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 DEDICATED TO MY LOVELY

Mother
Who loved life; who could take it with courage;
who loved and understood primitive living; who by
the hard way learned to love and appreciate a cabin in
the woods; who spent her early life in a cabin in a
lonely woods and loved it, but who did not live long
enough for me to satisfy the realization of her later
dreams—a “Cabin in the Woods.”

God bless her buoyant soul.

Conrad E. Meinecke
Foreword

FIRST of all, Conrad Meinecke’s Cabin in the Woods is a cabin not made with
hands; it is eternal in the heaven of his mind. He has roamed the Rockies,
tramped the Balkans, lived in adobe, bedded down in the desert of restless sands,
but always he comes back to his true love—a cabin in the woods. He has built
thirty-two cabins and fireplaces in the Rockies and in Canada and now has six
cabins scattered about in the Western Hemisphere.

From his artist, linguistic father, who at ninety-three could still do a

handstand, and from his Scotch-Swiss mother, who combined a practical,
pioneering type of thinking with a high degree of spirituality, he inherited
something in his genes that defies imprisoning in words. He is a lean, tough
specimen illuminated by a quenchless inner fire of spirituality. His tireless
energy, his buoyancy, and, strange to say, his quietness of spirit, spring from his
communion with forms, visible and invisible, of the Great Out Doors. At some
time, like his grand old father, he has had a draught from the fabled fountain of
Immortal Youth. He is fortunate in his ancestry—the genes somehow “blended”
just right.
 Curiously enough, with this idealism, this high spirituality, this understanding
love of the inner meaning of life, he combines a Yankee, practical ingenuity. He
is the best cook that ever concocted a meal for me in the wilderness. He “swings
a mean skillet.” If he says, “Build your fireplace so and so,” do it. And when you
have done it, you can stretch your moccasined feet to the fire and have no smoke
in your eyes. Build your cabin the way he tells you and you will have a joy
forever, partly because you built it and partly because it “belongs” to the
particular spot of its own earth, partly because it’s as handy as a pocket in a shirt,
and then, too, because it’s easy on your income.

This man tramps all over the earth and, when he settles down, builds himself
a “nest” on the end of a twig as practical and as intriguing as that of the
Baltimore oriole. Somehow, he has so much—maybe it is because he is always
giving it away.
 From being a successful young man in business affairs, he turned to working
with and for men and boys. Somehow, he has in his spiritual heritage and in his
ripening wisdom, the blessedness of sharing. From his Cabin in the Woods, you
can learn how to fashion your cabin, but more, you may become more fit to live
in a “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Elbert K. Fretwell
Chief Scout Executive (1943–1948)
Boy Scouts of America
Lifting the Latch

THERE is nothing unusual in these pages. There is little I may claim as

original. Some of the material here treated is as old as time. Many friends and
books have contributed to its contents. My thirty years of outdoor experience
and cabin building may, however, save the reader much of the trial-and-error
method when he builds his Cabin in the Woods.

I have attempted, most of all, to help build an attitude of mind toward the
Great Out Doors—an appreciation of simple living. I want to influence both men
and women toward the belief and confidence they are “masters of their destiny”
if they can stay within the realm of their own potentialities; if they can find a
normal “out” for their abilities in this creative field of the outdoors. Indeed, they
can be “master builders” in the best sense. Resourcefulness, initiative, and a love
for things natural—these are the values that may give us a new concept of simple
living in a very complicated and mechanical civilization.
 You, too, can build a Cabin in the Woods. Cabin building is fun and
satisfying, and here you can learn to be a master builder instead of just a helper.
Detailed and minute descriptions of every step in building a cabin can prove
confusing and discouraging to the novice. If you wish to study beyond the
information here given, you will find ample help in your public library. You will
naturally go through that period of experimentation that is the trial-and-error
method. Your trials, however, need not be crowded with too many errors.
I am counting on that great American quality, “horse sense.” So go to it, Mr.
Cabin-Builder. Keep in mind you are going to build a better and bigger cabin
someday. In your first experiment, fortified by all the descriptive material you
can understand and assimilate, wade in and go to work. Do it courageously and
don’t you dare apologize for mistakes made. You won’t make the same mistake
twice. Besides building your first cabin, you will absorb techniques so essential
—a combination of theory and practice.
 In fireplace building, the feel of a trowel in your hand; the skill of “slinging
the mud” to recognize cement, sand and water mixed to the right consistency,
and what it means to “sweeten” or “temper” the mixture—all these will find
their rightful places and give you skills. They do not come from books alone.

Again, the art of pulling a crosscut saw; the swinging of the axe and the
making of the chips to fly; the choice of axe handle that fits your grip and your
height—these skills we develop through the doing.
This book is written for those who would “revert back to the land”—land
near your city home—five, ten, or thirty miles—a place that can be used
weekends and on vacations; indeed, throughout the year. It is written, too, for the
“poor” man, that is, the man not rich in worldly goods, but rich in dreams,
imagination, resourcefulness, and a willingness to make it happen.
Bless those folks who can wrest from the earth its richness, its wealth, its
natural resources, and find its peace. That is our God-given right.
SO you are another lover of the out of doors who desires a cabin or shelter in
the woods! I salute you. I understand you. I know your kind. You carry the spirit
of our ancestors. The spirit of the “Great Out Doors.” The first letters of these
three words spell GOD. There is an irresistible force in the Great Out Doors—
the very soul of America. This is as it should be.
And so from the start, let me chat with you in a very personal way. Let’s take
each other at face value. I picture you as sitting on a log, dressed in colorful
outdoor togs while I am nestled against the notch in a big tree, hugging my knees
—eager to talk it over. I feel somehow that we both want this cabin to represent
our own handicraft. It must be cozy, equipped with comforts—beds, cots, or
bunks according to our own fancy. It must be made bright and warm with a
glowing fireplace. It must have rustic furniture and, at least, a five-foot
bookshelf of our own choice of books. Old-fashioned kerosene lamps again
become a luxury as they throw their soft flickering shadows.
The howling wind, the sleet driving with an impact against our tightly built
cabin will only add to the security and snugness inside. Add another log to the
fire. Readjust the cushions and let the world go by. This is life—with a friend
who understands. Snugness and security in our Cabin in the Woods, be it
sunshine or tempest. This is life.
Because we are used to city houses with a multiplicity of household duties,
our Cabin in the Woods should be built where there is quiet; where housework
can be reduced to a minimum; where our time may be given over to the perusal
of a few chosen books; where reflection may have its full sway; where one may
be carefree in the Great Out Doors. Here, for a brief spell, we may find in its
very fullness, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
So now, “partner on the log” opposite, let us plan our Cabin in the Woods.
Which shall it be—a log cabin or a frame building? There really is not much
difference in the planning.
First, let us not be too concerned about the whole venture. The cost of land
need not be prohibitive. The problem of the distance from town can be solved.
Building costs, how to get logs, transportation, reforestation, trails and trail
markers, gateways and fences, sanitation, lighting, lamps, and many other
questions will be discussed. If the desire is there and the will to see it through,
the building of Your Cabin in the Woods will be fun. Resourcefulness and
initiative will meet the challenge. Most important of all, let us take our time. Let
us plan carefully. Let us get as much enjoyment in the building as in the finished
cabin.
A cabin and campsite in the woods, after all, should never be finished, for
when there is nothing new to develop or nothing to be added, there will be little
fun.
Start Making Notes

IN the original privately printed edition of this book, ample margins and blank
pages afforded room for personal notes, plans, sketches, photos, and clippings;
also for signatures of friends who helped plan or build the Cabin in the Woods.
In this edition, most of the blank pages are omitted, but the margins are
generous, and you will find other open spots at the beginning and end of some
chapters. Use them, from the start, to collect material for your cabin-building
program. They will not only prove invaluable later, but will make this book truly
yours, expressing your own individuality, and honoring the author by permitting
him to collaborate with you in producing your own exclusive volume—your
Cabin in the Woods.
Plan Wisely and You Plan for the Future

ABOVE all things, let us not plan too quickly, build hurriedly, or lay out our
grounds haphazardly. Let us not be concerned if we do not accomplish this in a
week, or a month, or even in a year. I knew a man who built a shack in the
woods. It was little better than a woodshed. The next year he needed another
room so he tacked a lean-to on one side. Then he added another and another. The
roof looked like an ocean of waves. When he finished, his place looked like a
big sprawling shack. No general floor level—no plan; low ceilings, poor
ventilation. What a mess. He did not plan wisely. He is the kind of fellow who
says, “If I were to do it again, I’d do so and so.”
So, Mr. Cabin-Builder, I say plan wisely. Spend a summer on your site in a
tent before you build. Study the air currents that flow down the hills; the
prevailing winds; the landscape and vista you want to develop. Do you prefer
sunrise to sunset? If you do not enjoy sunrise, then set your cabin so the morning
sun will not disturb your sleep. You may enjoy the sunset from your porch or big
window. Where are the noises from highways and how can you plant trees to
blot out ugly views or even some of the noise?
Lastly, blueprint your newly acquired playground. Pace it off at two-hundred-
foot intervals, both ways. Do this if you have an acre or one hundred acres.
Record in your field notes what you find—springs, gullies, kinds of trees,
bushes, rocks, ground erosion, and, if you find the latter, seek advice on what to
plant to overcome this hazard.
You will discover more natural resources and materials, which you can use
later and you will know where to find them when you need them. On your
master blueprint, locate your yearly tree plantings, roadways, trails, springs,
dates of events, et cetera. It will prove a storybook of Your Cabin in the Woods.
Who Knows? This May Be Your Future
Home

MAY I now invite you to deeper thought in your planning? Who knows what
ten years from now will hold for you. You may consider retirement and make
your future home in this spot of your dreams. Then again, you may turn farmer
on a small scale—chickens, perhaps a pig, a cow, and a garden spot. Start a
beehive or two—honey is stored in the flowers about your place. Don’t close
your mind to the thought. You may discover your greatest contentment and
happiness, also skills and aptitudes you did not know you had. That’s what our
pioneer fathers did. It was about their only choice in those days.
This idea may provide a means of escape from the reality and tension of city
life. It may prove a step forward and upward in the fulfillment of your life’s
ambitions.
Life, after all, need not be measured in accomplishment of wealth, great
achievement, nor by standards of public opinion. If you have a partner who
thinks likewise and is not regimented by conventional thinking, then I say, Mr.
Cabin-Builder, lay your plans boldly—whether you go to the wilds of Africa, to
the South Sea Islands, or to Your Cabin in the Woods—so long as you go you
may find life, liberty, and ultimate happiness.
A Cure for Restlessness

YOUR Cabin in the Woods can be a perfect cure for restlessness. If you are
restless today, you may be even more restless ten years from now—unless you
do something about it now. Life brings increasing cares. So going to your dream
spot month after month, year in and year out, you will experience a recharging, a
rehabilitation, a re-creating.
Your Cabin in the Woods should always present enough challenge to keep
you constantly adding to its loveliness. In this way, after each visit, you will
return to your city life rested, stronger, revived.
It is obvious, then, we should take our time—months, years, predicating our
building on long-term planning.
Take full enjoyment in the building. Take time to rest. Most city folks seem
always to rush things through. Why? Lay off until tomorrow. Take an afternoon
nap. Stop the clock for the weekend. Get off to an early start in the cool of
tomorrow morning. You may be crowded in your work in town, but this should
be your rest-cure, your re-creating. Don’t spoil it by city-driving standards. Set
your own pattern. You will be rewarded with increasing peace of mind from year
to year.
Again, I say, here is a perfect cure for restlessness.
AND now for a word about the size of the cabin itself. Have you, in the back of
your head, some notion of a three-, five-, or seven-room building? You have a
big family? You need guest rooms?
The Family Camp—Summer and Winter

I HAVE in my own cabin-site accommodations for fourteen people. But they are
not all in one building. I, too, had many to provide for, but I started simply some
twenty years ago with a plan.
First, we built a large living room, eighteen by twenty-four feet—with a good
foundation, large windows; in fact one window with forty-nine panes in it
measured eight feet wide by six and one-half feet high and afforded a five-mile
view across the valley.
We included a big fireplace. Later we added a spacious porch on two sides.
On a third side, we added a kitchen and a combination wash and dressing room.
No bath. The shower was placed under the porch. The north end of the porch
supplied what we called the “master bedroom”—twin beds. The porch today is
enclosed richly with woodbine.
As our needs grew, we added nine-by-twelve-foot tents—two beds in each, a
locker, chairs, et cetera. Finally, there were four tents added and we were set for
the summers. With this arrangement, there was freedom for everyone—more
independence and plenty of privacy. One member of the party could retire or
take an afternoon nap while the rest of the group would be free to play without
concern about those who wanted quiet.
This, of course, did not take care of our winter needs. But, as one of the tents
had served its time, we replaced it with a lovely one-room bedroom cabin with a
large porch. It was finished with pine board and included a clothes closet,
washstand, and a large fireplace. This bedroom cabin, which is our latest
addition not more than two hundred feet away from our main living room cabin,
is nestled on the hillside and is the envy of everyone who sees it. In summer, we
sleep on the screened-in porch.
Thus, we have built a seven-room house—each room with an outlook on four
sides, plenty of ventilation, privacy—all with real comfort.
 LEGEND OF FAMILY CAMP GROUNDS

A. Main Living Room

B. Kitchen
C. Wash and Storeroom
D. Veranda
E. “Master Bedroom” on Porch
F. Guest Cabin
G. Guest Tent
H. Windmill and Water System
I. Shade Trees
J. Tennis Court or Vegetable Plot
K. Parking Lot
L. Swimming Pool, 9 by 15 feet
M. Lily Pond
N. Driveway
O. Hot Water Heater
P. “Johnnie”
Q. Trails
R. Fruit Trees
S. Sunken Garden—Outdoor Fireplace
T. Shower Under Veranda
THE FAMILY CABIN AND FLOOR PLAN
The Guest Tent for Two

A TENT, fly, tent frame, and platform can be had inexpensively. With care,
your bedroom tent with a fly will last about eight to ten years. The fly will give
you a guarantee against leaking. Also, when anchored to side posts it will keep
your tent fixed and secure against storms. The platform will give you a level
floor and add dryness and cleanliness.
Eight-ounce duck canvas, double filled, is heavy enough for this size tent.
Hang the tent over a wood frame and fasten all around the bottom. Guy ropes are
not needed. The tent wall is two feet and six inches high. Therefore, to have
standing room, a frame wall is built to be four feet and six inches with two-foot
board siding below.
 A nine-by-twelve-foot tent is large enough for twin beds, a dresser,
washstand, and rug.
Tent fly, if ten feet by sixteen feet with air space between fly and tent, will
help keep your tent cool in hot weather and provide a four-foot porch. On warm
sunny days, roll up the canvas walls, let the breezes through, and make the
hillside part of your living quarters.
Our Window Picture Frame

