See him every day, in muddy little bare legs, hunting in the forest for berries, or chasing the cow s who have gone astray there. He learns to trap rabbits and catch young woodcocks, knows the wolf's paw, the fox paw, the bear paw in the soft soil. The priest teaches him a little in the school about God and the Tsar, and the observances of the Church, and such education suffices for Vania. He is becoming a woodsman, The forest is the best school but he never remembers how it was he learnt there. He came to know that when the sun set it was evening, and when it rose it was morning.
Every tree is a compass in itself.
But so deep and subconscious is this knowledge that he does not look at trees at all. He does not know how he knows. Ask him the way out of the wood, and he will point in this direction or in that, as the case may be. As I said, the forests are behind his eyes as well as in front of them. The forests look into the simple soul, placid as a lake, and draw their own pictures there.