It would take shape and turn to the flash of a
loon's wet wing in the dawning, Or I would sit still in the woods until
my thought was as a tree, and the squirrels would take me for a tree and
run over me. Then there would come a strange stir, and the creeping of
my flesh along my spine until the Forest seemed about to speak ... and
suddenly a twig would snap or a jay squawk, and I would be I again, and
the tree a tree....
"It was the first quarter of the Moon of Falling Leaves," said the
Onondaga filling his pipe again and taking a fresh start on his story.
"There was a feel in the air that comes before the snow, but I was very
happy in my camp by a singing creek far up on the Adirondacks, and kept
putting off moving the camp from day to day. And one evening when I came
in from gathering acorns, I discovered that I had had a visitor. Mush of
acorn meal which I had left in my pot had been eaten. That is right, of
course, if the visitor is hungry; but this one had wiped out his tracks
with a leafy bough, which looked like trickery.
"It came into my mind that it might have been one of the Gahonga, the
spirits that dwell in rocks and rivers and make the season fruitful.
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