THE big window in our cabin resembles a picture frame in which miles of
landscape across the valley bring nature’s choicest pictures to life. Each hour of
the day brings intriguing new vistas, changing lights and shadows.
The early morning sun lights up the sparkling lily pond below us, which, in
turn, throws playful, mischievous lights about us. As the day wears on, pastoral
scenes replace the picture of the misty morning and through our “picture frame”
we see the hillside dotted with lowing cattle, green fields boxed in with rail
fences, and lined with small trees and bushes—telling the story of the toil and
accomplishment of our neighboring farmers. An occasional tall elm or maple
stands as a sentinel in the march of time. Far beyond “stately ships of fleecy
white clouds sail majestically across the dark blue ocean of the sky,” leaving one
in awe, for such scenery is painted only with bold strokes by the hand of the
Master Painter.
Even the sundial on a cloudy day seems to reflect our mood of response to
nature—and so time passes on. Finally, lengthening shadows, dissolving glory of
eventide—night—twinkling stars and a full moon.
Whenever you look out of a window, whatever the view, try to remember you
are looking at one of God’s great pictures.
There never were paintings comparable to those in the big window of our
Cabin in the Woods.
One-Room Cabin

HERE is the perfect, yet simplest, two-person log cabin you can wish for, low
in cost and easy to build. It can be constructed as small as nine by twelve feet
(inside measurement), or twelve by fourteen, fourteen by eighteen, or even
larger. The larger cabin needs added structural material.
 Let’s discuss the nine-by-twelve-foot two-person log cabin—just one room
with two commodious couches, each with a view of the fireplace. A kitchenette,
quite complete. Next to the fireplace, two comfortable chairs, and a table. It’s the
very essence of snugness. It can be ventilated easily at upper gables without
creating a draft. A floor of flagstones.
If you have natural material on your cabin site such as logs and stones, you
will only have to purchase such material as cement, boards to cover your roof,
shingles, windows, nails, a bit of lumber for the inside.
Two-Room Cabin (with Storm Porch and
Toilet Room)

THIS cabin has the added storm porch and toilet room. The cabin proper is the
same. The added storm porch offers a bit more comfort and refinement without
adding much to the cost. The toilet—a slop bucket with seat and cover and pipe
vent running to the outside make this type free from odors. The bucket is
emptied from time to time in the backyard toilet. It serves its best purpose for
winter use, when one does not gather much enthusiasm, especially on a stormy
night, to visit the backyard “Johnnie.” An oil heater will keep this room
comfortable. Then there is the washstand. Improvise your own supply water
tank; also drain the stationary with pipe to the outside. Note, also, the neatly
piled wood within the storm porch. Nothing like having dry wood to start your
fire, especially if you arrive on a stormy night. A nine-by-twelve-foot cabin can
be comfortably heated by the fireplace.
 You can have an inexpensive cabin if you supply your own labor—that is, do
it yourself, and if much of the natural material is on the land for the taking. A
nine-by-twelve log cabin will require fourteen logs (seven inches in average
thickness) twenty-one feet long; also sixteen poles (four and a half inches in
average thickness) eight feet long for the roof rafters.
Four-Room Cabin (with Kitchen and
Storeroom)

NOW we come to the spreading idea. Obviously, it would not be satisfactory, if

you have more than two to provide for, to build on the front and back the added
rooms here suggested on a nine-by-twelve cabin. You may now want to build
your prize cabin with living room, say fourteen by eighteen or larger. However,
the nine by twelve can still enjoy a lean-to on the back by cutting a door as
indicated in this floor plan. The kitchen would be small—about six by six feet,
but, if carefully planned, with a small stove, shelves, etc., it will enrich even a
small cabin.
You will never have greater enjoyment out of any cabin in the woods than the
nine-by-twelve log cabin for two. It’s snug. It suggests teamwork. It invites
consideration. It is rudely complete. It provides the perfect setting for ideal
companionship.
The Amateur Architect

WHEN planning a home of several rooms in which the cellar, first floor,
second floor, attic, also bath, are involved, one does not save money by being his
own architect. But to plan your own Cabin in the Woods, of one or two or three
rooms, by all means be your own amateur architect. Even though you have had
no experience, here are some very simple rules and methods to help you. Above
all, you will get a real thrill in doing your own planning.
Cabin planning is different from planning a city home. First, there is little
need for a cellar, so start with a good foundation. So many would-be cabin
builders think they can save money by building a cabin on concrete piers—one
at each corner of the cabin. This is getting off to a very bad start. Piers settle
until, finally, the cabin floor is no longer level—cracks appear in the walls and
the cabin is no longer snug and tight. A good eight-inch concrete wall all around
will prove cheapest in the end. It must go below the frost line, i.e., three and a
half feet below ground level in New York State. A twelve-inch footing for the
eight-inch wall is desirable.
Let’s take, for example, a cabin with a combination living room and dining
room, porch, kitchen, and bath. Size overall, 18 feet by 32 feet. After the
concrete is poured, bury one-half- or five-eighths-inch bolts in the soft cement.
The bolts should be long enough to sink eight inches into the cement and
protrude upward to bolt down the first log. (In frame building, enough to bolt
through two two-by-four sills.)

But now let’s get back to the floor plan. In these pages, you will find many
suggestions of cabins, bay windows, rustic doors and windows, built-in features
for books, cupboards, nooks, window seats, etc. I have avoided detailed floor
plans, for after all, it should be your cabin, not mine. Your conception of room
sizes will naturally differ from mine. I do, however, present some methods.
Talking toward some simple principles will prove more helpful than trying to tell
my reader how to proceed at every step.
 Let us then look at the overall picture, from size of cabin to cupboards,
furniture—yes, rugs—to fit the plan. How much furniture will be included: beds,
tables, cupboards, etc.? How much space will the fireplace take? Doors should
be two feet, eight inches wide, by at least six feet, six inches high. Windows to
fit in between, and sized to suit one’s fancy. Most log cabins are spoiled with
small windows. A modern log cabin must have large windows to provide plenty
of light. In one of my cabins, which measures fourteen feet by sixteen feet, I
have an end window measuring six feet by eight feet, which not only gives a
burst of light within, but also provides a beautiful view over the countryside.
 The accompanying map of quadrille paper will help lay out the first floor
plan in the minutest detail. Consider each square equal to one foot. It is obvious,
then, if the cabin is to be thirty-two feet long and eighteen feet wide, we need to
count the exact number of squares to get a fair picture of the size of the cabin.
Just where shall we place the bed and how much space will it take? At this point,
take a yardstick and measure the bed. Three feet wide by six feet, six inches
long? Again we count off the same number of squares and will be amazed to find
how much space it really takes in relation to the room itself. If two comfortable
lounging chairs are to be included, then measure these, too, and draw them in the
floor plan. A fireplace requires about seven feet by three feet of floor space, if
you want an open hearth three feet wide. Cupboards, table, and other furniture
must also be included.
At this point, we may find we need a larger cabin to house all the comforts
desired. Remember, the man who says after his cabin is finished, “If I were to
build again, I’d do so and so…” So, Mr. Amateur Architect, you will do well to
spend winter evenings in laying out your floor plan on paper. After the floor
plan, use the quadrille paper again to plan the sidewalls, again one square to the
foot. Raise or lower the roof to give your cabin graceful lines. Draw in the doors
and windows to scale. A log cabin in which the gable is included as part of the
main living room leaves one free to start with lower sidewalls, i.e., a seven-foot
sidewall is ample with the roof slanting upward to a thirteen-, fourteen-, or
fifteen-foot peak, according to one’s fancy. When laying out the floor plan, make
all measurements starting from the inside of the cabin. Then add the thickness of
the walls on the outside. Another common error made in cabin construction is to
be skimpy about the overhanging roof. The cabin here described can well afford
to have an overhang of eighteen inches to two feet, especially on the gable ends.
MODEL BUILDING
After your cabin plans are complete, build a miniature cabin. If you are
unfamiliar with reading blueprints, the miniature cabin will prove most helpful.
More than this, it will serve as a perfect guide, and save errors and expense.
Every person who has ever built a house of any kind says without fail, “If I
were to build again…” No great project was ever built before a model was built,
to visualize to the unskilled mind just what it would look like. So with us, the
building field is new and we need to proceed carefully. More than this, with a
model we can get a better perspective by a little adjustment here, raising or
lowering the roof, by extending the eaves—to give it graceful lines. You don’t
want your cabin to look like a garage when it is finished.
You will become so thoroughly familiar with every piece of log or lumber—
its dimension and fitting—used in your cabin you will approach the real building
with confidence and sound enjoyment.
Build your miniature cabin one inch to the foot. In the winter in your
workshop, you will find this an ideal hobby. Whittle the logs of soft white pine
about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Use thin packing boxes for lumber
and cut to size. Your hardware store will supply you with one-quarter-inch and
one-half-inch brads for nails. Leave the roof removable, so you can look inside
and plan for the rooms. Build tiny book-racks, lockers, beds, et cetera, your table
and rustic chairs, and build them to scale. Have the family check each item with
you. Rearrange doors and windows to your liking. Check space and, if
unsatisfactory, make changes. Then you won’t be disappointed or wish you had
done it differently. When erecting your cabin, take the miniature along. It will
serve as a blueprint, or better.
Of course, the easier way is to hire an architect and contractor, but more than
half of the fun is building Your Cabin in the Woods, from the planning to the
building, with your own hands. It will be really yours. It’s what you put into it of
yourself that will really make it a part of you.
WHEN you really get serious about building a Cabin in the Woods, you will
very quickly envision rather definite ideas of your own. By all means, hold on to
them. The ideas are usually larger and surrounded with more grandeur, more
spacious quarters, added acres often beyond your finances to carry them through.
Then comes the paring down process to fit the pocketbook. At this point, you
may welcome suggestions, but you do not want to be told, “This is the only
way,” or “This is the only kind of a cabin.” After all, this is your project. It will
mean little when finished unless it has your personality, your own innovations,
your own architecture built into the sum total. Perhaps these offerings may
stimulate your thinking and planning. They may save you some of the errors
commonly made. Lengthy descriptions have been avoided purposely. There is no
one way. Your own aptitude, your own peculiar kind of initiative, and the ability
to use your hands, together with native intelligence (horse sense) precludes
anyone from trespassing with the final answer. So if I can be your helper, let’s go
to work.
Your “treasure chest” is really your tool chest full of sharp tools. You can
save yourself endless trouble and add to your enjoyment by building a toolbox
for your tools. It is your “treasure chest” for these, plus your own wildest ideas
and your own will to express yourself, that will lift you into the realm of the
genius—the creator making dreams come true.
 It will speed up your work if the chest is arranged with a place for each tool.
They will keep sharp longer. Most of all, you will not have to buy new ones to
replace those lost. The chest, too, will serve as a table for those campfire meals
while your cabin is in the making. An added cushion will make it a part of your
cabin furniture.
Cabin Tools—Keep ’em Sharp

THERE is nothing, in my experience, more trying, more time wasting, and

disheartening than to attempt to carve a turkey, repair a door, or build a cabin
with dull or inadequate tools.
A tool chest and a workshop will always be a part of your cabin craft—so
prepare for it. Stock the essential implements you will need if you are to get real
satisfaction from your efforts. Good tools need protection—a roof—and a lock.
If your building occurs on weekends and scattered days, a small shed is a good
investment. The shed may later serve as a chicken coop, a woodshed, or for
storage. A tent is probably sufficient coverage if you can stay on the job until it
is complete.
Either build or buy a workbench with a vise attached. You must have the vise
to grip firmly the boards upon which you want to work. Your tool chest should
contain hammers, a level, screwdrivers, square, chalk, a soft pencil or two, tough
string for plumb lines and an adequate plane, a sturdy auger that will bore holes
at least one and a half inches in diameter. Add a carborundum stone for fine edge
sharpening. Put in a supply of nails of needed sizes, weights, and lengths for
each particular bit of construction. Splitting pieces of wood because of improper
nails or screws is disappointing—and a waste of time.
 Besides these smaller essentials, you will need saws, a reliable jackknife, a
draw-shave for shaping rustic furniture and trimming logs, and an axe—more
about this king of tools elsewhere. For ground work, a post-hole digger is a great
time saver. A pickaxe, a crowbar, shovels, rake and hoe, and grub axe.
Now something to keep the tools sharp. An old-fashioned grindstone goes
well with your cabin craft. On a rainy day, I get the grindstone working and
sharpen my axes. This done, I get my collection of jackknives, bowie knives,
and—just to keep in right with the kitchen folk—the butcher knives and kitchen
knives. There is nothing like a grindstone for really sharpening steel. The water
dripping from the can above prevents overheating the metal. I’m sure you will
now defend the emery or carborundum wheel. I have one connected with power.
It is good for rough work, but, too often, I have burned a good piece of steel by
overheating. Once burned, the life is gone from the steel. To grind an axe or
knife properly takes practice—a steady hand and patience. Edge tools should be
held against the stone at an angle so the sharpest part of the edge barely touches
the stone. As you wear the rough high spots down toward the fine edge, your
blade will even up.

The flat fine carborundum stone is most valuable for the final finishing. To
give your tool its final keen edge, use an eight-inch flat carborundum stone.
THE AXE
Now, if you are a city person who goes to the woods for weekends, who has
most of his work done for him, you won’t need an axe. For the real cabin
builder, the axe is his best friend. With an axe, you can fashion a rough cabin or
hunting shelter; with an axe, you can build traps and snares to catch wild animals
for food; with an axe you can blaze your way through dense woods—notching a
return trail; with an axe, you can cut firewood for cooking and for warmth.
Without an axe, I should feel helpless in the woods. It is the first “must” on my
list of tools.
At this point, if you are a novice in axemanship, you might expect further
instruction on how to handle an axe. Any expert would agree with me, such
written directions would be bad teaching. Here is a craft that cannot be gained
from books. The skill must be handed down by one who knows—it must be
learned in the doing.
Many books have been written on how to play golf. They may serve for
winter sport beside a fireplace. But, to benefit from real instruction, the amateur
still goes to the golf course—asks the guidance of a golf “pro.” The “pro” knows
the why and how of grips, stance, and position and teaches right out on the
course. So also in learning the use of an axe. Find the farmer who cuts his own
wood from his woodlot or the lumberjack or craftsman who earns his salt with
an axe. Either one will say, “Well, come along to the woodpile—we’ll cut
firewood while we are learning.” This will result in added skill for you—and
more wood for the woodpile—and you won’t have to pay five dollars an hour for
this most practical instruction.
As your skill improves, you will not be satisfied with one axe. I have
seventeen in actual use. A bit of a hobby? Yes—but each axe has a special
purpose. They differ in shape, weight, and length. They range from the dainty
light axe for fine work to the broad axe used in pioneer days for squaring logs to
build beams and block houses. The broad axe is little used today, but I wouldn’t
part with mine.
Some axes are for cutting, others for splitting. Cutting-axes must be sharp to
be effective. Keep them sharp—razor sharp—and you will respect them. I once
saw a lumberjack in northern Wisconsin shave his partner with a two-bitted axe
—not for the sake of the shave but to demonstrate what he meant by a razor-
sharp edge on his axe.
An old tree stump provides a center for sport and healthy exercise for my
guests when we play throw the hatchet. I have four old axes for this purpose.
The object of the game is to throw the hatchet twenty or thirty feet so it will stick
into the old stump. It’s not at all difficult. Throw the axe overhead with the blade
pointing forward. The axe must make a complete revolution before it hits the
stump. So if you miss, stand a little farther back. Vary your position until you
connect. Each axe and each contestant’s force vary.
No camp is complete without one or more axes.
KNIVES
Next to the axe in usefulness is the woodsman’s knife. In this day and age,
we are inclined to think of the pocketknife as a dainty pearl-handled affair for
sharpening pencils and cutting string on packages. No true woodsman would
tolerate such a tool.
Knife collecting, I must confess, is quite as much a hobby of mine as my
hoarding of axes. A few of them are rare antiques. The case of one is made from
a deer’s foot—hair and all. Another, it is claimed, saved the life of my
grandfather when faced with a bear. Caught without a gun, grandfather fought it
out with his knife. Scared and bruised, he was saved by the knife.
A woodsman and cabin builder needs both a jackknife in his pocket and a
stout bowie knife in a sheath attached to his belt. Hunters, too, need this sharp
bowie knife, for a deer, after being shot, should at once be bled and dressed.
In my collection are knives from three to eighteen inches in length. I have a
set of fine carving tools, each of them razor sharp. It is fun to show your skill
with a roast beef or a well-browned fowl. If your knife is sharp, the carving is
quite simple—just steady the roast with a large fork and draw your knife back
and forth. With a little practice, you can cut roast beef in even, thick or paper-
thin, slices. For fowl, I prefer a short thin blade. It is easier to find and separate
the joints. A longer thin blade should be at hand for carving the slices of white
breast meat.
 In our family—as in most families—are swords from past wars. We had
several: commanders’ swords three feet long, bayonets, a fencing saber, a dirk,
and short dagger for close-in engagements. These tools were designed for killing
men. They are refashioned now into implements for peacetime pursuits—for
carving and for pruning.
The commander’s sword was a piece of excellent steel. Using my emery
wheel and grindstone, I cut it in two, regrinding the blades into fine carving
knives that are among my prized cutting tools.
Good steel is sometimes hard to get. If you are one of those who must have a
really good knife of the best tempered steel—and are willing to do the necessary
grinding—reconvert an old steel file. Steel files must be made of the best
tempered steel. They can be ground to the shape and size desired. A twelve-inch
file can be ground into a perfect carving knife.
The story is told of two ancient kings who demonstrated to each other their
skill with the sword. The first king, a giant in size, drew forth his heavy powerful
weapon. With one mighty blow, he severed an iron bar one inch thick. The
second king drew forth his slender, delicate, razor-sharp blade. He drew it across
a feather pillow—splitting the case with such hair-precision no bit of down was
spilled. The moral of this bedtime story is not important here. For me, I prefer
the delicate skill that comes from sharp well-balanced tools, handled by those
who appreciate how to use them.
Nails

