Forest Neighbors

It is a book which tells Life Stories of Wild Animals. Some thirty years ago, while out on one of his landlooking trips in the woods of Northern Michigan, my father came upon a little lake which seemed to him the loveliest that he had ever seen, though he had visited many in the course of his explorations. The wild ponds are very apt to be shallow and muddy, with low, marshy shores; but this one was deep and clear, and its high banks were clothed with a splendid growth of beech, maple and birch. Tall elms stood guard along the water's edge, and here and there the hardwood forest was broken by dark hemlock groves, and groups of lordly pine trees, lifting their great green heads high above their deciduous neighbors. Only in one place, around the extreme eastern end, the ground was flat and wet; and there the tamarack swamp showed golden yellow in October, and light, delicate green in late spring. Wild morning glories grew on the grassy point that put out from the northern shore, and in the bays the white water lilies were blossoming. Nearly two miles long and three quarters of a mile wide, it lay basking and shimmering in the sunshine, a big, broad, beautiful sheet of water set down in the very heart of the woods.