366 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
with strawberries? You could not then walk over 
them without dyeing your feet in the juice of the 
ripe fruit. Above the strawberries red-clover was 
thickly blooming, and above the clover ox-eye 
daisies. The odor of this field was perceptible before 
you otherwise noticed it — a chorus of sweet smells 
seemed shouting to you to come up. As soon as the 
land is left untilled about here, wild strawberries 
rush in as pink azaleas do about Traumfest. You 
can buy them for five cents a gallon, but you will be 
foolish to do that when you can stain your own 
fingers with their juices, and fill your tissues with 
sunshine and fresh air and fragrances out on the 
slopes when strawberries are ripe. 
Shading our camp is the remains of a grove, for 
most of the trees lie on the ground, bleached skele- 
tons, which, however, prove to be a blessing rather 
than a misfortune for us. For towards night the air 
grows cold — and then comes the crowning pleasure 
of the day : a royal camp-fire suddenly blazes forth. 
We have a perfect firemaker in the mountain man 
who lives in the canvas-covered wagon that brought 
us here, bag and baggage. Every mountain man is 
a perfect firemaker, though he is by no means a fire 
worshiper. He makes his fire for homely uses, not 
for any spiritual cause such as we imagine kindled 
those fires of early man in the Far East, fires that yet 
burn in poetry to warm the heart even at this dis- 
tant time. The mountain man always starts his fire 
with a stick whittled into a brush. He scorns paper 
even when he can get it, seeming to whittle into his 
