Jeannette Augustus Marks

“ Indeed, there is scarcely a class of men who seem in better control of themselves and who have a better working knowledge of themselves and others than the highest type of guide. All the associations of that great out-of-door life, its demands, its privations, its sudden needs, its great silence, its dumb creatures, its wonderful beauty, have taught the man of the woods a wisdom no school, no university, can offer merely through its curriculum. ”

“ The finery is as out of place in camp as your camp boots would be at a garden party at home. But several middy blouses, more shoes, more stockings, another skirt, a number of towels, a few more books—all will prove just that much added food for pleasure; first, last, and always, be comfortable in camp. There is no reason for being uncomfortable unless you enjoy discomfort. Anything, however, over and above what you actually need will be only a hindrance. Those who go camping, if they go in the right spirit, are looking for the simple life ”

“ Again we have counted upon the work of industrious beavers of silence—the silent workers within each one of us.
The woods are full of lessons never to be learned any place else. Insensibly are we, in this vast big intelligent life of the forest, led on to meditate about the things we see. I often wish not only that I could place myself at certain times in those solitary places by edge of pond, deep in forest, on the hillside, following the trail, but also that I might send a friend or two to the healing which can be found in the wilderness. ”

“ Why should this great silence, this friendly wilderness power be considered anti-social? Really, is it not most social? Does it not bring us all nearer together, sometimes even when we are afraid to be nearer to one another? Does it not make us all equal, making us aware of those profound things in life which we all have in common? Silence can say, can teach, what speech can never, to the end of the world, learn to express. ”

“ Maybe it is not, but if you have ever heard the screams of an animal, terrified by fire, being burned to death, as I have; if you have ever heard the blind frenzied terror of the stampede which takes place, the beating of hoofs and the screams of creatures that are trying to escape, but do not know how, as I have heard them—then you will have a new sense of the tragedy which a forest fire means to the creatures of the forest. Of a forest fire it may be said, as of an evil, that there is absolutely no good in it: it is all bad, all devastating, all injurious. ”

“ The wilderness is your opportunity to make up for those vitally interesting facts about life which are not taught in schools. Above all, have a map of the country in which you are, and study it. Keep that map by you as if it were Fidus Achates himself, and refer to it whenever there is need. The girl or woman in camp who never knows where she is is a bore, sponging upon the good-nature and intelligence of others who have taken the trouble to familiarize themselves with the lie of the land. ”

“ Things are bad enough as they are. Yet if we can’t have a more intimate knowledge of ourselves, if we don’t arrange our lives better, if we don’t plan for the future more carefully, what are our lives likely to be like when the curtain goes down? How are we ever going to take the proverbial ounce of prevention if we are not certain to a fraction what it is we must prevent? Camp is a splendid opportunity to think a little about those things of which we have been afraid to think. ”

“ I have something in mind that is more than physical culture: The wilderness cure, the lesson of the woods, a high spiritual as well as physical truth. For the girl who keeps her eyes open, here are forces at work, mysterious, inspiring, wonderful, that awake in her all the dormant worship and vision of her nature. ”

“ Yet no one of these kinds of cleanliness is what I have in mind. Can any girl by the camp fire guess what it is? I will not say it is more important than household cleanliness, although it is so,—vastly more so. I will not say that it is more important than bodily cleanliness, external and internal, yet it is so,—vastly more so. I could almost say that it is more important than anything else in the world of human experience. Do you [151] know what it is now? It is cleanness of the mind, cleanness of the soul, and of that kind of purity the great outdoor world is one indivisible whole. ”

“ THE TRAIL A girl who has learned to camp will not only have her own pleasures greatly increased, but she will also add to those of her friends, becoming a better companion for her chums, her father, her brother; for camping, if it is anything, is a social art. It is far better for a girl to be out in the world which demands all of one’s attention, one’s eyes and ears and nose and feet and hands and every muscle of the entire body, than to be leading a sedentary life at home, or analyzing emotions or sentimentalizing about things not worth while. ”

“ MOOSE
If, by any chance, you should be lost, don’t run around. If you have no compass or if darkness is coming on, settle down where you are. Devote your energies to occasional periods of shouting and to building a camp fire, keep your body warm and dry and your head cool. You will be found. And remember that there are no wild creatures to be feared in our camping wilderness. You have nothing of which to be afraid except your own lack of common sense. ”

“ To have a strike while the twilight is coming on, a big fellow, with the line spinning off your reel as if it would never stop, to see your salmon leap into the air and strike the water, to reel him [204] in, then plunge! and down, down he goes; to feel the twilight deepening as you try to get him in closer to the canoe again; to know suddenly that it is dark and that the hours are going by; to feel your wrist aching, your body tense with excitement ”

“ Do you suppose we feel or see that sunshine, or that we are aware any longer of the white lives of others, that our past ideals are evident to us when our hearts and minds are no longer clean? Do you suppose that there is anything in nature which comes home to us in quite the beautiful way it once did, the flowers, the birds, the song of the wind, the little creatures of the wood? ”

“ Eyes must be able to detect the differences not only in colors and shapes of birds, but in their flight, and ears know every song of wood and field. Then the services of beauty, its music, its color, its form, will be always about us and nature’s health and strength and beauty become our own, not only her gaiety and “vital feelings of delight,” but also her restraint upon weakness, and her kindling to the highest life—the life that is spiritual. ”