CHOOSING the right kind and size of nails to be driven into wood is as
important as knowing what ingredients go into a cake, or which golf club to use
for making a particular shot. The purpose of the nail is to hold two pieces of
wood together. If the pieces of wood are thick, i.e., nailing two pieces of two-by-
four together, then longer and stouter nails are required. If to nail two one-inch
boards together, then a smaller nail will do.
There are cut nails, common wire nails, horseshoe nails, finishing nails,
penny nails, and others. For our purpose in the use of nails that will deal mostly
with joinery and carpentry, there are three kinds of nails to be considered. They
are called penny nails, box nails, and finishing nails.
Penny nails run from two-penny to sixty-penny nails. A two-penny is one
inch in length, a three-penny is one and one-quarter inches long, and so on up to
a sixty-penny, which is about seven inches in length.
The penny nail is a heavy nail with a sturdy shank that can be driven hard
with a heavy hammer without bending. Never choose a nail longer than the
thickness of the wood you want to nail together. If you choose a nail longer, so it
sticks out on the other side, you are wasting that piece of the nail; but, more than
this, you add nothing to the holding strength of the nail. It should be buried
thoroughly into the two pieces of wood you are binding together. To turn over
the piece of protruding nail indeed locks the nail into the wood, but, in so doing,
there is danger of partly driving it back and your boards are not tight fitting.
Box nails run about the same size as penny nails, but are thinner and for finer
work.
Lastly, finishing nails are for cabinetwork. These have small heads, which,
when driven into the wood, can be sunk deeper with a nail set so no part of the
nail is above the surface of the wood.
With the last stroke of the hammer, which finally plants the nail in your
board, care must be taken to hit gently so as not to injure the grain of the wood,
if you want to produce fine workmanship.
Building Rules You May Not Violate

Anyone with a general working knowledge of tools can build his own cabin,
if he follows a few simple but fundamental rules:

1. Set foundation or piers below the frost line. If in deep woods, freezing is not
as severe. Bank your cabin in the fall with leaves.
2. Set the foundation both level and truly square. This will save endless trouble
as building develops. Triangles of three, four, and five feet will give you a
large square; also six, eight, and ten feet. Here is how you do it. Drive a stake
(A) firmly into the ground at the corner of your planned cabin. Mark a cross
(X) on the top. From the center of this cross measure off exactly three feet
along the side of your cabin and then drive the second stake (B). At right
angles to this line and starting again from the first stake (A), measure off four
feet and drive a stake (C). This done, measure from (B) to (C). It must
measure exactly five feet and you then have a right angle triangle with (A) at
the base. If it does not measure exactly five feet, move stake (C) until it does.
Your whole structure will reveal good lines by the care you exercise in the use
of the plane, plumb line, or level and the square.
3. Square, level, and plumb tell the truth. Never guess.
4. Sharp tools will speed up the work.
5. Provide for thorough drainage about the cabin.
6. Build from a plan, not memory. Don’t rush it through in a weekend. Take a
month, six months, or a year. Your greatest pleasure will be in the building
and your greatest enjoyment will be in the satisfaction of a comfortable, snug,
and well-built cabin.
7. If in doubt, seek expert advice.
Land Cost

LAND can be secured at surprisingly low cost or at low rental. Poor farm land,
i.e., land cut deep with ravines, is of little value to the farmer and ideal for our
purpose, especially if there are trees, bushes, and shrubs.
Over the past thirty years, I have traveled the length and breadth of this
country. Whether New York State, Florida, the Rockies, or the prairie lands of
the southwest, there is an unlimited quantity of land available. More than this, it
can be purchased inexpensively.
The trouble with most of us is we want so many feet frontage on a lake or
stream or ocean. Or we want the highest hill for a view. For these, of course, we
must pay. Let us think simply. A bit of land, say five acres, off the main highway,
a lovely view to the south, a real vista after removing one or two trees and
bushes. The land is rough and rocky, but this is no obstacle. It’s a challenge, for
here we shall build a rock garden, trails, an out-of-door rustic stove for picnic
suppers.
You will find plenty of land for your purpose “off the beaten path,” and it will
be within your means. If you do not wish to own the land, you can work out a
rental arrangement, say, for five, ten, or fifteen years.
If you live in a big city, the distance to travel will be greater. Do not cast the
idea of a Cabin in the Woods aside just because you may not own an automobile.
It still can be done even if you have to take the bus or trolley or train. It will help
you grow strong and more resourceful. Yes—it will increase your earning power.
Some day you may have that auto, also a trailer.
Cabin Cost

THAT all depends on how lavish you wish to be and on your own resources—
how many rooms, how much land. Remember, the purpose of this book is to
help the novice who wants to play a big part in building his own cabin—who
wants to be resourceful.
If you hire your labor instead of doing most of it yourself, or buy rustic
furniture instead of creating it out of woods material, or are in a hurry to
complete Your Cabin in the Woods, then, of course, costs will mount. A good
slogan to keep in mind is “Utilize all natural resources. Do it yourself. Take
time.” Even hinges, door locks, coat hangers, shelves, shingles, stone steps, and
slab floors need nothing more than a few tools, the natural resources at your
disposal, and the will to make it your own handicraft.
If this is your first cabin-building experience, avoid larger cabins than here
suggested, for both carpentering and structural problems will present themselves
that are not included in these plates. A big cabin needs additional reinforcing,
heavier timber, supports, et cetera. You will become discouraged. Our ancestors,
the old pioneers, built small cabins and lived in them. You will lose the lore and
spirit of a Cabin in the Woods with a big house. Again, a good carpenter is not
necessarily a good log cabin builder. Different technique is involved, and you
gain this technique through experience. You will later want to build another and
will benefit by your first experience.
Logs for Your Cabin

CHOOSE softwoods rather than hardwoods for your first experience—

hemlock, bass, pine, even poplar works up easily into logs. By all means, avoid
working with oak logs unless you are thoroughly familiar with this wood. It is
“temperamental.” I have seen it, after it was thoroughly dried, seasoned, squared,
and fitted into place, change form a year after the cabin was built. It will twist
slightly like a barber pole, even to lifting your cabin at one corner and leaving
big cracks to patch from year to year. But that’s another story.
Speaking of green softwood logs—it will pay you to remove the bark. Use a
draw-shave. Insects get under the bark and may cause you much annoyance.
There are methods of preserving the bark, but I still favor stripping the logs. It
will give you a clean cabin. Old cedar telephone poles redressed are
recommended, if you can get them. They are dry and ready for use. Dressing old
telephone poles is fun, and will give most satisfying results. The grain in cedar
logs is straight. With a sharp axe, dig in about one inch all around. The wood
will come off in long strips—two, three, and four feet long. After the rough axe
work, finish and smooth off with a draw-shave. Your logs will look like new
timber and the sweet smell of cedar will reward you for your added effort.
Fourteen logs with an average thickness of eight or nine inches and twenty-
six feet long will build a cabin twelve by fourteen feet up to fourteen by sixteen
feet, depending upon the number of doors and windows.
Pile the logs far enough apart and crisscross to give them all the air possible
for drying. If the logs are green, it is best to allow them to dry several months
before using. When hauling your logs to your cabin site, place them equally on
either side of the planned building. This will save unnecessary loads after the
logs are sawed up. Remove knots and burls to have logs as nearly straight and
smooth as possible.
Tie Your Cabin Together

There are three important places to bind your cabin:

1. After placing the sill logs, which rest on the foundation and should, of course,
run parallel to each other, place your floor joists running at right angles to the
sills. The log sills should be dug out to accommodate the two-inch-by-six-inch
floor joists and then nailed in securely. This binds your floor both ways after
you lay a double floor.
2. The next place to tie in is at the plates, which rest on top of your logs and
corner studs and form the base for your roof construction to fasten to. Plates
should be two inches by six inches, laid double and overlapped at every corner
to bind and leave no weak spots. Logs may be used as plates and they, too,
should overlap at corners and then be bolted together as well as spiked to
corner studs.
3. The third important tie-in is in the roof rafters, for a hip roof will spread,
especially under heavy snows, and so roof rafters should be bound together to
hold your roof rigid. In northern zones where there is a great deal of snow,
more rafters should be added. The floor joists should be of two-inch-by-six-
inch lumber supported in the middle, and the roof rafters for the size of cabin
here suggested can be of two inches by six inches, but preferably of saplings
dressed and trimmed—all about four or five inches in diameter.
Notching Your Logs

NOTCHING logs is a craft one does not learn merely by reading books.
Notching logs so they fit together snugly is an art all in itself. It belongs to the
pioneer skills, to the woodsman, to the one intimately acquainted with an axe—
more than this, with the broad axe, the pewee, the cant hook.
 If you want a cabin true to the pioneer background, it will be of the notched-
log construction and you will need to find a backwoodsman who has mastered
the art of delicately swinging an axe. He will teach you more in a day than you
can learn from a dozen books. As has been said often, “Theory without practice
is empty and practice without theory is deadly.” Combine the two and you will
acquire a technique that is workable. Only then will you be on your own.
MAINE-WOODS METHOD OF BINDING LOGS AT CORNERS
The old-fashioned method of notching logs is more costly as it requires at
least four additional feet on each log and, unless expertly done, will be a
disappointment to you.
The Maine-Woods Method saves time, labor, and material, and gives you
very satisfactory results. After the foundation logs or sills have been placed and
squared, toenail a double or “V” studding at each corner—that is, a two-inch-by-
six-inch stud spiked at right angles to a two-inch-by-eight-inch, so the two are
“V” shaped. (Use six-penny spikes.) The outside will measure eight inches; the
inside, six inches. Place this on the sill at the corner so the mouth of the “V”
faces outside. (At bay window intersections, the mouth of the “V” faces inside.)
A “V” studding now placed at every corner of the cabin and carefully toenailed,
should be topped with a double plate or two two-inch-by-eight-inch running all
around, or a log overlapping. Be sure the two-inch-by eight-inch plates bind or
overlap at all points.
Cut logs with care to fit exactly between your “V” studding or doorjamb and
windows, then spike with six-penny spikes through the stud wall and into the
end of the log. Use at least three spikes for each end of the log. Pack spaces
between the end of the log and studding with oakum. Keep logs spaced at least
one inch apart to provide for generous chinking.
Cabin Detail

HERE is a complete picture story of the Maine-woods cabin construction from

the foundation to roof rafters.
Concrete foundation down below the frost line; base logs anchored by bolts
to the foundation.
Next, we have “V” studs at all corners with logs spiked at the ends; log plates
properly notched, bolted, and anchored; finally, roof log rafters to complete the
log frame.
 The insert presents in detail the “V” stud construction.
Study these plates until you are thoroughly familiar with every detail. Build
your miniature from these plates. This type of log cabin construction is really
very economical as against overlapping logs. It will give you a sturdy building
“tight as a drum.”
Windows, Doors, and Gables

ACCORDING to the thickness of your logs, build your own window frames
out of two-inch-by-six-inch or two-inch-by-eight-inch lumber and place
windows in double, so they overlap and slide past each other. Place strips on the
outside and inside of the window, so they may slide back and forth. This
removes hinges and the inconvenience of having windows inside a room when
they are open. As you bring your logs up to the desired height, place your whole
window frame on the log and build around it. Be sure your frame is exactly
squared. Do this by keeping it braced both ways on the frame. You can purchase
from your wood dealer almost any size windows you wish. Your cabin is likely
to be dark unless you provide one window large enough to give ample light.
There is no need for feeling cooped up. It costs a little more, but it is worth it.
 Be sure to put a small opening in the gables of Your Cabin in the Woods—
both ends. These are for ventilators. You can control these by a shutter-string.
Screen them on the outside. Leave them slightly open when you leave your cabin
and you will find it sweet and fresh smelling when you return. On the coldest
night, you can sleep comfortably with plenty of fresh air by opening these two
vents, and by the dead air that will be drawn out by your fireplace.
Build your doorframes out of two-inch-by-six-inch or two-inch-by-eight-inch
lumber and place strips inside the doorjamb against which to fit the door. The
doorjamb serves also as a stud. Nail through it to hold your log.
Drainage and Grading

CERTAINLY you should not choose a marshy spot for your cabin. It is self-
evident there would be dampness, wet floors, rheumatism, the doctor.
Choose first a knoll or high ground that pitches down from your cabin site.
Rain, but especially melting snow, will flow away from your cabin. This is a rule
you may not change if you want a dry cabin.
Of course, you want your cabin to nestle into its surroundings. Give it,
however, at least eighteen inches elevation above the natural ground and have it
drain down and away from your building on all sides. The ground dug out from
the foundation, or should you decide to dig a cellar, should be thrown outside the
foundation. You won’t have to dig the foundation so deep if you raise the level
without.
To do a really fine job, especially if you use a flagstone floor within, is to lay
a three-inch tile at the bottom of the foundation on the outside. Be sure it pitches
downward from one side of the building all around to the point where it drains
down the hillside.
Upper and Lower Bunks Converted into
Couches

