There is a dignity about the social intercourse of old Indians which reminds me of a stroll through a winter forest.
- Frederick Remington
It was time to feed the horses. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to lie down in the shade of a big cedar, and dropped off to sleep at once. In a couple of hours Olentiev awakened me and I looked around. I saw Dersu splitting firewood and collecting birch bark and stacking it all in the hut.
I thought at first that he wanted to burn it down, and started dissuading him from the idea. Instead of replying he asked me for a pinch of salt and a handful of rice. I was interested to see what he was going to do with it, so told the men to give him some. The Gold carefully rolled up some matches in birch bark, and the salt and rice, each separately, in rolls of birch bark, and hung it all inside the hut. He then started packing his own things.
“You’ll probably be coming back here one of these days, I suppose?” I asked him.
He shook his head, so I then asked him for whom he was leaving the matches, salt, and rice.
“Some other man he come,” answered Dersu, “He find dry wood, he find matches, he find food, not die.”
I well remember how struck I was by this. It was wonderful, I thought, that the Gold should bother his head about an unknown man whom he never would see, and who would never know who had left him the provisions. I thought how my men, on leaving a bivouac, always burnt up all the bark left at the fire. They did it out of no ill-will, but simply for amusement, to see the blaze, and I never used to stop them from doing so. And here was this savage far more thoughtful for others than I.
- V.K. Arseniev, Dersu the Trapper
...that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
- William Wordsworth, from “Lines Written a few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.”
We express gratitude for the gift of life
By the little things we do.
Here’s a mockup of the two pages in the journal I’m working on,
Meditations on the Beauty and Mystery of Life, A Gratitude Journal
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You can make a one-time or recurring contribution here. And thank you.
You can access a longer, more complete version of this post on the Heron Dance website, including larger images, here.