My Side of the Mountain (10 page)

January was a fierce month. After the ice storm came more snow. The mountaintop was never free of it, the gorge was blocked; only on the warmest days could I hear, deep under the ice, the trickle of water seeping over the falls. I still had food, but it was getting low. All the fresh-frozen venison was gone, and most of the bulbs and tubers. I longed for just a simple dandelion green.

Toward the end of January I began to feel tired, and my elbows and knees were a little stiff. This worried me. I figured it was due to some vitamin I wasn’t getting, but I couldn’t remember which vitamin it was or even where I would find it if I could remember it.

One morning my nose bled. It frightened me a bit, and I wondered if I shouldn’t hike to the library and reread the material on vitamins. It didn’t last long, however, so I figured it wasn’t too serious. I decided I would live until the greens came to the land, for I was of the opinion that since I had had nothing green for months, that was probably the trouble.

On that same day Frightful caught a rabbit in the meadow. As I cleaned it, the liver suddenly looked so tempting that I could hardly wait to prepare it. For the next week, I craved liver and ate all I could get. The tiredness ended, the bones stopped aching and I had no more nosebleeds. Hunger is a funny thing. It has a kind of intelligence all its own. I ate liver almost every day until the first plants emerged, and I never had any more trouble. I have looked up vitamins since. I am not surprised to find that liver is rich in vitamin C. So are citrus fruits and green vegetables, the foods I lacked. Wild plants like sorrel and dock are rich in this vitamin. Even if I had known this at that time, it would have done me no good, for they were but roots in the earth. As it turned out, liver was the only available source of vitamin C—and on liver I stuffed, without knowing why.

So much for my health. I wonder now why I didn’t have more trouble than I did, except that my mother worked in a children’s hospital during the war, helping to prepare food, and she was conscious of what made up a balanced meal. We heard a lot about it as kids, so I was not unaware that my winter diet was off balance.

After that experience, I noticed things in the forest that I hadn’t paid any attention to before. A squirrel had stripped the bark off a sapling at the foot of the meadow, leaving it gleaming white. I pondered when I saw it, wondering if he had lacked a vitamin or two and had sought them in the bark. I must admit I tried a little of the bark myself, but decided that even if it was loaded with vitamins, I preferred liver.

I also noticed that the birds would sit in the sun when it favored our mountain with its light, and I, being awfully vitamin minded at the time, wondered if they were gathering vitamin D. To be on the safe side, in view of this, I sat in the sun too when it was out. So did Frightful.

My notes piled up during these months, and my journal of birch bark became a storage problem. I finally took it out of my tree and cached it under a rock ledge nearby. The mice made nests in it, but it held up even when it got wet. That’s one thing about using the products of the forest. They are usually weatherproof. This is important when the weather is as near to you as your skin and as much a part of your life as eating.

I was writing more about the animals now and less about myself, which proves I was feeling pretty safe. Here is an interesting entry.

“February 6

“The deer have pressed in all around me. They are hungry. Apparently they stamp out yards in the valleys where they feed during the dawn and dusk, but many of them climb back to the hemlock grove to hide and sleep for the day. They manage the deep snows so effortlessly on those slender hooves. If I were to know that a million years from today my children’s children’s children were to live as I am living in these mountains, I should marry me a wife with slender feet and begin immediately to breed a race with hooves, that the Catskill children of the future might run through the snows and meadows and marshes as easily as the deer.”

I got to worrying about the deer, and for many days I climbed trees and cut down tender limbs for them. At first only two came, then five, and soon I had a ring of large-eyed white-tailed deer waiting at my tree at twilight for me to come out and chop off limbs. I was astonished to see this herd grow, and wondered what signals they used to inform each other of my services. Did they smell fatter? Look more contented? Somehow they were able to tell their friends that there was a free lunch on my side of the mountain, and more and more arrived.

One evening there were so many deer that I decided to chop limbs on the other side of the meadow. They were cutting up the snow and tearing up the ground around my tree with their pawing.

Three nights later they all disappeared. Not one deer came for limbs. I looked down the valley, and in the dim light could see the open earth on the land below. The deer could forage again. Spring was coming to the land! My heart beat faster. I think I was trembling. The valley also blurred. The only thing that can do that is tears, so I guess I was crying.

That night the great horned owls boomed out across the land. My notes read:

“February 10

“I think the great horned owls have eggs! The mountain is white, the wind blows, the snow is hard packed, but spring is beginning in their hollow maple. I will climb it tomorrow.

