Perhaps the cleared spot is called Ephesus.There is a splendid city on the plain; there are temples and theatres on the hills; the commerce of the world seeks its port; the luxury of the Orient flows through its marble streets.You are there one day when the sea has receded: the plain is a pestilent marsh; the temples, the theatres, the lofty gates have sunken and crumbled, and the wild-brier runs over them; and, as you grow pensive in the most desolate place in the world, a bandit lounges out of a tomb, and offers to relieve you of all that which creates artificial distinctions in society.The higher the civilization has risen, the more abject is the desolation of barbarism that ensues.The most melancholy spot in the Adirondacks is not a tamarack-swamp, where the traveler wades in moss and mire, and the atmosphere is composed of equal active parts of black-flies, mosquitoes, and midges.It is the village of the Adirondack Iron-Works, where the streets of gaunt houses are falling to pieces, tenantless; the factory-wheels have stopped; the furnaces are in ruins; the iron and wooden machinery is strewn about in helpless detachment; and heaps of charcoal, ore, and slag proclaim an arrested industry.Beside this deserted village, even Calamity Pond, shallow, sedgy, with its ragged shores of stunted firs, and its melancholy shaft that marks the spot where the proprietor of the iron-works accidentally shot himself, is cheerful.
The instinct of barbarism that leads people periodically to throw aside the habits of civilization, and seek the ******* and discomfort of the woods, is explicable enough; but it is not so easy to understand why this passion should be strongest in those who are most refined, and most trained in intellectual and social fastidiousness.
Philistinism and shoddy do not like the woods, unless it becomes fashionable to do so; and then, as speedily as possible, they introduce their artificial luxuries, and reduce the life in the wilderness to the vulgarity of a well-fed picnic.It is they who have strewn the Adirondacks with paper collars and tin cans.The real enjoyment of camping and tramping in the woods lies in a return to primitive conditions of lodging, dress, and food, in as total an escape as may be from the requirements of civilization.And it remains to be explained why this is enjoyed most by those who are most highly civilized.It is wonderful to see how easily the restraints of society fall off.Of course it is not true that courtesy depends upon clothes with the best people; but, with others, behavior hangs almost entirely upon dress.Many good habits are easily got rid of in the woods.Doubt sometimes seems to be felt whether Sunday is a legal holiday there.It becomes a question of casuistry with a clergyman whether he may shoot at a mark on Sunday, if none of his congregation are present.He intends no harm: he only gratifies a curiosity to see if he can hit the mark.Where shall he draw the line? Doubtless he might throw a stone at a chipmunk, or shout at a loon.Might he fire at a mark with an air-gun that makes no noise? He will not fish or hunt on Sunday (although he is no more likely to catch anything that day than on any other); but may he eat trout that the guide has caught on Sunday, if the guide swears he caught them Saturday night? Is there such a thing as a vacation in religion? How much of our virtue do we owe to inherited habits?
I am not at all sure whether this desire to camp outside of civilization is creditable to human nature, or otherwise.We hear sometimes that the Turk has been merely camping for four centuries in Europe.I suspect that many of us are, after all, really camping temporarily in civilized conditions; and that going into the wilderness is an escape, longed for, into our natural and preferred state.Consider what this " camping out " is, that is confessedly so agreeable to people most delicately reared.I have no desire to exaggerate its delights.
The Adirondack wilderness is essentially unbroken.A few bad roads that penetrate it, a few jolting wagons that traverse them, a few barn-like boarding-houses on the edge of the forest, where the boarders are soothed by patent coffee, and stimulated to unnatural gayety by Japan tea, and experimented on by unique cookery, do little to destroy the savage fascination of the region.In half an hour, at any point, one can put himself into solitude and every desirable discomfort.The party that covets the experience of the camp comes down to primitive conditions of dress and equipment.There are guides and porters to carry the blankets for beds, the raw provisions, and the camp equipage; and the motley party of the temporarily decivilized files into the woods, and begins, perhaps by a road, perhaps on a trail, its exhilarating and weary march.The exhilaration arises partly from the casting aside of restraint, partly from the adventure of exploration; and the weariness, from the interminable toil of bad walking, a heavy pack, and the grim monotony of trees and bushes, that shut out all prospect, except an occasional glimpse of the sky.Mountains are painfully climbed, streams forded, lonesome lakes paddled over, long and muddy "carries" traversed.
Fancy this party the victim of political exile, banished by the law, and a more sorrowful march could not be imagined; but the voluntary hardship becomes pleasure, and it is undeniable that the spirits of the party rise as the difficulties increase.
For this straggling and stumbling band the world is young again: it has come to the beginning of things; it has cut loose from tradition, and is free to make a home anywhere: the movement has all the promise of a revolution.All this virginal freshness invites the primitive instincts of play and disorder.The free range of the forests suggests endless possibilities of exploration and possession.