“ Now if the man who has all these burdens to bear is not a camp dog, I should like to know what he is? To those of us who have been into the woods year after year, it is a sort of boundless irritation to see some members of the camping party sitting about idle while the guide does the work. Part of the value of camp life is its activity, its activities. Another part of its good is the skill which comes from learning to be useful in the woods. The life out-of-doors should be a constant training in manual work,—call it wood work if you wish. ”

“ The biggest university of hygiene in the world is not within houses but outside, up that hillside where the trees are blowing, in the doorway of our tent, on the lawn in front of the house, out on the lake, even on a city house-top, and, last resort if necessary, by an open window. One reason why many people are concerned about this question of hygiene is because they know that not only are human beings happier when they are well and strong, but also because a healthy person is, nine times out of ten, more moral than one who is sick or sickly. ”

“ There is a bitter silence which is the silence of hate, and another which is that of evil thoughts, and a hostile silence, and a silence which may mean the beginning of a storm or a fierce warfare. But the only silence worth having is friendly and it is of that we need to think, and it is that we can have by the camp fire in our wilderness life. ”

“ Have we ever stopped to think for a moment, we who camp so joyfully, what loss and injury such carelessness on our part may mean to a whole community? To begin with, there are the forests themselves, and all they represent in actual timber, in promise for future growth, and in security for [81] rain supply. Then in fighting the fire thousands of dollars’ worth of wages will have to be paid and hundreds of men’s lives will be in danger. The sweep and fury of such forest fires, unless one has lived in the neighborhood of one as I have, is beyond the comprehension or the imagination. ”

“ But the outdoor exercise comes as an accessory. It is still unfortunately true that boys more than girls take camp life for granted. Yet girls, and students particularly, should realize that it is economy of time to be out of doors. This they need both for their work and for their health. Outdoor exercise, with its bath of fresh air and the natural bath of freshly circulating blood it brings with it, its training school for the whole girl, is as essential as the tub or sponge bath. ”

“ Fire is the dragon of our modern wilderness, and it will be glutted and gorged, and not satisfied until it is. That jolly little camp fire is worth keeping an eye on, it is worth the trouble, even if we have to go half a mile to fetch it, to get a pail of water and ring the embers around with the wet so that the fire cannot spread. Never leave a camp fire burning; no registered guide would do such a thing, and no sportsman. It is only those who don’t know or who are criminally careless who would. If the public will not take responsibility in this matter, the fire wardens are helpless. ”

“ Wisdom will not be found in one camp holiday or in fifty or in a lifetime even. But it is rather strange, isn’t it, that the person whom we know least is so frequently ourselves? We know very well that the most learned man or woman is not the one whose head is stuffed with information, is not necessarily the conspicuous or famous man or woman, but is, rather, the human being who knows himself. And this human being may [145] be not our teacher, but our janitor or a nurse who takes care of the baby or that fellow who seems so simple, the guide who has our camping trip in charge. ”

“ In that life one is obliged to work mind and body much as the beavers work, one’s attention is held to something every minute. The whole current of our thoughts has been changed and for the time being we are distracted from the old bruised ways of thinking. The very alteration that comes with wood life gives us a chance to think rightly. Who can be troubled or bored or bad tempered and follow the trail? Who can be indifferent and be conscious of the energy and intelligence of beaver and squirrel, of rabbit and bird, of deer and moose? ”

“ As a girl takes thought about this care and culture of the body, making herself clean within and without, higher lessons and perfections, both of the mind and of the soul will come to her as inevitably as the earth answers to the touch of rain and sun. ”

“ Water soaking turns a seemingly intelligent, high-spirited canoe, capable of answering to your least wish or touch, into the most lunk-headed thing imaginable, a thing so stupid and so dead and so obstinate, that life with it becomes a burden. Remember that the wounds in your canoe need quite as much attention as your own would. ”

“ One is never called upon on the score of duty to have an unclean mind because others have it. And if through some misfortune, something that is unlovely, [155] unclean, has been impressed upon you, fight valiantly not to think of it, to put it away from you. And never forget that to rule our spirits, to be in command of our minds, to have them wholesome and sweet and clean as a freshly swept log cabin, is greater than to win such victories as have come down in the records of history. ”

“ Let us help the fire wardens, those men who live on lonely mountain summits or in the midst of the wilderness with eyes ever vigilant to detect the starting of a fire—let us help, I say, these fire wardens to get rid of one nuisance at least, and let us keep our great, cool, wonderful American forests as beautiful as they have ever been and should always be for those who are in a holiday humor. ”

“ Yet of physical culture in these weeks and days in the woods too much cannot be said, for, as the world [162] is beginning to realize, on one’s physical health, cleanness, sanity, rests much of that close-builded wonderful palace of mind and soul. Every squad of girl campers should have its physical culture drill, its definite exercises, taken at a definite time, for ten or fifteen minutes. Ten or fifteen minutes are probably all that are necessary when practically the remainder of the day is spent in camp sports, canoeing, fishing, climbing, hunting and so on. ”

“ But where do we live more truly than in our camp life? Then he goes on to say what I think is equally true: That we are very jealous of silence, for even the most imprudent among us will not be silent with the first comer, some instinct telling us that it is dangerous to be silent with one whom we do not wish to know or for whom we do not care or do not trust. ”