Lost on a Mountain in Maine

by Donn Fendler

  It’s a good thing I didn’t know any more than I did. Sometimes, not knowing the worst helps a fellow along, if he just keeps going and doesn’t lose his head.

  The trees grew taller and taller. Going was easier than at first, and the air was warmer and not quite so soaked with mist. There was no sleet. I could see a little ways ahead—just broken mountain side with bushes and trees everywhere. No use to shout now. No one could hear me. Just one thing to do—work my way down to the camp. Maybe I’d be late for bacon and beans, but what of it? Dad might be mad because I didn’t stay with Henry and the man, but he wouldn’t hold anything like that against me very long.

  Just as I was thinking over such things I slipped off a big rock and hurt myself. I lay at the base of it, kind of stunned. At last, I got on my feet again. I saw that night was falling. The woods were clearing of mist but getting dark. I knew it was raining, but where I was, the trees protected me a little, though drops kept falling and wetting my hair. I thought over what I ought to do, for a long time, then I decided to sleep right there for the night.

  Before I bedded down under a big tree, I scouted around a bit and found a small stream. I knew then I was near the foot of the mountain. I was hungry. Boy, I wished I hadn’t eaten all my raisins on the way up. A raisin would have tasted good. I was thirsty, too, so I took a drink. Then I took off my sneakers and dabbled my feet in the water, Christmas! I was surprised. Those sneakers were clashed all over.

  When my feet felt better, I got up and started towards the tree. On the way back I saw a cave. It looked deep and dry, but I was afraid of it. I picked up a rock and threw it in. I could hear it bounce, inside. Nothing happened. I thought it would be a good place to sleep in—to get out of the cold and rain, but I was afraid of some animal coming home in the night; so I passed it up and went back to that big tree. It had two roots that ran out like arms. I got a little moss together in the hollow and lay down. I curled myself up into a ball and pulled my reefer down over my legs. The dungarees bothered me. They were wet and cold and as stiff as boards; so I got up and took them off. I put them and my sneakers under an old rotted tree trunk to keep them as dry as possible.

  I said my prayers and lay down again and shut my eyes. I was more comfortable but awfully wet and cold and hungry.

  Things look different at night in the woods, especially when a fellow is alone. Maybe a First Class Scout, who had timber experience, wouldn’t mind, but I did. I listened for a long time. Some queer bird screamed in the distance. Something fell on the mountain. A frog croaked. The mosquitoes were thick, too, and I kept slapping them off my face and neck. At last, I stripped off my blue shirt and wound it around my head. My fleece-lined reefer covered me down to my waist, and I could draw up my legs under it, too. My feet gave me the most trouble. I couldn’t cover them very well and they were awfully cold.

  I kept thinking of Mommy and Dad and wondering about them, and then I said some more prayers and felt better inside. I felt that God would help me if I needed help. I woke up once or twice and, each time, I wondered about Mommy and Dad. I felt awfully sorry about what had happened, for I knew Dad was out on the mountain somewhere looking for me.9 I knew that up on the top it was cold—pretty near freezing—and I blamed myself for not sticking close to Dad and the boys on the hike up. If I had done that, I would be safe on my cot-bed in camp. I cried myself to sleep.

  When I opened my eyes again, it was morning, and rain was still falling—but not heavily. I couldn’t figure out for a moment where I was, then I remembered. Just below me was a little open space through which the stream ran. Beyond it was an old stump, all hazy with mist and the drizzling rain. I was shivering and unhappy.

  CHAPTER 4

  GHOSTS ON THE MOUNTAIN • SECOND DAY

  HENRY CONDON is a strong boy. He is seventeen, I think, and he likes to help a fellow. When we were climbing up to the top of the mountain, I got tired and he took me on his back and toted me for a long way. I remembered that, before I went to sleep, and Christmas! I wished I’d never left Henry up in those clouds. Henry would have found his way down, because he’s the son of a guide and knows everything about the woods. He knows what berries to eat and what kind of mushrooms are good and what kind are poisonous. I guess I must have dreamed about Henry that first night, because when I opened my eyes and saw that old stump down by the stream, there he was, too. I could see his head, but his neck and shoulders were hidden by the stump. Boy, was I glad!

