Woodcraft

Woodcraft
by Nessmuk
(George Washington Sears)
1884
Digital version from http://www.zianet.com/jgray/

PREFACE
Woodcraft is dedicated to the Grand Army of "Outers," as a pocket
volume of reference on woodcraft.
For brick and mortar breed filth and crime,
With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats;
And men are withered before their prime
By the curse paved in with the lanes and streets.
And lungs are poisoned and shoulders bowed,
In the smothering reek of mill and mine;
And death stalks in on the struggling crowd--
But he shuns the shadow of oak and pine.
--Nessmuk

CHAPTER I
Overwork And Recreation--Outing And Outers--How To Do It, And
Why They Miss It
IT does not need that Herbert Spencer should cross the ocean to tell us
that we are an over-worked nation; that our hair turns gray ten years
earlier than the Englishman's; or, "that we have had somewhat too
much of the gospel of work," and, "it is time to preach the gospel of
relaxation." It is all true. But we work harder, accomplish more in a
given time and last quite as long as slower races. As to the gray hair--
perhaps gray hair is better than none; and it is a fact that the average
Briton becomes bald as early as the American turns gray. There is,
however, a sad significance in his words when he says: "In every circle
I have met men who had themselves suffered from nervous collapse
due to stress of business, or named friends who had either killed
themselves by overwork, or had been permanently incapacitated, or had
wasted long periods in endeavors to recover health." Too true. And it is
the constant strain, without let-up or relaxation, that, in nine cases out
of ten, snaps the cord and ends in what the doctors call "nervous
prostration"--something akin to paralysis--from which the sufferer
seldom wholly recovers.
Mr. Spencer quotes that quaint old chronicler, Froissart, as saying, "The
English take their pleasures sadly, after their fashion"; and thinks if he
lived now, he would say of Americans, "they take their pleasures
hurriedly, after their fashion." Perhaps.
It is an age of hurry and worry. Anything slower than steam is apt to
"get left." Fortunes are quickly made and freely spent. Nearly all busy,
hard-worked Americans have an intuitive sense of the need that exists
for at least one period of rest and relaxation during each year and all--or
nearly all--are willing to pay liberally, too liberally in fact, for anything
that conduces to rest, recreation and sport. I am sorry to say that we
mostly get swindled. As an average, the summer outer who goes to
forest, lake or stream for health and sport, gets about ten cents' worth
for a dollar of outlay. A majority will admit-- to themselves at

least--that after a month's vacation, they return to work with an inward
consciousness of being somewhat disappointed and beaten. We are free
with our money when we have it. We are known throughout the
civilized world for our lavishness in paying for our pleasures; but it
humiliates us to know we have been beaten, and this is what the most
of us know at the end of a summer vacation. To the man of millions it
makes little difference. He is able to pay liberally for boats, buckboards
and "body service," if he chooses to spend a summer in the North
Woods. He has no need to study the questions of lightness and
economy in a Forest and Stream outing. Let his guides take care of him;
and unto them and the landlords he will give freely of his substance.
I do not write for him and can do him little good. But there are
hundreds of thousands of practical, useful men, many of them far from
being rich; mechanics, artists, writers, merchants, clerks, business
men--workers, so to speak--who sorely need and well deserve a season
of rest and relaxation at least once a year. To these and for these, I
write.
Perhaps more than fifty years of devotion to "woodcraft" may enable
me to give a few useful hints and suggestions to those whose dreams,
during the close season of work, are of camp-life by flood, field and
forest.
I have found that nearly all who have a real love of nature and out-of-
door camp-life, spend a good deal of time and talk in planning future
trips, or discussing the trips and pleasures gone by, but still dear to
memory.
When the mountain streams are frozen and the Nor'land winds are out;
when the winter winds are drifting the bitter sleet and snow; when
winter rains are making out-of-door life unendurable; when season,
weather and law combine to make it "close time" for beast, bird and
man, it is well that a