THE POCKETBOOK
One of the objects of some girls on their camping expeditions is to keep
the trip from becoming too expensive. The maximum of value must be got
from the minimum of pence. And I think that is as it should be, for,
with economy, the life is kept nearer a simple ideal, is made more
active and more wholesome. All sorts and conditions of camping have been
my lot, the five-dollar-a-day camping in a log cabin (?) equipped with
running water and a porcelain tub, and the kind of camping one does
under a fly with the rain and sunshine and wind driving in at their
pleasure. Although I do not advise the latter as far as health results
are concerned, given that the party is in fair condition they will be
none the worse for the experiment.
Camping for a party of four or five should usually cost something
between eight dollars and eighteen dollars apiece per week. This rate
includes a guide and a good deal of service, a rowboat, a canoe, and no
care about food. But the longer I camp the more I am of the opinion that
the simpler and more independent the life is, the greater health and
pleasure it will bring. It has been said about camping, “Much for
little: much health, much good fellowship and good temper, much
enjoyment of beauty--and all for little money and, rightly judged, for
no trouble at all.”
[Illustration: “TANALITE” WATERPROOF WALL TENT.]
[Illustration: TOILET TENT.]
[Illustration: KHAKI STANDARD ARMY DUCK WALL TENT.]
[Illustration: TENT STOVE-PIPE HOLE.]
[Illustration: FRAZER CANOE TENT.]
[Illustration: WATERPROOF DINING FLYS FOR WALL TENT.]
The girl who is the right sort gets more fun out of camp life when she
does at least part of the work herself. Let her economize and use her
own ingenuity and do the work. Any group of three or four girls can
provide all the necessary “grub” for themselves at $3 a week per
capita. This sum does not include rental or purchase of tent. A good
tent, 7 × 7, big enough for two at a pinch, can be bought complete (this
does not include fly) for about $7. You can get tents second-hand often
for a song, or as a loan, or you can rent your tent for 10 cents a day.
Get at least a few numbers of one or several of the following sporting
magazines: _Outing_, _Country Life in America_, _Forest and Stream_,
_Field and Stream_, _Recreation_, _Rod and Gun in Canada_. Look in the
advertisement pages of these magazines for the names of sporting goods
houses and send for catalogs. Then choose your style of tent. The
different kinds of tents are legion. The Kenyon Take-Down House, too, is
a capital camp home. It is “skeet”-proof and fly-proof. Send to Michigan
for a catalog, and then go like the classic turtle with your shell on
your back. In groups of four or more, the $10 laid by for a vacation
should bring two holiday weeks--possibly a day or so over; $15, three
weeks and a bit over, and $20 a whole glorious month. Expensive camping
may be the “style” in certain localities, but it is not necessarily the
“fun.”
For eight weeks this past summer my family of two members camped with
two servants. In addition we had the occasional services of a man who
did all the heavy work. There was not enough for the servants to do in
the cottage and log cabin of our establishment. They were discontented,
faultfinding, and wholly out of the spirit of camp life. All of the day
that their tone of voice reached was helplessly ruined. The only way to
keep the camp joy and pleasure was to keep out of their way. On our camp
table we had silver, embroidered linen cloths, the same food, in almost
the same variety, that we had it at home, and the same amount of
service. All I can say is that it was a perfect nuisance--as perfectly
planned and executed a nuisance as one could well conceive. Everywhere
these servants looked they found things which did not suit them. What I
think they wished was a modest twenty-thousand-dollar cottage in that
great and wonderful wilderness.
[Illustration: FRAME FOR BOUGH LEAN-TO.]
[Illustration: BOUGH LEAN-TO.]
In the autumn I camped alone for two weeks in a log cabin. I say alone.
I was not alone, for I had three friends with me--a collie puppy, a
blind fawn, and a year-old cat. They were the best of companions--for
better I could not have asked. I never heard a word of faultfinding, and
I was witness to a great deal of joy. It is a curious fact about camp
life that if a girl has weak places in her character, if she is selfish
or peevish or faultfinding or untidy, these weaknesses will all come
out. But my four-footed friends were good nature itself, young, growing,
happy, contented. And they had excellent appetites. I tell you this
because I want you to see how much of an item their food was in the
expenses I shall enumerate. This might be called a little intimate
history of at least one camp pocketbook. The fawn had a quart of milk a
day and much lettuce, together with the kind of food which deer live
upon: leaves, grass, clover, ferns. I had to pay for her bedding of hay.
The puppy and the cat shared another quart of milk between them. The cat
hunted by night, but the puppy was fed entirely by hand on bread, milk,
an occasional egg, cereals, and vegetables. My own fare consisted of all
the bread and butter I wished, cocoa, condensed milk, bananas, apples,
eggs, potatoes, beans, nuts, raisins, cauliflower, chocolate, and a few
other articles. And there was, too, the denatured alcohol to be paid
for--a heavy item, for I used only a chafing dish and a small spirit
lamp. The milk was eight cents a quart on account of the carriage, the
butter was thirty-eight cents a pound, the eggs twenty-five cents a
dozen. Except for cutting up and splitting the wood for my open Franklin
stove, the wood cost me nothing. But I paid a man a dollar for half a
day’s work. We weren’t seven, but we were four in that camp community.
How much do you think the food for all averaged per week in those two
weeks? Three dollars a week, and we had all that we wanted and more,
too.
When girls plan carefully and intelligently, when they exercise good
sense in the cooking and care of food, there is no reason why, with a
party of four or five girls, from three dollars to four dollars apiece
per week should not cover all living, exclusive, of course, of the
traveling expenses. And the camping can be done for less. I commend
these expense items to all Vacation Bureaus and to Camp Fire Girls.
In the two weeks I camped alone I was very busy with my writing. To this
I was obliged to give most of the daylight. Besides this, I had much
business correspondence to attend to. It takes time to care properly for
animals, and my pets had not only to be fed, but also to be brushed and
generally cared for. I planned to spend some time every day with the
blind fawn so that I might amuse her. I did all these things, took care
of my little cabin, had time for a walk every afternoon, and went to bed
when the birds did, to get up the next morning at five o’clock. Had I
been able to give my thought entirely to the food question, I am certain
that the expense of these items might have been made even less.
Some girls will think this is getting back to the simple life with a
vengeance. So it was but I can assure you that those two weeks were most
happy and profitable in every way--far better than the over-served,
over-fed months which had preceded them. For any girl who needs to
forget how superficial to the real needs of life the luxuries are; for
any girl who is lazy in household ways; for any girl who needs character
building; for any girl who is in need of deep breathing and the pines;
for any girl who wants more active life than she gets in her own home;
for any girl who is of an experimental or adventurous turn of mind; for
any girl who needs to be drawn away from her books; for any girl who
wants to form new friendships in a big, sane, and beautiful world where
the greetings are all friendly; for any girl--for every girl--who wants
much for little; the log cabin, the tent, the shack in the wilderness,
by pond or lake, upon the hillsides or in the valleys, will prove a “joy
forever.”