“February 12

“Yes, yes, yes, yes. It is spring in the maple. Two great horned owl eggs lie in the cold snow-rimmed cavity in the broken top of the tree. They were warm to my touch. Eggs in the snow. Now isn’t that wonderful? I didn’t stay long, for it is bitter weather and I wanted the female to return immediately. I climbed down, and as I ran off toward my tree I saw her drift on those muffled wings of the owl through the limbs and branches as she went back to her work. I crawled through the tunnel of ice that leads to my tree now, the wind beating at my back. I spent the evening whittling and thinking about the owl high in the forest with the first new life of the spring.”

And so with the disappearance of the deer, the hoot of the owl, the cold land began to create new life. Spring is terribly exciting when you are living right in it.

I was hungry for green vegetables, and that night as I went off to sleep, I thought of the pokeweeds, the dandelions, the spring beauties that would soon be pressing up from the earth.

MORE ABOUT

The Spring in the Winter and the Beginning of My Story’s End

The owl had broken the spell of winter. From that time on, things began to happen that you’d have to see to believe. Insects appeared while the snow was on the ground. Birds built nests, raccoons mated, foxes called to each other, seeking again their lifelong mates. At the end of February, the sap began to run in the maple trees. I tapped some trees and boiled the sap to syrup. It takes an awful lot of sap to make one cup of syrup, I discovered—thirty-two cups, to be exact.

All this and I was still in my winter fur-lined underwear. One or two birds returned, the ferns by the protected spring unrolled—very slowly, but they did. Then the activity gathered momentum, and before I was aware of the change, there were the skunk cabbages poking their funny blooms above the snow in the marsh. I picked some and cooked them, but they aren’t any good. A skunk cabbage is a skunk cabbage.

From my meadow I could see the valleys turning green. My mountain was still snow-capped, so I walked into the valleys almost every day to scout them for edible plants. Frightful rode down with me on my shoulder. She knew even better than I that the season had changed, and she watched the sky like radar. No life traveled that sky world unnoticed by Frightful. I thought she wanted to be free and seek a mate, but I could not let her. I still depended upon her talents and company. Furthermore, she was different, and if I did let her go, she probably would have been killed by another female, for Frightful had no territory other than the hemlock patch, and her hunting instincts had been trained for man. She was a captive, not a wild bird, and that is almost another kind of bird.

One day I was in the valley digging tubers and collecting the tiny new dandelion shoots when Frightful saw another duck hawk and flew from my shoulder like a bolt, pulling the leash from my hand as she went.

“Frightful!” I called. “You can’t leave me now!” I whistled, held out a piece of meat, and hoped she would not get her leash caught in a treetop. She hovered above my head, looked at the falcon and then at my hand, folded her wings, and dropped to my fist.

“I saw that!” a voice said. I spun around to see a young man about my own age, shivering at the edge of the woods.

“You’re the wild boy, aren’t you?”

I was so astonished to see a human being in all this cold thawing silence that I just stood and looked at him. When I gathered my wits I replied. “No, I’m just a citizen.”

“Aw, gee,” he said with disappointment. Then he gave in to the cold and shivered until the twigs around him rattled. He stepped forward.

“Well, anyway, I’m Matt Spell. I work after school on the Poughkeepsie New Yorker, a newspaper. I read all the stories about the wild boy who lives in the Catskills, and I thought that if I found him and got a good story, I might get to be a reporter. Have you ever run across him? Is there such a boy?”

“Aw, it’s all nonsense,” I said as I gathered some dry wood and piled it near the edge of the woods. I lit it swiftly, hoping he would not notice the flint and steel. He was so cold and so glad to see the flames that he said nothing.

I rolled a log up to the fire for him and shoved it against a tree that was blocked from the raw biting wind by a stand of hawthorns. He crouched over the flames for a long time, then practically burnt the soles off his shoes warming his feet. He was that miserable.

“Why didn’t you dress warmer for this kind of a trip?” I asked. “You’ll die up here in this damp cold.”

“I think I am dying,” he said, sitting so close to the fire, he almost smothered it. He was nice looking, about thirteen or fourteen, I would have said. He had a good bold face, blue eyes, hair about the color of my stream in the thaw. Although he was big, he looked like the kind of fellow who didn’t know his own strength. I liked Matt.

“I’ve still got a sandwich,” he said. “Want half?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I brought my lunch.” Frightful had been sitting on my shoulder through all this, but now the smoke was bothering her and she hopped to a higher perch. I still had her on the leash.

