Firm active: 1907-1921
Minneapolis, Minnesota :: Chicago, Illinois
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania :: Portland, Oregon
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Purcell and Elmslie, Architects Firm active: 1907-1921
Minneapolis, Minnesota :: Chicago, Illinois |
Preface
T
HE papers enclosed in these covers were, with the exceptions indicated, written in the Northern woods, and drawn from the surroundings. Having there acquired resources of health which have made old age so far the pleasantest period of my life, I desire here to enter a plea for our own country. It is to be regretted that our deluded people pour in a dizzy tide across the sea in quest of pleasures which are only to be found at home; enjoyments and benefits incomparably superior to any that can be found elsewhere left untasted and unaccepted. There are two American gulf streams flowing across the Atlantic to Europe, the one marine, the other social. They both irrigate those otherwise unhappy lands with rains and gold, but both of them are headed for the melancholy Arctics.The country boy knows that when he drives his cows to a fresh clover-field they will rush all over it, and from side to side, in quest of pasture as good as what they are trampling: the same with the American man or woman turned loose upon the world. Such Americans reserve the ample room and fresh air allotted to them by their own generous country, for their future state of existence in a cemetery. The only reservation they make is, that they shall not be pushed and jammed and crowded after they are dead.
We Americans stand for liberty, and have wasted no end of windy rhetoric in extolling our quality and quantity of it, and then journey for our pleasure to where we are hedged about with customs and manners, limitations and restrictions, which are as absurd as they are annoying. Fortunately, the best things in life are not purchasable; they would not be best things if they were. Among them are vacations, which are sweetened and spiced with a little money, such as one can afford, but gravied by a great deal. Discontent is a good thing. It makes us go, as fuel does the locomotive; but overcharged with it, we do nothing but sizzle and smoke.
Our Atlantic mountain ranges are replete with lovely scenery and a most interesting people. Our northern frontiers and Canada are jeweled with lakes as beautiful as the sun shines on, shadowed with noble forests and laced with lovely streams. The Pacific ranges, from our southern borders to the Arctics, are made up of clusters of peaks, cascades, interlocked lakes, glaciers, and forests which have no rivals in Europe. The canons of the Yellowstone, Colorado, and Yosemite need not be described. For uniqueness, 'brilliancy of colors, and grandeur, they have no rivals that are known or accessible. Nor need I speak of the astonishing beauty and strangeness of the Yellowstone National Park. To Alaska no description can do justice. It
contains no less than sixty-five active volcanoes, and thousands of extinct craters which are either the cups of cerulean lakes or the birthplaces of magnificent glaciers. The Muir is most accessible and best known, but one which issues from Redoubt Mountain leaps from a cliff of a thousand feet, in huge emeralds, which whirl and flash as they fall. It is admitted that nowhere else can so delightsome a voyage be found as that between Seattle and Juneau. There is nowhere a more beautiful island than Kodiac; nor is there. any coast where mountains, snow-clad from head to heels, rise sheer thirteen thousand feet out of the sea—spectacles of incredible and appalling grandeur.More quietly delightful and yet as health-giving is an outing of tent-camping, easily accessible and small of expense. Better, however, is a log cabin and a camp-fire in some locality chosen for its waters, wildness, and beauty. Such outings are supposed to be appropriate only for men, but women should go. More than men they need to break the monotony of life squarely off, and make a summary riddance of it. Let them make wood-nymphs of themselves. Whoever heard of a Diana suffering from nervous prostration, or a naiad sending a satyr post-haste for Hippocrates?
A woman can never fully appreciate the refinements of her home till she have an opportunity to contrast them with their opposites—not the opposites found in poverty, overcrowding, and squalor, but those which make the contrast between nature and artificiality. Nothing under the sky is so pure and sweet as virgin forests and waters, nor is there anywhere such beauty and refinement in art as that which pervades them. Solitude brightens society, and society sweetens solitude. The monotony of the home gives exhilaration to the tent, and the tent gives appreciation for the home. We are not to seek contrasts between things that are desirable and those which are offensive, but find restful variety rather in that which is pleasing both in nature and in art. We shall find in the wilderness not only new objects of interest, but we will discover in our-selves, both in mind and in body, new powers and new capacities for activity and enjoyment.
NOTE.—Some years ago, at the solicitation of friends, I gathered a bunch of my Camp-Fire Musings and published them in a small volume. It was well received, and ran to a sale of a few thousands, but being unsatisfactory to myself, it was withdrawn. Some of the contents of that volume have been recast for this, a notice that is due to any into whose hands a copy of the former book may have fallen.
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