Big Two Hearted River
by Ernest Miller Hemingway
Part I
The train went on up the track out of sight, around one of the hills of
burnt timber. Nick sat down on the bundle of canvas and bedding the baggage
man had pitched out of the door of the baggage car. There was no town,
nothing but the rails and the burned-over country. The thirteen saloons that
had lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of
the Mansion House hotel stuck up above the ground. The stone was chipped and
split by the fire. It was all that was left of the town of Seney. Even the
surface had been burned off the ground.
Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had
expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the
railroad track to the bridge over the river. The river was there. It swirled
against the log spiles of the bridge. Nick looked down into the clear, brown
water, colored from the pebbly bottom, and watched the trout keeping
themselves steady in the current with wavering fins. As he watched them they
changed their positions by quick angles, only to hold steady in the fast
water again. Nick watched them a long time.
He watched them holding themselves with their noses into the current,
many trout in deep, fast moving water, slightly distorted as he watched far
down through the glassy convex surface of the pool, its surface pushing and
swelling smooth against the resistance of the log-driven piles of the
bridge. At the bottom of the pool were the big trout. Nick did not see them
at first. Then he saw them at the bottom of the pool, big trout looking to
hold themselves on the gravel bottom in a varying mist of gravel and sand,
raised in spurts by the current.
Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge. It was a hot day. A
kingfisher flew up the stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into
a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory. As the shadow of the
kingfisher moved up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle,
only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through
the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the
stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with
the current, unresisting, to his post under the bridge where he tightened
facing up into the current.
Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling.
He turned and looked down the stream. It stretched away,
pebbly-bottomed with shallows and big boulders and a deep pool as it curved
away around the foot of a bluff.
Nick walked back up the ties to where his pack lay in the cinders
beside the railway track. He was happy. He adjusted the pack harness around
the bundle, pulling straps tight, slung the pack on his back, got his arms
through the shoulder straps and took some of the pull off his shoulders by
leaning his forehead against the wide band of the tump-line. Still, it was
too heavy. It was much too heavy. He had his leather rod-case in his hand
and leaning forward to keep the weight of the pack high on his shoulders he
walked along the road that paralleled the railway track, leaving the burned
town behind in the heat, and then turned off around a hill with a high,
fire-scarred hill on either side onto a road that went back into the
country. He walked along the road feeling the ache from the pull of the
heavy pack. The road climbed steadily. It was hard work walking up-hill. His
muscles ached and the day was hot, but Nick felt happy. He felt he had left
everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs. It
was all back of him.
From the time he had gotten down off the train and the baggage man had
thrown his pack out of the open car door things had been different. Seney
was burned, the country was burned over and changed, but it did not matter.
It could not all be burned. He knew that. He hiked along the road, sweating
in the sun, climbing to cross the range of hills that separated the railway
from the pine plains.
The road ran on, dipping occasionally, but always climbing. Nick went
on up. Finally the road after going parallel to the burnt hillside reached
the top. Nick leaned back against a stump and slipped out of the pack
harness. Ahead of him, as far as he could see, was the pine plain. The
burned country stopped off at the left with the range of hills. On ahead
islands of dark pine trees rose out of the plain. Far off to the left was
the line of the river. Nick followed it with his eye and caught glints of
the water in the sun.
There was nothing but the pine plain ahead of him, until the far blue
hills that marked the Lake Superior height of land. He could hardly see
them, faint and far away in the heat-light over the plain. If he looked too
steadily they were gone. But if he only half-looked they were there, the
far-off hills of the height of land.
Nick sat down against the charred stump and smoked a cigarette. His
pack balanced on the top of the stump, harness holding ready, a hollow
molded in it from his back. Nick sat smoking, looking out over the country.
He did not need to get his map out. He knew where he was from the position
of the river.
As he smoked, his legs stretched out in front of him, he noticed a
grasshopper walk along the ground and up onto his woolen sock. The
grasshopper was black. As he had walked along the road, climbing, he had
started many grasshoppers from the dust. They were all black. They were not
the big grasshoppers with yellow and black or red and black wings whirring
out from their black wing sheathing as they fly up. These were just ordinary
hoppers, but all a sooty black in color. Nick had wondered about them as he
walked, without really thinking about them. Now, as he watched the black
hopper that was nibbling at the wool of his sock with its fourway lip, he
realized that they had all turned black from living in the burned-over land.
