If, when you are at home, you live on land that is low, and high land is accessible for your expedition, I think you cannot do better than camp on the hills or the mountains. On the other hand, if you are ordinarily accustomed to living among the hills, a camping ground on low land by sea or lake will bring you the greatest change. Some girls might prefer to camp deep in the very heart of the woods. Personally I do not. I think it is likely to be very damp there, and to be so enclosed on every side that the life grows dull. I like a camping ground on the shore of a pond, or on a hill side with a big outlook, or at the mouth of a river.
One of the most beautiful camping grounds I have ever known is in a deserted apple orchard miles away from civilization. Once upon a time there was a farm there, but the buildings were all burned down. Remote, perfect, sheltered, I often think the original Garden of Eden could not have been more beautiful. And there is the original apple tree, but in this case most seductive as apple sauce. You make a mistake if, before you get up your camp appetite, you assume that apple sauce need not be taken into account. When your camp appetite is up, you will find that the original sauce on buttered bread will put you into the original paradisaic mood. And there are all sorts of extension of the apple that are as good as they are harmless, apple pie, apple dumpling, apple cake, and baked apples.
It may not seem romantic to you, but you will find it practical and, after all, delightful to camp a mile or so away from a good farmhouse, as far out on the edge of the wilderness as you can get, for, the farm within walking distance, it is possible to have a great variety of food: fresh milk and cream, eggs, an occasional chicken, new potatoes, and other vegetables in season. With the farm nearby, you can say, as in the “Merry Wives of Windsor”: “Let the sky rain potatoes!” and you have your wish fulfilled. It is probable, too, that the farmer in such an isolated region will be glad to help in pitching the tents, in lugging whatever needs to be lugged from the nearest village or station, in making camp generally and, finally, in striking the camp. It is likely that for a reasonable sum he will be glad to let you have one of his nice big farm Dobbins and an old buggy for cruising around the country. In any event, choose ground that affords a good run-off and is dry; select a sheltered spot where the winds will not beat heavily upon your tents, and never forget that clean drinking water is one of the first essentials. Keep away from contaminated wells and all uncertain supplies. With these injunctions in mind, you can find only a happy, healthful, invigorating home among the “primitive pines” or under the original apple tree.
CHAPTER VII
CAMP FIRES
“The way to prevent big fires is to put them out while they are small.”—Chief Forester Graves.
Lightly do we go into the woods, bent upon a holiday. There we kindle a fire over which we are to cook our camp supper. How good it all smells, the wood smoke, the odor of the frying bacon and fish and potatoes; how good in the crisp evening air the warmth of the camp fire feels; and above all, how beautiful everything is, the deep plumy branches on whose lower sides shadows from the firelight dance, the depth of darkness beyond the reach of the illuminating flame, the rich strange hue of the soft grass and moss on which we are sitting! It is all beautiful with not a suggestion of evil or terror about it, and yet, unchecked, there is a demon of destruction in that jolly little camp fire before which we sit. Now the supper! Nothing ever tasted better, nothing can ever taste so good again, the fish and bacon done to a turn, the potatoes lying an inviting brown in the frying pan, and the hot cocoa, made with condensed milk, steaming up into the cool evening air.
After supper we lie about the fire and sing or dream. Perhaps some one tells a story. The hours go so rapidly that we do not know where they have gone. And when the evening is over? The fire is still glowing, a bed of bright coral coals and gray ash. The fire will just go out if we leave it. Besides, we haven’t time to fetch water to put it out with. No, nine chances out of ten, if we leave the fire it will not go out, but smoulder on, and a breeze coming up in the night or at dawn, the fire springs into flame again, catching on the surrounding dry grass and pine needles. Soon, incredibly soon, it begins to leap up the trunks of trees. Before we know it, it is springing from tree to tree, faster than a man can leap or run.