“There was a bird on your shoulder,” Matt said. “He had nice eyes. Do you know him?”

“I’m sort of an amateur falconer,” I replied. “I come up here to train my bird. It’s a she—Frightful is her name.”

“Does she catch anything?”

“Now and then. How hungry are you?” I asked as his second bite finished the sandwich.

“I’m starved; but don’t share your lunch. I have some money, just tell me which road takes you toward Delhi.”

I stood up and whistled to Frightful. She flew down. I undid her leash from her jesses. I stroked her head for a moment; then threw her into the air and walked out into the field, kicking the brush as I went.

I had noticed a lot of rabbit tracks earlier, and followed them over the muddy earth as best I could. I kicked up a rabbit and with a twist Frightful dropped out of the sky and took it.

Roast rabbit is marvelous under any conditions, but when you’re cold and hungry it is superb. Matt enjoyed every bite. I worked on a small portion to be sociable, for I was not especially hungry. I dared not offer him the walnuts in my pocket, for too much had been written about that boy living off nuts.

“My whole circulatory system thanks you,” Matt said. He meant it, for his hands and feet were now warm, and the blue color had left his lips and was replaced by a good warm red.

“By the way, what’s your name?”

“Sam. Sam Gribley,” I said.

“Sam, if I could borrow a coat from you, I think I could make it to the bus station without freezing to death. I sure didn’t think it would be so much colder in the mountains. I could mail it back to you.”

“Well,” I hesitated, “my house is pretty far from here. I live on the Gribley farm and just come down here now and then to hunt with the falcon; but maybe we could find an old horse blanket or something in one of the deserted barns around here.”

“Aw, never mind, Sam. I’ll run to keep warm. Have you any ideas about this wild boy—seen anyone that you think the stories might be referring to?”

“Let’s start toward the road,” I said as I stamped out the fire. I wound him through the forest until I was dizzy and he was lost, then headed for the road. At the edge of the woods I said, “Matt, I have seen that boy.”

Matt Spell stopped.

“Gee, Sam, tell me about him.” I could hear paper rattle, and saw that Matt’s cold hands were not too stiff to write in his notebook.

We walked down the road a bit and then I said, “Well, he ran away from home one day and never went back.”

“Where does he live? What does he wear?”

We sat down on a stone along the edge of the road. It was behind a pine tree, and out of the ripping wind.

“He lives west of here in a cave. He wears a bearskin coat, has long hair—all matted and full of burrs—and according to him he fishes for a living.”

“You’ve talked to him?” he asked brightly.

“Oh, yes, I talk to him.”

“Oh, this is great!” He wrote furiously. “What color are his eyes?”

“I think they are bluish gray, with a little brown in them.”

“His hair?”

“Darkish—I couldn’t really tell under all those coon tails.”

“Coon tails? Do you suppose he killed them himself?”

“No. It looked more like one of those hats you get with cereal box tops.”

“Well, I won’t say anything about it then; just, coon-tail hat.”

“Yeah, coon-tail hat’s enough,” I agreed. “And I think his shoes were just newspapers tied around his feet. That’s good insulation, you know.”

“Yeah?” Matt wrote that down.

“Did he say why he ran away?”

“I never asked him. Why does any boy run away?”

Matt put down his pencil and thought. “Well, I ran away once because I thought how sorry everybody would be when I was gone. How they’d cry and wish they’d been nicer to me.” He laughed.

Then I said, “I ran away once because . . . well, because I wanted to do something else.”

“That’s a good reason,” said Matt. “Do you suppose that’s why . . . by the way, what is his name?”

“I never asked him,” I said truthfully.

“What do you suppose he really eats and lives on?” asked Matt.

“Fish, roots, berries, nuts, rabbits. There’s a lot of food around the woods if you look for it, I guess.”

“Roots? Roots wouldn’t be good.”

“Well, carrots are roots.”

“By golly, they are; and so are potatoes, sort of. Fish?” pondered Matt, “I suppose there are lots of fish around here.”

“The streams are full of them.”

“You’ve really seen him, huh? He really is in these mountains?”

“Sure, I’ve seen him,” I said. Finally I stood up.

“I gotta get home. I go the other way. You just follow this road to the town, and I think you can get a bus from there.”

“Now, wait,” he said. “Let me read it back to you to check the details.”

“Sure.”