He realized that the fire must have come the year before, but the
grasshoppers were all black now. He wondered how long they would stay that
way.
Carefully he reached his hand down and took hold of the hopper by the
wings. He turned him up, all his legs walking in the air, and looked at his
jointed belly. Yes, it was black too, iridescent where the back and head
were dusty.
"Go on, hopper," Nick said, speaking out loud for the first time. "Fly
away somewhere."
He tossed the grasshopper up into the air and watched him sail away to
a charcoal stump across the road.
Nick stood up. He leaned his back against the weight of his pack where
it rested upright on the stump and got his arms through the shoulder straps.
He stood with the pack on his back on the brow of the hill looking out
across the country toward the distant river and then struck down the
hillside away from the road. Underfoot the ground was good walking. Two
hundred yards down the hillside the fire line stopped. Then it was sweet
fern, growing ankle high, to walk through, and dumps of jack pines; a long
undulating country with frequent rises and descents, sandy underfoot and the
country alive again.
Nick kept his direction by the sun. He knew where he wanted to strike
the river and he kept on through the pine plain, mounting small rises to see
other rises ahead of him and sometimes from the top of a rise a great solid
island of pines off to his right or his left. He broke off some sprigs of
the heathery sweet fern, and put them under his pack straps. The chafing
crushed it and he smelled it as he walked.
He was tired and very hot, walking across the uneven, shadeless pine
plain. At any time he knew he could strike the river by turning off to his
left. It could not be more than a mile away. But he kept on toward the north
to hit the river as far upstream as he could go in one day's walking.
For some time as he walked Nick had been in sight of one of the big
islands of pine standing out above the rolling high ground he was crossing.
he turned and made toward the pine trees.
There was no underbrush in the island of pine trees. The minks of the
trees went straight up or slanted toward each other. The trunks were
straight and brown without branches. The branches were high above. Some
interlocked to make a solid shadow on the brown forest floor. Around the
grove of trees was a bare space. It was brown and soft underfoot as Nick
walked on it. This was the over-lapping of the pine needle floor, extending
out beyond the width of the high branches. The trees had grown tall and the
branches moved high, leaving in the sun this bare space they had once
covered with shadow. Sharp at the edge of this extension of the forest floor
commenced the sweet fern.
Nick slipped off his pack and lay down in the shade. He lay on his back
and looked up into the pine trees. His neck and back and the small of his
back rested as he stretched. The earth felt good against his back. He looked
up at the sky, through the branches, and then shut his eyes. He opened them
and looked up again. There was a wind high up in the branches. He shut his
eyes again and went to sleep.
Nick woke stiff and cramped. The sun was nearly down. His pack was
heavy and the straps painful as he lifted it on. He leaned over with the
pack on and picked up the leather rod-case and started out from the pine
trees across the sweet fern swale, toward the river. He knew it could not be
more than a mile.
He came down a hillside covered with stumps into a meadow. At the edge
of the meadow flowed the river. Nick was glad to get to the river. He walked
upstream through the meadow. His trousers were soaked with the dew as he
walked. After the hot day, the dew had come quickly and heavily. The river
made no sound. It was too fast and smooth. At the edge of the meadow, before
he mounted to a piece of high ground to make camp. Nick looked down the
river at the trout rising. They were rising to insects come from the swamp
on the other side of the stream when the sun went down. The trout jumped out
of water to take them. While Nick walked through the little stretch of
meadow alongside the stream, trout had jumped high out of water. Now as he
looked down the river, the insects must be settling on the surface, for the
trout were feeding steadily all down the stream. As far down the long
stretch as he could see, the trout were rising, making circles all down the
surface of the water, as though it were starting to rain.
The ground rose, wooded and sandy, to overlook the meadow, the stretch
of river and the swamp. Nick dropped his pack and rod-case and looked for a
level piece of ground. He was very hungry and he wanted to make his camp
before he cooked. Between two jack pines, the ground was quite level. He
took the ax out of the pack and chopped out two projecting roots. That
leveled a piece of ground large enough to sleep on. He smoothed out the
sandy soil with his hand and pulled all the sweet fern bushes by their
roots. His hands smelled good from the sweet fern. He smoothed the uprooted
earth. He did not want anything making lumps under the blankets. When he had
the ground smooth, he spread his three blankets. One he folded double, next
to the ground. The other two he spread on top.
