so I have never been able to discover. It apparently comes from no
predisposing uneasiness of indigestion, no rashness in the matter of
too much tea or tobacco, no excitation of unusual incident or
stimulating conversation. In fact, you turn in with the expectation of
rather a good night's rest. Almost at once the little noises of the
forest grow larger, blend in the hollow bigness of the first drowse;
your thoughts drift idly back and forth between reality and dream;
when--_snap!_--you are broad awake!

Perhaps the reservoir of your vital forces is full to the overflow of a
little waste; or perhaps, more subtly, the great Mother insists thus
that you enter the temple of her larger mysteries.

For, unlike mere insomnia, lying awake at night in the woods is
pleasant. The eager, nervous straining for sleep gives way to a
delicious indifference. You do not care. Your mind is cradled in an
exquisite poppy-suspension of judgment and of thought. Impressions slip
vaguely into your consciousness and as vaguely out again. Sometimes
they stand stark and naked for your inspection; sometimes they lose
themselves in the midst of half-sleep. Always they lay soft velvet
fingers on the drowsy imagination, so that in their caressing you feel
the vaster spaces from which they have come. Peaceful-brooding your
faculties receive. Hearing, sight, smell--all are preternaturally keen
to whatever of sound and sight and woods perfume is abroad through the
night; and yet at the same time active appreciation dozes, so these
things lie on it sweet and cloying like fallen rose leaves.

In such circumstance you will hear what the _voyageurs_ call the
voices of the rapids. Many people never hear them at all. They speak
very soft and low and distinct beneath the steady roar and dashing,