Things About Camp 27 



is extemporized by driving into the ground four posts X wise, 

 and against the log lying in the sacrificial cradle thus formed lie 

 the cross-cut saw and an axe — the two most important tools in 

 making any kind of a camp. 



About the first thing the novice in camp life has knocked 

 into him with kindly severity, is the importance of orderliness. 

 There being no such conveniences as shelves, drawers, or casual 

 tables, and available nails or hooks being few, a constant practice 

 must be made, until it becomes an automatic habit, of restoring 

 everything that is taken up and used to the precise spot from which 

 it is taken. The soap is always to be found at the same point 

 on the ground beside the washbowl or at the margin of the stream, 

 and the camp towel near by. Some campers, of course, are fussy 

 enough to provide their own individual towels and soap tablets — 

 in which case they may, of course, do what they please with them. 

 The axe must be replaced always in the same place, and so with 

 all other "ictas," each to its appointed locus. 



The next thing is that for the very reason that there is no 

 floor to be swept and mopped, in the messtent or elsewhere, the 

 habit of personal neatness is for common health's sake of com- 

 manding importance. Scraps of paper, food skins and so forth, 

 must not be dropped at random, but must be orderly disposed of, 

 preferably by fire. This was pointedly brought home to the artist 

 the first evening in camp, when Art, dropping a piece of sausage 

 skin on the messtent floor, remembered himself, and, picking it 

 up, admonished Jimmy on the need above set forth. His little 

 health lecture was further confirmed by William with the state- 

 ment that even where the utmost care had been taken, any hunt- 

 ing camp should be broken after two weeks for health's sake. 



It is a matter of course to care for a gun or a fishing rod. 

 Quite as important is the care of the axe. Of all tools in camp 

 it most needs to be handled with respect, its edge nursed, its blade 

 kept bright, and strictly reserved in use for its own proper purpose. 

 The waste of energy and time occasioned by an axe with a nicked 

 and dull edge caused by misuse will make the difference between 

 comfort and perilous discomfort. It may even make the differ- 

 ence between life and death. 



A little to the rear of the messtent, its margin thickly set 

 with lodgepole pines and aspen, whose trunks amid willow brush 