  You may think this was a dream, but it wasn’t. My eyes were wide open and I saw everything. I know it wasn’t a dream, even though it sounds crazy now. I sat up straight and yelled, “Henry! Henry! Here I am! Come and get me!”

  Why didn’t Henry answer me? I wondered about that. He was so still there behind that stump and he had such a queer look in his eyes. He was scared, and that made me frightened, too, because Henry wasn’t afraid of anything. He wasn’t afraid of noises in the woods and he just laughed at bears and things. I tried to get up to go to him and I did get onto my knees, but something had happened to my legs. They weren’t legs at all. They were boards and my knees had iron hinges in them. So I just stayed there, leaning on my hands, and looking at Henry. Watching Henry was enough to scare the daylights out of a fellow. His eyes seemed to be popping out of his head. They never winked. They just stared downstream.

  I had to do something. “Henry,” I screamed. “Here I am! Don’t you see me? Come and get me! I can’t walk. I can’t get up!”

  Then, when Henry didn’t even look at me, I turned half around and saw why. Christmas! No wonder Henry was scared. Over there near the stream, in a clear place, were four white figures—they were men, and big men, too. Each had on a long white robe that went right down to the ground and they all had white hoods over their heads, with the peaks pulled out in front so I couldn’t see their eyes. They had eyes, though—I know that, because something seemed to blaze under the hoods, like the eyes of cats at night when a headlight picks them up on the road.

  Each one of the men had a long arm stuck out towards Henry. The arms were partly covered by white sleeves, but they were partly bare, too, and skinny. I knew then what was happening. Those men weren’t going to let Henry help me. They were hypnotizing him, just like a fellow I read about once in a book.10

  “Henry,” I screamed, “don’t let them! Look at me! I’m here, near a tree.” I began to cry, because Henry wouldn’t answer me. Just then, a man on a black horse rode out of the thicket on the other side of the brook. He was smiling and I thought he was going to rescue Henry, but he rode right along and disappeared. Right after him came a black automobile. I knew then what had happened. Boy, was I happy! Dad had come for me. I was so glad that I cried, and I held onto the tree and pulled myself up onto my feet and shouted, and Dad answered me. “Donn, Donn!” he shouted.

  “Here I am, Dad!” I yelled back. I got my legs going and started towards the brook. I went right by Henry and I must have frightened the four men, because they disappeared like smoke.

  I was pretty wise, too, because I remember fishing my dungarees and sneakers from under the old tree and taking them with me when I ran towards Dad. I waded into the water and, boy, was it cold! It made me shiver all over. I stumbled on a slippery rock and went down on my hands, and the water splashed into my face. It felt good, because my face was hot with so many blackfly bites. I got onto my feet and scrambled up the bank. Nobody was there. Henry was gone. Only the old stump stayed where it was. The automobile was gone, and though I yelled till I was hoarse, nobody answered me. Dad was gone, too. I just sat down on the ground and cried.

  I don’t know how long I sat there and cried, making my hands go up and down on my knees, but pretty soon I felt weak all over and so I stretched out on the bank and put my head on my arms. I got to thinking about Henry and the four men and I thought about them for a long time. “That’s the way people go crazy,” I said to myself. “That’s when they start to run and tear off their clothes.” Well, I wasn’t going t
o go crazy—not if I could help it.

  One thing kept going through my mind all the time I lay there on the bank. I learned it in Scouting and it did me a lot of good—maybe saved my life. “Keep your head and you’ll come out all right—just keep your head!” When I had made up my mind on that point I felt better. There wasn’t any Henry to help me, and there wasn’t any automobile, and Dad hadn’t called me. I was lost and that was all there was to it. It was better for me to get going and get myself out of the mess I had blundered into.

  It’s queer what funny things go through a fellow’s head in a fix like that. There were times when it seemed to me I wasn’t talking to myself at all. Instead, somebody inside of me was doing all the talking—somebody who wanted me to get out of those woods and go home to Mommy and Dad. Somebody who would keep me from going crazy if I just listened.

