aioe Se, BON ee B USL ESIN i 
ivy and answer with a smile of understanding the look from your 
friend which seems to say, ‘‘This, indeed, is the life!” 
Again, your trip may be of a different nature. You paddle a loaded 
canoe along the banks of a wooded stream for an outing of a few days 
in the fall or during a bit of clement winter weather. You cheer- 
fully unload and pack your duffle around the shallow riffles while your 
fellow wanderer works upstream with the empty canoe until deep 
water is reached again. Perchance a couple of squirrels fall to your 
12-gun and you continue on the course which leads away from whistle 
signals and striking clocks. You put up your tent-lodge in a sheltered 
spot on the bank, collect great piles of dry leaves for your beds, cut 
a stock of firewood and make ready for the night. It is work—hard 
work—but you love it and do it happily. What matter if your “din- 
ner” is not “served” until six-thirty, seven, or later. You have no 
conference, no social affair for the evening. You exult in your inde- 
pendence, in your freedom. 
When the impulse comes you dress, or rather undress, the squirrels 
you are lucky enough to have obtained, and make a stew that is un- 
equaled in civilization. The coffee boils and sends its aroma through 
the atmosphere. You dig out from your pack-sacks the other neces- 
sities for the meal and as night sinks down around you, black and 
cold, you sit under the camp light in the warmth of your friendship- 
fire and are content to live. 
Here is where you know your friend; not through the medium 
of spoken words, for mostly you talk little and sometimes you are 
silent, but through a conscious nearness and subtle understanding that 
brings a feeling of trustfulness and confidence experienced nowhere 
else. A coyote howls, a Screech Owl gives his quavering lament; then 
all is quiet save the rippling water and the rustle of the wind through 
the last-year’s leaves. Both of you feel the spell of the out-of-doors, 
the vastness of it, the mystery of it, but neither of you can put it into 
words. You draw your blankets more closely about you and in your 
fancy and the firelight travel enchanted dream-trails “where was 
never man before.” 
Or perhaps in the early spring you slip away some afternoon from 
the duties and restrictions of the city to some favorite spot along the 
rocky bluffs of a river. You investigate everything. You turn over 
great rocks trying to catch the swiftly moving skinks and pry the 
bark off old logs to watch the scampering beetles. You enjoy the 
Erythronium and the first violets and admire the May apples and 
Solomon’s seal just pushing up through the thick layer of dead leaves. 
You scratch about in the moist, mouldy crevices for the land snails. 
You search for the first snakes that may be sunning themselves on 
the ledges. The early insects—wasps, dragon-flies, and an occasional 
Grapta—hold your interest. Old Man Corvus, the crow, a sable- 
garbed brigand returning from a neighborhood “‘cawcuss,” glares down 
at you suspiciously, informing you with throaty mutterings of his 
displeasure at your invasion. In a nearby marsh choruses of leopard 
frogs and Pseudacris make trial of their repertoire in anticipation 
