1. Not to drop matches or burning tobacco where there is inflammable material.
2. Not to build larger camp fires than are necessary.
3. Not to build fires in leaves, rotten wood, or other places where they are likely to spread.
4. In windy weather and in dangerous places, to dig holes or clear the ground to confine camp fires.
5. To extinguish all fires completely before leaving them, even for a short absence.
6. Not to build fires against large or hollow logs, where it is difficult to extinguish them.
7. Not to build fires to clear land without informing the nearest officer of the FOREST SERVICE, so that he may a.s.sist in controlling them.
This notice is posted for your benefit and the good of every resident of the region. You are requested to cooperate in preventing the removal or defacement, which acts are punishable by law.
JAMES WILSON, Secretary of Agriculture ----------------------------------------------------------------
_The above is a copy of one of a series of notices posted in forests by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, directing attention to U.
S. laws on this important subject_.
{160 continued}
[Ill.u.s.tration: Around the camp fire.]
The Camp Fire
"I cannot conceive of a camp that does not have a big fire. Our city houses do not have it, not even a fireplace. The fireplace is one of the greatest schools the imagination has ever had or can ever have. It is moral, and it always has a tremendous stimulus to the imagination, and that is why stories and fire go together. You cannot tell a good story unless you tell it before a fire. You cannot have a complete fire unless you have a good story-teller along!
"There is an impalpable, invisible, softly stepping delight in the camp fire which escapes a.n.a.lysis. Enumerate all its charms and still there is something missing in your catalogue.
"Anyone who has witnessed a real camp fire and partic.i.p.ated in its fun as well as seriousness will never forget it. The huge fire shooting up its tongue of flame into the darkness of the night, the perfect shower of golden rain, the company of happy {161} boys, and the great dark background of piny woods, the weird light over all, the singing, the yells, the stories, the fun, and then the serious word at the close, is a happy experience long to be remembered."
Camp-fire Stunts
The camp fire is a golden opportunity for the telling of stories--good stories told well. Indian legends, war stories, ghost stories, detective stories, stories of heroism, the history of life, a talk about the stars. Don"t draw out the telling of a story. Make the story life-like.
College songs always appeal to boys. Let some leader start up a song in a natural way, and soon you will have a chorus of unexpected melody and harmony. As the fire dies down, let the songs be of a more quiet type like "My Old Kentucky Home," and ballads of similar nature.
When the embers are glowing is the time for toasting marshmallows. Get a long stick sharpened to a point, fasten a marshmallow on the end, hold it over the embers, not in the blaze, until the marsh-mallow expands. Oh, the deliciousness of it! Ever tasted one? Before roasting corn on the cob, tie the end of the husk firmly with string or cord; soak in water for about an hour; then put into the hot embers. The water prevents the corn from burning and the firmly tied husks enable the corn to be steamed and the real corn flavor is thus retained. In about twenty minutes the corn may be taken from the fire and eaten.
Have a bowl of melted b.u.t.ter and salt at hand. Also a pastry brush to spread the melted b.u.t.ter upon the corn. Try it.
Story Telling
For an example of a good story to be told around the camp fire this excellent tale by Prof. F. M. Burr is printed by permission:
How Men Found the Great Spirit
In the olden time, when the woods covered all the earth except the deserts and the river bottoms, and men lived on the fruits and berries they found and the wild animals which they could shoot or snare, when they dressed in skins and lived in caves, there was little time for thought. But as men grew stronger and more cunning and learned how to live together, they had more time to think and more mind to think with.
Men had learned many things. They had learned that cold weather followed hot; and spring, winter; and that the sun got up in the morning and went to bed at night. They said that the great water was kindly when the sun shone, but when the sun hid its face and the wind blew upon it, it grew black and angry and upset their canoes. They found that knocking flints together or rubbing dry sticks would light the dry moss and that the {162} flames which would bring back summer in the midst of winter and day in the midst of night were hungry and must be fed, and when they escaped devoured the woods and only the water could stop them.
These and many other things men learned, but no one knew why it all was or how it came to be. Man began to wonder, and that was the beginning of the path which led to the Great Spirit.
In the ages when men began to wonder there was born a boy whose name was Wo, which meant in the language of his time, "Whence." As he lay in his mother"s arms she loved him and wondered: "His body is of my body, but from whence comes the life--the spirit which is like mine and yet not like it?" And his father seeing the wonder in the mother"s eyes, said, "Whence came he from?" And there was no one to answer, and so they called him Wo to remind them that they knew not from whence he came.
