Lost Woods by Rachel Carson Read Free Book Online Page A

with no sound coming from it, and nothing moving at the visible edges of the forest. On every low tide I could see a solemn line of cormorants standing on a rocky ledge that ran out from the south end of the island, their long necks extended skyward. The gulls were less broodingly protective of the approaches to the island forest, their presence about the shores of the island more casual as they perched on the weed-covered rocks while waiting for the turn of the tide.
    About sundown the island, that had lain so silent all day long, began to come to life. Then the forms of large, dark birds could be seen moving among its trees, and hoarse cries that brought to mind thoughts of ancient, reptilian monsters came across the water. Sometimes one of the birds would emerge from the shadows and fly across to our shore, then revealing itself as a great blue heron out for an evening’s fishing.
    It was during those early evening hours that the sense of mystery that invested the island drew somehow closer about it, so that I wished even more to know what lay beyond the wall of dark spruces. Was there somewhere within it an open glade that held the sunlight? Or was there only solid forest from shore to shore? Perhaps it was all forest, for the island voice that came to us most clearly and beautifully each evening was the voice of a forest spirit, the hermit thrush. At the hour of the evening’s beginning its broken, silvery cadences drifted with infinite deliberation across the water. Its phrases were filled with a beauty and a meaning that were not wholly of the present, as though the thrush were singing of other sunsets, extending far back beyond his personal memory, through eons of time when his forebears had known this place, and from spruce trees long since returned to earth had sung the beauty of the evening.
    It was in the evenings, too, that I came to know the herring gulls as I had never known them before. The harbor gull – the gull of the fish wharves – is an opportunist. He sits with his fellows on the roofs above the harbor, or each on his wharf piling, and waits, knowing at what hour the refuse will be discharged from the fish house, or when the first of the returning fishing boats will appear on the horizon, to be met with excited cries. But the gulls of the island were different. They were fishermen, and like the men who handle the nets, they lived by their own toil.
    I suppose a certain amount of regular fishing went on during the day, but I was especially aware of the excitement that attended the runs of young herring that came into our cove each evening.
    It is strange to reflect on that twilight migration of the young herring that by day have moved widely through the coastal waters, but now are drawn, as the water darkens to black and silver, to follow the channels between the rocky foundations of the islands.
    We would know the herring were coming by watching the behavior of the gulls. Most of the late afternoon they would have dozed on their rocky perches along the shore of the island. But as sunset neared and the shadows of the spruces began to build dark spires in the water, a stir of excitement would pass among the gulls. There would be a good deal of flying up and down the channel, as though scouts were coming and going. It seemed that some intelligence of the movements of the fish was being spread among the birds. More and more of the gulls would join in the scouting parties, until the whole flock was in movement, their sharp, staccato cries coming across the water.
    When the water was glassy calm, holding the colors of the evening sky on its surface, we could time as exactly as the gulls the arrival of the herring in our cove. Suddenly the silken sheet would be dimpled by a thousand little noses pushing against the water film. It would be streaked by a thousand little ripples moving eagerly toward the shore. It would be shot through by a thousand silver needles as the fish, swimming just beneath the