13 The Autumn Provides Food and Loneliness

In Which The Autumn Provides Food and Loneliness September blazed a trail into the mountains. First she burned the grasses. The grasses seeded and were harvested by the mice and the winds. Then she sent the squirrels and chipmunks running boldly through the forest, collecting and hiding nuts. Then she frosted the aspen leaves and left them sunshine yellow. Then she gathered the birds together in flocks, and the mountaintop was full of songs and twitterings and flashing wings. The birds were ready to move to the south.

And I, Sam Gribley, felt just wonderful, just wonderful I pushed the raft down the stream and gathered arrowleaf bulbs, bulrush roots, and the nutlike tubers of the sedges.

And then the crop of crickets appeared and Frightful hopped all over the meadow snagging them in her great talons and eating them. I tried them, because I had heard they are good. I think it was another species of cricket that was meant. I think the field cricket would taste excellent if you were starving. I was not starving, so I preferred to listen to them. I abandoned the crickets and went back to the goodness of the earth. I smoked fish and rabbit, dug wild onions by the pouchful and raced September for her crop.

October 15 Today The Baron Weasel looked mouldy. I couldn't get near enough to see what was the matter with him, but it occurs to me that he might be changing his summer fur for his white winter mantle. If he is, it is an itchy process. He scratches a lot. Seeing The Baron changing his mantle for winter awoke the first fears in me. I wrote that note on a little birch bark, curled up on my bed, and shivered. The snow and the cold and the long lifeless months are ahead, I thought. The wind was blowing hard and cool across the mountain. I lit my candle, took out the rabbit and squirrel hides I had been saving, and began rubbing and kneading them to softness.

The Baron was getting a new suit for winter. I must have one too, Some fur underwear, some mittens, fur-lined socks. Frightful, who was sitting on the foot post of the bed, yawned fluffed, and thrust her head into the slate-grey feathers of her back. She slept. I worked for several hours. I must say here that I was beginning to wonder if I should not go home for the winter and come back again in the spring. Everything in the forest was getting prepared for the harsh months. Jessie Coon James was as fat as a barrel. He came down the tree slowly, his fat falling in a roll over his shoulders. The squirrels were working and storing food. They were building leaf nests. The skunks had burrows and plugged themselves in at dawn with bunches of leaves. No draughts could reach them. As I thought of the skunks and all the animals preparing themselves against the winter, I

realized suddenly that my tree would be as cold as the air if I did not somehow find a way to heat it. Notes: Today I rafted out into the deep pools of the creek to fish. It was a lazy sort of autumn day, the sky clear, the leaves beginning to brighten the air warm. I stretched out on my back because the fish weren't biting, and hummed. My line jerked and I sat up to pull, but was too late. However, I was not too late to notice that I had drifted into the bank– the very hank where Bando had dug the clay for the jam pots. At that moment I knew what I was going to do. I was going to build a fireplace of clay, even fashion a little chimney of clay. It would be small, but enough to warm the tree during the long winter.