Aug. 24, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
233 
My Substitute for the Wilderness 
By ROSCOE BRUMBAUGH 
T HE surest way to make some lovers of the 
out-of-doors disgusted with life is to de¬ 
scribe your month’s excursion in the wilder¬ 
ness. Lug out your photographs of bears and fish 
and big trees. Show them the camp, the river and 
range on range of mountains. Tell them that 
you were one hundred miles from a railroad and 
that during your entire trip you saw no other 
persons than members of your party. Don't 
forget to enumerate the good things you had to 
eat, and relate in detail all those pleasant little 
incidents which made your vacation so enjoy¬ 
able. Don’t forget a single joke or yarn that 
will enliven the tale. Include all the trimmings. 
Pile it on. Rub it in. The poor devils can’t 
help themselves—just yet. 
My sympathy is with the fellows who want 
to go and can’t—just yet. I am one of them my¬ 
self. I turn cynical with envy every time I am 
told of an outdoor journey I could not start 
upon. Maybe the trip turned out to be a failure, 
or the men were not good sportsmen after all. 
I envy them just the same, for the getting out 
is what I crave. My rule book sentences me to 
six days at labor, fifty-two times a year. A 
day or two is the longest reprieve practicable. 
The rope won’t reach any farther. And I have 
not the courage to use the knife—just yet. 
However, I believe I have found a sort of 
satisfying substitute for the wilderness. Some¬ 
times I think it has better “staying” qualities 
than the genuine article. It is slowly curing me 
of my envious disposition, too. But once when 
I told a big-game hunter about it, he smiled in¬ 
dulgently and said: “Enjoy yourself; it doesn’t 
cost anything.” In a rather small souled remark 
he hit the nail right on the head and drove it 
home more neatly than I can hope to. 
This wilderness of mine is only a few miles 
from a great city and is practically the back yard 
of a thriving suburban town. Strangest thing of 
all, no attempt has ever been made to improve 
it and sell it off as five-acre chicken farms or 
bungalow plots. Perhaps I am the only person 
who believes it worth anywhere nearly the enor- 
mour price at which it is held. But I must con¬ 
fess my method of valuation is based upon no 
arbitrary commercial standards. 
In all seasons of the year this uncultivated 
tract of “five hundred acres more or less” is a 
delightful stamping ground for the lover of the 
out-of-doors. I have come to know and to love 
almost every foot of it, from many different 
angles, but each new jaunt shows me something 
new in interest and beauty. The fact that nature 
is allowed to run the place after her own fashion 
attracts all the birds and persecuted animals of 
the countryside, which find in this pleasant 
retreat the cover and protection so hard 
to secure in the environs of the most over¬ 
crowded city in America. But this casual, un¬ 
designed “reserve” bears not the slightest re¬ 
semblance to a public park. To me this is one 
of its greatest charms. It is given a wide berth 
by the Sunday dress parade, and by almost 
everyone else except a few' foreign invaders and 
the adventure-seeking boys of the neighborhood. 
Included in’this “waste” is some abandoned 
farm land, cleared and grubbed, no doubt, by 
early Dutch settlers. The little patches of fields 
are inclosed with elaborate stone fences, which 
cut up the w.oods in about the same aimless, 
patch work w r ay. These stone fences annoyed 
me at first and made me homesick for a man’s 
size farm country, but I learned later to view 
them in a different, more kindly light. Now I 
think I should miss their rugged, sturdy pres¬ 
ence. The farm buildings vanished long since, 
and no one remembers the time when any man 
tried to wrest a livelihood from the boulder- 
THE BROOK IN SUMMER. 
