HOMEMADE CAMPING
It was our second day in camp,--a camp on the edge of the Maine
wilderness. Around us were many lakes--ponds as the natives call
them--Moosehead, Upper Wilson, Lower Wilson, Little Wilson, Trout Pond,
Horse-shoe Pond, and a dozen others. About us on all sides were the
forest-covered mountains, and burning fiercely, twenty miles distant, a
large forest fire which filled the horizon with dense, yellow smoke.
From our camp, consisting of a red shanty, a log cabin in which I am now
sitting, my dog beside me, thinking what I shall say to you about a
remarkable family I saw, and, looking up at the cabin ceiling, its log
ridge-pole and supports between which are birch bark cuts of trout and
salmon caught in the lakes, of which I have spoken--from our camp we
look out and down on a wonderful view. Immediately in front of the log
cabin is a meadow, the last on the edge of this wilderness, then the
serrated line of pointed firs, which marks the edge of the woods at the
foot of the meadow. Beyond this line miles of tree-tops, pines, birches,
maples, beeches, after that the shining lakes, and beyond them the
mountains. There is not a house in sight. For that matter there _is_ no
house to be seen, not even a log cabin.
As was said, there is a meadow in front of the cabin, and over to the
right beyond our view are two other meadows. In Maine--as far north as
this, anyway--the farmers have only one crop of hay, and, when there is
so much forest, and the winter is long, and cattle are to be fed, every
meadow has to be counted upon for all it will bear of hay. It was a
foregone conclusion that somebody would need and use the crop from the
meadow down upon which my cabin looked.
And, sure enough, the second day we were in camp, along the road bumping
and thumping over the big stones came a large hay wagon: behind it,
rattling and jarring, a mowing machine and hay rake. But that hay wagon,
what didn’t it hold? In the first place, there was the driver, then a
big packing box, a tent rolled up, sacks of feed for the horses, a
baby’s perambulator, three children, a woman, a hammock, a long bench,
some chairs, including a rocking chair, and several small boxes, packed
to overflowing with articles of various kinds. For an instant it looked
as if they were house-moving, and then, recollecting that there was no
house to which to move, I came to the conclusion that they were merely
haying.
I watched them spread the big tent-fly and make it fast. I saw them take
out the large packing box, converting that into a table, on which some
of the children put flowers in an old bottle; I watched them set out the
bench and chairs, swing the hammock, lay the improvised table with the
enamel dishes which they took from the little boxes, and, in general,
make themselves comfortable.
The children had pails for berries, and they began to pick berries in a
business-like fashion. The woman sat in the hammock and took care of the
baby--oh, I forgot to mention the baby. The farmer and his lad hitched
and unhitched the horses, starting within a few minutes to work with the
mowing machine, and leaving two of the horses tethered to a tree.
Evidently this was work and a picnic combined--to me a new way of
getting in your hay crop. But the more I watched it and thought about it
the more I liked it. And their dinner with the berries as dessert--well,
I knew just how good, there in the sunshine, with appetites sharpened by
work, it must taste to them all.
Inside the cottage shanty of our camp, one member of the household, at
least, had been doing her work in quite a different spirit. It seemed to
me that there was nothing which this cook, a large, robust woman, with
an arm with the strength of five, had not found fault with and made the
worst of. Her first groan was heard in the morning at six o’clock--in
getting up myself to go to my writing table I had cruelly awakened
her--and, of course, as she went to bed only half after seven the night
before, she had been robbed of her necessary sleep. As I say, I heard
her first groan--the sun was shining gloriously, and I had already had a
sun bath and a cold sponge and my morning exercises--while she continued
to lie in bed and to make every subsequent groan until after seven
o’clock fully audible.
