Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

WOODCRAFT 15ing Will Tahlahlah giving me a lesson in Cherokee,remarked rather sourly to the redskin: "You needn'tteach him anything; he's more of an Indian thanyou are."Seldom during those three years as a forest exiledid I feel lonesome in daytime ; but when supperwould be over, and black night closed in on myhermitage, and the owls began calling all the bluedevils of the woods, one needed some indoor occupationto keep him in good cheer: and that is how Icame to write my first little book on camping andwoodcraft.Since then I have spent several more years in "thesticks," at much the same kind of life, save that nowI had as partner one of the best woodsmen in thiscountry, a man so genuinely a scholar in hi? chosenlore that he could well afford to say, as once he didto me: "I've studied these woods and mountains allmy life, Kep, like you do your books, and I don'tknow them all yet, no sirree." And I now say tothe reader, for myself, just what Bob said to meabout himself, save that my experience covers a lessperiod of time.In the school of the woods there is no graduationday. What would be good woodcraft in one regionmight be bad bungling in another. A Maine guidemay scour all the forests of northeastern America,and feel quite at home in any of them ; but put himin a Mississippi canebrake, and it is long odds thathe would be, for a time.Perplexed, bewildered, till Tie scarce doth knowHis right forefinger from his left big toe.And a southern cane-cracker would be quite asmuch at sea if he were turned loose in a spruceforest in winter. But it would not take long foreither of these men to "catch on" to the new conditions;for both are shifty, both are cool-headed, andboth are keen observers. Any man may blunderonce, when confronted by strange conditions; bui