  After that little rest on the bank I felt better. It wasn’t quite raining, but it was dark and misty and I felt cold and miserable. I remembered that I hadn’t said my morning prayers, so I got onto my knees and prayed. I never prayed like that before. Other mornings I hurry a little or don’t think much about what I am saying, but this morning I meant everything, and I thought of God and how He was there in the woods, and how He looked after everything, and I felt warm all inside of me and peaceful, too.

  When my prayers were over, I thought of putting on my dungarees, but they hurt my legs; so I threw them over my arm and picked up my sneakers. Christmas! Those sneakers weren’t much good to me. When I tried them on, they were so tight and hurt my feet so much, I had to take them off. I guess the rain had shrunk11 them way down. So I tied the strings together and hung them over my arm with the dungarees. Then I went down into the brook. It was just a little brook, but it flowed pretty swiftly. As I waded into it, I recalled a Scout rule. “When lost, follow a stream down. It will lead to a larger stream, and there are always camps along the larger streams.” That’s the way I remembered the rule and the talk the Scoutmaster gave with it. That advice sounded good to me and I decided never to leave the bank of the stream, even if I had to scramble over rocks to keep to it.

  Maybe you think it wasn’t hard work following that mountain stream. Boy! The going was slow and painful! My feet weren’t tough like Henry’s and the water soaked them and made them even softer, and the rocks I had to walk over weren’t like pebbles at all. They were flakes of stone, like Indian arrowheads. I had to teeter along over them like a boy walking on a tightrope. Sometimes, when the water got too deep for wading, I had to hug the bank and crawl on hands and knees under the brush. Maybe that’s how I lost my sneakers. Anyhow, I came up from one of those crawls and my sneakers were gone. I wondered what I should do, but when I sat down and looked at my feet, I knew sneakers were no good to me. I couldn’t put them on even if I had them. My right foot had a cut on the side and was bleeding and the nails on my left foot were all broken, and one was bleeding badly. I had hurt my left ankle, too, scraping it against a rock, but that didn’t bother me a great deal.

  Well, the sneakers were gone, I shrugged my shoulders12—no use to look for them, just a waste of time. Anyway, shoes didn’t seem important. I don’t know why, but they didn’t. I knew I’d find a camp just around the bend, I could stick it out till then—anyone could. I’d just go a little slower, that’s all, and be a little more careful, a fellow had to, for those rocks were sharp. I whistled a tune. I had to laugh a little at myself as I whistled. I’d heard Dad speak of people whistling to keep up their courage and I guess that’s just what I was doing.

  CHAPTER 5

  BLACKFLIES ARE NO FUN • SECOND DAY

  MOSQUITOES have always bothered me. Even one in my bedroom will keep me awake, but on that mountain. Boy! And those blackflies! Swarms of them—like clouds. Christmas! Somebody ought to do something about those blackflies. They’re terrible—around your forehead under your hair, in your eyebrows and in the corners of your eyes and in the corners of your mouth, and they get up your nose like dust and make you sneeze, and you keep digging them out of your ears. I don’t know how long I walked fighting them off and trying at the same time to pick soft spots for my feet, when I suddenly felt weak all over. I was hungry. I knew I would have to find something to eat. I left the stream and went up into an open space that looked like an old pasture. I saw berries there on bushes that looked to me like blueberries. I was about to eat some of them when I remembered that Dad had told me, “Never eat berries unless you’re sure of them, especially the blue ones.” I wasn’t sure of these blueberries. I never had picked any; so I passed them up and went back to the stream and drank a little water instead.

  About the middle of the afternoon, I sat down on a big rock to rest. Boy! I was a sight. My wrists were covered with blood from the mosquitoes I’d smashed, and my feet and legs were all red, too, from the cuts and scratches and bites. I had a million bites. I looked like I had measles or smallpox. I got a little worried when I found my feet were numb. I pinched my big toe and didn’t feel anything.

  I wished I had a hat with mosquito netting around it, like some of the fishermen in the camp wore. I wished that, because the blackflies and mosquitoes didn’t give me any rest. They made me so nervous that I could have jumped out of my boots, but I didn’t have any boots to jump out of. I could hear their wings and they sounded like airplanes right in my ears. I felt like getting up and running, but what good would that do? They’d follow, and I’d pick up others. Anyway, they were only flies and not bears or wild cats. They couldn’t kill a fellow, even if they could drive him nearly crazy. I pulled my dungarees up over my legs and lay back on the rock, and I guess I slept for an hour or so because the shadows were pretty dark under the trees when I awoke with a start.

