Letters Of A Sourdough

The spruce door gave way beneath the woman’s shoulder with a dry crack, and a little drift of August dust fell from the lintel. She caught herself against the jamb. Behind her, the man stood in the clearing with one hand upon the strap of his pack, listening to the forest.

“Easy,” he said. “It may come down.”

“It has stood this long.”

The cabin stood low among the black spruce, its roof silvered with weather and its window blind hanging by one hinge. Beyond it, the timberline opened toward a pale sweep of mountains. A raven lifted from the chimney and beat twice across the gray sky.

The woman pushed the door wider. Inside were a pot-belly stove, a small table, and a bunk built against the wall. The room bore the close, dry scent of old wood and iron. Upon the table lay a wrapped sheaf of papers, tied with a strip of cracked leather.

The man stepped over the threshold.

“Somebody’s been here,” he said.

“Not lately.”

He touched the stove with two fingers and drew them back blackened. “This place could save us the night.”

The woman looked toward the dark beyond the window. “We ought to keep moving.”

The woods answered with a long shudder of branches, though there was scarcely any wind.

The man lifted the papers. Dust trembled from them. On the upper sheet, in a hand browned by age, stood a date: August 30, 1905.

He read the first line aloud.

“‘To the man who finds this - ’”

The woman took the page from him. “Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it feels like trespassing.”

He looked at the bunk, then at the rain beginning to stipple the clearing. “We’ve already come in.”

She held the page near the window. The ink had faded, but the letters remained firm.

“Read it,” she said at last.

“Here?”

“Where else?”

He set the pack beside the stove. The woman sat upon the edge of the bunk, and together they bent over the old sheet while the rain thickened upon the roof.

August 30, 1905

The cabin stands yet, and I with it.

It is a small concern, being no more than a single room of spruce logs, with a roof that leaks at the north corner and a door that sticks in damp weather. There is a pot-belly stove, a table made from a split board, and one bunk where a man may lie down without complaint if he has known poorer beds, as I have. The forest presses close on every side, save where the timber breaks and the country opens toward the high ridges.

I set these lines down at the table with the last of the daylight upon the page. A raven has been calling from the roof, and there is the sound of water running somewhere beneath the moss. Such sounds are company enough when a man has grown accustomed to hearing his own thoughts.

I am Edgar Morrow, fifty years of age, and lately come to this place for the winter. Whether I shall remain here until the snow goes is a matter between Providence and my legs. The country is not given to promises. It offers wood, water, game, and a hard account for every one of them.

This cabin is refuge, though it is no paradise. A refuge need not be handsome. It must keep the rain from a man’s shoulders, give him a place to dry his socks, and allow him one quiet hour in which to remember that he is more than the labor of his hands.

I have worked beneath the earth in West Virginia, where the roof timbers groaned and the coal dust entered a man’s eyes, ears, and lungs. Down there, a fellow learned to listen before he moved. A whisper in the stone might be warning enough. I carried coal until my back was crooked and my temper was not worth carrying at all. Yet I do not despise those years. Hard work teaches a man the weight of bread, the value of a sound tool, and the mercy of a roof that holds.

Here the work is different, though the lesson remains. A fire must be fed. Water must be carried. The flesh must be guarded from cold, and the mind from foolishness. There is no foreman in these woods to call a halt, and no neighbor near enough to hear a man curse. If I neglect the axe, I shall shiver. If I neglect my ankle, I shall crawl. If I neglect my thoughts, they shall make a wilderness of me.

This morning I walked the clearing and found fresh tracks in the mud beside the creek. Moose, by the breadth of them. The animal had passed during the night, close enough that I could see where the grass was torn. I found no need to follow. A man who has come here to be alone ought not to quarrel with the creatures for keeping their distance.

There are signs of other life. A fox crossed the ridge at dawn. Two gray squirrels scolded me from a spruce. High above the open ground, a hawk turned in the light. I have seen no human mark since reaching this country, and I confess that the absence has settled upon me kindly.

The cabin was not built by me. I found it three days past after losing the old trail in a wet storm. The roof appeared between the trees at dusk, and I came upon the door with rain running down my neck. There was no lock....