Whatever Consolation The Absence Of Catamount In A Dark, Drenched,
And Howling Wilderness Can Impart, That I Experienced; But I Thought
What A Satire Upon My Present Condition Was Modern Culture, With Its
Plain Thinking And High Living!
It was impossible to get much
satisfaction out of the real and the ideal, - the me and the not-me.
At this time what impressed me most was the absurdity of my position
looked at in the light of modern civilization and all my advantages
and acquirements.
It seemed pitiful that society could do absolutely
nothing for me. It was, in fact, humiliating to reflect that it
would now be profitable to exchange all my possessions for the woods
instinct of the most unlettered guide. I began to doubt the value of
the "culture" that blunts the natural instincts.
It began to be a question whether I could hold out to walk all night;
for I must travel, or perish. And now I imagined that a spectre was
walking by my side. This was Famine. To be sure, I had only
recently eaten a hearty luncheon: but the pangs of hunger got hold on
me when I thought that I should have no supper, no breakfast; and, as
the procession of unattainable meals stretched before me, I grew
hungrier and hungrier. I could feel that I was becoming gaunt, and
wasting away: already I seemed to be emaciated. It is astonishing
how speedily a jocund, well-conditioned human being can be
transformed into a spectacle of poverty and want, Lose a man in the
Woods, drench him, tear his pantaloons, get his imagination running
on his lost supper and the cheerful fireside that is expecting him,
and he will become haggard in an hour. I am not dwelling upon these
things to excite the reader's sympathy, but only to advise him, if he
contemplates an adventure of this kind, to provide himself with
matches, kindling wood, something more to eat than one raw trout, and
not to select a rainy night for it.
Nature is so pitiless, so unresponsive, to a person in trouble! I
had read of the soothing companionship of the forest, the pleasure of
the pathless woods. But I thought, as I stumbled along in the dismal
actuality, that, if I ever got out of it, I would write a letter to
the newspapers, exposing the whole thing. There is an impassive,
stolid brutality about the woods that has never been enough insisted
on. I tried to keep my mind fixed upon the fact of man's superiority
to Nature; his ability to dominate and outwit her. My situation was
an amusing satire on this theory. I fancied that I could feel a
sneer in the woods at my detected conceit. There was something
personal in it. The downpour of the rain and the slipperiness of the
ground were elements of discomfort; but there was, besides these, a
kind of terror in the very character of the forest itself. I think
this arose not more from its immensity than from the kind of
stolidity to which I have alluded.
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