Every form of moving life is stilled and magically
fades into its background. The tawny rabbit halts amid the dry leaves of
a fallen tree. No one sees it. The sinuous weasel slips silently under a
rock by the side of the trail and is unnoticed. The mother grouse
crouches low amid the underbrush and her little ones follow her example,
but the careless company has no time to observe and drifts quickly by.
Only the irrepressible red squirrel might be seen, but isn't, when he
loses his balance and drops to a lower branch in his efforts to miss
nothing of the excitement of the invasion.
This is not romance, it is truth. To think sentimentally about nature,
to sit by a babbling brook and try to put your supposed feelings into
verse, will not help you to know the wild. The only way to cultivate the
sympathy and understanding which will enable you to feel its
heart-beats, is to go to it humbly, ready to see the wonders it can
show; ready to appreciate and love its beauties and ready to meet on
friendly and cordial terms the animal life whose home it is. The wild
world is, indeed, a wonderful world; how wonderful and interesting we
learn only by degrees and actual experience.
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