NAVAHO BLANKET WEAVER IN HER OPEN AIR WORK-SHOP.
CHAPTER IV
THE INDIAN AND OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE
The Indian is an absolute believer in the virtue of the outdoor life, not as an occasional thing, but as his regular, set, uniform habit. He lives out of doors; not only does his body remain in the open, but his mind, his soul, are ever also there. Except in the very cold weather his house is free to every breeze that blows. He laughs at “drafts.” “Catching cold” is a something of which he knows absolutely nothing. When he learns of white people shutting themselves up in houses into which the fresh, pure, free air of the plains and deserts, often laden with the healthful odors of the pines, firs, balsams of the forest, cannot come, he shakes his head at the folly, and feels as one would if he saw a man slamming his door in the face of his best friend. Virtually he sleeps out of doors, eats out of doors, works out of doors. When the women make their baskets and pottery, it is always out of doors, and their best beadwork is always done in the open. The men make their bows and arrows, dress their buckskin, make their moccasins and buckskin clothes, and perform nearly all their ceremonials out of doors.
Our greatest scientific fighters against tuberculosis are emulating the Indian in the fact that even in the winter of the East they advocate that their patients sleep out of doors. Pure air, and abundance of it, is their cry.
“Taking cold” comes, not from breathing “night air,” but generally from inflammation of the mucous membranes caused by impure air,—the air of a heated room from which all the pure air has been exhausted by being breathed again and again into the lungs of its deluded occupants, each exhalation sending with it a fresh amount of poison to vitiate the little good that remains.
Men often go to gymnasiums in the city to get exercise. The air is vitiated by the presence of others, and as respiration is increased by the exercise, impure air is taken into the lungs, and the prime object of the exercise is defeated. For it is not so much to develop muscles as it is to stimulate the general action of the whole body that gymnastics should be indulged in. Vigorous exercise demands deep breathing; if the air breathed is pure, the blood thereby becomes more oxygenated or vivified. As this vitalized blood circulates, it carries its life-giving new strength and energy to every part of the body, so that the whole man feels the increased vigor. But let the air be impure, death instead of life is given to the blood. Hence, where possible, all vigorous exercise should be taken out of doors in the pure air and sunlight, and if this is not possible, every door, window, and avenue through which outside air can be brought inside should be placed wide open, and kept open during the whole time of the exercises. If spectators come, and on their account windows and doors are closed, a positive injury is being done to the exercisers. Far better turn out the spectators than shut out God’s pure air.
What a pitiable thing it is that our civilization can do no better for us than to make us slaves to indoor life, so that we have to go and take artificial exercise in order to preserve our health. Think of the vigor and strength, the robustness and power, the joy and the health, that are the possession of men and women of outdoor life. Let any one who wishes to know what this means read John Muir’s Mountains of California. In it he tells of his years of experiences climbing the terribly difficult peaks of the Sierras, the exploring of glaciers, the sleeping out at night during snow-storms in the depth of winter without either an overcoat or a single blanket. One of the most thrilling of experiences is told as simply as the narrative of a child. He was out during a terrific wind-storm. Says he: “When the storm began to sound I lost no time in pushing out into the woods to enjoy it. For on such occasions Nature has always something rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof.”
Think of a city-bred man, a society man, deliberately walking out into a storm to enjoy it.
“It was still early morning when I found myself fairly adrift. Delicious sunshine came pouring over the hills.... I heard trees falling for hours at the rate of one every two or three minutes; some uprooted, partly on account of the loose, water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken straight across, where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot. The gestures of the various trees made a delightful study. Young sugar-pines, light and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been tried in a hundred storms, waved solemnly above them, their long, arching branches streaming fluently on the gale, and every needle thrilling and singing and shedding off keen lances of light like a diamond.
“I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music and motion, across many a glen from ridge to ridge; often halting in the lee of a rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual trees,—spruce and fir and pine and leafless oak,—and even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet. Each was expressing itself in its own way,—singing its own song and making its own peculiar gestures,—manifesting a richness of variety to be found in no other forest I have yet seen.