might have saved, of the distant settlement, of to-morrow's plans. An
owl hoots off in the mountain and he thinks of him; if a wolf were to
howl or a panther to scream, he would think of him the rest of the
night. As it is, things flicker and hover through his mind, and he
hardly knows whether it is the past or the present that possesses him.
Certain it is, he feels the hush and solitude of the great forest, and,
whether he will or not, all his musings are in some way cast upon that
huge background of the night. Unless he is an old camper-out, there
will be an undercurrent of dread or half fear. My companion said he
could not help but feel all the time that there ought to be a sentinel
out there pacing up and down. One seems to require less sleep in the
woods, as if the ground and the untempered air rested and refreshed him
sooner. The balsam and the hemlock heal his aches very quickly. If one
is awakened often during the night, as he invariably is, he does not
feel that sediment of sleep in his mind next day that he does when the
same interruption occurs at home; the boughs have drawn it all out of
him.

And it is wonderful how rarely any of the housed and tender white man's
colds or influenzas come through these open doors and windows of the
woods. It is our partial isolation from Nature that is dangerous; throw
yourself unreservedly upon her and she rarely betrays you.

If one takes anything to the woods to read, he seldom reads it; it does
not taste good with such primitive air.

There are very few camp poems that I know of, poems that would be at
home with one on such an expedition; there is plenty that is weird and
spectral, as in Poe, but little that is woody and wild as this scene
is. I recall a Canadian poem by the late C. D. Shanly--the only one, I