86 WAITING IN THE WILDERNESS 



certain of the way, I gave up trailing and started 

 on a short cut to camp. I met a vigorous whirl- 

 wind spinning across the plains and taking with 

 it tinware and other non-essentials from camp. 

 "Go it," I called, and let it go. On the way I 

 must have picked up fifty-seven varieties of my 

 camp stuff. Then I walked upon the ashes of 

 a camp-fire that appeared familiar. The tracks 

 were my own. Here within five hundred feet of 

 Buffalo Camp I had spent last night. 



This experience showed me that the supreme 

 camping test for an outdoor fellow is finding the 

 way back to camp. He cannot do this with a 

 compass alone unless he turn surveyor and make 

 ,notes every little while. I have known many a 

 man with a compass to become hopelessly lost. 

 One who makes a mental log of his movements, 

 who knows where he is every minute, will be 

 able to return to camp without a compass or 

 even without landmarks. 



In back-tracking myself I discovered a number 

 of Nature's points of the compass, pointers that 

 I had not before noticed. They were plentiful 

 enough and I was surprised not to have seen 

 them earlier. These were made by the prevail- 

 ing westerly winds. Piles of tumbleweeds against 

 the westerly sides of sagebrush clumps. On the 

 eastern leeward side of these clumps were sand 

 drifts. These formed east and west lines here 



