Sleeping outdoors was the next great phase in the open-air movement. That also began casually enough and altogether charmingly. One lingered in the hammock, watching the stars, musing in the still summer night, until, lo! there was the dawn beginning behind the eastern hills. A wonderful experience. Not much sleeping about it truly,—there is commonly not much sleeping about great experiences,—but so beautiful that the heart said, 'Go to! why not have this always? Why not sleep outdoors every night?' Which is of course exactly the way in which human nature works; very reasonable, very sane and convincing, but unfortunately never quite so successful as it should be. That which has blessed us once must be secured in perpetuity for our souls to feast on continually; revelation must fold its wings and abide with us. So we soberly go to work and strip all the poetry of divine chance, all the delight of the unexpected, from our great occasions by laying plans for their systematic recurrence.
| He who bends to himself a joy, |
| Does the winged life destroy; |
| But he who kisses a joy as it flies, |
| Lives in eternity's sunrise. |
It is a pity that William Blake could not teach us that once for all. As a matter of fact, of course, great occasions care nothing at all for our urging; and a plan is an institution which they cordially abhor. The stars and the dawn do not condescend to such paraphernalia for waylaying them as sleeping-bags, rubber blankets, air-pillows, and mosquito netting, with a stout club close at hand in case of tramps or a skunk.
One experience of my own recurs to my memory poignantly here, and I think I cannot do better than set it forth. I had passed an unforgettable night all alone in a meadow, detained by the evening almost insensibly into 'solemn midnight's tingling silences,' and thence into the austere dawn. It was an episode such as should have sealed my lips forever; but I profanely spoke of it, and at once the contagion of interest spread through the little village.
'What fun! Did you have your rubbers on? Did you sit in a chair? I should think you would have sat in a chair—so much more comfortable! Well, I tell you what, let's do it together,—a lot of us, so we won't be afraid,—and let's climb a mountain. The sunset and dawn will be beautiful from a mountain.'
We did it; I blush to confess that some twenty-five of us did it. It was an excursion planned and discussed for a matter of two weeks (a full moon being part of the programme), and there was no accident unforeseen, no event unprovided for. The procession that wended its way, toiling and puffing, up the ascent of Haystack,—the favored mountain selected for the high pedestal of our rapture,—on the auspicious night, was about as sad, and withal as funny, an affront as the secrecy of beauty ever received. Blankets, steamer-rugs, pillows, shawls, hammocks, whiskey-flasks—how we groaned beneath the burden of all these things. We lost the way, of course, and had to beat the woods in every direction; we were tired and hot and—cross? Perhaps. But we knew what our rôle was, and when we reached the top of the mountain, we all of us stood very solemnly in a row and said, 'How beautiful!'
It was beautiful; that was just the fineness of the night's triumph over us—over me at least; I cannot speak for the other twenty-four. To this day, be it said in parentheses, whenever we mention that night on Haystack we lift our eyes in ecstasy, and no one of us has ever confessed any sense of lack. But honestly, honestly at the last (dear stalwart relief of honesty!), that experiment was a failure—so beautiful that the spirit should have been lifted out of the body, and would have been, had it stood alone, had it not already exhausted itself in plans and expectations. Beneath us, a far-spreading sea of misty, rolling hills, all vague and blended in the light of the soaring moon; above us, such a sweep of sky as only mountain-tops command; around us, silence, silence. Yet the unstrenuous orchard at home, with its tranquil acceptance of such degree of sunset light as was granted to it, and of the moon's presence when she rose above the apple trees, would have conveyed the night's message a thousand times more clearly.
It is seldom worth while to describe any failure of the spirit very minutely, and tragedy is not the tone this paper would assume; but one slight episode of the dawn following that fatal night must be related. We were gathered on the eastern edge of our mountain top, a tousled, gray, disheveled lot, heavy-eyed and weary. Does the reader understand the significance of the term 'to prevent the dawn'? He does if he has stood and waited for the sun to rise—or the moon or any of the constellations, for that matter. All heavenly bodies retard their progress through the influence of being waited for. 'Surely now!' a dozen times we warned one another there, with our faces toward the quickening east; yet no glittering, lambent rim slid up to greet our eyes.
At last a decent comely cloud came to the rescue of the sun, halting and embarrassed, and settled snugly all about the mountain of the day-spring. Into this the sun was born, so obscurely that it rode high above the mountain's edge, shorn and dull, a rubber ball, before we discovered it. 'Why—why—' some one began, stammering; and then there was a dramatic pause. Brave and determined though we were in our pursuit of ecstasy, we could not burst forth into song like Memnon statues at the sight of that belated orange, 'Lo, the Lord Sun!' Not at all. It was the merest varlet. In this dilemma of our hearts, a funny little wailing cry came from the cliff's edge: 'I want my money back! I want my money back!' It was a perfect commentary on the whole situation, as fine and humorous and true an utterance as could be asked on the foiled occasion. We laughed at it, and all the air was straightway clearer for us. Then down the mountain-side we trooped, and went home to bed.
Of course I am not unaware of the impatience of some readers, if they have taken pains to scan so far this earnest exposition. The outdoor movement is not one primarily of sentiment, but of health and happiness; and the story just related is aside from the point. That may be true. I certainly stand in respect of the great claims of the physical side of the subject, and would not deal with them. By all means, let all people be as well as possible. But it is still the other side, the side of sentiment and rapture, which is most pleadingly often brought home to me.