side of a logging-path,--a mere vista through the woods, which can only be used in the winter, on account of the stumps and fallen trees,--which are at length are the roadside plants in old settlements. The pioneers of such are planted in part by the first cattle, which cannot be summered in the woods.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It appears that in a forest like this the great majority of flowers, shrubs, and grasses are confined to the banks of the rivers a...nd lakes, and to the meadows, more open swamps, burnt lands, and mountain-tops; comparatively very few indeed penetrate the woods. There is no such dispersion even of wild-flowers as is commonly supposed, or as exists in a cleared and settled country. Most of our wild-flowers, so called, may be considered as naturalized in the localities where they grow. Rivers and lakes are the great protectors of such plants against the aggressions of the forest, by their annual rise and fall keeping open a narrow strip where these more delicate plants have light and space in which to grow. They are the protégés of the rivers. These narrow and straggling bands and isolated groups are, in a sense, the pioneers of civilization. Birds, quadrupeds, insects, and man also, in the main, follow the flowers, and the latter in his turn makes more room for them and for berry-bearing shrubs, birds, and small quadrupeds. One settler told me that not only blackberries and raspberries but mountain maples came in, in the clearing and burning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have often wished since that I was with them. They search for timber over a given section, climbing hills and often high trees t...o look off; explore the streams by which it is to be driven, and the like; spend five or six weeks in the woods, they two alone, a hundred miles or more from any town, roaming about, and sleeping on the ground where night overtakes them, depending chiefly on the provisions they carry with them, though they do not decline what game they come across.... It is a solitary and adventurous life, and comes nearest to that of the trapper of the West, perhaps. They work ever with a gun as well as an axe, let their beards grow, and live without neighbors, not on an open plain, but far within a wilderness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But, on more accounts than one, I had had enough of moose-hunting. I had not come to the woods for this purpose, nor had I foresee...n it, though I had been willing to learn how the Indian manvred; but one moose killed was as good, if not as bad, as a dozen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Those Maine woods differ essentially from ours. There you are never reminded that the wilderness which you are threading is, after... all, some villager's familiar wood-lot, some widow's thirds, from which her ancestors have sledded fuel for generations, minutely described in some old deed which is recorded, of which the owner has got a plan, too, and old bound-marks may be found every forty rods, if you will search.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our woods are sylvan, and their inhabitants woodmen and rustics; that is selvaggia, and the inhabitants are salvages. A civilized ...man, using the word in the ordinary sense, with his ideas and associations, must at length pine there, like a cultivated plant, which clasps its fibres about a crude and undissolved mass of peat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The woods were as fresh and full of vegetable life as a lichen in wet weather, and contained many interesting plants; but unless t...hey are of white pine, they are treated with as little respect here as a mildew, and in the other case they are only the more quickly cut down.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Perhaps our own woods and fields,--in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,--with the primitiv...e swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light...,--to see its perfect success; but most are content to behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem that its true success! But the pine is no more lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and houses is no more its true and highest use than the truest use of a man is to be cut down and made into manure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »