from a trip, turn your duffel bag upside down on the floor. Of the
contents make three piles--three piles conscientiously selected in the
light of what has happened rather than what ought to have happened, or
what might have happened. It is difficult to do this. Preconceived
notions, habits of civilization, theory for future, imagination, all
stand in the eye of your honesty. Pile number one should comprise those
articles you have used every day; pile number two, those you have used
occasionally; pile number three, those you have not used at all. If you
are resolute and singleminded, you will at once discard the latter two.

Throughout the following winter you will be attacked by misgivings. To
be sure, you wore the mosquito hat but once or twice, and the fourth
pair of socks not at all; but then the mosquitoes might be thicker next
time, and a series of rainy days and cold nights might make it
desirable to have a dry pair of socks to put on at night. The past has
been _x_, but the future might be _y_. One by one the discarded creep
back into the list. And by the opening of next season you have made
toward perfection by only the little space of a mackintosh coat and a
ten-gauge gun.

But in the years to come you learn better and better the simple woods
lesson of substitution or doing without. You find that discomfort is as
soon forgotten as pain; that almost anything can be endured if it is
but for the time being; that absolute physical comfort is worth but a
very small price in avoirdupois. Your pack shrinks.

In fact, it really never ceases shrinking. Only last summer taught me
the uselessness of an extra pair of trousers. It rains in the woods;
streams are to be waded; the wetness of leaves is greater than the
wetness of many rivers. Logically, naturally, inevitably, such