CHAPTER IX

FITTING UP THE CAMP FOR USE

Any girl who has crossed the ocean knows how impossible, the first time she entered her little white cabin, that bit of space looked as a place in which to sleep and to spend part of her time. There seemed to be no room in it for anything; it was difficult to turn around in, there were so few hooks on which to hang things, and the berth--dear me, that berth! So her thoughts ran. Yet gradually, as she learned the ropes, she was able to make it homelike. With experience she learned that the more bags she had in which to put things, the easier it was to keep this little stateroom in order. The next time she took with her every conceivable sort of bag for every conceivable sort of object. Also she had learned that the more she could do without unnecessary things in her cabin and steamer trunk, the more comfort was hers to enjoy. By the time she had crossed the ocean often, she had learned the art of having little but all that she needed with her--the art of making herself comfortable in a stateroom.

Even so is there an art in learning how to camp, a happy art of which there is always something left to learn. The oldest campers never get beyond the point where they can make a slight improvement in their kit or their methods. In the end you will work out your own salvation for the kind of camping you wish to do. It is my intention to point out to you only what might be called the ground plan of fitting up a camp for use. Those little individual adaptations which every one of us makes, increasing familiarity with camp life will help you to make for yourselves.

First, last, and always, when making out your camp lists, revise them carefully with the idea of cutting out everything unnecessary. All besides what you actually need will be clutter. The best way to do is to make out your lists, putting down everything that comes to you. Then go over them by yourselves and a second time with some one else. Your check lists for camp are important and should always be conscientiously made out, with nothing left to chance, nothing done hit or miss.

If you are to furnish a camp, remember that your packing boxes can do great work in helping to set you up in your new home. In rough camping such boxes do well for dressers, washstands and, with a little carpentry, also for clothes presses. A piece of enameled cloth on the top of the one to be used as a washstand, and a towel or white curtain strung on a string in front of it, behind which you can put dirty clothes, make a thoroughly satisfactory article of furniture. In camp there is no need to think about elegance. Fitness and usefulness are all the girl need ever consider. It is astonishing how much beauty your homely cabin and white tent will acquire--a beauty all their own.

For tent camping the usual camp cot bed is probably most satisfactory, for it is light and readily carried. If you are on the march and carrying at the most a tent fly for protection, you will, of course, sleep on bough beds or browse beds. Small, cut saplings, well trimmed, make good springs for beds. Any guide can help you to make the beds, and you would better be about it early, for it takes a good three-quarters of an hour to make a comfortable bough bed. Perhaps a few suggestions will not come amiss. You will, of course, have both good hunting knives, worn in a leather sheath on a leather belt, and belt-sheath hatchets. With the hatchet cut down a stout little balsam tree. From this break the tips from the big branches, having them about one foot in length. These foot-length stems make good bed springs and are the only bed springs you will have on a balsam couch unless you provide the spring yourself because of some green worm who is industriously measuring off the length of your nose, no doubt in amazement that there should be anything so extraordinarily long in the world. However, he is a harmless little chap, and the balsam tree having treated him very kindly, he will be greatly surprised at any other kind of entertainment which he may receive from you. Now, having got your “feathers,” select a smooth piece of ground with a slight slope toward the foot. Press the stems of the feathers into the earth, laying them tier after tier as you have seen a roof shingled, until your bed is wide enough, long enough, and soft enough to give you a good and sweet-scented night of sleep upon it. Lay a fair-sized log along each side and across the foot. This balsam bough bed can be made up as often as you wish with fresh feathers. Place one blanket on top and it is ready for your use. If you have got pitch on your hands in doing this, rub them with a little butter or lard and it will come off.

There is still an easier bed to make. A bag of stout bed ticking, filled with leaves and grass, forms an excellent mattress and has the virtue of being portable, for the bag can always be emptied, folded up, packed, and refilled at the next camp ground. A thin rubber blanket or poncho laid over this makes it an absolutely dry bed at all times. If you are to camp in a log cabin, probably the most comfortable bed for you to plan is a spring, bought at the nearest village, and nailed onto log posts a foot and a half high. With your ticking mattress filled with straw, your day lived in the great out of doors, no one will need to wish you pleasant slumber.

