Post 01527
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Those who believe in fairies will receive the most from Nature. The unfenced wilderness is full of wild folk, full of fairy gardens and homes. With these a careless prowler is rarely welcome. Wasps and bees early gave me sharp hints on blundering, hurried intrusion, and a mother grizzly with two cubs by her side also impressed me concerning this matter. Birds sometimes made me ashamed for breaking in upon them. I did no shooting, carried only a kodak, and was careful to avoid rushing from one place to another; but refined wilderness etiquette was yet to be learned. Usually I felt welcome in the most secluded place, but one day, having wandered out into the corner of the meadow, I felt that I was not only an uninvited guest, but a most unwelcome intruder.
The meadow was a deeply secluded one, such as the fairies would naturally reserve for themselves. Towering spruces shut it out from the world. A summer play was surely in progress when I blundered upon the scene. With my intrusion everything stopped abruptly. Each flower paused in the midst of its part, the music of the thrush broke off, the tall spruces scowled stiffly, and the slender, observant young trees stood unwillingly still. Plainly all were annoyed at my presence, and all were waiting impatiently for me to be gone. As I retreated into the woods, a breeze whispered and the spruces made stately movements. The flowers in the meadow resumed their dance, the aspen leaves their merry accompaniment, the young trees their graceful swaying and bowing, and the fairies and bees became as happy as before.
A camp-fire anywhere in the wilderness appeals strongly to the imagination. To me it was most captivating in a little mountain meadow. Even in a circle of friends it may shut out all else, and with it one may return through “yesterday’s seven thousand years.” But to be completely under its spell one must be alone with its changing flame. Although I have watched the camp-fire all alone in many scenes,–in the wilderness, at the shore of the sea, at timber-line, and on the desert in the shadow of the prehistoric cactus,–nowhere has my imagination been more deeply stirred than it was one night by my camp-fire in a little mountain meadow. Around were the silent ranks of trees. Here the world was new and the fire blazed in primeval scenes. Its strange dance of lights and shadows against the trees rebuilt for me the past. Once more I felt the hopes and dreads of savage life. Once more I knew the legends that were told when the first camp-fire burned.