t up with a
teacher, just as we might learn to play golf or tennis. It is quite
different from learning a game. Most of what we learn, we shall have
to teach ourselves. Of course we must profit from the experience and
observation of others, but no man's opinion can take the place of the
evidence of our own eyes. A naturalist once told me that chipmunks
never climb trees. I have seen a chipmunk on a tree so I know that he
is mistaken. As a rule the natives in any section only know enough
woods-lore or natural history to meet their absolute needs. Accurate
observation is, as a rule, rare among country people unless they are
obliged to learn from necessity. Plenty of boys born and raised in the
country are ignorant of the very simplest facts of their daily
experience. They could not give you the names of a dozen local birds
or wildflowers or tell you the difference between a mushroom and a
toadstool to save their lives.

[Illustration: The wilderness traveller]

On the other hand, some country boys who have kept their ears and eyes
open will know more about the wild life of the woods than people who
attempt to write books about it; myself, for example. I have a boy
friend up in Maine who can fell a tree as big around as his body in
ten minutes, and furthermore he can drop it in any direction that he
wants to without leaving it hanging up in the branches of some other
tree or dropping it in a soft place where the logging team cannot
possibly haul it out without miring the horses. The stump will be
almost as clean and flat as a saw-cut. This boy can also build a log
cabin, chink up the cracks with clay and moss and furnish it with
benches and tables that he has made, with no other tools than an axe
and a jackknife. He can make a rope out of a grape-vine or patch a
hole in his birch bark canoe with a piece of bark and a little spruce
gum. He can take you out in the woods and go for miles with never a
thought of getting lost, tell you the names of the different birds and
their calls, what berries are good to eat, where the partridge nests
or the moose feeds, and so on. If you could go around with him for a
month, you would learn more real woodcraft than books could tell you
in a lifetime. And this boy cannot even read or write and probably
never heard the word "woodcraft." His school has been the school of
hard knocks. He knows these things as a matter of course just as you
know your way home from school. His father is a woo