Life in the open air :: :: University of Virginia Library

Our camping-place was worthy of its view. On
the bank, high and dry, a noble yellow birch had
been strong enough to thrust back the forest,
making a glade for its own private abode. Other
travellers had already been received in this natural
pavilion. We had had predecessors, and they had
built them a hut, a half roof of hemlock bark, resting

on a frame. Time had developed the wrinkles
in this covering into cracks, and cracks only wait
to be leaks. First, then, we must mend our mansion.
Material was at hand; hemlocks, with a
back-load of bark, stood ready to be disburdened.
In August they have worn their garment so long
that they yield it unwillingly. Cancut's axe, however,
was insinuating, not to say peremptory. He
peeled off and brought great scales of rough purple
roofing, and we disposed them, according to the
laws of forest architecture, upon our cabin. It
became a good example of the renaissance. Storm,
if such a traveller were approaching, was shut out
at top and sides; our blankets could become curtains
in front and completely hide us from that unwelcome
vagrant, should he peer about seeking
whom he might duck and what he might damage.

Our lodge, built, must be furnished. We need a
luxurious carpet, couch, and bed; and if we have
these, will be content without secondary articles.
Here, too, material was ready, and only the artist
wanting, to use it. While Cancut peeled the hemlocks,
Iglesias and I stripped off armfuls of boughs
and twigs from the spruces to “bough down” our
camp. “Boughing down” is shingling the floor
elaborately with evergreen foliage; and when it is
done well, the result counts among the high luxuries
of the globe. As the feathers of this bed are
harsh stems covered with leafage, the process of
bed-making must be systematic, the stems thoroughly
covered, and the surface smooth and elastic.

I have slept on the various beds of the world, — in
a hammock, in a pew, on German feathers, on a
bear-skin, on a mat, on a hide; all, all give but a
feeble, restless, unrecreating slumber, compared to
the spruce or hemlock bed in a forest of Maine.
This is fragrant, springy, soft, well-fitting, better
than any Sybarite's couch of uncrumpled rose-leaves.
It sweetly rustles when you roll, and, by a
gentle titillation with the little javelin-leaves, keeps
up a pleasant electricity over the cuticle. Rheumatism
never, after nights on such a bed; agues
never; vigor, ardor, fervor, always.

We despatched our camp-building and bed-making
with speed, for we had a purpose. The Penobscot
was a very beautiful river, and the Ayboljockameegus
a very pretty stream; and if there is one place
in the world where trout, at certain seasons, are
likely to be found, it is in a beautiful river at the
mouth of a pretty stream. Now we wanted trout;
it was in the programme that something more delicate
than salt-pork should grace our banquets before
Katahdin. Cancut sustained our a priori, that
trout were waiting for us over by the Aybol. By
this time the tree-shadows, so stiff at noon, began
to relax and drift down stream, cooling the surface.
The trout could leave their shy lairs down in the
chilly deeps, and come up without fear of being
parboiled. Besides, as evening came, trout thought
of their supper, as we did of ours.

Hereupon I had a new sensation. We made
ready our flies and our rods, and embarked, as I

supposed, to be ferried across and fish from terra
firma. But no. Cancut dropped anchor very
quietly opposite the Aybol's mouth. Iglesias, the
man of Maine experience, seemed naught surprised.
We were to throw our lines, as it appeared, from
the birch; we were to peril our lives on the unsteady
basis of a roly-poly vessel, — to keep our
places and ballast our bowl, during the excitement
of hooking pounds. Self-poise is an acrobatic feat,
when a person, not loaded at the heels, undertakes
trout-fishing from a birch.