BY building in upper and lower bunks, the upper bunk can be hinged. Drop the
front of the upper bunk to form the backrest of the couch with the lower bunk.
Painting and Preservatives

AS you read more into this subject, you will find many recommendations. The
old pioneer had no paint or stain and his building stood the test of time. Window
frames, windowsills, doorjambs, and doors can be painted or, better, stained.
Beautiful effects can be had by working out a weather-stain color. After your
logs have thoroughly dried, it will be a far better time to stain with preservatives.
Chinking

CHINKING between logs will make a cabin warm, clean, and dry. It should be
carefully done. It pays in the end. Logs must be dried thoroughly. Plaster with
sand, four parts; lime, one-half to one part; white cement, one part. If spaces of
one inch or more occur between logs, fill in with small branches nailed to the top
and bottom logs, inside and out. Don’t be too sparing with the plaster. Wide
plaster spaces will brighten the room, too. Plaster well if you want a warm cabin.
The plaster on the outside should not touch or meet the plaster on the inside, for
the dead air space makes the best nonconductor. To make plaster hold between
the logs, drive nails as far in as possible into logs both up and down near the
middle of the crack—many of them—say every three or four inches—old nails,
crooked nails. Another good method is to nail in woven wire or hardware cloth,
one-quarter-inch mesh. Cut the hardware cloth in strips about three inches wide;
fold lengthwise in a slight “V” shape and drive in between the logs and nail to
the upper or lower log. This is not absolutely necessary, but gives added
strength. Dead air space makes the perfect nonconductor.
 Better to chink with moss if logs are not thoroughly dry or leave unchinked
until dry. Lime, one part; sand, three parts; wood ashes, twenty-five parts; salt,
two parts, all thoroughly mixed with dry moss will serve well for a hunter’s
lodge. The ashes tend to keep vermin away.
When chinking is complete, if any light spots show through a door or
window jamb, caulk it with tarred hemp, oakum, or moss. The tar smell soon
disappears. Be especially careful to chink between the ground or sill log above
before laying a floor.
Fireplace Magic

IT is a simple thing to talk about a glowing fireplace. To achieve one takes skill,
plus a few tricks up your sleeve. The ash bed is important. The kind of wood and
the placing of the logs determine your success. The only thermostat is the fire
builder himself. If he learns the secret of its magic, he can make of his fire
making a fine art, shading it, highlighting it, coloring it with craftsmanship that
need not depend on chemicals from a package or bottle.
Let’s learn the art from scratch. Those unacquainted with fireplace craft will
clean out and scour the fire bed, leaving it empty, clean, naked. I have
discovered the main reason. They desire a clean and tidy setting. So do I. Ashes
can add rather than detract from the beauty and efficiency of your fire. Today we
desecrate a fire by throwing into it cigar and cigarette butts, trash, and paper.
These seldom burn in entirety, and, if they do, leave a black char that is most
unsightly. It might seem unnecessary to say food waste should never enter into
this symbol of family life. A fireplace that is an incinerator would have to be
cleaned. A fireplace that centers the warmth and light and friendliness of a group
of fireplace lovers will never be so desecrated.
A fireplace without a deep cushion of ashes is like a bed without a mattress.
Ashes form the soft warm bed for the next fire. Without it, the logs won’t burn
correctly. The mat of ashes should be six inches deep at the back wall of your
fireplace. They will be white and clean if you become a master of your art and
burn only hardwood.
So, first, as you build your fire, rake the ashes back so they slant upward
from the hearth’s front to the six-inch depth at the back of the fire wall. You need
no grate or andirons. A bed of ashes is the real need. In the center of your
fireplace, build a small tepee of kindling, dry tinder bits, preferably full of pitch.
At right angles, one on either side, lay two three- or four-inch sticks of wood
running from front to back. Now lay a thick backlog, say ten inches, way in the
back on the sticks; next, forward, a smaller log in thickness, but not touching.
Then, a still smaller log and so on to the hearth’s edge. Air currents, which create
correct draft, travel along the outside or ends of these logs, flowing up and in
between them. A diagonal log placed on top of this pile will give added pull to
the flame. Your fire is ready for lighting. As the coals form and the under-logs
burn through and allow the fire to settle into the coal and ash bed, they will not
need to be replaced, as the flames themselves give added impetus. If you want
your fireplace full of lively flame—I don’t mean just a flickering glow, but a
burst of light and warmth—continue to add logs diagonally or thrust into the
crevices, upright smaller pieces—“ticklers” I call them. Abe Lincoln did his
studying by such a light.
 Your choice of woods depends upon the purpose and the mood for which the
fire is designed. Some woods make a crackling fire. Others throw out showers of
sparks. Still others burn slowly and leave a deep bed of coals. Hemlock, pine,
and other softwoods are good for kindling, but burn out quickly and leave a dark
ash. Beech, maple, elm, ash, and hickory are tops. Oak and pitch pine will burn
well together. They leave a bed of glowing coals and, when spent, a white ash.
Any of these hardwoods can be used for broiling steaks. A deep bed of coals is
essential to any fireplace cooking.
Try birch wood for a fire of welcome. It sputters, crackles, seems to say to
your five o’clock tea guest, “Come in. Warm up a bit. Draw up a chair.” Birch
doesn’t last long, but it is sprightly while it burns. I keep a small stock of this
rollicking, laughing wood for such special occasions.
Now let me tell you about the choicest of all fire logs, if you want a quiet,
colorful fire for the late evening—for the deeper, more silent moods. It neither
spits nor sparkles. It throws blue, red, green, yellow, and purple flames and all
the shades and colors in between. It inspires close companionship. This special,
magic wood is just your old apple tree from the orchard. It is gnarled, covered
with buds, often sprouting twigs. It’s a tough old tree. Even when its inside is
hollow, it keeps right on growing—giving shade and apples. The very
hollowness adds to your fire magic. Set it up, chimney fashion, and watch the
glow and constant change of color. Watch the “fire fairies” climb out of its heart
and soar upward with the smoke. I sometimes fancy the old tree is remembering
and sharing with us the earlier glory of its pink and cream blossoms, the human
romances that bloomed in its deep green shade, the fulfillment of its green and
scarlet fruit. As a tree, the apple is a romantic, attracting young and old. As
firewood, it is an artist of color that warms the hands, the heart—the soul.
The overnight backlog is indeed a part of your fireplace craft. You can keep
your log burning all night. If properly buried it will greet you in the morning as a
solid log of glowing coals. Just before going to bed take your shovel and rake
forward from the back wall of your fireplace all coals and ashes. Dig down deep
through the six inches of ashes a place to hold a ten-inch log. After dropping the
log into this hollow, cover all of it with the rest of your coals and ashes. Bury it
until you can see no part of the log for coals and ashes. Now place your screen in
front of the hearth for protection from sparks. Behold, tomorrow morning you
will find your log of red-hot coals. Our pioneer fathers did this always;
especially in the days when there were no matches and fires were built by
rubbing sticks, or with flint on steel. On the mantle shelf stood a jar of long
slender sticks about pencil thickness and of pitchy wood. These served as
matches for grandfather’s pipe, or for lighting candles.

In my boyhood days I used to watch, fascinated, the sparks that would ignite
on the black charred fireplace wall when the coals were low. These sparks would
not flame up, just creep through the gathered creosote—building fantastic shapes
of floating clouds, birds, animals, and, finally, as if by magic, disappearing.
There really is magic in a fireplace.
Fireplaces Successfully Built by the Novice

WORKING with brick and mortar is fascinating. It will give you a thorough
respect for this craft. Fireplace building is hard work, back breaking, yet worth
all the effort in the pleasure a glowing hearth will give. Diligent application and
any handyman with a few tools and the will to “stick” can succeed. Our
ancestors had to rely on their own skill or develop it. It’s just a part of the
American spirit.
First, let us make it attractive—simple lines, stones from the field, fit together
like patterns in a flagstone floor. Flat sandstones or limestones work up best.
Fashioning stones from the field for your fireplace will present some problems
and an occasional “frustration.” With a little practice and perseverance, however,
you will suddenly discover you can split a stone with precision. You will
experience a new thrill. This, then, is learning by doing and in the doing you will
find yourself tired, muscles a bit sore, hands hardened and rough, but you will
say over and over again, “I did it. I have it. I know it.” You will go to bed
wholesomely tired, but eager to get off to an early start in the morning, to work
again on your fireplace.
Use natural material, if available, before resorting to brick. Be sure, however,
to line your fireplace with firebrick.
Do not attempt a large fireplace if it is your first experiment. The two
fireplaces shown are workable. One is different, raised fourteen inches above the
floor, with a shelf that makes an excellent space for cooking and will save your
back. It warms the body and the room—not just the shins.
CROSS SECTION OF RAISED HEARTH FIREPLACE
IMPORTANT
Build your fireplace at the end of the room away from doors, to give
snugness and avoid drafts. Your fireplace will give warmth, a welcome glow,
and throw shadows. Do not expect a fireplace to keep a cabin warm in sub-zero
weather. Place a wood-burning stove at the opposite end of the room. Run a
smokestack through the roof with a metal collar. You will then be between two
fires and warmed both “fore and aft.”
 SMALL BRICK FIREPLACE

THE “WHY” OF FIREPLACES THAT BURN WELL

It is tragic to see so many lovely cabins spoiled by smoking fireplaces. A
good many fireplaces are built by people who do not understand the first
principles of fireplace construction. Books on the subject are available at your
library; also, the United States Department of Agriculture Farmers’ Bulletin No.
1649 treats this subject at length. If measurements here given are followed, your
fireplace will not smoke, but will burn perfectly, keeping logs burning overnight,
and will be a joy in your cabin.
After your fireplace has dried out for a few days, light your first really great
fire. What a thrill! It works. Call in the family, your friends. Celebrate.
If it smokes, sit alone and study it. Watch the air currents. Light a bundle of
sticks or newspaper and hold it at the upper corners of the opening. If the flue
does not draw the flame and smoke, then there is something wrong about the
throat. Get your chisel and dig inside on either side of the throat above the lintel.
Here is the greatest possibility of trouble. If you are sure the flue is in correct
measured relationship to the opening, you really can’t go very wrong. After you
have adjusted here and there until the fireplace really burns, you will approach
the next fireplace with added confidence and will have good results.

TOOLS
Level, plumb line, mixing box two by four feet and ten inches deep, hoe,
trowel, mason’s hammer, chalk line, square, shovel.

MATERIALS
Stones or bricks, sand, gravel, cement, lime, nails, chalk, iron lintel arch
support, eight inches longer than the width of the opening (angle iron lintel will
not sag), one hundred firebricks, twenty-five pounds of fireclay, pothooks,
pothook supports.

HOW TO PROCEED
Build the foundation the full size of the fireplace, two feet to four feet and six
inches below ground level, according to your freezing line; fill in with concrete
and stones.
Rest the floor joists on the fireplace’s foundation. Fill in with concrete
between the joists to floor level, unless you plan a flagstone floor.
Build the fireplace by levels—i.e., do not build up one side, then the other. If
you add a four-inch stone on one corner, bring the rest of the fireplace up
likewise, then add the next tier.
Make it rough. If one stone protrudes, good, but bring the one above it back
true with your plumb line.
 Rake out the mortar about one inch deep between joists. This will give an
aged or weathered appearance. Keep your mortar stiff, i.e., not too much water.
A false hearth is cheaper, but not so sturdy. Build your hearth the full width
of the fireplace.
If in a log cabin, the fireplace foundation must be deeper front to back to
allow for the thickness of the logs.
Bring the foundation to within six inches of the floor and make it level. Now
lay your fireplace out carefully, providing space for firebrick and keeping in
mind support for the chimney, which must rest on the foundation outside of the
cabin. Use your plumb line.
Do not be sparing with the mortar. Mortar must be free from gravel, not too
wet. Use sifted sand mixed to a stiff paste. Place face stones about three-quarters
of an inch apart; fill in between the joints. Tap the stones with the handle of a
trowel until all joints are cemented well. Scrape off any surplus and throw it
back into the mortar box. Mix mortar in small quantities and work it with your
trowel from time to time to keep it tempered. A total of three to five shovelfuls.

MIXTURE
Three sand, one cement, one and one-half lime or prepared commercial
mixture called brick cement—directions on the bag.
 It is advisable to build the chimney of brick, enclosing the flue. Use flue
lining, eight inches by twelve inches, for the fireplace with an opening of thirty-
six inches by twenty-four inches. Lay the firebrick first and then build the
stonework around it. This keeps the work open and easy to get at.
The inside of the raised hearth fireplace measures thirty-six inches wide,
twenty to twenty-four inches in depth, and twenty-six inches high. The sides
draw in slightly toward the back (about two inches each side). The back wall
rises perpendicular for fourteen inches from the fireplace level, then slants
upward and forward until it reaches the throat, which is at least eight inches
above the arch. The throat should be at least ten percent in the square area of the
opening of the fireplace. Also, the flue must be ten percent in the square area of
the opening of the fireplace or better.

A SIMPLE METHOD FOR THE NOVICE

First, build a wooden box or frame, the outside of which will be the same as
the inside space of your fireplace—throat and approach to the flue. This will
save you endless trouble. Build your fireplace and mason work around the
framework with reasonable certainty. Always lay brick or stone horizontally and
bind one on the other. Use care in placing the damper and the two angle irons. A
damper is not necessary, but will save your house from destruction by squirrels
in the summer and fall; it also helps regulate draft. An old-fashioned damper
such as used in woodstove pipe can be built from sheet iron and fitted in the flue
just above the fireplace mantle shelf. The rest, then, is a matter of laying one
stone or brick on the other, always lapping one stone over the other, keeping all
work level and perpendicular lines true.

POT HOOKS
When building your fireplace do not forget to include an iron hook on which
to hang a kettle for hot water. A swinging pothook has many valuable uses—
keeping food hot, keeping coffee hot, et cetera.
Ashes

IT’S time to turn in, for the hour is late. The night is still. Yet, somehow, we
linger. Why? No one knows. There is always enchantment in the closing hour
when the fading coals in the fire stir and “speak” their soft good night. Dying
embers fall apart; the glow fades and is replaced by a delicate white ash, more
beautiful than and as intriguing as the stillness of the night. Finally, we realize
the great sacrament of fire is completed. A downdraft of our chimney may
scatter these feathery white ashes over our hearth until one becomes entranced
by the lacy white filament. “Ashes to ashes” have portrayed their fulfillment.
 Somehow, I just can’t bear to burn rubbish or wastepaper in a glowing
fireplace. These produce a black ash. White ashes remind one of the “sacrament
of fire,” of God’s gift, of warmth and light. The delicate loveliness of white
wood ashes seems a symbol of purity and consecration. We, too, will “burn out”
someday, but joyously by what we have created in our time for our own
happiness and the good of the world. We, too, may contribute to life’s great
sacrament of fire for the generations to come.
YOUR HOT AND COLD WATER SYSTEM AND SUPPLY
Running Hot and Cold Water

A SUMMER camp is incomplete without a shower bath. One does not need to
think in terms of tile floors or granite bathtubs. A hot and cold water system can
be installed for very little cost. In fact, we built one that supplied hot and cold
water to not only the shower, but also for the kitchen and washroom. It was fun
to work with Stillson wrenches, valves, fittings, water pressure, air vents, et
cetera.
A house-wrecking company supplied sinks, pipes, and valves at a very
reasonable cost. A thirty-gallon hot water tank laid flat with a fire hole under it
resulted in our hot water heating system. A wood fire built in it in the morning
would smolder all day and keep water hot. On sunny days, we had a solar
heating system with no effort or expense. Three oak barrels connected by pipe
will store one hundred and fifty gallons of water.
Careful study of your hot and cold water system and supply tells its own
story.
Waste: Johnnies and Incinerators

TOILETS, at their best, are none too good. Most toilets in the woods smell and
are a disturbance. If you insist on having a toilet inside your cabin, then you
must follow certain precautions.
There are, generally speaking, three kinds of toilets—flush, septic, and old-
fashioned privies.

