Bird lore - Project Puffin

adiance . . . He
The Audubon Societies 115
wished he could walk as a spirit walks— ." . . . "Of course,
the day jungle is the jungle asleep. This was its waking hour. Now the deer
were arising from their forms, the tigers and panthers and jungle cats stalking
noiselessly from their lairs in the grass. Countless creatures that had hidden
from the heat and pitiless exposure of the day stood now awake and alertly
intent upon their purposes, grazed or sought water, flitting delicately through
the moonlight and shadows. The jungle was awakening. This was the real
life of the jungle, this night life, into which man did not go. Here he was on
the verge of a world that, for all the stuffed trophies of the sportsman and the
specimens of the naturalist, is still almost as unknown as if it were upon another
planet."
"He became less and less timorous as beast and bird evaded him or fled at
his approach, and when the moon sank suddenly, and darkness settled down,
'a great stillness came over the world, a velvet silence that wrapped about
him, as the velvet shadows wrapped about him. The corncrakes had ceased,
all the sounds and stir of animal life had died away, the breeze had fallen,'
and thus, calm and full of placid joy, he waited for the dawn, for he hadcon-
quered fear."
This is an imaginary picture, based no doubt on some actual experience.
It is worth reading because it puts one into sympathy with Nature, even
with one of its wildest and most uninhabitable parts. There are girls, and boys
too, living in secure houses in village or town, who are afraid, afraid of the dark,
afraid of the deep woods, afraid of wild, lonely places where snakes may be
lurking, or some imagined beast. There are many grown-up people who are
more fearful than children, to whom a storm is terrifying, who see little beauty
in rough places, who take no enjoyment in fog, rain or snow. It is natural to
be afraid, but it is not wholesome, and it betrays ignorance. This kind of fear
deprives most people of much that makes up the very best of life. One need
not be rash or daring to conquer fear. It is only needful to awaken, to get
into sympathy with Nature, to see the world as it really is, and not as our
shrinking bodies lead us to imagine.
A man died not long ago who for many years had lived perhaps as close to
Nature as anyone in this generation. His name was John Muir. He loved the
mountains with their vast silences and wide outlooks; the storms and winds,
searching every hidden corner and ruling all Nature in their passing; the giant
trees of his home country, majestic sentinels of tranquillity, and age-long growth
he loved the clouds and stars, birds, beasts and flowers ; he loved mighty waters,
whose power man's hand might never check. This man wrote at times modestly
and reverently of what he saw and felt. You can learn truth from him. Many
other men have seen deeply into Nature, and written with sincerity, pages
which we do well to study. There comes to mind the poet Lanier, who, struck
by the fatal hand of disease, sought to prolong his life by Uving with Nature
in. the open. How delicately and clearly he translated beauty into terms of
;