  Something had happened. I couldn’t tell just what. There had been a loud noise, like a snort and then a scramble as though some creature had gone away fast. I didn’t dare get up. I just opened my eyes and looked about as far as I could without moving my head. All was quiet, except the growling of low thunder in the mountains somewhere. I was glad of one thing—the drizzling rain had stopped. I lay there listening for a long time, then I sat up and looked around. Down near the stream edge, in the mud, there were hoofmarks, quite large ones, and they were fresh because water was oozing into them. Then I knew what had happened. A deer, maybe a moose, had come up close to me while I slept.

  After my rest on the rock, I felt much better. I bathed my feet in the stream and, while doing so, did I see some trout! If the fishermen in the camp knew about those trout, they’d wear their shoes out getting to them—great, green fellows with pink portholes, sliding through the water like eels—just a flip of a tail and they went a yard. Those trout looked good to me. I hadn’t eaten anything since the morning before and I was hungry. I lay over the rock on my stomach and watched them. Maybe I could catch one with my hands. Nothing doing! They slid beyond reach each time, but they weren’t frightened at all. They just hung around watching me. I guess that shows that they hadn’t been fished much.

  Anyway, what could I do with a raw trout? I couldn’t cook it because I didn’t have any matches. My Dad is strict about that. He never permits us boys to fool around with matches at home or in the woods. Even if I had matches, a whole box of them, and they were all dry, I would have been pretty slow about lighting a big fire where I was. A hurricane must have gone through that region, for there was down timber everywhere—whole patches of “blow-downs,” as the guides call them, with the tops all heaped together like the makings of a bonfire.13 I knew very well what would happen if those tops got going—the whole place would be a roaring furnace. A fellow wouldn’t have any chance at all. So I didn’t worry much when I couldn’t catch a trout because I don’t like fish anyway, and I couldn’t eat it raw.

  Night was coming and I was pretty tired. I wasn’t so much afraid now, but I wondered why I hadn’t run into somebody or come across some trail. Tomorrow it would be different, and I’d be back with Dad. Maybe I could just telephone
to Dad to pick me up on the way to Caribou, and we wouldn’t lose much time after all.14 That started me to thinking about home and Ryan. I missed Ryan a lot. He’s my twin and he’d know what to do, because he’s level-headed and smart.

  Maybe he was out playing with the other boys, right at that moment. While I was thinking over such things, I found a gold mine—no, not exactly a gold mine, but a strawberry patch—big berries, too, and as sweet as honey. Did they taste good! I got down on all fours, like a bear, and gobbled them as fast as I could. I guess I ate a few leaves, too, but that didn’t matter. Pretty soon, I noticed darkness setting in. It gets dark fast in those woods.

  I have always been used to going to bed early. My Mommy and Dad think that children need lots of sleep. Maybe that was a good thing for me, because when bedtime arrived, I always stopped and hunted for some place to sleep.

  Just before I found the berry patch, I came across an old stump with a lot of green moss around its roots. That seemed like a good place to sleep so I went back to it. My dungarees chafed me so badly and were so wet and cold, I took them off and shoved them under a small log that was leaning on a rock.

  Maybe you think a fellow can’t curl up in a ball when he’s cold! Well, I had my knees right up under my chin. I got my knees under my reefer that way, and that helped keep the mosquitoes off. Boy, was I dumb! I never thought of piling moss over my legs or pulling down some branches. Maybe I could have made a lean-to if I had known how, but I didn’t, and anyway, I was awfully tired and my hands were sore from catching hold of rocks and rough branches all day.

  It’s easy to think up things to do, now, but it was different in the woods. Maybe you think I didn’t miss a good bed. That moss wasn’t soft at all. There was always a stone under it sticking into my ribs. I’d lie on one side as long as I could, and then I’d turn over and that would give the mosquitoes a new start. Those mosquitoes were terrible. Maybe turning over so often was the wrong thing to do, but I did it.