It is well to have a good supply of tarlatan on hand. This is finer than mosquito netting and therefore more impervious to stinging insects. If you camp in June, or the first week or so in July, you are likely in many parts of the country to find black flies, mosquitoes, and midges to battle against. There should be enough tarlatan to use over the camp bed and also enough to cover completely a hat with a brim and to fall down about the neck, where it can be tied under the collar. A more expensive head-net of black silk Brussels net can be made. This costs a good deal more, but the great advantage of it is, that the black does not alter the colors of the world out upon which one looks. Don’t make any mistake about the importance of some kind of netting and fly dope, or “bug juice,” as the antidotes for insect bites are sometimes called. There are various kinds of fly dope, any one of which is likely to prove useful. There is an excellent recipe for the making of your own fly dope in Breck’s “Way of the Woods,” which I give here.[6] A tiny vial of ammonia will also prove useful. One drop on a bite will often stop further poisoning from an insect sting. Inquiries should always be made beforehand whether one is likely to encounter black flies and midges. Those who have met them once are not likely to wish to have a second unprotected meeting. They are the pests of the woods and the wilderness.

[6] “Breck’s Dope: Pine tar 3 oz. Olive oil 2 “ Oil pennyroyal 1 “ Citronella 1 “ Creosote 1 “ Camphor (pulverized) 1 “ Large tube carbolated vaseline.

Heat the tar and oil and add the other ingredients; simmer over slow fire until well mixed. The tar may be omitted if disliked.”

I will give, just as they occur to me, a few other articles which will be useful in the camp life: a small cake of camphor to break over things in the knapsack and keep off crawlers; a small emergency box containing surgeon’s plaster and the usual things; vaseline, witch hazel; jack knife; tool kit; a map of the region in which you are camping and a diary in which to take notes. To these might be added sewing articles, a sleeping bag if you care to use one, and a folding brown duck waterpail. The catalog from any sporting goods place will suggest a thousand other articles which you may care to have.

With a few planks to saw up into lengths, and a few white birch saplings, a most attractive camp dinner table can be made. Over this a piece of white oilcloth should be laid and kept clean by the use of a little sapolio. It is best not to buy an expensive stove for the cabin. A second-hand kitchen range, which can be purchased for a few dollars, will do quite well for the cooking cabin or shack, and an open Franklin stove for the living cabin. If one is going to camp in tents and wants a stove in one of them, it will be necessary to buy a regular tent stove. Anything else would not be safe.

As far as actual furniture is concerned, except for camp stools or benches and camp chairs, if you wish to be very elegant, the camp is now furnished. But there are still to be considered the necessary utensils for cooking and other purposes. I will enumerate them again just as they occur to me, and not necessarily in the order of their importance: kerosene oil can, molasses jug, pails, a tin baker, a teapot, tin and earthen dishes, tin and earthen cups, basins for washing, pans for baking and for milk, dishpans, dishmop, double boiler, broiler, knives, forks, teaspoons, tablespoons, mixing spoons, pepper box, salt shaker, nutmeg grater, flour sifter, can opener, frying pans--one with a long handle for use in cooking over open fires--butcher knife, bread knife, lantern, bucket, egg beater, potato masher, rolling pin, axe, hatchet, nails, hammer, toilet paper, woolen blankets, rubber blankets, crash for dish towels, yellow soap, some wire, twine, tacks, and a small fireless cooker if you know how to use one. A good fireless cooker can be built on the premises.

Possessed of these articles, any one who knows anything about the woods can be most comfortable. They can, of course, be added to indefinitely. One may make camp life as expensive and complicated as one pleases. But to do that seems a pity, for it is against the very good and spirit of the wilderness life. The wood life and all its new and invigorating experience should take us back to nature. It is for that we go into the wilderness and not to bring with us the luxuries of civilization. Part of the wholesomeness of camp life lies in learning to do without, in the fine simplicity which we are obliged to practice there. Common sense is the law of the wilderness life, and let us be sure that we follow that law.