The Writings of John Burroughs | Page 2

somebody else leaves off. Go back to the stump, and see
what an impetus you get. Those fishermen who wind their own flies
before they go a-fishing,--how they bring in the trout; and those hunters
who run their own bullets or make their own cartridges,-- the game is
already mortgaged to them.

When my boat was finished--and it was a very simple affair--I was as
eager as a boy to be off; I feared the river would all run by before I
could wet her bottom in it. This enthusiasm begat great expectations of
the trip. I should surely surprise Nature and win some new secrets from
her. I should glide down noiselessly upon her and see what all those
willow screens and baffling curves concealed. As a fisherman and
pedestrian I had been able to come at the stream only at certain points:
now the most private and secluded retreats of the nymph would be
opened to me; every bend and eddy, every cove hedged in by swamps
or passage walled in by high alders, would be at the beck of my paddle.
Whom shall one take with him when he goes a-courting Nature? This is
always a vital question. There are persons who will stand between you
and that which you seek: they obtrude themselves; they monopolize
your attention; they blunt your sense of the shy, half- revealed
intelligences about you. I want for companion a dog or a boy, or a
person who has the virtues of dogs and boys,-- transparency,
good-nature, curiosity, open sense, and a nameless quality that is akin
to trees and growths and the inarticulate forces of nature. With him you
are alone, and yet have company; you are free; you feel no disturbing
element; the influences of nature stream through him and around him;
he is a good conductor of the subtle fluid. The quality or qualification I
refer to belongs to most persons who spend their lives in the open
air,--to soldiers, hunters, fishers, laborers, and to artists and poets of the
right sort. How full of it, to choose an illustrious example, was such a
man as Walter Scott!
But no such person came in answer to my prayer, so I set out alone.
It was fit that I put my boat into the water at Arkville, but it may seem a
little incongruous that I should launch her into Dry Brook; yet Dry
Brook is here a fine large trout stream, and I soon found its waters were
wet enough for all practical purposes. The Delaware is only one mile
distant, and I chose this as the easiest road from the station to it. A
young farmer helped me carry the boat to the water, but did not stay to
see me off; only some calves feeding alongshore witnessed my
embarkation. It would have been a godsend to boys, but there were no
boys about. I stuck on a rift before I had gone ten yards, and saw with
misgiving the paint transferred from the bottom of my little scow to the
tops of the stones thus early in the journey. But I was soon making fair

headway, and taking trout for my dinner as I floated along. My first
mishap was when I broke the second joint of my rod on a bass, and the
first serious impediment to my progress was when I encountered the
trunk of a prostrate elm bridging the stream within a few inches of the
surface. My rod mended and the elm cleared, I anticipated better sailing
when I should reach the Delaware itself; but I found on this day and on
subsequent days that the Delaware has a way of dividing up that is very
embarrassing to the navigator. It is a stream of many minds: its waters
cannot long agree to go all in the same channel, and whichever branch I
took I was pretty sure to wish I had taken one of the others. I was
constantly sticking on rifts, where I would have to dismount, or running
full tilt into willow banks, where I would lose my hat or endanger my
fishing-tackle. On the whole, the result of my first day's voyaging was
not encouraging. I made barely eight miles, and my ardor was a good
deal dampened, to say nothing about my clothing. In mid-afternoon I
went to a well-to-do-looking farmhouse and got some milk, which I am
certain the thrifty housewife skimmed, for its blueness infected my
spirits, and I went into camp that night more than half persuaded to
abandon the enterprise in the morning. The loneliness of the river, too,
unlike that of the fields and woods, to which I was more accustomed,
oppressed me. In the woods, things are close to you, and you touch
them