We threw our flies. Instantly at the lucky
hackle something darted, seized it, and whirled to
fly, with the unwholesome bit in its mouth, up the
peaceful Ayboljockameegus. But the lucky man,
and he happened to be the novice, forgot, while
giving the capturing jerk of his hook, that his
fulcrum was not solid rock. The slight shell tilted,
turned — over not quite, over enough to give
everybody a start. One lesson teaches the docile.
Caution thereafter presided over our fishing. She
told us to sit low, keep cool, cast gently, strike
firmly, play lightly, and pull in steadily. So we
did. As the spotted sparklers were rapidly translated
from water to a lighter element, a well-fed
cheerfulness developed in our trio. We could not
speak, for fear of breaking the spell; we smiled
at each other. Twenty-three times the smile went
round. Twenty-three trout, and not a pigmy
among them, lay at our feet. More fish for one
dinner and breakfast would be waste and wanton

self-indulgence. We stopped. And I must avow,
not to claim too much heroism, that the fish had
also stopped. So we paddled home contented.

Then, O Walton! O Davy! O Scrope! ye
fishers hard by taverns! luxury was ours of which
ye know no more than a Chinaman does of music.
Under the noble yellow birch we cooked our own
fish. We used our scanty kitchen-battery with
skill. We cooked with the high art of simplicity.
Where Nature has done her best, only fools rush
in to improve: on the salmonids, fresh and salt,
she has lavished her creative refinements; cookery
should only ripen and develop. From our silver
gleaming pile of pounders, we chose the larger and
the smaller for appropriate experiments. Then we
tested our experiments; we tasted our examples.
Success. And success in science proves knowledge
and skill. We feasted. The delicacy of our
food made each feaster a finer essence.

So we supped, reclined upon our couch of spruce-twigs.
In our good cheer we pitied the Eft of Katahdin:
he might sneer, but he was supperless.
We were grateful to Nature for the grand mountain,
for the fair and sylvan woods, for the lovely
river and what it had yielded us.

By the time we had finished our flaky fare and
sipped our chocolate from the Magdalena, Night
announced herself, — Night, a jealous, dark lady,
eclipsed and made invisible all her rivals, that she
might solely possess us. Night's whispers lulled
us. The rippling river, the rustling leaves, the

hum of insects, grew more audible; and these are
gentle sounds that prove wide quietude in Nature,
and tell man that the burr and buzz in his day-laboring
brain have ceased, and he had better be
breathing deep in harmony. So we disposed ourselves
upon the fragrant couch of spruce-boughs,
and sank slowly and deeper into sleep, as divers
sink into the thick waters down below, into the
dreamy waters far below the plunge of sunshine.

By and by, as the time came for rising to the
surface again, and the mind began to be half conscious
of facts without it, as the diver may half
perceive light through thinning strata of sea, there
penetrated through my last layers of slumber a
pungent odor of wetted embers. It was raining
quietly. Drip was the pervading sound, as if the
rain-drops were counting aloud the leaves of the
forest. Evidently a resolute and permanent wetting
impended. On rainy days one does not climb
Katahdin. Instead of rising by starlight, breakfasting
by gray, and starting by rosy dawn, it
would be policy to persuade night to linger long
into the hours of a dull day. When daylight
finally came, dim and sulky, there was no rivalry
among us which should light the fire. We did
not leap, but trickled slowly forth into the inhospitable
morning, all forlorn. Wet days in camp
try “grit.” “Clear grit” brightens more crystalline,
the more it is rained upon; sham grit dissolves
into mud and water.

Yankees, who take in pulverized granite with

every breath of their native dust, are not likely to
melt in a drizzle. We three certainly did not.
We reacted stoutly against the forlorn weather,
unpacking our internal stores of sunshine, as a
camel in a desert draws water from his inner tank
when outer water fails. We made the best of it.
A breakfast of trout and trimmings looks nearly
as well and tastes nearly as well in a fog as in a
glare: that we proved by experience at Camp
Katahdin.

We could not climb the mountain dark and dim;
we would not be idle: what was to be done?
Much. Much for sport and for use. We shouldered
the axe and sallied into the dripping forest.
Only a faint smoke from the smouldering logs
curled up among the branches of the yellow birch
over camp. We wanted a big smoke, and chopped
at the woods for fuel. Speaking for myself, I
should say that our wood-work was ill done. Iglesias
smiled at my axe-handling, and Cancut at his,
as chopping we sent chips far and wide.