As Wo grew up, he was stronger and swifter of foot than any of his tribe. He became a mighty hunter. He knew the ways of all the wild things and could read the signs of the seasons. As he grew older they made him a chief and listened while he spoke at the council board, but Wo was not satisfied. His name was a question and questioning filled his mind.
"Whence did he come? Whither was he going? Why did the sun rise and set? Why did life burst into leaf and flower with the coming of spring? Why did the child become a man and the man grow old and die?"
The mystery grew upon him as he pondered. In the morning he stood on a mountain top and stretching out his hands cried, "Whence?" At night he cried to the moon "Whither?" He listened to the soughing of the trees and the song of the brook and tried to learn their language. He peered eagerly into the eyes of little children and tried to read the mystery of life. He listened at the still lips of the dead, waiting for them to tell him whither they had gone.
He went out among his fellows silent and absorbed, always looking for the unseen and listening for the unspoken. He sat so long silent at the council board that the elders questioned him. To their questioning he replied like one awakening from a dream:
"Our fathers since the beginning have trailed the beasts of the woods.
There is none so cunning as the fox, but we can trail him to his lair.
Though we are weaker than the great bear and buffalo, yet by our wisdom we overcome them. The deer is more swift of foot, but by craft we overtake him. We cannot fly like a bird, but we snare the winged one with a hair. We have made ourselves many cunning inventions by which the beasts, the trees, the wind, the water and the fire become our servants.
"Then we speak great swelling words: "How great and wise we are! There is none like us in the air, in the wood, or in the water!"
"But the words are false. Our pride is like that of a partridge drumming on his log in the wood before the fox leaps upon him. Our sight is like that of the mole burrowing under the ground. Our wisdom is like a drop of dew upon the gra.s.s. Our ignorance is like the great water which no eye can measure.
"Our life is like a bird coming out of the dark, fluttering for a heart-beat in the tepee and then going forth into the dark again. No one can tell whence it comes or whither it goes. I have asked the wise men and they cannot answer. I have listened to the voice of the trees and wind and water, but I do not know their tongue; I have questioned the sun and the moon and the stars, but they are silent.
"But to-day in the silence before the darkness gives place to light, I seemed to hear a still small voice within my breast, saying to me, "Wo, the {163} questioner, rise up like the stag from his lair; away, alone, to the mountain of the sun. There thou shalt find that which thou seekest." I go, but if I fail by the trail another will take it up. If I find the answer I will return."
Waiting for none, Wo left the council of his tribe and went his way toward the mountain of the sun. For six days he made his way through the trackless woods, guided by the sun by day and the stars by night.
On the seventh day he came to the great mountain--the mountain of the sun, on whose top, according to the tradition of his tribe, the sun rested each night. All day long he climbed saying to himself, "I will sleep tonight in the teepee of the sun, and he will tell me whence I come and whither I go."
But as he climbed the sun seemed to climb higher and higher; and, as he neared the top, a cold cloud settled like a night bird on the mountain. Chilled and faint with hunger and fatigue, Wo struggled on.
Just at sunset he reached the top of the mountain, but it was not the mountain of the sun, for many days" journey to the west the sun was sinking in the Great Water.
A bitter cry broke from Wo"s parched lips. His long trail was useless.
There was no answer to his questions. The sun journeyed farther and faster than men dreamed, and of wood and waste and water there was no end. Overcome with misery and weakness he fell upon a bed of moss with his back toward the sunset and the unknown.
And Wo slept, although it was unlike any sleep he had ever known before, and as he slept he dreamed. He was alone upon the mountain waiting for the answer. A cloud covered the mountain but all was silent. A mighty wind rent the cloud and rushed roaring through the crags, but there was no voice in the wind. Thunder pealed, lightning flashed, but he whom Wo sought was not there.
In the hush that followed up the storm Wo heard a voice, low and quiet, but in it all the sounds of earth and sky seemed to mingle--the song of the bird, the whispering of the trees, and the murmuring of the brook.
"Wo, I am he whom thou seekest, I am the Great Spirit. I am the All Father. Ever since I made man of the dust of the earth, and so child of the earth and brother to all living, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, thus making him my son, I have waited for a seeker who should find me. In the fullness of time thou hast come, Wo the questioner, to the answerer.
"Thy body is of the earth and to earth returns; thy spirit is mine; it is given thee for a s.p.a.ce to make according to thy will; then it returns to me better or worse for thy making.
"Thou hast found me because thy heart was pure, and thy search for me tireless. Go back to thy tribe and be to them the voice of the Great Spirit. From henceforth I will speak to thee, and the seekers that come after thee in a thousand voices and appear in a thousand shapes.