With the ax he slit off a bright slab of pine from one of the stumps
and split it into pegs for the tent. He wanted them long and solid to hold
in the ground. With the tent unpacked and spread on the ground, the pack,
leaning against a jackpine, looked much smaller. Nick tied the rope that
served the tent for a ridge-pole to the trunk of one of the pine trees and
pulled the tent up off the ground with the other end of the rope and tied it
to the other pine. The tent hung on the rope like a canvas blanket on a
clothesline. Nick poked a pole he had cut up under the back peak of the
canvas and then made it a tent by pegging out the sides. He pegged the sides
out taut and drove the pegs deep, hitting them down into the ground with the
flat of the ax until the rope loops were buried and the canvas was drum
tight.
Across the open mouth of the tent Nick fixed cheesecloth to keep out
from the pack to put at the head of the bed under the slant of the canvas.
Inside the tent the light came through the brown canvas. It smelled
pleasantly of canvas. Already there was something mysterious and homelike.
Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent. He had not been unhappy all
day. This was different though. Now things were done. There had been this to
do. Now it was done. It had been a hard trip. He was very tired. That was
done. He had made his camp. He was settled. Nothing could touch him. It was
a good place to camp. He was there, in the good place. He was in his home
where he had made it. Now he was hungry.
He came out, crawling under the cheesecloth. It was quite dark outside.
It was lighter in the tent.
Nick went over to the pack and found, with his fingers, a long nail in
a paper sack of nails, in the bottom of the pack. He drove it into the pine
tree, holding it close and hitting it gently with the flat of the ax. He
hung the pack up on the nail. All his supplies were in the pack. They were
off the ground and sheltered now.
Nick was hungry. He did not believe he had ever been hungrier. He
opened and emptied a can of pork and beans and a can of spaghetti into the
frying pan.
"I've got a right to eat this kind of stuff, if I'm willing to carry
it," Nick said. His voice sounded strange in the darkening woods. He did not
speak again.
He started a fire with some chunks of pine he got with the ax from a
stump. Over the fire he stuck a wire grill, pushing the four legs down into
the ground with his boot. Nick put the frying pan on the grill over the
flames. He was hungrier. The beans and spaghetti wanned. Nick stirred them
and mixed them together. They began to bubble, making little bubbles that
rose with difficulty to the surface. There was a good smell. Nick got out a
bottle of tomato catchup and cut four slices of bread. The little bubbles
were coming faster now. Nick sat down beside the fire and lifted the frying
pan off. He poured about half the contents out into the tin plate. It spread
slowly on the plate. Nick knew it was too hot. He poured on some tomato
catchup. He knew the beans and spaghetti were still too hot. He looked at
the fire, then at the tent, he was not going to spoil it all by burning his
tongue. For years he had never enjoyed fried bananas because he had never
been able to wait for them to cool. His tongue was very sensitive. He was
very hungry. Across the river in the swamp, in the almost dark, he saw a
mist rising. He looked at the tent once more. All right. He took a full
spoonful from the plate.
"Chrise," Nick said, "Geezus Chrise," he said happily.
He ate the whole plateful before he remembered the bread. Nick finished
the second plateful with the bread, mopping the plate shiny. He had not
eaten since a cup of coffee and a ham sandwich in the station restaurant at
St. Ignace. It had been a very fine experience. He had been that hungry
before, but had not been able to satisfy it. He could have made camp hours
before if he had wanted to. There were plenty of good places to camp on the
river. But this was good.
Nick tucked two big chips of pine under the grill. The fire flared up.
He had forgotten to get water for the coffee. Out of the pack he got a
folding canvas bucket and walked down the hill, across the edge of the
meadow, to the stream. The other bank was in the white mist. The grass was
wet and cold as he knelt on the bank and dipped the canvas bucket into the
stream. It bellied and pulled hard in the current. The water was ice cold.
Nick rinsed the bucket and carried it full up to the camp. Up away from the
stream it was not so cold.
Nick drove another big nail and hung up the bucket full of water. He
dipped the coffee pot half full, put some more chips under the grill onto
the fire and put the pot on. He could not remember which way he made coffee.