FLUSH TOILETS
If in Your Cabin in the Woods you can have running water and proper
drainage, and, if you can keep running water from freezing, install a flush toilet
inside your cabin. In the far south, this may be in keeping and successful. To go
to your cabin on weekends in the winter where temperatures get below freezing,
you have at once a different problem. Unless you can properly shut off all water
below the frost line and drain all receptacles, you will have no end of trouble and
inconvenience. This, then, is a problem for your plumber.

SEPTIC SYSTEMS
Septic systems (bacteria action) can be installed inside your cabin, but you
will not be pleased with the results. They give off an odor of some kind or
another. On a warm still night, they exude fumes (a sweet sickly smell) that will
remind you constantly of the presence of a toilet within your cabin. This kind of
toilet is most successful fifty or one hundred feet or more away from your cabin.
Observe local state health laws. You will, however, find them efficient and
economical.

PRIVIES
 The old-fashioned privy or “backhouse” is still a good type of outdoor toilet
if properly built. First, the pit must be deep (five or six feet at least). Second, it
must be properly boxed—and with a fly-proof seat and cover. The seat cover
should be so constructed that it drops in place automatically. The building should
be fly-proof and screened. This toilet should be at least fifty feet from the cabin
—better, one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet away—and, by all means,
away from any possible drainage toward your spring or well. Consult your local
health authorities.

YOU DECIDE
It is now for you to decide where you want your toilet, according to your
desires and within your means and health regulations. A “one-hole” backyard
privy can be built for the cost of materials if you do the work.
Even an outdoor toilet can be built along good lines. Paint or stain it to fit
into the surrounding color scheme. Plant young trees or vines to enclose it.

INCINERATORS
This subject may seem unimportant, except for the necessity of a simple daily
disposal and avoidance of odors about your cabin. I have tried several kinds—
wire frames, stone incinerators, et cetera. What is most needed is an efficient
method of getting rid of daily waste that naturally accumulates in a cabin—
wastepaper, tin cans, garbage.
I have found a plain open pit the simplest of all—a pit three feet deep by five
feet in diameter. As you dig the pit, throw up a bank of dirt three feet wide all
around the pit. This will raise a wall all around and will protect you against grass
fires when you burn the refuse. Wrap garbage in paper, which helps in the
combustion. Throw in small branches of waste wood. Build a fire in the pit and
burn the refuse. If damp, spray with creosote solution, which will keep the flies
away. A pit used this way will serve a year for six people. It then needs cleaning
out, or dig a new pit and cover the old one.
One word of caution—place the pit so the prevailing winds will carry odors
and smoke away from your cabin.

THE OIL DRUM INCINERATOR

Dig a trench eight inches deep by ten inches wide and ten feet long. Now dig
another at right angles to cross the center—same length. Place an oil drum in the
center, open top and with large two-inch holes punched in the bottom. You can
do this with an old axe. The four trenches will carry the prevailing wind from
any of four directions and travel up the oil drum. Throw wastepaper and garbage
in the drum and let it burn. If garbage is balanced with paper and other
inflammable material, your incinerator will smolder all day and gradually burn
out. Occasionally dump the ashes, bottles, glass, and other solid material.

OTHER WASTE
Much that we throw away in the city is well worth saving in the woods—
string, twine, paper from wrappings, small boxes, and cartons. You may find it
more difficult to run to the store to replenish your needs. You will fully realize
this, once you are “caught short.”


ALTHOUGH I lay no claim to knowledge of interior decoration, there are a

few essentials I feel I dare suggest, which can give to the inside of your cabin
home the comfortable, simple, rugged beauty in keeping with the structure and
the setting.
I once saw a beautiful, truly pioneer, log cabin ruined by the successful and
lovely scheme of decoration for a city home transplanted to the primitive
naturalness of the country. It did not fit.
A cabin of logs suggests its own motif in both line and color. We are getting
away from the artificial. We are reviving the restful softness of the woods’
coloring, the strength of straight lines and natural curves, with accents of
brilliance for warmth on cold nights and light on cloudy days. To achieve this
rather fierce charm of ruggedness blended with coziness has a fascination all its
own. Your cabin can throw a spell over one in its rough welcome, gentled by the
natural refinement of your personal tastes and expressions. Even the flickering
fireplace flames will enhance your cabin color scheme.
Cedar logs are tan in color with streaks of lighter tone all the way from light
brown to cream. Cedar has a beautiful grain, so does hemlock when properly
dressed down. Hemlock logs, however, when left to dry for a year tone down to
a fine silvery gray. Cedar, thoroughly dry, may be dressed down with a draw-
shave, reviving its natural color and releasing that sweet pungent smell of the
cedar woods. Dressed knotty white pine blends perfectly with a log cabin. You
can use it for doors, window frames, cupboards, and bookshelves. It does not
need a dark stain. Merely rub it down with boiled linseed oil, adding a coat of
varnish. The knots will glisten, the lovely natural grain remains. Without this
treatment, white pine does not stay light but gets darker and darker as time goes
on until it looks dark brown.
 Don’t miss the fun of having wrought iron hinges and latches. Plenty of
imagination and personal symbolism can go into the choice of design for the
door knocker to announce your visitors, the iron foot scraper, even the bootjack,
that are a part of your porch decoration, and, too, door hinges and pothooks. By
now you must be saying, “I have no money to spend on wrought iron.” You need
not say it. Go to your hardware store or, better still, to the general store in the
country town. Ask for a pair of heavy barn hinges. You can get them from
twenty-four to thirty inches long. Now hunt up the village blacksmith (or realize
the fun of setting up a small forge of your own). Have the blacksmith reheat the
metal, then pound it hard with a ball-peen hammer, roughen it, with or without
design, and it becomes wrought iron. From scraps of iron and with ingenuity,
many delightful articles may be added to your cabin, inside and out. Their
rugged individuality suits your cabin motif. An old buggy wheel suspended from
the rafters by log chains of iron may afford overhead lighting. Brackets for oil
lamps add to their charm. Of course, the tools for your fireplace and the
pothooks become essentials.
Speaking of indoor fireplaces, I am tempted to say here, “Don’t build this
center of your home, your hearth, out of manufactured bricks if natural stone is
anywhere available.” Native stones belong to your setting; you can’t improve
upon them. Use them.
Your choice of flooring may be determined by your budget—or the
availability of material. Flagstone, if available. Hardwood (i.e., maple or oak) is
preferable, but Georgia pine or fir, sanded, oiled, and varnished do very well.
For old times’ sake, and for easy cleaning and wear, remember to include rag
rugs, the kind Grandma used to make out of odds and ends of garments or old
material. Here is a chance to learn the knack of hooking rugs. The homespun
materials are in keeping with early American designs. We found burlap had that
handmade look. Burlap can be purchased by the yard from your bag company.
We used it for cabin drapes. It blended perfectly with the wood tones. To enliven
it a bit we stenciled the borders with conventional figures in bright colors. In a
cabin in the mountains, two friends of ours have created designs that express,
totem pole fashion, the episodes, the fun that have grown into the life of the
cabin. These designs are repeated on dishes, cushions, bookends, even
hammered into some of their iron and copper work.

One other element that adds to the welcome in your cabin is, in homely
phrase, a sweet, clean smell. On this point, there is need of precaution. A tightly
closed, poorly ventilated cabin will soon grow musty and will disappoint you. In
the gable ends, and very near the top, I have a small window swung on hinges.
Attached to its top is a latchstring long enough so I may open and shut the
twelve-inch opening at will. The last thing I do, when leaving my cabin, is to
open the ventilators.
One other precaution you must take to preserve this fresh clean smell: If you
burn wood in a stove, you must guard against the drip of creosote from the
stovepipe. Wood smoke builds up creosote in your chimney flue, and in the
stovepipes leading to it. When the stoves are idle, moisture gathers. Rain also
may enter an uncapped chimney and carry the creosote along. It leaves a pungent
and offensive odor.
I once had such a stove. The pipe ran straight up for five or six feet above the
stove. Then came the elbow and two lengths of pipe that ran horizontally into the
main chimney. Snow drifted into the chimney and settled in the horizontal part
of the pipe. On arrival, we started our fire. The snow melted and drip, drip, drip,
from the joints of the pine came the black, sticky, stinking creosote. It sputtered
over the floor and even the sidewalls. Creosote is the worst stuff to scrub away,
and the smell will not fade.
I have since learned I do not always need to pipe into a brick chimney. I run
the stovepipe straight up and through a triple cylinder, metal smokestack right
through the roof. It is perfectly safe—and cheaper than the brick. I also learned
when the pipe sections are fitted one into the other it is wise to nest the top
section into the one below. This does away with any possible leak of smoke or
moisture. The creosote is also controlled.
Lamps, Lighting, and Illumination

KEROSENE lamps are almost a luxury in this day of electricity. They throw
long flickering shadows—so do candles. Log cabins are intimately associated
with candles and kerosene lamps.
Chain-pull kerosene lamps can still be bought from secondhand stores or
antique shops. I wish I could find again the beautiful hanging lamp of my
boyhood days. Way back in the 1890s, as I remember, it seemed there were a
“thousand” crystals hanging around the globe dome. We pulled it down over the
living room table, back on the farm when the family gathered after supper and
the day’s work was done. A dish of apples supplied from our cellar, also a dish of
hickory nuts. One of the older members of the family would crack the nuts on
the bottom of the old-fashioned flatiron—the kind Mother used to heat by
placing it on the top of the kitchen stove on ironing day. The real family life was
around the living room table, under the dome of our chain-pull crystal-decorated
lamp. Here was security—the peace and quiet companionship of the family.

The wagon wheel “chandelier” suspended from the roof-ridge with logging
chains is a modern interpretation; yet it conforms to the spirit of the Cabin in the
Woods. Place either lamps or candles on the rim. Here is room to follow your
own fancy.

LANTERN MAGIC
What an important part the lantern has played in American pioneer life.
Within the squared-oak log cabin back on the farm in Wisconsin, winter nights
closed in at four or five o’clock in the afternoon. As we approached the barn to
do the chores, our lantern cast great shadows of the person ahead of us on the
barn wall—shadows that grew larger and larger with each approaching step, until
they became giant-size. Inside the barn, the lantern was hung on a wooden peg.
Each person sat on a milking stool, head pressed against the belly of a cow, pail
gripped between the knees. As each pail became full, we would carry the warm
milk near to the lantern, pour its contents through a clean-washed cloth strainer
into the milk can, and return to the next cow for the second ten quarts. One cow I
milked had the habit of switching her tail in my direction so I would place her
tail between my head and the side of her belly and press hard. The smell of cow
dung, animal odor, the warm moisture of the barn, the smell of sweet hay, and
the pungent odor of silo feed were a part of pioneer American life.
 The lantern, as it cast its feeble flickering rays, was an important part of the
milking ceremony. It was the only light we had.
Lanterns cast soft lights. Their “feeble” shadows teach you patience and
calm. You find in them a slowing-down process. They help take you from high
tension back to a wholesome normal. Try it. You, too, will discover magic in the
old-fashioned lantern.
Rustic Furniture

RUSTIC furniture, inside or out, will add more than anything to the artistry and
homelikeness of your camp. It is by no means difficult if built of natural rustic
material because every piece of natural wood has graceful lines. However
roughly fashioned, your articles will be good-looking. Rope, some bolts, a few
nails, a good sharp axe, an expansion bit for boring one-inch to one-and-one-half
inch holes, a draw-shave, small timber from the woods, two to four inches in
diameter, and a little ingenuity are all that are needed. The illustrations may be
followed exactly or make your own adaptation to suit your fancy.
A DINING ROOM SUITE
Here is an outdoor dining room outfit that costs little or nothing. On my own
place, I built the table on top of a small tree stump. I cut off the stump twenty-
five inches above the ground—allowing for four inches of thickness of tabletop.
If you have no convenient stump, dig a hole where you want your table. Use
your post-hole digger for the neat hole—about thirty inches deep. Set in it a six-
inch log about five feet long. Stamp it in firmly. With your crosscut saw, level
the top at the desired height.
If you have small softwood trees or saplings four to six inches in diameter,
cut these in four-foot lengths and split them in half, smoothing one side flat with
your axe. Next, lay these logs flat side to the ground and anchor them together
with two cleats. Now place them on your post flat side up. Put four angle braces
beneath. Cover the top with linoleum and your table is ready for use.
Splitting saplings for tabletops can best be done with iron wedges. Your extra
axes can serve this purpose. Start at one end of the log by driving your axe
slightly, but exactly, in the center. Drive the second axe into the crack you have
started—about twelve inches farther along. By the time the third axe is in place,
the first axe will drop as the split log gives way. Of course, if you have lumber,
you can build a tabletop with much less effort!
Peg-leg stools are a practical and natural companion to a treetop table. They
are easy to make and will last a lifetime in the open. For four stools you will
need two sixteen-inch-long logs about twelve inches in diameter. Split these in
half, again smoothing the flat side with your axe. On the round underside bore
three one-and-a-half-inch holes about three inches deep. These should be at an
angle so the legs will spread. Next, cut twelve two-inch-thick branches, three for
each stool. Taper each at one end to fit snugly into the bored holes. A three-
legged stool fits more easily on uneven ground than one with four legs. With the
help of a friend, your complete dining room set can be built in an hour or two.

Perhaps you may have no twelve-inch softwood on your place. If not, go to

your nearest telephone or electric company. For a small fee they will sell you
used telephone poles. Often they have poles too short for their purposes but
adequate for yours.
So, for this project you will need (1) a friend to share the fun; (2) a post-hole
digger; (3) a crosscut saw; (4) an augur; (5) an axe; (6) carpentry tools; (7) wood
from your woodlot. Lastly, energy and imagination if you don’t want to sit on the
ground.
THE HALF-LOG BENCH
Cut six-foot logs from a fourteen- to eighteen-inch tree. Split through the
middle. Bore four holes one and one-half inches at an angle in the bottom or
round part of the log so the peg-legs will protrude from the seat “fore and aft”
about four inches. The backrest needs one and one-half inch holes with support
running to the back legs. The seat part should be dressed, planed, and
sandpapered.
THE RUSTIC HAMMOCK OR GARDEN SWING
Six feet six inches long, it will serve as a bed. Canvas over frame will serve
as a tent and make a good extra bed when the unexpected visitor arrives. Start
with the seat frame. The two end pins doweled into long ends. Then bore holes
every four inches all around and lace with one-quarter-inch rope. Homemade
cushions will serve for the mattress and seat. Try corn shucks for the mattress.
Just fill a straw tick with handpicked corn shucks. They make a very comfortable
bed. Use the soft, springy, inner part of the cornhusk. The outer leaves are harsh.

