Getting up some time after midnight to collect the scattered brands together, while my companions were sound asleep, I observed, p...artly in the fire, which had ceased to blaze, a perfectly regular elliptical ring of light, about five inches in its shortest diameter, six or seven in its longer, and from one eighth to one quarter of an inch wide. It was fully as bright as the fire, but not reddish or scarlet, like a coal, but a white and slumbering light, like the glow-worm's. I could tell it from the fire only by its whiteness. I saw at once that it must be phosphorescent wood, which I had so often heard of, but never chanced to see. Putting my finger on it, with a little hesitation, I found that it was a piece of dead moose-wood (Acer striatum).... Using my knife, I discovered that the light proceeded from that portion of the sap-wood immediately under the bark, and thus presented a regular ring at the end, which, indeed, appeared raised above the level of the wood, and when I pared off the bark and cut into the sap, it was all aglow along the log.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This afternoon's experience suggested to me how base or coarse are the motives which commonly carry men into the wilderness. The e...xplorers and lumberers generally are all hirelings, paid so much a day for their labor, and as such they have no more love for wild nature than wood-sawyers have for forests. Other white men and Indians who come here are for the most part hunters, whose object is to slay as many moose and other wild animals as possible. But, pray, could not one spend some weeks or years in the solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments than these,--employments perfectly sweet and innocent and ennobling?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The afternoon's tragedy, and my share in it, as it affected the innocence, destroyed the pleasure of my adventure. It is true, I c...ame as near as is possible to come to being a hunter and miss it, myself; and as it is, I think that I could spend a year in the woods, fishing and hunting just enough to sustain myself, with satisfaction. This would be next to living like a philosopher on the fruits of the earth which you had raised, which also attracts me. But this hunting of the moose merely for the satisfaction of killing him,--not even for the sake of his hide,--without making any extraordinary exertion or running any risk yourself, is too much like going out by night to some wood-side pasture and shooting your neighbor's horses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We suddenly spied two moose standing just on the edge of the open part of the meadow which we had passed, not more than six or sev...en rods distant, looking around the alders at us. They made me think of great frightened rabbits, with their long ears and half-inquisitive, half-frightened looks; the true denizens of the forest (I saw at once), filling a vacuum which now first I discovered had not been filled for me,--moose-men, wood-eaters, the word is said to mean,--clad in a sort of Vermont gray, or homespun.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Indian remarked as before, "Must have hard wood to cook moose-meat," as if that were a maxim, and proceeded to get it. My comp...anion cooked some in California fashion, winding a long string of the meat round a stick and slowly turning it in his hand before the fire. It was very good. But the Indian, not approving of the mode, or because he was not allowed to cook it his own way, would not taste it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
it was older sure than this year's cutting, Or even last year's or the year's before.... The wood was gray and the bark warping off it And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and ...the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O hurry to the ragged wood, for there I will drive all those lovers out and cry... O my share of the world, O yellow hair! No one has ever loved but you and I.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »