Jeannette Augustus Marks

One of the objects of some girls on their camping expeditions is to keep the trip from becoming too expensive. The maximum of value must be got from the minimum of pence. And I think that is as it should be, for, with economy, the life is kept nearer a simple ideal, is made more active and more wholesome. All sorts and conditions of camping have been my lot, the five-dollar-a-day camping in a log cabin (?) equipped with running water and a porcelain tub, and the kind of camping one does under a fly with the rain and sunshine and wind driving in at their pleasure. Although I do not advise the latter as far as health results are concerned, given that the party is in fair condition they will be none the worse for the experiment.

Camping for a party of four or five should usually cost something between eight dollars and eighteen dollars apiece per week. This rate includes a guide and a good deal of service, a rowboat, a canoe, and no care about food. But the longer I camp the more I am of the opinion that the simpler and more independent the life is, the greater health and pleasure it will bring. It has been said about camping, “Much for little: much health, much good fellowship and good temper, much enjoyment of beauty—and all for little money and, rightly judged, for no trouble at all.”

“TANALITE” WATERPROOF
WALL TENT.

TOILET TENT.

The girl who is the right sort gets more fun out of camp life when she does at least part of the work herself. Let her economize and use her own ingenuity and do the work. Any group of three or four girls can provide all the necessary “grub” for themselves at $3[109]
[110] a week per capita. This sum does not include rental or purchase of tent. A good tent, 7 × 7, big enough for two at a pinch, can be bought complete (this does not include fly) for about $7. You can get tents second-hand often for a song, or as a loan, or you can rent your tent for 10 cents a day. Get at least a few numbers of one or several of the following sporting magazines: Outing, Country Life in America, Forest and Stream, Field and Stream, Recreation, Rod and Gun in Canada. Look in the advertisement pages of these magazines for the names of sporting goods houses and send for catalogs. Then choose your style of tent. The different kinds of tents are legion. The Kenyon Take-Down House, too, is a capital camp home. It is “skeet”-proof and fly-proof. Send to Michigan for a catalog, and then go like the classic turtle with your shell on your back. In groups of four or more, the $10 laid by for a vacation should bring two holiday weeks—possibly a day or so over; $15, three weeks and a bit over, and $20 a whole glorious month. Expensive camping may be the “style” in certain localities, but it is not necessarily the “fun.”

For eight weeks this past summer my family of two members camped with two servants. In addition we had the occasional services of a man who did all the heavy work. There was not enough for the servants to do in the cottage and log cabin of our establishment. They were discontented, faultfinding, and wholly out of the spirit of camp life. All of the day that their tone of voice reached was helplessly ruined. The only way to keep the camp joy and pleasure was to keep out of their way. On our camp table we had silver, embroidered linen cloths, the same food, in almost the same variety, that we had it at home, and the same amount of service. All I can say is that it was a perfect nuisance—as perfectly planned and executed a nuisance as one could well conceive. Everywhere these servants looked they found things which did not suit them. What I think they wished was a modest twenty-thousand-dollar cottage in that great and wonderful wilderness.

In the autumn I camped alone for two weeks in a log cabin. I say alone. I was not alone, for I had three friends with me—a collie puppy, a blind fawn, and a year-old cat. They were the best of companions—for better I could not have asked. I never heard a word of faultfinding, and I was witness to a great deal of joy. It is a curious fact about camp life that if a girl has weak places in her character, if she is selfish or peevish or faultfinding or untidy, these weaknesses will all come out. But my four-footed friends were good nature itself, young, growing, happy, contented. And they had excellent appetites. I tell you this because I want you to see how much of an[113]
[114] item their food was in the expenses I shall enumerate. This might be called a little intimate history of at least one camp pocketbook. The fawn had a quart of milk a day and much lettuce, together with the kind of food which deer live upon: leaves, grass, clover, ferns. I had to pay for her bedding of hay. The puppy and the cat shared another quart of milk between them. The cat hunted by night, but the puppy was fed entirely by hand on bread, milk, an occasional egg, cereals, and vegetables. My own fare consisted of all the bread and butter I wished, cocoa, condensed milk, bananas, apples, eggs, potatoes, beans, nuts, raisins, cauliflower, chocolate, and a few other articles. And there was, too, the denatured alcohol to be paid for—a heavy item, for I used only a chafing dish and a small spirit lamp. The milk was eight cents a quart on account of the carriage, the butter was thirty-eight cents a pound, the eggs twenty-five cents a dozen. Except for cutting up and splitting the wood for my open Franklin stove, the wood cost me nothing. But I paid a man a dollar for half a day’s work. We weren’t seven, but we were four in that camp community. How much do you think the food for all averaged per week in those two weeks? Three dollars a week, and we had all that we wanted and more, too.

When girls plan carefully and intelligently, when they exercise good sense in the cooking and care of food, there is no reason why, with a party of four or five girls, from three dollars to four dollars apiece per week should not cover all living, exclusive, of course, of the traveling expenses. And the camping can be done for less. I commend these expense items to all Vacation Bureaus and to Camp Fire Girls.

In the two weeks I camped alone I was very busy with my writing. To this I was obliged to give most of the daylight. Besides this, I had much business correspondence to attend to. It takes time to care properly for animals, and my pets had not only to be fed, but also to be brushed and generally cared for. I planned to spend some time every day with the blind fawn so that I might amuse her. I did all these things, took care of my little cabin, had time for a walk every afternoon, and went to bed when the birds did, to get up the next morning at five o’clock. Had I been able to give my thought entirely to the food question, I am certain that the expense of these items might have been made even less.

Some girls will think this is getting back to the simple life with a vengeance. So it was but I can assure you that those two weeks were most happy and profitable in every way—far better than the over-served, over-fed months which had preceded them. For any girl who needs to forget how superficial to the real needs of life the luxuries are; for any girl who is lazy in household ways; for any girl who needs character building; for any girl who is in need of deep breathing and the pines; for any girl who wants more active life than she gets in her own home; for any girl who is of an experimental or adventurous turn of mind; for any girl who needs to be drawn away from her books; for any girl who wants to form new friendships in a big, sane, and beautiful world where the greetings are all friendly; for any girl—for every girl—who wants much for little; the log cabin, the tent, the shack in the wilderness, by pond or lake, upon the hillsides or in the valleys, will prove a “joy forever.”