Matt stood up, blew on his hands and read: “The wild boy of the Catskills does exist. He has dark brown hair, black eyes, and wears a handsome deerskin suit that he apparently made himself. He is ruddy and in excellent health and is able to build a fire with flint and steel as fast as a man can light a match.

“His actual dwelling is a secret, but his means of support is a beautiful falcon. The falcon flies off the boy’s fist, and kills rabbits and pheasants when the boy needs food. He only takes what he needs. The boy’s name is not known, but he ran away from home and never went back.”

“No, Matt, no,” I begged.

I was about to wrestle it out with him when he said furtively, “I’ll make a deal with you. Let me spend my spring vacation with you and I won’t print a word of it. I’ll write only what you’ve told me.”

I looked at him and decided that it might be nice to have him. I said, “I’ll meet you outside town any day you say, providing you let me blindfold you and lead you to my home and providing you promise not to have a lot of photographers hiding in the woods. Do you know what would happen if you told on me?”

“Sure, the newsreels would roll up, the TV cameras would arrive, reporters would hang in the trees, and you’d be famous.”

“Yes, and back in New York City.”

“I’ll write what you said and not even your mother will recognize you.”

“Make it some other town, and it’s a deal,” I said. “You might say I am working for Civil Defense doing research by learning to live off the land. Tell them not to be afraid, that crayfish are delicious and caves are warm.”

Matt liked that. He sat down again. “Tell me some of the plants and animals you eat so that they will know what to do. We can make this informative.”

I sat down, and listed some of the better wild plants and the more easily obtainable mammals and fish. I gave him a few good recipes and told him that I didn’t recommend anyone trying to live off the land unless they liked oysters and spinach.

Matt liked that. He wrote and wrote. Finally he said, “My hands are cold. I’d better go. But I’ll see you on April twelfth at three-thirty outside of town. Okay? And just to prove that I’m a man of my word, I’ll bring you a copy of what I write.”

“Well, you better not give me away. I have a scout in civilization who follows all these stories.”

We shook hands and he departed at a brisk pace.

I returned to my patch on the mountain, talking to myself all the way. I talk to myself a lot, but everyone does. The human being, even in the midst of people, spends nine-tenths of his time alone with the private voices of his own head. Living alone on a mountain is not much different, except that your speaking voice gets rusty. I talked inside my head all the way home, thinking up schemes, holding conversations with Bando and Dad and Matt Spell. I worded the article for Matt after discussing it with Bando, and made it sound very convincing without giving myself up. I kind of wanted to write it down and send it to Matt, but I didn’t.

I entered my tree, tied Frightful to the bedpost, and there was Jessie Coon James. It had been months since I’d seen him. He was curled up on my bed, asleep. A turtle shell that had been full of cracked walnuts was empty beside him. He awoke, jumped to the floor, and walked slowly between my legs and out the door. I had the feeling Jessie was hoping I had departed for good and that he could have my den. He was a comfort-loving creature. I was bigger and my hands were freer than his, so he conceded me the den. I watched him climb over The Baron’s rock and shinny up a hemlock. He moved heavily into the limbs, and it occurred to me that Jessie was a she-Jessie, not a he-Jessie.

I cooked supper, and then sat down by my little fire and called a forum. It is very sociable inside my head, and I have perfected the art of getting a lot of people arguing together in silence or in a forum, as I prefer to call it. I can get four people all talking at once, and a fifth can be present, but generally I can’t get him to talk. Usually these forums discuss such things as a storm and whether or not it is coming, how to make a spring suit, and how to enlarge my house without destroying the life in the tree. Tonight, however, they discussed what to do about Matt Spell. Dad kept telling me to go right down to the city and make sure he published nothing, not even a made-up story. Bando said, no, it’s all right, he still doesn’t know where you live; and then Matt walked into the conversation and said that he wanted to spend his spring vacation with me, and that he promised not to do anything untoward. Matt kept using “untoward”—I don’t know where he got that expression, but he liked it and kept using it—that’s how I knew Matt was speaking; everything was “untoward.”

That night I fell asleep with all these people discussing the probability of my being found and hauled back to the city. Suddenly Frightful broke into the conversation. She said, “Don’t let that Matt come up here. He eats too much.” That was the first time that Frightful had ever talked in a forum. I was delighted, for I was always sure that she had more to say than a few cries. She had not missed Matt’s appetite.

The forum dissolved in a good humor, everyone being delighted with Frightful. I lifted my head to look at her. She had her beak in the feathers of her back, sound asleep.