Camping in the Winter Woods: Adventures of Two Boys in the Maine Woods

As the train stopped before a small station built of logs, two boys carrying guns and rods sprang from their seats and hurried out into the fragrant, pine-laden air of northern Maine. They were Edward Williams and his friend, George Rand. They waved their hands to the conductor as he swung himself back upon the train, and then they turned to face a vast forest which seemed to surround the tiny station on every side.

As they were too young to enter college until the following year, the lads had been sent to spend the fall and winter in the Maine woods. Their fathers, both outdoor enthusiasts, whose boyhood days had been passed on a farm, believed that a taste of pioneer life would strengthen the boys for their life-work. They would be thrown largely upon their own resources, and their parents hoped that the results would justify the experiment. It was to be a new venture in education--a course for the building of clean, self-reliant manhood.

Ed and George were accordingly intrusted to the care and tutorage of Ben Adams, a tried and trusted old woodsman, who had guided their fathers for many years. Ben was told to teach them whatever he considered it necessary for them to know. They had their text-books, also, and a tutor was to keep in touch by letter. So at the end of a two days’ journey we find the city boys standing curiously on the threshold of a new world.

Suddenly a friendly voice called to them, and turning, they saw a figure which seemed to belong to the forests.

“Well, boys, you got here all right, eh?”

They looked up to see a tall, gray-haired man dressed in corduroys smiling down at them. His face was tanned and kindly, and his keen, penetrating dark eyes looked at them approvingly; for he winked at the young station agent, who had just greeted him, and nodded toward the lads.

“Are you Mr. Adams?” asked Ed.

“Yes, I reckon that’s me; but I guess you’d better call me Ben. It sounds more natural up here,” he laughed.

The boys smiled at each other, and then Ed offered his hand to the guide, who smothered it in his own great brown one.

“I am Ed Williams; and this is my friend, George Rand,” he explained, introducing his chum.

Adams then made them acquainted with the agent, and said they had come to take a course at nature’s school in the woods.

“Well, now that we all know one another, I’ll get the team, and we’ll load up and mosey away from here,” and, so saying, the guide disappeared around the corner of the station.

The agent had departed to report the passing of the train which had just gone.

“Well, what about it?” asked Ed of his friend.

“I think it is going to be great!” declared George, looking off into the woods which they were soon to enter.

Ben drove up with the team and, assisted by the agent, began loading the luggage into his wagon. When everything was finally tucked away, he called the boys.

“You fellows had better telegraph some word to your folks to let them know you arrived all right. When we get into the woods it may be some time before you can send a letter out,” he advised.

“I almost forgot,” confessed Ed, guiltily, as he and George followed the agent into the station to send a telegram to their parents.

When they returned, the guide was sitting on the wagon, reins in hand, impatient to start for camp. The boys quickly climbed aboard and found seats on top of the baggage. Ben spoke to the team of wiry little mountain ponies, and with a sudden jerk the wagon started and rattled down the road toward the wall of towering pines at the edge of the forest.

Once in the woods, the road became rougher, and the ponies subsided to a walk. “Hang on there, you fellows!” shouted the guide, each time the wheels dropped into a rut or bumped over the top of a rock. The boys found it great sport, and Ed declared it made him think of stories he had read about Rocky Mountain roads.

A low-hanging hemlock limb swept the cap from George’s head, and Ben stopped the team that he might go back and recover it. George jumped down. He was about to pick up his cap when something went tearing through the woods at the roadside with such a tremendous noise that he half-started toward the wagon in alarm.

Ed grasped the guide by the arm and inquired breathlessly, “What’s that?”

“Don’t get scared so easy,” laughed Ben. “That was only a partridge, or ruffed grouse some call them. You’ll see and shoot lots of them; yes, and eat them, too. Why, look at George, he’s pale yet,” he chuckled.

George had meanwhile recovered his cap and climbed thankfully back to his seat. As they traveled along, Ben told about the bird that had given them their first fright in the woods.

“He has lots of tricks to fool you with, but you fellows will learn them all before you go back home,” he promised.

For some time they bumped along over the rough wood-road in silence, the boys gazing with interest into the deep, somber woods which stretched away for miles on both sides of them. Once George thought he saw some large animal sneaking off between the trees. He pulled Ed excitedly by the sleeve and endeavored to make him see it. They spoke to Ben about it, but he only smiled and said he guessed it was nothing much.

“You’ll see plenty of animals later on,” he told them; and they poked each other in gleeful anticipation.

All at once the guide stopped the team and pointed down at a muddy spot in the road.

“See anything?” he asked.

They looked carefully, and finally Ed said: “Why, yes, there are some marks down there.”

“What kind of marks?” demanded Ben.

They had to confess they did not know; and then he told them they were the footprints of deer. Instantly both boys were down from the wagon, bending eagerly over those interesting tracks. Neither of them had ever seen a wild deer, though they had heard their fathers tell many stories of these graceful creatures, and how Ben tracked them through the woods.

“Don’t you notice any difference in them?” he asked.

“They all look very much alike, except that some are bigger than others,” declared George, glancing over his shoulder as though he half expected to see the animals themselves walk into view.

“Is that all you notice?” persisted Ben.

“That is all we can see,” replied Ed.

“Well, now let me tell you about them,” and the guide began to explain. “You see, there are large tracks, medium-sized tracks, and small ones. The large ones, you’ll observe, are rather blunt, and so I know they were made by a buck. He blunts the tips of his toes by stamping around. The medium-sized ones are quite sharp at the point, and were undoubtedly made by a doe, and the small tracks beside them were made by her fawn, a little deer born last spring.

“Then you’ll see, if you look sharp, that the big tracks cover the medium-sized ones in several places, which shows that the buck came along some time after the doe and her fawn had passed. Notice that the little pools in the big tracks are still roiled, which means that the buck has passed only a short time ago.

“Now, look here; see, his tracks are nearer together and run into one another. He heard something which frightened him, possibly us, and started to trot away. Here is where he turned from the road. See that long mark in the bank? He left the road, jumped up that steep place, and went galloping away through the woods. Yes, here are some broken twigs where he went through.”

Ben smiled at the boys and led them to the wagon.