The busy, keen, short strokes of the axe resounded
through the forest. When these had
done their work, and the bungler paused amid his
wasteful débris to watch his toil's result, first was
heard a rustle of leaves, as if a passing whirlwind
had alighted there; next came the crack of bursting
sinews; then the groan of a great riving spasm,
and the tree, decapitated at its foot, crashed to
earth, with a vain attempt to clutch for support at
the stiff, unpitying arms of its woodland brotherhood.

Down was the tree, — fallen, but so it should not
lie. This tree we proposed to promote from brute
matter, mere lumber, downcast and dejected, into
finer essence: fuel was to be made into fire.

First, however, the fuel must be put into portable
shape. We top-sawyers went at our prostrate
and vanquished non-resistant, and without
mercy mangled and dismembered him, until he
was merely a bare trunk, a torso incapable of
restoration.

While we were thus busy, useful, and happy,
the dripping rain, like a clepsydra, told off the
morning moments. The dinner-hour drew nigh.
We had determined on a feast, and trout were to
be its daintiest dainty. But before we cooked our
trout, we must, according to sage Kitchener's advice,
catch our trout. They were, we felt confident,
awaiting us in the refrigerate larder at
hand. We waited until the confusing pepper of
a shower had passed away and left the water
calm. Then softly and deftly we propelled our
bark across to the Ayboljockameegus. We tossed
to the fish humbugs of wool, silk, and feathers,
gauds such as captivate the greedy or the guileless.
Again the “gobemouches” trout, the fellows
on the look-out for novelty, dashed up and
swallowed disappointing juiceless morsels, and
with them swallowed hooks.

We caught an apostolic boat-load of beauties
fresh and blooming as Aurora, silver as the morning
star, gemmy with eye-spots as a tiger-lily.

O feast most festal! Iglesias, of course, was
the great artist who devised and mainly executed
it. As well as he could, he covered his pot and
pan from the rain, admitting only enough to season
each dish with gravy direct from the skies. As
day had ripened, the banquet grew ripe. Then as
day declined, we reclined on our triclinium of hemlock
and spruce boughs, and made high festival,
toasting each other in the uninebriating flow of our
beverages. Jollity reigned. Cancut fattened, and
visibly broadened. Toward the veriest end of the
banquet, we seemed to feel that there had been a
slight sameness in its courses. The Bill of Fare,
however, proved the freest variety. And at the
close we sat and sipped our chocolate with uttermost
content. No garçon, cringing, but firm,
would here intrude with the unhandsome bill.
Nothing to pay is the rarest of pleasures. This
dinner we had caught ourselves, we had cooked
ourselves, and had eaten for the benefit of ourselves
and no other. There was nothing to repent
of afterwards in the way of extravagance,
and certainly nothing of indigestion. Indigestion
in the forest primeval, in the shadow of Katahdin,
is impossible.

While we dined, we talked of our to-morrow's
climb of Katahdin. We were hopeful. We disbelieved
in obstacles. To-morrow would be fine.
We would spring early from our elastic bed and
stride topwards. Iglesias nerved himself and me
with a history of his ascent some years before, up

the eastern side of the mountain. He had left the
house of Mr. Hunt, the outsider at that time of
Eastern Maine, with a squad of lumbermen, and
with them tramped up the furrow of a land-avalanche
to the top, spending wet and ineffective
days in the dripping woods, and vowing then to
return and study the mountain from our present
camping-spot. I recalled also the first recorded
ascent of the Natardin or Catardin Mountain by
Mr. Turner in 1804, printed in the Massachusetts
Historical Society's Collections, and identified the
stream up whose valley he climbed with the Ayboljockameegus.
Cancut offered valuable contributions
to our knowledge from his recent ascent
with our Boston predecessors. To-morrow we
would verify our recollections and our fancies.

And so good night, and to our spruce bed.