On the Trail: An Outdoor Book for Girls. Adelia B. Beard
as quickly as possible. This will help you to become agile and sure-footed, to cover long distances in a short time, but it will not allow of much observation until your mind has become alert and your eyes trained to see quickly the things of the forests and plains, and to read their signs correctly. Unless there is necessity for haste, it is better to take more time and look about you as you go. To hurry over the trail is to lose much that is of interest and to pass by unseeingly things of great beauty. When you are new to the trail and must hurry, you are intent only on what is just before you—usually the feet of your guide—or if you raise your eyes to glance ahead, you notice objects simply as things to be reached and passed as quickly as possible. Unhurried trailing will repay you by showing you what the world of the wild contains.
Walking slowly you can realize the solemn stillness of the forest, can take in the effect of the gray light which enfolds all things like a veil of mystery. You can stop to examine the tiny-leafed, creeping vines that cover the ground like moss and the structure of the soft mosses with fronds like ferns. You can catch the jewel-like gleam of the wood flowers. You can breathe deeply and rejoice in the perfume of the balsam and pine. You can rest at intervals and wait quietly for evidences of the animal life that you know is lurking, unseen, all around you; and you can begin to perceive the protecting spirit of the wild that hovers over all.
To walk securely, as the woodsmen walk, without tripping, stumbling, or slipping, use the woodsmen's method of planting the entire foot on the ground, with toes straight ahead, not turned out. If you put your heel down first, while crossing on a slippery log as in ordinary walking, the natural result will be a fall. With your entire foot as a base upon which to rest, the body is more easily balanced and the foot less likely to slip. When people slip and fall on the ice, it is because the edge of the heel strikes the ice first and slides. The whole foot on the ice would not slip in the same way, and very often not at all.
Trailing does not consist merely in walking along a path or in making one for yourself. It has a larger meaning than that and embraces various lines of outdoor life, while it always presupposes movement of some kind. In one sense going on the trail means going on the hunt. You may go on the trail for birds, for animals, for insects, plants, or flowers. You may trail a party of friends ahead of you, or follow a deer to its drinking-place; and in all these cases you must look for the signs of that which you seek.
Footprints or Tracks
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