The Forest | Page 9

log.
At the end of three hours' flusteration, heat, worry, and good hard work,
he had accomplished the following results: A tent, very saggy, very
askew, covered a four-sided area--it was not a rectangle--of very
bumpy ground. A hodge-podge bonfire, in the centre of which an
inaccessible coffee-pot toppled menacingly, alternately threatened to
ignite the entire surrounding forest or to go out altogether through lack
of fuel. Personal belongings strewed the ground near the fire, and
provisions cumbered the entrance to the tent. Dick was anxiously
mixing batter for the cakes, attempting to stir a pot of rice often enough
to prevent it from burning, and trying to rustle sufficient dry wood to
keep the fire going. This diversity of interests certainly made him sit up
and pay attention. At each instant he had to desert his flour-sack to
rescue the coffee-pot, or to shift the kettle, or to dab hastily at the rice,
or to stamp out the small brush, or to pile on more dry twigs. His
movements were not graceful. They raised a scurry of dry bark, ashes,
wood dust, twigs, leaves, and pine needles, a certain proportion of
which found their way into the coffee, the rice, and the sticky batter,
while the smaller articles of personal belonging, hastily dumped from
the duffel-bag, gradually disappeared from view in the manner of
Pompeii and ancient Vesuvius. Dick burned his fingers and stumbled
about and swore, and looked so comically-pathetically red-faced
through the smoke that I, seated on the log, at the same time laughed
and pitied. And in the end, when he needed a continuous steady fire to
fry his cakes, he suddenly discovered that dry twigs do not make coals,
and that his previous operations had used up all the fuel within easy
circle of the camp.
So he had to drop everything for the purpose of rustling wood, while
the coffee chilled, the rice cooled, the bacon congealed, and all the

provisions, cooked and uncooked, gathered entomological specimens.
At the last, the poor bedeviled theorist made a hasty meal of scorched
food, brazenly postponed the washing of dishes until the morrow, and
coiled about his hummocky couch to dream the nightmares of complete
exhaustion.
Poor Dick! I knew exactly how he felt, how the low afternoon sun
scorched, how the fire darted out at unexpected places, how the smoke
followed him around, no matter on which side of the fire he placed
himself, how the flies all took to biting when both hands were occupied,
and how they all miraculously disappeared when he had set down the
frying-pan and knife to fight them. I could sympathize, too, with the
lonely, forlorn, lost-dog feeling that clutched him after it was all over. I
could remember how big and forbidding and unfriendly the forest had
once looked to me in like circumstances, so that I had felt suddenly
thrust outside into empty spaces. Almost was I tempted to intervene;
but I liked Dick, and I wanted to do him good. This experience was
harrowing, but it prepared his mind for the seeds of wisdom. By the
following morning he had chastened his spirit, forgotten the assurance
breathed from the windy pages of the Boy Trapper Library, and was
ready to learn.
Have you ever watched a competent portraitist at work? The infinite
pains a skilled man spends on the preliminaries before he takes one step
towards a likeness nearly always wears down the patience of the sitter.
He measures with his eye, he plumbs, he sketches tentatively, he places
in here a dab, there a blotch, he puts behind him apparently
unproductive hours--and then all at once he is ready to begin something
that will not have to be done over again. An amateur, however, is
carried away by his desire for results. He dashes in a hit-or-miss early
effect, which grows into an approximate likeness almost immediately,
but which will require infinite labour, alteration, and anxiety to beat
into finished shape.
The case of the artist in making camps is exactly similar, and the
philosophical reasons for his failure are exactly the same. To the
superficial mind a camp is a shelter, a bright fire, and a smell of
cooking. So when a man is very tired he cuts across lots to those three
results. He pitches his tent, lights his fire, puts over his food--and finds
himself drowned in detail, like my friend Dick.

The following is, in brief, what during the next six weeks I told that
youth, by precept, by homily, and by making the solution so obvious
that he could work it out for himself.
When five or six o'clock draws near, begin to look about you for a good
level dry place, elevated some few feet above the surroundings. Drop
your pack or