When one has been accustomed to the comforts of civilized life--the
small ones, I mean, for they are the only ones that count--the beginning
of a wild, free life near to nature's heart begets a series of
impressions quite new, and strange--so strange. It is not that one
misses a house of solid walls and roof, with stairways and steam
radiators. These are the larger comforts and are more than made up for
by the sheltering temple of the trees, the blazing campfire and the
stairway leading to the stars. But there are things that one does
miss--a little--just at first. When we had finished our first evening's
smoke and the campfire was burning low--when there was nothing further
to do but go to bed, I suddenly realized that the man who said he would
be willing to do without all the rest of a house if he could keep the
bathroom, spoke as one with an inspired knowledge of human needs.
I would not suggest that I am a person given to luxurious habits and
vain details in the matter of evening toilet. But there are so many
things one is in the habit of doing just about bedtime, which in a
bathroom, with its varied small conveniences, seem nothing at all, yet
which assume undue proportions in the deep, dim heart of nature where
only the large primitive comforts have been provided. I had never been
in the habit, for instance, of stumbling through several rods of bushes
and tangled vines to get to a wash-bowl that was four miles wide and six
miles long and full of islands and trout, and maybe snapping turtles (I
know there were snapping turtles, for Charlie had been afraid to leave
his shoepacks on the beach for fear the turtles would carry them off),
and I had not for many years known what it was to bathe my face on a
ground level or to brush my teeth in the attitude of prayer. It was all
new and strange, as I have said, and there was no hot water--not even a
faucet--that didn't run, maybe, because the man upstairs was using it.
There wasn't any upstairs except the treetops and the sky, though, after
all, these made up for a good deal, for the treetops feathered up and
faded into the dusky blue, and the blue was sown with stars that were
caught up and multiplied by every tiny wrinkle on the surface of the
great black bowl and sent in myriad twinklings to our feet.
Still, I would have exchanged the stars for a few minutes, for a
one-candle power electric light, or even for a single gas jet with such
gas as one gets when the companies combine and establish a uniform rate.
I had mislaid my tube of dentifrice and in the dim, pale starlight I
pawed around and murmured to myself a good while before I finally called
Eddie to help me.
"Oh, let it go," he said. "It'll be there for you in the morning. I
always leave mine, and my soap and towel, too."
He threw his towel over a limb, laid his soap on a log and faced toward
the camp. I hesitated. I was unused to leaving my things out overnight.
My custom was to hang my towel neatly over a rack, to stand my
toothbrush upright in a glass on a little shelf with the dentifrice
beside it. Habit is strong. I did not immediately consent to this wide
and gaudy freedom of the woods.
"Suppose it rains," I said.
"All the better--it will wash the towels."
"But they will be wet in the morning."
"Um--yes--in the woods things generally are wet in the morning. You'll
get used to that."
It is likewise my habit to comb my hair before retiring, and to look at
myself in the glass, meantime. This may be due to vanity. It may be a
sort of general inspection to see if I have added any new features, or
lost any of those plucked from the family tree. Perhaps it is only to
observe what the day's burdens have done for me in the way of wrinkles
and gray hairs. Never mind the reason, it is a habit; but I didn't
realize how precious it was to me until I got back to the tent and found
that our only mirror was in Eddie's collection, set in the back of a
combination comb-brush affair about the size of one's thumb.
Of course it was not at all adequate for anything like a general
inspection. It would just about hold one eye, or a part of a mouth, or
a section of a nose, or a piece of an ear or a little patch of hair, and
it kept you busy guessing where that patch was located. Furthermore, as
the comb was a part of the combination, the little mirror was obliged to
be twinkling around over one's head at the precise moment when it should
have been reflecting some portion of one's features. It served no useful
purpose, thus, and was not much better when I looked up another comb and
tried to use it in the natural way. Held close and far off, twisted and
turned, it was no better. I felt lost and disturbed, as one always does
when suddenly deprived of the exercise of an old and dear habit, and I
began to make mental notes of some things I should bring on the next
trip.
There was still a good deal to do--still a number of small but precious
conveniences to be found wanting. Eddie noticed that I was getting into
action and said he would stay outside while I was stowing myself away;
which was good of him, for I needed the room. When I began to take on
things I found I needed his bed, too, to put them on. I suppose I had
expected there would be places to hang them. I am said to be rather
absent-minded, and I believe I stood for several minutes with some sort
of a garment in my hand, turning thoughtfully one way and another,
probably expecting a hook to come drifting somewhere within reach. Yes,
hooks are one of the small priceless conveniences, and under-the-bed is
another. I never suspected that the space under the bed could be a
luxury until I began to look for a place to put my shoes and handbag.
Our tent was just long enough for our sleeping-bags, and just about wide
enough for them--one along each side, with a narrow footway between.
They were laid on canvas stretchers which had poles through wide hems
down the sides--the ends of these poles (cut at each camp and selected
for strength and springiness) spread apart and tacked to larger cross
poles, which arrangement raised us just clear of the ground, leaving no
space for anything of consequence underneath. You could hardly put a
fishing rod there, or a pipe, without discomfort to the flesh and danger
to the articles. Undressing and bestowing oneself in an upper berth is
attended with problems, but the berth is not so narrow, and it is flat
and solid, and there are hooks and little hammocks and things--valuable
advantages, now fondly recalled. I finally piled everything on Eddie's
bed, temporarily. I didn't know what I was going to do with it next, but
anything was a boon for the moment. Just then Eddie looked in.
"That's your pillow material, you know," he said, pointing to my medley
of garments. "You want a pillow, don't you?"
Sure enough, I had no pillow, and I did want one. I always want a pillow
and a high one. It is another habit.
"Let me show you," he said.
So he took my shoes and placed them, one on each side of my couch, about
where a pillow should be, with the soles out, making each serve as a
sort of retaining wall. Then he began to double and fold and fill the
hollow between, taking the bunchy, seamy things first and topping off
with the softer, smoother garments in a deft, workmanlike way. I was
even moved to add other things from my bag to make it higher and
smoother.
"Now, put your bag on the cross-pole behind your pillow and let it lean
back against the tent. It will stay there and make a sort of head to
your bed, besides being handy in case you want to get at it in the
night."
Why, it was as simple and easy as nothing. My admiration for Eddie grew.
I said I would get into my couch at once in order that he might
distribute himself likewise.
But this was not so easy. I had never got into a sleeping-bag before,
and it is a thing that requires a little practice to do it with skill
and grace. It has to be done section at a time, and one's night garment
must be worked down co-ordinately in order that it may not become merely
a stuffy life-preserver thing under one's arms. To a beginner this is
slow, warm work. By the time I was properly down among the coarse, new
blankets and had permeated the remotest corners of the clinging
envelope, I had had a lot of hard exercise and was hot and thirsty. So
Del brought me a drink of water. I wasn't used to being waited on in
that way, but it was pleasant. After all there were some conveniences of
camp life that were worth while. And the bed was comfortable and the
pillow felt good. I lay watching Eddie shape his things about, all his
bags and trappings falling naturally into the places they were to occupy
through the coming weeks. The flat-topped bag with the apothecary stores
and other urgency articles went at the upper end of the little footway,
and made a sort of table between our beds. Another bag went behind his
pillow, which he made as he had made mine, though he topped it off with
a little rubber affair which he inflated while I made another mental
memorandum for next year. A third bag----
But I did not see the fate of the third bag. A haze drifted in between
me and the busy little figure that was placing and pulling and folding
and arranging--humming a soothing ditty meantime--and I was swept up
bodily into a cloud of sleep.