ROPE BUNKS
These make good cabin beds. Bore three-eighths-inch holes every four inches
around the frame of four-inch saplings. Lace with one-quarter-inch rope. Bunks
with slats on which to place springs and mattresses make good beds.

CHEST UNDER BUNKS

These serve well for storage and utility space. Casters under the chest make
for easy handling.
Storm Doors

IT will help your heating problem in winter if you add storm doors to your
cabin. I have seen a cabin with a picnic table with folding legs fitted as a storm
door in winter, but in summer unhinged and again used as a picnic table.
Trick Door with Secret Lock

WHAT could be more discouraging than to arrive at your winter cabin after a
long hike, cold and a bit wet, to find you have forgotten the key? Here is a cure
for that human weakness, or at least protection against it—a trick door lock. Pull
a leather thong, push a slide, lift a latch, and—presto—the door opens! Work out
your own combination. Make it as complicated as your imagination suggests, but
don’t forget the combination.
Trim Plate Decoration

A DECORATIVE effect can be given by dressing plates with half-round four-

inch or split logs.
Wooden-Peg Coat Hangers

COAT hangers can be made of wooden pegs three-quarters of an inch thick.

Bore three-quarter-inch holes in a log.
Skylight

A SKYLIGHT in the roof of your cabin will add light on dark days. It is also a
good out for hot air.
Natural Icebox Cooler

BUILD an icebox cooler in the side of a hill. Stone walls on the sides and back.
Top, dome-shaped. Use a two-inch-by-eight-inch frame with double doors inside
and out. This will keep vegetables from freezing in winter, and provide cellar
coolness in summer. Or build an eighteen-inch-by-eighteen-inch elevator cellar
within your cabin, five feet deep. This is raised by rope and pulley. It must be
supplied with outside drainage on the downside of a hill.
The Frame House

THUS far, we have discussed log cabins along very simple lines. Something
now should be said for frame buildings for the person who loves the out of
doors, but who prefers to erect a bit more of a modern building. Modern in the
sense he prefers plastered walls inside and painted walls without. A white
cottage with green blinds. Why not? I must admit I could not treat this subject
with any such warmth and length as I would the lore that surrounds log cabins.
Nor is it necessary. There is unlimited source material on the subject of frame
buildings.
These drawings may help you. A local carpenter can be of real help. He will
help you figure the amount of lumber with accuracy and without waste. Also, the
length of plates, rafters, joists, windows, and board feet of lumber to complete
the job. More than this, he can help you build it and with speed.

ROOF PLATES AT CORNERS

Here we have plates at the top of studding fastened at corners, also sill
construction on foundation. To keep your cabin warm underfoot, it is good to
build a double floor filled in between with tar paper.
The following gives construction of roof rafters and method of fastening.
NOVEL LOG EFFECTS
If you want your house to look rustic you can get a clever log effect on your
frame building by ripping one-inch boards off logs, going straight through the
bark. After one slab is removed from the log, turn the log over to rest flat on the
table of the saw. Then, one after the other, boards are ripped off. This gives you a
rough edge with a strip of bark and gives you somewhat the outline of a log. Use
these as clapboards with the bark end to the bottom. Cut these logs in summer or
fall when there is no sap in the trees.
Flagstone Floors

IF you really want a warm, snug cabin, free from floor drafts, free from sweat,
rich in design, and colorful beyond what even an inlaid floor would give, then
build a flagstone floor for your cabin. Surprisingly, too, you will find the stone
warmer than a wood floor.
Did you ever warm up a cabin in severe winter weather and notice the
painted floor sweats great beads of moisture as the fires got under way? A
flagstone floor properly laid will not do this. In fact, it will start getting warm as
soon as you build a fire and it will stay warm. This is because the floor is dry
and does not absorb moisture.
A flagstone floor needs, first, a foundation built all around the cabin and
below frost line—four feet or better in New York State, less as you go farther
south. Anchor the first log or plate to the foundation with bolts buried in the
cement at least eight inches. Drainage on the outside of the cabin—that is, the
ground pitches down and away from the building at least eighteen inches. Lay
four to six inches of gravel within your cabin and four inches below the top of
the concrete foundation. Upon this, lay your flagstone floor. After it is laid and
leveled, pour a soupy, strong mixture of cement in between the flagstones. This
is commonly called grouting.
If you do not have flat stones on your property, you can get pieces of marble,
slate, et cetera, from a house-wrecking or construction company. Since the first
log is anchored to the foundation, there is no need of binding with floor joists as
in the case of a wooden floor.
Steppingstones

MANUFACTURED steppingstones may seem a bit incongruous and artificial;

yet I know of places where there are no flat stones for building paths, trails, or
steppingstones. I had a lot of fun once when building a cabin site in wild country
where rocks were of the molten kind and I just could not get a flat surface. Then
why have flat stones? Now I was determined to have them; so, having enough
sand and cement, we made them. We learned some interesting things in this
experiment.
First, we built pans two inches deep out of scrap sheet iron. We finally agreed
on five patterns, each different so they could be fitted together in several ways.
We had some red sandstone chips from our fireplace, also pieces of blue and red
marble. We broke these in pieces the size of hickory nuts and mixed them in the
cement, and then poured the mixture into the forms. After the cement mixture
“set,” we smoothed the top surface with a trowel. After two days, we removed
the cement blocks and rubbed them down with a common brick. To our
amazement, the chips of sandstone and marble gave the cement block a really
natural appearance. Still more interesting, after a month or two they weathered
into soft colors that fit quite naturally into the setting.
 Be sure to rub oil on the inside of your pans before pouring in the cement or
you may have difficulty removing the blocks.


PUT personality plus into all you create. The story is told of three masons who
were doing the same kind of work. A passerby inquired of each mason, “What
are you doing?” “I’m laying brick,” said the first mason. “I’m building a wall,”
the second man answered. The third mason in answer to the same question
replied, “I’m building a great cathedral.” Certainly, no one will question which
of the three masons lived the fuller life.
And so, Mr. Cabin-Builder, I challenge you to build a “cathedral”—your
greatest dream, when you create Your Cabin in the Woods. Be there woods or
no, be it treeless as the Kansas prairies or the highest peaks of the Rockies—
build into your cabin spot your loftiest thinking. You’ve got it. Think it through.
It will bless you and yours if you resort not to just “laying brick or building a
wall.” Put personality plus into all you create.
Landscaping Your Cabin Setting

A LOG cabin needs plenty of sunlight. Logs are a fine insulation against heat,
but they do absorb moisture and need to dry out. A cabin buried among too many
shade trees can be dark and damp on rainy days. Leave a bit of a grass spot
round the house. It really adds to the charm. One cabin builder whom I observed
went to the other extreme. He decided on a two-acre lawn. With bulldozers and
other machinery, he leveled his grounds—tore out wild shrubs, bushes, and small
trees. He planted clover and grass. The results were beautiful but he spent much
of each summer thereafter behind a lawn mower.
 Salvage those small trees and bushes. Leave the natural setting, opening a
vista here and there, a path or two; but let Nature, not the nursery, provide your
setting. Chances are you will add a lot of extra work and expense without
improving things if you go for flower beds and lawns in a big way. A Cabin in
the Woods should be so simple in its setup that, after unlocking the door,
opening the windows, bringing out a chair or two, you should be able to settle
down and enjoy living. Breathe deep and relax.
If you want a rock garden, find it. There will be a spot somewhere that, with
a few touches of recognition and encouragement, can become one. If you would
like a lily pond, or even a fountain, seek your hillside spring. With a bit of piping
you can guide the flow into a nearby saucer-like depression. Cover a space about
ten feet wide and twelve long with cobblestones, a bit of sand and gravel.
Transplant a few waterplants into the rock crevices. The fountain may be piped
from below the stones. The overflow can be controlled and guided with a few
clay tiles. The cost need be little. These are playthings, not work. It is satisfying
to create.
Always leave something for the next visit, the next summer. Outdoor living
with its relaxing, creative activity will fulfill the true purpose, the dream that
went into our cabin craft.
Your Flagpole

NO camp is complete without a flag and flagpole. We hoist the flag when we
arrive. It says to our friends and neighbors, “We are in and you are welcome.”
Were it not for the meaning woven through the years into this Flag of our
Nation, we might not be enjoying the privilege of building and owning a cabin in
the woods.
There are a few mechanical problems in erecting a flagpole. If you just dig a
hole in the ground and drop the pole in, packing it with stones and dirt, be sure it
does not lean a bit off center. This can be very distressing later! After setting, it
is hard to change. So, save yourself needless hard work and disappointment.
Before packing the earth around the pole be sure it stands one hundred percent
perpendicular. Tie a pebble to a piece of string about two feet long. Stand about
fifty feet away from the pole and hold up the string—the pebble at the bottom, of
course. Here is a true vertical. Have your helpers move the pole right or left until
it is in line with your plumb line. Circle the pole so you have trued it from
several angles. Now brace it securely. Only when you are satisfied it is actually
perpendicular, fill in around the base with dirt and stones. Tamp it in firmly.
Keep it braced for a week until it settles.
I have taken for granted that before you raised the pole your pulley and
halyard were in place. It is a wise man who whips the halyard lines or at least
ties them together. I once had the embarrassment of having one of the lines slip
out of my hand. In less time than it takes to tell it, the halyard had run out of the
pulley forty feet above. Old Glory did not fly that day. It is not an easy matter to
get up to the top of a graceful pole—even with a ladder. Since lines wear out or
decay and have to be replaced, I now use a double post with the flag pole
between—a three-quarter-inch pivot or axle running between and through the
two posts and the pole—about five feet above the ground. At the bottom of the
pole, place an iron band attached firmly around the two posts. Fasten with a
large hasp and padlock. Your blacksmith will make this for you. By unlocking
the hasp, you can now lower the pole to the ground. It can be repaired, painted,
and set up again without risk to life and limb.
Use a bit of imagination in dressing up the flagpole’s top. A weather vane,
maybe, instead of the traditional ball. Many quaint and individual flag symbols
may add to the fun and usefulness of your flagpole tradition.
Sign Posts and Trail Markers

DOES the name you have chosen for your camp site—“Camp Elizabeth,” or
“Shady Pines,” or, a bit flippantly, “Dew Drop Inn”—express your welcome to
your friends and neighbors? Does it say, “We want you to come and share with
us what we have. We delight in your coming”?
Express your personality in some sign or symbol—perhaps a pine tree cut out
of metal, your name fashioned in rustic wood, a novel wrought iron lantern. Your
sign or symbol will not only represent the name of your place, but the character
of the people within.
Let Mother Nature Be Your Gardener

ONE of the luxuries of a Cabin in the Woods is the abundance of nearby

wildflowers. Wildflowers complete the personality of gentle slopes, rugged
steeps, and lush flatlands. No need of “green fingers” or a knowledge of
gardening processes to have a wild garden in the country. You have the soil, sun,
and moisture necessary to the flowers in your neighborhood.
If you want a more formal garden than the changing patchwork of fields
beyond the windows, start with a scrap of lawn, a fieldstone terrace, or a rough
fence.
To form a backdrop in our garden we have transplanted clumps of goldenrod,
pepper plants from the fields, and built a loose framework of branches upon
which woodbine climbs thick and green. Before it, daisies, purple bellflowers,
and brown-eyed Susans are happily grouped. Down the slope in a swampy
hollow are wild iris, butter-yellow cowslips, forget-me-nots, tall day lilies, and
woods fern. A trickle from a spring furnishes a pool to mirror the water lilies.
Let your garden infringe upon the lawn without corners or edges or too
careful trimming. Tuck tiny plants between the stones of your walk or terrace.
Leave the hillocks and hollows. Accentuate them with your planting. It should
look as though it just happened.
When you are strolling, watch for an unusual plant. Dig it up with care. Tie it
in your kerchief to plant on your return. Try to recreate the mood of its natural
setting. Space your treasure hunts throughout the summer; your garden will
follow a natural sequence of bloom, for wildflowers are the hardiest of
perennials.
You can let your garden grow lazily or you can become a connoisseur—
searching out rare specimens. Our “showpieces” are cardinal flowers, showy
lady-slippers, and a flowering dogwood. Many cultivated plants slip in among
the wild ones with ease, for they are merely wildflowers with a bit of education.
Hollyhocks will spread in a few years to make charming splashes of color about
the garden. Golden glow, delphinium, and phlox make friends with wildflowers
in bouquets, for, of course, most gardens presuppose flowers within the house.
Flower arranging may be a simple part of the morning routine. Water lilies
and their pads in a shallow pottery dish make a lovely centerpiece. Try a spray of
goldenrod and a curve of half-ripe chokecherries over the fireplace. Pack daisies
tightly in a small round bowl like an old-fashioned nosegay. Tall, orange day
lilies will pay a compliment to an old bean jug.
The variety of wildflowers and their abundance are a daily challenge to
expressing one’s personality and mood. Even on rainy mornings, some member
of the family will always enjoy bundling into a slicker and rain hat, to tramp
through the tall grass and gather dripping color to make dark gray days friendly
within and fresh with the woods’ smell.
You may add all this variety of color to your cabin site without having to be a
student of flowers. Flowers add richness and joy and interest in living. Try a
wildflower garden and let Mother Nature be your gardener.
Shrubs, Trees, and Reforestation

RAISE your own forest. Plant tree seedlings and God will raise them. Plant
them now. Trees are comparatively cheap as one- or two-year-old seedlings.
Plant five hundred each year for ten years. You can plant five hundred seedlings
with the help of another person in less than a day. Carolina poplars grow fast.
They will be thirty feet high in ten years’ time and give generous shade. You will
revel each year in their added growth.
Plant trees native to your territory—softwood for fast growth. You can dig up
quaking or bigtooth aspens most anywhere. They will grow on the poorest kind
of land. Conifers can be secured from your state forestry schools—white, red,
and jack pines, spruce. Would you like a ski course on your ranch? If so, plant
red pines to arrest the snow on the windward side and add to your skiing and
tobogganing.
Visualize the shade you will enjoy at the spot where you will have a perfect
vista. Why not set out an orchard? Buy ten varieties of apple trees; include a
cherry tree, crabapple, and one or two plum trees. You won’t have to wait ten
years for these to bear fruit. Add several nut trees—hickory, walnut, or any trees
suitable to the climate you live in.
Perhaps you want a winding road to your cabin spot. Here, again, you may
need trees so at each turn there may be added charm: first pines, then hemlocks,
and birch. Don’t fail to plant some oaks—pin oaks, red oaks, sturdy oaks. Plant
them from acorns. No cost except a little effort. I planted an acorn twenty years
ago just for fun. Today it is the pride of all my planting. It is now twenty-five
feet high. Who knows, you may live to enjoy those plantings of your earlier days
and derive peace and joy each year you live to greet them. Please, please, do not
make the usual mistake of saying, “I won’t live long enough to enjoy the fruits
of my labors.” Plant those trees this year—today—whether you are thirty, fifty,
or seventy years old. They will bring you the richest returns.
Your Cabin in the Woods, if you plan with vision, will become a cabin in the
woods, even though you have started on a bare hillside. Plant trees. God will do
most of the work. But plant them now!
Your Treasure Chest

“THERE’S gold in them thar hills” may be said of your acres. You don’t have
to be a Forty-Niner, nor travel to the ends of the earth for your “gold.” It is on
your own land—if you know where to find it. One man turned his gravel hill into
a gravel pit that paid him richly. He took toll of each load. Another discovered a
clay bank. The blue gravel-free clay was suitable for fine pottery and brought a
good price—and a new craft interest. A third chap made capital out of a marshy
pond busy with bullfrogs. He supplies a New York market with frog’s legs.
Trees planted as seedlings yield a rich return in about twenty years. Plant the
type that will grow best on your particular acres. I plant five hundred evergreens
each spring on my land. Now I have a hundred or more eight- and ten-foot trees
that need thinning. I could sell them for Christmas trees—red pine with its long
needles, balsam, white pine, spruce, hemlock, jack pine, but we will have a
Christmas tree party this year for our close friends. They will come out with
their kiddies and have the fun of cutting their own holiday trees.
Plant clover—red and white. It will add color to your acres and fragrance,
too. Golden honey for winter sweets can be yours if you add a beehive or two,
which reminds me, your maple trees will add amber syrup. This is yours for the
taking—but that is another story in this book.
 Rocks need not be a liability. They are wealth if used for fences, fireplaces, or
other building construction. In the earth may even lie natural gas—and oil. I do
not mean to be mercenary, but I do urge you to explore all the possibilities of
your acres. If water is available, a sheep, a steer, or a goat that gives milk can be
fed off the land—adding to your wealth with little of the routine care and
housing necessary for chickens, cows, etc.
It is amazing how my little ranch blossoms and prospers each year. As soon
as pine, spruce, and balsam seedlings have developed a sound root base, they
seem to jump eighteen to thirty inches each year, stretching skyward a slender
spire that soon branches out. Even the forgotten trees and bushes along my
fences show lush growth—and behold, the highway, the passing cars become
obscured. Our cabin is not only landlocked, but also tree-locked.
I’d like to share with you a device I have used to help me in the knowledge
and use of resources on my land. I have made a master map. On it, I have noted
the location of hickory, butternut, and black walnut trees. Here, too, are spotted a
dozen old apple trees and wild thorn apple. Upon these may be grafted young
apple branches that will bear fruit in a year or two. On the south hillside, just
above the early frost line, I have set out a small but varied orchard—apples,
plums, and cherries. Remember the luscious russets? They have almost gone out
of fashion, but not in my orchard. To change a weed fruit tree into a bearing fruit
of good flavor and size means careful pruning and trimming and then
fertilization. I’ve even fussed with a thorn apple until its fruit is twice the size of
its wild state. Thorn apples go back to my boyhood days, so I must have a thorn
apple tree.
Let me share with you the secret for finding hidden “treasure” on your acres,
the technique of mapping so you may study your land; be it one acre or a
hundred, you must know it.
Test the soil value. Any county agricultural agent will help you do this and
show you how to apply the treatment it needs. Study the substrata. A six-foot
post-hole digger may reveal gravel or springs. Rushes, too, may indicate springs
of real value. Running water means you may have fresh spring greens,
watercress, and mint for your julep, and dried spices.
 Study every foot of your land and you will discover hidden “gold” that will
not require the miner’s pick and shovel. Here’s how to make the master map of
your possible riches.
Let’s say you have a sixteen-acre plot. This means about 800 feet by 800 feet.
Start at the upper left corner. Pace off along the fence line a hundred feet.
(Establish your own stride. You don’t need a tape line. Mine is just two and a
half feet to each step.) Plant a stake each hundred feet and repeat the process
across the upper land and then down one side. You are designing an exact
checkerboard picture of your land. For true reliability travel the lines down and
up with a compass so your stakes—each four—will form perfect hundred-foot
squares that may be represented accurately on a scale map.
Take with you a notebook and pencil. Observe and record everything you see
to the left and right of your stake lines. Here—in square number ten, which
would be two hundred feet east of the starting point and down one hundred and
fifty feet, is a boulder of rich red stone that will be an excellent cornerstone for
your cabin fireplace. Or, two hundred and fifty feet east by thirty-five feet south,
is a trickling spring—or wintergreen berries—or a hickory tree for future
furniture. You note that the little brook flowing down to the bottomland will
assure you water for a garden regardless of the weather and could be dammed
for a natural pool, or piped across lots for power, craftshop machinery, or a
fountain forty feet high. (My hills run three hundred feet high.)
Now all this may sound a bit complicated. If you like what I have explained
so far, let’s chart this checkerboard into larger, more easily recognized zones. As
you have traversed the land forward and back, you have noted landmarks more
easily “picked up” than the hundred-foot stakes. Designate these on your map.
This map now holds a place of honor on your cabin wall. To establish markers
you may even like to erect a stone pile or cairn marker on each two-hundred-foot
corner, if no outstanding landmark is nearby. This may have a name or a number
on the master map. Now, when you want to relocate the hidden boulder, or the
spring with its watercress, it will be an easy matter. A tall maple or a windblown
elm may be your marker. You do not know one tree from another? Well, that
makes it doubly interesting for now you may step into a new world—the tree
world. Your five-foot bookshelf will soon harbor the best book on how to
identify trees. As your respect grows, your understanding deepens, and you
realize, indeed, “only God can make a tree.” When this happens, you will need a
longer bookshelf, for you will want to know the names of the birds you see, the
insects that harm and help, the history of the rock structure, the meaning of the
color. You will come alive to wild plant life and wonder if these mushrooms and
berries are edible. In short, the “gold” will be translated into golden light of new
knowledge. You will find a new source of entertainment, of recreation. With a
light heart, a grateful heart, you will find the “Golden Age of Life”—the treasure
of happiness—all for the taking on your own acres. This is my idea of a paradise
on earth.

So, build your master map from your field notes. Search the treetops. Search
the shy wood life. Search the substrata of your land. Your map may lead you to a
“buried treasure.” Who knows? In this happy health-giving search, you will find
more than “gold”—you will discover God in the Great Out Doors.
Sugarin’

IF your cabin is really in the woods and if you really live life in it, the urge of
early spring, late February, early March will stir us to action out of doors. If
further, it is located in the North Country where sugar maples grow, you’ll know
the sap is running. When days are warm and sunny and nights are still frosty and
clear—sap wells up from the good earth. We may tap the abundance, extract
sweetness, health, and wealth from God-given nature. There never was a more
delicate sugar flavor than maple syrup and maple sugar boiled down from the
sap of the sugar maple tree.

A healthy tree, in a normal sap season, produces twenty-four to thirty gallons

of sap. Boiled down, this will produce nearly a gallon of rich maple syrup. Have
you one tree, or a grove of them? With a bit of effort, you can “sugar off.” Just
an iron kettle on the kitchen stove will do.

Bore a three-eighths-inch hole in the tree about three feet from the ground.
Bore it about two inches deep, pointing your brace and bit straight in. Next drive
in tightly a spout or spile, which can be purchased at the hardware store. Now,
hang upon the spout a small pail and, at once, you will see almost a miracle.
Here is the proverbial “milk and honey” right in your own backyard. As the
bucket fills, carry it inside to the iron kettle. Set it to boil as you would the
teakettle. As it boils down add more sap. Before too long the liquid will take on
a bright, light amber color. First-run syrup of the highest grade is judged on its
weight and color. The browner syrup color seems to depend on the seasonal
variation. To test for the right consistency, instruments have been invented to
measure specific gravity. Do not let this disturb you. Our grandfathers had a
simpler method that worked. They used just plain “horse sense.” When the syrup
begins to thicken, put a drop of it between your thumb and first finger. Feel for
stickiness. It should feel like light mucilage. Another test is to lift a spoonful of
syrup and watch it flow. If it flows like water, boil it some more. If it flows like a
salad oil or light honey, it is ready for bottling. Seal it in sterile jars. You will
look with pride in the months ahead on this stored-up life-giving energy, which
can serve to dress up many a meal. Hot biscuits, fried cornmeal, hot cereals,
French toast, ice cream, puddings, and all manner of pancakes, waffles, and
fritters are enhanced with this sweetest of sweets.
 Some of my happiest boyhood recollections go back to “sugarin’.” We had a
thousand or more maple trees. This required a sugarhouse with a sap pan, four
feet by ten and about five inches deep. The pan was built or set upon brick walls
that served to hold the wood fire. A chimney rose from the end farthest from the
door. Our sugarhouse was made of logs, unchinked, to allow the steam from the
boiling to make its escape. A cupola top directly over the pans was open on all
sides to allow for additional steam escape. It was located on the side of a hill so
the stone boat with its four-hundred-gallon barrel for gathering sap was able to
deliver its load to the storage tank below the road but above the level of the
boiling vats. No one had to carry sap uphill.
My buddy, Nicki, and I hitchhiked on the tail end of the stone boat while two
hired men, one on either side of the tank, trotted to the trees for the full sap
buckets, replaced them with empty ones, running back and forth to the slow-
moving stone boat to empty their loads. The years of logging and sugaring had
worn rude trails through the trees. In a year of abundant flow, one thousand
buckets had to be emptied each day of the run. It was Uncle Claude’s job to keep
up the fires to keep the vats and pans boiling, boiling, boiling. The steam was so
thick one couldn’t see the length of the sugarhouse. These were no eight-hour
days. We stayed with the job as long as the sap ran. It was satisfying. We felt rich
and prosperous, with little concern about tomorrow. The good earth was giving
generously. This fine flow meant profits as well as added home comforts.
When darkness fell and the last trip through the trees was hauled in, the real
fun of sugarin’ began. Usually we were early-to-bed folks, but, at sap time, the
lid was off. Neighbors drifted in and out to taste and chat. As the syrup began to
form in the syrup pan, it was ladled off just for fun. We dripped it over a pan of
clean packed snow. It congealed in sticky strands that could be wound on smooth
sticks or forks and munched like soft taffy. Each winter we revive the thrilling
memories with sugar on snow—made in a kitchen. When the mood suited, or
when Ken thought to bring his mouth organ, there was singing—such harmony
—such barbershop minors—such spirit. Sometimes it was a planned party with
homemade bread, and ham roasted in the coals. The sharp, salty flavor was a
nice contrast to the rich sweetness. There were eggs hardboiled in the sap.
Broiled bits of salt pork and bacon.

When the happy crowd recalled the program of their own tomorrows, they
left us. The menfolk, who must stay ’til the syrup was run into the new shiny
cans, settled down to a card game. The cards were extracted from between two
logs. They stuck together a bit, but we didn’t mind. It was all part of the game.
So when February comes along, let’s make syrup. If you haven’t a maple
tree, look for the mists rising over the maple groves in the nearby country. Any
farmer will enjoy sharing the fun of his sugarin’ with you. Just as the golden
syrup is yours for the taking, so is the friendliness of shared experience. We can
still use today these solid friendly values.
“Tune In” on the Birds

BIRDS will come to your cabin and sing for you, if you encourage them. Feed
and house them and their songs will gladden your heart. If you are unfamiliar
with bird life, you will soon discover a new interest and hobby. But more than
this, Your Cabin in the Woods will become enchanted—a rendezvous for birds.
Build a rustic, simple feeding station. Build a box of half-inch wire mesh, fill
it with suet occasionally, and then watch the fun.
Besides giving us abounding pleasure in song and color, birds have a real
economic value, and your interest in and conservation of bird life is important.
Birds protect vegetation, which is so necessary for man’s very existence. Some
birds “police” the grounds, some the tree trunks, others the branches and leaves,
and still others the air—all devouring the destructive grubs and insects that
would despoil our vegetation. Without vegetation, our streams would dry up;
without our water supply, the human race would not exist. A small effort on your
part to attract the birds will be a contribution toward all humankind.
Before winter is over, try to erect birdhouses for bluebirds, wrens, and
martins. Plant, if you can, thick clumps of bushes for catbirds and chirping
sparrows, a trumpet vine for the hummingbird, and a mulberry tree for the later
joy of midsummer birds.
The spring migration starts in late February and lasts until June. It is a
thrilling experience to keep count of the different kinds of birds that visit you. A
good bird reference book and a pair of field glasses will help you identify your
visitors from other climates and other lands.
In the fall, put out feeding stations. While our wintering birds are relatively
few, the chickadee, the downy and hairy woodpeckers, and the nuthatches will
come to feast near your windows throughout the winter months. For the effort
made to attract and befriend the birds that come to your locality, I know of no
other reward so gratifying. If you must have a pet housecat, provide her with a
collar and small bell, so the birds will have a fair chance to save themselves
when the cat is abroad. This simple remedy to bird destruction is one big step
toward success in being the good neighbor to your birds. The soft tinkle of the
bell will alarm the birds no matter how carefully puss creeps up on them.
Birds will bring music to your cabin.
Gateways, Guardrails, Fences, and
Friendliness

AS we pass through the gateway of our camp once the gate is closed, we are
alone within. A closed gate implies privacy and the stranger will not intrude
incautiously. However, too many people look upon a gate as a means of shutting
out. Let us remember the old gate swings in as well as out, bidding you welcome
and inviting you to come again.
As far as history records, gateways depicted the personality of peoples and
much of the art of the age. In the Roman days when warriors returned from
triumphant battles, they were formally met by the governor or high priest at the
gateway of the city and, here, welcomed and honored. In ancient times, great
cities were enclosed with high stone walls. Pretentious gateways were provided
for the inhabitants to come and go on their peaceful pursuits. On state occasions,
the gateway to a city was the formal meeting place—the place for salutations;
the crossing of swords. Lords and ladies were dressed in their finest—deep
curtsies, sly flirtations, clicking of heels, salutes. In a word, the town was
celebrating and came to its gateway to welcome honored guests and heroes.
 In more modern days, gateways still hold an important part in our communal
life. What a thrill on arriving in one of our great cities to step off a train and into
a beautiful, yes, by its very bigness, inspiring railway station. This is a modern
city’s gateway for its friends and inhabitants.
Now we are inside your gateway and following a winding road with changing
vistas at each turn. The bank is steep on one side so a guardrail is on the curve to
guide our guests who may walk or drive in the night—white-washed boulders or
perhaps a sign or symbol to give them direction.
As you enter the cabin door, the mat may have the word “WELCOME” woven
into it. Often wrought iron lamps on either side of the door light your way and
add welcome.
Your spot in the woods, however large or small, should be enclosed with a
fence—a fence that expresses the artistry and, indeed, the personality of the
owner. As for myself, I would choose the old rail fence because of my childhood
memories. In my boyhood days, we held basket picnics next to the rail fence and
the big elm tree. Those were sweet experiences. The spot was a sort of
playground for neighborhood folks both young and old. We’d meet at the big
elm next to the rail fence. And, so, rail fences warm me. They belong to my
youth. They belong to me now. After all, rail fences are just as good as any other
kind of fence if you can get them. They are simple to build. They have a sturdy,
homely dignity. I must admit I bought nearly three-quarters of a mile of rail
fence from a farmer one time. He was tearing his fence down. I bought it out of
sentiment more than actual need. I’m sure he must have said under his breath,
“They ain’t worth cuttin’ up for firewood.”
Friendly Trails

TRAILS are plain paths or obscure windings among trees, rocks, or boulders.
They become more pronounced by use. Obscure trails are more intriguing. Step
over a log or rock. Make your trail interesting, especially if it leads to your
favorite hiding spot where you may want to be alone—away from the world. Or
it may lead to your bird sanctuary or to a pet chipmunk who will come to you if
you call and will eat from your hand.
You may want your trail to lead to a one-man shack, tucked away out of
view. Put a small fireplace in the shack, a bunk, a book or two. Build it out of
natural resources. Don’t spend too much money. Go to it some starlit night. Take
a friend in tune with your thinking. Here you will find the romance of “night,
God, and the Milky Way.”
This may sound like a three-hundred-acre tract. No, I’m thinking of one, two,
or ten acres. Of course, if you are lucky enough to have more land, so much the
better. Do you still have a farm belonging to the family from your childhood
days? Don’t let it get out of the family. Divide it, if need be, but hold on to it.
Some day when you reach the age of forty, you will wish you still had it, for just
such a purpose as we are discussing. It has too many rich treasures and traditions
to let it out of family hands. You will, at some time in later years, “revert back to
the land.”
To get back to trails, remember trails are undeveloped paths, not too obvious,
not too clear cut. Leave something to the imagination. “Shall we turn right or
left? Now let’s see… there are three stone markers, first a large one, then a
smaller one, and a still smaller one taking the shape of the point of an arrow.”
This is stalking.