She began that beautiful day and its work in resisting everything. She
had never been in such a place before, and a very nice convenient camp
we, ourselves, thought it. She groaned while she pumped water--I do not
know whether she or the pump made the more noise. She complained loudly
because of the mice. Oh, no, she could not set a mouse trap: she had
never done such a thing before! And then, when we got a cat, she
complained because of the noise the cat made in catching the mice. I do
not know precisely what kind of a cat she expected, possibly a
noiseless, rubber-tired cat, that would catch noiseless, rubber-tired
mice. She would not carry water--even a two-quart pail full--her back
was not strong enough. She had never seen such dishes as these we were
using, nice, clean enamel ware dishes, with blue borders. She had never
heard of such a thing as hanging milk and butter in a well to keep them
cool. Dear me, she never even thought of going to such a place where
they did not have ice that would automatically cool everything, and
which the ice-man kindly handed to her in pieces just the size which
she preferred. She said the spring--a beautiful spring whose waters are
renowned for their purity and healthfulness much as the waters of Poland
Spring are--she said that the spring had pollywogs in it and frogs. She
could not string a clothes-line, but stood in tears near the big trunk
of a balsam fir, holding the line helplessly in her hands and looking up
to the branch not more than two inches above her head. While one of us
flung the end of the clothes-line over the branch and made it fast to
another she remarked with contempt, sniffing up her tears, that it was
not a clothes-line, anyway, which was perfectly true, for it was only a
boat cord, but it did quite as well. When she walked down from the
meadow, that glorious golden meadow, where the happy family was
picnicking and hay-making at the same time, and through which wound a
little path down to the spring’s edge, she lifted her skirts as if she
were afraid they might be contaminated by the touch of that clean,
sweet-smelling, long grass. Still groaning she would fetch about a quart
of water. And groaning, still groaning, she went to bed at night
“half-dead,” as she expressed it, as the result of about five hours of
work, in which she was all the time helped by somebody else.
Of course she was “half-dead.” It is a wonder to me now, as I think of
it, that she did not die altogether. Instead of taking things as they
were in the sun-filled day, with its keen, crisp air, its wonderful
view, instead of feeling something of the beauty and health and sun and
wind-swept cleanness of it all, she had resisted every detail of the
day, every part of her work, she had, in short, found fault with
everything. This day, that would have seemed so joyous to some people,
had not meant to her an opportunity to make the best of things and to
be grateful for the long sleep, the sunshine, the invigorating air, the
beauty, the light work, but merely a chance to make the worst of things,
to throw herself against every demand made upon her.
Out in front of the cabin the farmer swept round and round with his
mowing machine, his big, glossy horses glistening in the sunshine, the
sharp teeth of the machine laying the grass in a wide swath behind him.
He seemed peaceful and contented, although it was warm out in the direct
sunlight, and the brakes were heavy and the horses needed constant
guiding. Down below, nearer the spring, his wife swung in the hammock,
and the children picked berries, fetched water, and were gleefully busy.
It was a scene of simple contentment with life.
When the father came back for his dinner, which was eaten under the
spread of a tent-fly and from the top of a packing box, decorated in the
center with flowers and around the edges by contented faces, I said to
him: “You seem to be having a jolly time.”
“Why, yes, so we are,” was his reply. “I offered the folks who own this
meadow such a small sum of money for the hay crop I didn’t think I’d get
it. I thought some one else was sure to offer them more, but I guess
they didn’t, for I got it. You see, it’s pretty far away from my farm to
come out here haying.”
“And so you make a picnic of it?”
“Yes, we are making a picnic of it. The children like it. It’s great fun
for them, and it gives my wife, who isn’t very strong, a chance to rest
and be out of doors. I enjoy it, too. I like to see them have a good
time.”
“Well,” I said, before I realized I was taking him into my confidence,
“I wish you could make our camp cook see your point of view.”
“Why, don’t she like it?” he asked innocently.
“Like it? I am afraid she doesn’t. The other day it rained and leaked in
through the kitchen roof onto her ironing board, and when we found her
she had her head on the board and was crying.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” he said. “Why didn’t she take that board out of
the way of the leak? We don’t mind a little thing like a leak around
here, especially when folks are camping. Having her feel that way must
make a difference in your pleasure. Well, there is ways of taking work.
Now, probably, she’s throwing herself against her work, and making it
harder all the time.”
“That’s exactly what she is doing,” I commented dryly.
“It’s a pity.” There was sympathy in his voice. “For it’s such a lot
easier to make a picnic out of what you are doing--homemade camping, we
call this. My folks always feel that way about it. Even the hardest
work is easier for taking it the right end to. My children are growing
up to think, what it doesn’t hurt any man to think, that work is the
best fun, after all. It’s the only thing you never get tired of, for
there is always something more to do.”