There are three vines that belong to the ancient forest.
Elsewhere they will not grow, though the soil prepared for
them be never so rich, the shade of the arbour built for them
never so closely and cunningly woven. Their delicate,
thread-like roots take no hold upon the earth tilled and
troubled by the fingers of man. The fine sap that steals
through their long, slender limbs pauses and fails when they
are watered by human hands. Silently the secret of their life
retreats and shrinks away and hides itself.
But in the woods, where falling leaves and crumbling
tree-trunks and wilting ferns have been moulded by Nature into
a deep, brown humus, clean and fragrant — in the woods, where
the sunlight filters green and golden through interlacing
branches, and where pure moisture of distilling rains and
melting snows is held in treasury by never-failing banks of
moss — under the verdurous flood of the forest, like sea-weeds
under the ocean
waves, these three little creeping vines put forth their hands
with joy, and spread over rock and hillock and twisted
tree-root and mouldering log, in cloaks and scarves and
wreaths of tiny evergreen, glossy leaves.
One of them is adorned with white pearls sprinkled lightly
over its robe of green. This is Snowberry, and if you eat of
it, you will grow wise in the wisdom of flowers. You will
know where to find the yellow violet, and the wake-robin, and
the pink lady-slipper, and the scarlet sage, and the fringed
gentian. You will understand how the buds trust themselves to
the spring in their unfolding, and how the blossoms trust
themselves to the winter in their withering, and how the busy
bands of Nature are ever weaving the beautiful garment of life
out of the strands of death, and nothing is lost that yields
itself to her quiet handling.
Another of the vines of the forest is called Partridge-berry. Rubies are hidden among its foliage, and if you
eat of this fruit, you will grow wise in the wisdom of birds.
You will know where the oven-bird secretes her nest, and where
the woodcock
dances in the air at night; the drumming-log of the
ruffed grouse will be easy to find, and you will see the dark
lodges of the evergreen thickets inhabited by hundreds of
warblers. There will be no dead silence for you in the
forest, any longer, but you will hear sweet and delicate
voices on every side, voices that you know and love; you will
catch the key-note of the silver flute of the woodthrush, and
the silver harp of the veery, and the silver bells of the
hermit; and something in your heart will answer to them all.
In the frosty stillness of October nights you will see the
airy tribes flitting across the moon, following the secret
call that guides them southward. In the calm brightness of
winter sunshine, filling sheltered copses with warmth and
cheer, you will watch the lingering blue-birds and robins and
song-sparrows playing at summer, while the chickadees and the
juncos and the cross-bills make merry in the windswept fields.
In the lucent mornings of April you will hear your old friends
coming home to you, Phoebe, and Oriole, and Yellow-Throat, and
Red-Wing, and Tanager, and Cat-Bird. When they call
to you and greet you, you will understand that Nature knows a
secret for which man has never found a word — the secret that
tells itself in song.
The third of the forest-vines is Wood-Magic. It bears neither
flower nor fruit. Its leaves are hardly to be distinguished
from the leaves of the other vines. Perhaps they are a little
rounder than the Snowberry's, a little more pointed than the
Partridge-berry's; sometimes you might mistake them for the
one, sometimes for the other. No marks of warning have been
written upon them. If you find them it is your fortune; if
you taste them it is your fate.
For as you browse your way through the forest, nipping
here and there a rosy leaf of young winter-green, a fragrant
emerald tip of balsam-fir, a twig of spicy birch, if by chance
you pluck the leaves of Wood-Magic and eat them, you will not
know what you have done, but the enchantment of the tree-land
will enter your heart and the charm of the wildwood will flow
through your veins.
You will never get away from it. The sighing of the wind
through the pine-trees and the laughter
of the stream in its rapids will sound through all your
dreams. On beds of silken softness you will long for the
sleep-song of whispering leaves above your head, and the smell
of a couch of balsam-boughs. At tables spread with dainty
fare you will be hungry for the joy of the hunt, and for the
angler's sylvan feast. In proud cities you will weary for the
sight of a mountain trail; in great cathedrals you will think
of the long, arching aisles of the woodland; and in the noisy
solitude of crowded streets you will hone after the friendly
forest.
This is what will happen to you if you eat the leaves of
that little vine, Wood-Magic. And this is what happened to
Luke Dubois.
