Many girls think of outdoor life as of something to be enjoyed if they have plenty of time. As a matter of course they take their daily bath. But the outdoor exercise comes as an accessory. It is still unfortunately true that boys more than girls take camp life for granted. Yet girls, and students particularly, should realize that it is economy of time to be out of doors. This they need both for their work and for their health. Outdoor exercise, with its bath of fresh air and the natural bath of freshly circulating blood it brings with it, its training school for the whole girl, is as essential as the tub or sponge bath. But how many of us think of it in that way?

To be outdoors is to have the nerves keyed to the proper pitch. If fresh air is not a tonic to the nerves, then why is it that moodiness and depression fall away as we walk or row or lie under the trees, and we become saner and more serene? When one is depressed the best thing to do is to go out of doors. Altogether aside from any formal wisdom of book or student or teacher, there is wisdom with nature. If the head is tired, go out of doors! If the body is fagged, go out of doors! If the heart is troubled, go out of doors! The life out there, as no life indoors can, will make for health, for charity, for bigness. Petty things fall away, and with nature equanimity and poise are found again. It isn’t necessary to bother someone about woes real or imaginary. All that is necessary is to get out among the trees and flowers, the sky and clouds, the joyous birds and little creatures of field and wood, and hear what they have to say. There will be no complaining among them, even about very real difficulties.

A great deal is heard concerning hygiene in these days, the study of it, the practice of it. The biggest university of hygiene in the world is not within houses but outside, up that hillside where the trees are blowing, in the doorway of our tent, on the lawn in front of the house, out on the lake, even on a city house-top, and, last resort if necessary, by an open window. One reason why many people are concerned about this question of hygiene is because they know that not only are human beings happier when they are well and strong, but also because a healthy person is, nine times out of ten, more moral than one who is sick or sickly. Ill health means offense of some kind, often one’s own, against the laws of nature or society. We have, too, to pay for one another’s faults. But life lived on sound physical principles, with plenty of sunshine, cold water, exercise, wind, rain, simple food and sensible clothing, is not likely to be sickly, useless or burdensome.

The body is not a mechanism to be disregarded, but an exquisitely made machine to be exquisitely cared for. Nobody would trust an engineer to run an engine he knows nothing about. Yet most of us are running our engines without any knowledge of the machinery. Why should we excuse ourselves for lack of knowledge and care when, for the same reasons a chauffeur, for example, would be immediately dismissed? How many of us know that the nerves are more or less dependent upon the muscles for their tone? How many of us realize how important it is to keep in perfect muscular condition? We sit hour after hour in our chairs, all our muscles relaxed, bending over books, and begrudge one hour—it ought to be three or four!—out of doors. The person[131]
[132] who can run furthest and swiftest is the one with the strongest heart. The person who can work longest and to the greatest advantage is the one who has kept his bodily health.... It may be laid down as an absolute rule that any individual can do more and better work when he is well than when he is not in good physical condition. Ceaseless activity is the law of nature and the body that is resolutely active does not grow old as rapidly as the one that is physically indolent.

Much out-of-door life, much camping, keep one young in heart, too. It isn’t possible to grow old or sophisticated among such a wealth of joyous, wholesome friendships as may be found in nature, where no unclean word is ever heard and where no unfriendliness, no false pride, no jealousy can exist. A great English poet, William Wordsworth, has told us more of the shaping power of nature, its quickening spirit, its power of restoration, than any other poet. It would be well for every girl to take that wonderful poem “Tintern Abbey” out of doors and read it there. Wordsworth, still a very young man when he wrote it, tells how he loved the Welsh landscape and the tranquil restoration it had brought him

A higher gift he acknowledges, too, when through the harmony and joy of nature he had been led to see deeply “into the life of things.”

There is something the matter with a girl who hasn’t an appetite, as sharp as hunger, to escape from her books and camp out of doors. If outdoor life cannot engross her wholly at times, banishing all thoughts of work, then she should make an effort to forget books and everything connected with them for a while. A young girl ought to be skillful in all sorts of outdoor accomplishments, rowing, swimming, riding and driving if possible, canoeing, skating, sailing a boat, fishing, hunting, mountain climbing.

Fortunately there is more of the play-spirit connected with outdoor life than there used to be. Both school and college have fostered this wholesome attitude. If a girl doesn’t like active sports she should cultivate a love for them. You can always trust a person who is accomplished in physical ways, for anyone who has led an intelligent out-of-door life is more self-reliant. Her faculty for doing things, her inventiveness, her poise, her “nerve” are all strengthened. I recall an instance of this “faculty” and inventiveness. We were on a wild Maine lake when an accident happened to the canoe, a necessity to our return, for we were far away from all sources of help. Apparently there was nothing with which to mend it. But our Indian guide found there everything he needed ready for his use. He scraped[135]
[136] gum off a tree, he cut a piece of bark, and then he rummaged about until he discovered an old wire. With these things he securely mended a big hole. Oftentimes it seems as if the very appliances with which city children are provided tend to make them incapable.

The girl who lives out of doors acquires unlimited resourcefulness. Outdoor life quickens and sharpens the perception. And for the girl to have her power of observation sharpened is worth a great deal. The capacity for accurate and quick observation education from books does not always develop. One must go back to nature for that, one must live out in the woods and fields all one can, one must be able to tell the scent of honeysuckle from the scent of the rose, and know the fragrance of milkweed even before that homely weed is seen, and know spruce, balsam and white pine even as one knows a[137]
[138] friend. Eyes must be able to detect the differences not only in colors and shapes of birds, but in their flight, and ears know every song of wood and field. Then the services of beauty, its music, its color, its form, will be always about us and nature’s health and strength and beauty become our own, not only her gaiety and “vital feelings of delight,” but also her restraint upon weakness, and her kindling to the highest life—the life that is spiritual.