Go alone. Sit by yourself and suddenly with God. If you have never done it,
you will have a new experience. Birds will fly overhead. A chipmunk may
chatter, a katydid may say its say, and you will suddenly find yourself with God
and at peace with the world. This is Christ in the mountains. You will find this a
place for clear thinking on the eternal fitness of things.
So, my friend, your trail has not only led you to a place, but to a new
opportunity—perhaps a challenge. Perhaps you will have really discovered
yourself.
Springs

PURE drinking water is as essential as pure air. There is something about

spring water that is different from any other form of drinking water. It is
refreshingly cool and, yet, though one drinks great drafts of it, it is not like ice
water in its effect upon one’s stomach.
I have a favorite spring to which I trudge a mile just for a deep satisfying
drink. The spring forms a deep pool surrounded by moss and rocks. Watercress
and fresh greens line the sides of the little stream below. Somehow, I grow
sentimental and make a ceremony of the approach. To lie flat on one’s stomach
is not at all undignified—prone, nestling close to Mother Earth—lips touching
the sparkling water. I cannot stop there. Face deeper and deeper into the spring,
until opening my immersed eyes I behold a new world. The crystal water serves
as a magnifying glass, showing the delicate plant life, the bubbling particles of
white sand dancing playfully about those small apertures in the earth from which
flows this frolicking stream. Then up again for a breath of God’s fresh air. And
again and again a deep draft. Why must I return to the kitchen faucet to draw a
glass of chlorinated, medicated fluid that is hopefully labeled “pure drinking
water”?
 Life in the outdoors may take the crease out of one’s trousers, but it will leave
impressions of things fundamental, values against which to judge the
shallowness of modern civilization. A great crony of mine, Samuel Bogan, once
invited me to his “hermit’s shack” in Connecticut for a weekend. He waxed
warm about his favorite spring, which was nearby. We both went to visit it, to
drink deeply from its cool waters. As we sat there, he told me of its history. I
said, “Sam, write what you have just told me.” He did and here it is—a classic
legend of an ageless spring in the woods:

I suppose most of us are amphibians at heart. We like to rest beside a

flowing stream. We feel, with Seneca, that “where the spring rises and the
river flows, there we should build our altars and offer our sacrifices.” We
like rain, and clear lakes, and mountain brooks that sing. We like water
done up in glaciers, and the magnificent undrinkable sea.
When my own spirit is battered and I am possessed of that indefinable
thirst not quenched by ordinary water, I like to go to my favorite spring. It
lies in the forest at the foot of a long sweeping hill, and the water comes
from deep rock crevices. It is a pure spring and its flow does not change
with the seasons. Its temperature is the same the whole year round. The
pressure of the great hill pushes the water outward, and the pressure of
the water throws up a small fountain of sand. The little grains of clear and
milky quartz form a cascade at the bottom of the transparent basin.
The water is clear, but the spring is not colorless. The adjacent earth
and sky hide nothing from it. The sky rests there and the trees are reflected
upside-down. It is as though one could reach into the spring and touch the
sky, or wrap one’s finger in a cloud, or pluck a leaf from the tiny trees.
Then, suddenly, like Narcissus, you see your face. Yet, if you look closely
at your face in the spring, it shuts out the sky. It is a reminder that “he
who loves himself will have no rivals.”
The spring, walled in by moss-covered rocks, is as old and as
permanent as the contours of the land in which it lies.
It was formed when the last glacier receded from New England some
thirty thousand years ago. This is to realize, with awe, that prehistoric
animals have drunk from it.
Once, in cleaning it out, we found an arrowhead. What brave left it,
and in what year? The pioneers came, too. They lived near, and planted
apples and maples. Where did they go and why? Westward, with the
Forty-Niners? To the prairies? The wide Pacific?
Yesterday, that is to say, only fifty years ago, a hermit built a cabin on
the slope and the spring was his for a while and takes its name from him,
Hermit’s Spring.

The spring is indescribable because, being perfect, it is not supposed to

exist. Have we not heard, many times, nothing is perfect? But I know
better. I have seen the leaves of autumn on this spring, and the pebble-
tossing fountain on its floor. I have seen within it the blue inverted sky,
and a flight of birds across the sky. I knew the leaves were perfect, and the
 fountain, and the sky, but once, when on a clear winter night, I drank from
it and suddenly realized my face was immersed in a cool sky of stars, and
my spirit rested for a while. I was not thirsty anymore.

God has provided us with refreshment for our souls, with fresh air and good
water, but somehow we are careless in our use and care of them. If you have a
spring on your acres, be sure to protect it against contamination. If it is on a
hillside, build a ditch above it so seepage water will be turned aside and there
will be no possible pollution. I have added to the ditch a protecting fence to keep
out wandering animals, a neighbor’s cow, or thoughtless visitors unfamiliar with
the ways of the woods and the value of natural resources.
ASSUMING you have an automobile, assuming you are an unlucky devil who
gets but two weeks’ vacation—let’s put it in reverse. A two-week vacation with
pay implies you have a steady job, that you are a lucky devil with a job and a
two-week vacation with pay. You want to make that vacation a delight and real
adventure for your growing family. If you use your wits, your initiative, and
resourcefulness, you can make these two weeks rich, sparkling, and satisfying
even if your wage is not large. Work should give us something more than just
bread. With skillful planning, the zest, the fun, the shared growing experiences
of a year’s hard work can be climaxed with a larking adventure together, if you
would like it, in a gypsy wagon or a Family Camp on Wheels.
A Family Camp on Wheels can be yours for almost a song. Your campsite
may be anywhere in North America—or points beyond. In the United States, we
may travel from state to state without having to show visa or passport.
Innumerable camping grounds are open to the public. Many woodland spots,
offering more privacy, are also available to the careful camper. I like to think of
Wisconsin with its myriad large and small lakes as the camping playground of
America. Then, too, the hundreds of national parks, from the friendly
Adirondack peaks to the staggering grandeur of the Rockies, from Maine to
Mexico, offer us all their beauty. Your vacation need not be confined to summer
months. “June may be had by the poorest comer,” for this country is so large and
vast one may find June weather every month of the year.
 Over the past twenty-five years, we have owned the trailer from which these
illustrations have been drawn. I have taken my family with me far and wide.
First came the heated debate, “Where shall we go?” There was no need to make
resort reservations months in advance. We did study geography, interesting
places, road maps. The timetable need not depend on railroads, conducted tourist
schedules, nor taxis. Our course was tempered to the time allowed—a month,
two weeks, a weekend, and the size of our pocketbook. It didn’t cost much more
to feed the family en route than it did at home. There was only one thing to do.
We packed our little covered wagon, checking and rechecking lists of food and
fixings for comfort, fun, fellowship. We hitched it behind our car. Ready for the
road, we were off to a new adventure.
 Believe it or not, my Family Camp on Wheels has spring beds and good
mattresses for four persons—yes, even six with a bit more careful packing and
an added small tent. It carries complete kitchen gear—pots, pans, and dishes,
stove, icebox, tools for repairs, portable toilet. Not only these, but a collapsible
table with a roll-up top and folding chairs and stools. We have, also, a real
shower bath, with adequate privacy. Soap and water are far too cheap for
campers to tolerate unclean bodies.
Part of our equipment was a shovel, rake, broom, and pickaxe—all small. We
must keep compactness in mind. While we started out with pie tins for plates, tin
cups, etc., we finally improved our kitchen and saved space with nesting
aluminum. Four pots nested into one another—containing four soup bowls, cups,
knives, forks, and spoons. This group rested on four plates nested into two
skillets. The entire unit fit into a waterproof canvas bag and took less space than
a water pail. Our stove and reflector oven collapsed into a flat package. With
four pairs of busy hands, the whole camp could be set up in less than thirty
minutes. We made a game of it—improving our setting-up record as you would
improve your golf score.
 Of course, packing four persons into this little “hotel” was a bit intimate, but
usually it was a family circle. Let’s not forget our living “room,” and play
“room,” and (on pleasant days), our dining “room” were the whole outdoors.
Even on rainy days when our table was set back under the small canvas porch,
and we were dressed in boots, raincoats, and hats, there was room to stretch and
play beyond and around our tent.
Where shall we go this time? That all-adventurous question! Suppose it were
a lovely weekend in early fall or spring, when an extra Saturday or Monday was
available. We’d have studied the county geodetic maps, which revealed the
contour lines and pointed out rugged rolling country with large and small
streams. We’d trail along the concrete highway and then choose an intriguing
dirt crossroad that our map had shown led to some such wild spot. Farmers who
have settled in these solitudes are usually friendly folk who enjoy the surprise of
a contact with the outside world. “Sure, you can camp in our orchard. Drive right
down the lane. Anything you want?” I have always preferred to pay for this
privilege. Most often a dollar would be ample. The farmer, too, would gladly sell
us vegetables and eggs, and his wife a loaf of homemade bread. You are pretty
sure, too, to have a return invitation if you have been a good and tidy camper.
 So we’d drive in, choose the apple orchard if there was one, strip the
waterproof canvas cover from the trailer top, open out the double bed-springs,
erect the canvas tent over them, anchor the fly. The stove would be set up in a
safe spot, handy to the dining “room” of the moment, yet where the wind would
not carry the smoke into the trailer. Soon a bright fire would do its work and
savory odors would whet the appetites of the rest of the workers, who were
setting up the shower bath. It was a simple contraption, this shower bath. A five-
gallon collapsible canvas bucket into the bottom of which had been set a spigot.
(You can secure this at any hardware store—the kind to which you can attach a
bathroom hose and sprinkler.) A rope was tied to the bucket handle. The other
end of the rope was slung over the branch of a tree about seven feet from the
ground. A strip of canvas, six feet high and about ten feet long, could be strung
around the bucket for privacy. A small box for a stool, soap, and towel; the
bucket filled from the pail now steaming gently over the fire and, “your bath is
ready.” This is the life, and no large fee for room and bath.
 Of course, I haven’t mentioned in my preoccupation with this refreshing
finale before dinner that the bedding had been tucked in over the mattresses
(always held in place for traveling by straps). That the icebox had been snuggled
into a shady hole, and the toilet set out of sight; the lanterns filled and hung to
thwart the twilight, and the tabletop set onto its frame and centered with leaves,
blossoms, and berries.
One year, I had the rare privilege of a two-month vacation. We decided to go
south. We took our two daughters out of school for February and March and
traveled from our home in New York State to Florida and back. The school
principal agreed with us that the youngsters could learn more of geography,
history, life, and people than in a year of school days.
We decided the fun should begin from the moment we left home behind us.
So often it is possible to spoil the present by rushing to a given destination, with
no sense of leisurely discovering the fun and knowledge to be had along the way.
The person at the wheel is so often to blame for this rushing and fast driving.
Why will some people have such perverse notions! I’m really talking about
myself and some things I had to learn to provide riding comfort and true
enjoyment. I finally got over trying to pack a month’s travel into two weeks. A
little paper and pencil work was needed. Three thousand miles packed into ten
days would require seven hours of steady driving with an average of forty miles
per hour. This would mean holding close to fifty miles per hour to maintain a
forty-mile average. If you want to make a long, rush trip, then you won’t enjoy
your covered wagon or trailer. I learned, too, the Family Camp on Wheels is best
at thirty-five mile per hour, which provides opportunity for all to enjoy the
countryside, historical markers, and an occasional stop for points of interest.
Someone in the car remarks there is a signpost ahead, looks like the marker of a
historic spot, but Father, having gotten his car to that fifty-five- or sixty-mile
tempo of speed, swishes by and then says apologetically, “Well, that’s too bad. I
couldn’t slow up in time.” Then he resumes his same safe and sane driving—
fifty, fifty-five, sixty. Along at three o’clock in the afternoon Mother remarks
casually, “Let’s stop at the next farm where there is a vegetable stand.” Soon we
come to one, but, again, Father, who seems by now to have but one focus point,
the destination three thousand miles away, drives on. The family yells in unison,
“Here are vegetables!” but, alas, Father, with foot deep on the gas pedal, swishes
by again—and again says he is sorry. We then drive the next hundred miles with
no vegetables offered for sale. True, we made another added hundred miles
today. It’s now near seven o’clock. Kiddies, weary and hungry, and Mother—
well it just isn’t fun. We compromise by eating at a “dog” stand, find a place to
set up our camp—anyplace, anywhere—just so we can go to bed. We are weary.
So (reward for his pressure driving), the family remains in the car as the chill of
the night comes. Father sets up his clever little Family Camp on Wheels by
himself in the dark. Where did I leave the flashlight?

A Family Camp on Wheels should mean more than a place to sleep. It’s what
the name implies and, so, I recommend this kind of trailer for longer
encampments and shorter hauls. I have learned, too, for mental happiness and
maximum of camping fun: stop driving at three in the afternoon and set up
camp. Take time to set up properly near a brook or stream. Enjoy the fun of
preparing an outdoor meal. Indeed, the place of your choosing may be so ideal
you may decide to spend a few days. Why not be sufficiently mentally carefree
to react to this kind of adjustment?
 After many trailer trips, we actually added a small rowboat or dinghy, nine
feet long, three and a half feet at the beam, a small outboard motor, and a
surfboard. No, I’m not bragging. The surfboard was rigged from an old
woodshed door, but it worked wonderfully. The board, motor, and surfboard idea
came about when we had the two months in Florida. We envisioned ourselves
within the sound of the ocean surf on a sandy beach. We dreamed of the early
morning dip in the ocean, but no such luck. Choice sandy beach spots were
privately owned and public beaches were controlled by local “city fathers.”
Those with trailers were politely told of the city block set aside for trailer
campers and the law forbade any other camp spots. The city lot for trailer
campers is well set up—usually electric lights with central shower baths and
washrooms and other accommodations, but more congested than our closely
populated city homes. We did find seclusion by renting a two-acre orange grove
for almost a song ($15 per month)—just two miles from the ocean. And so we
had the privacy we wanted and yet all the ocean bathing and surfboat riding. No
one aboard the swanky launches, nor atop the curved commercial surfboards,
learned more of balance and grace, or had more fun in and out of the waves than
did my small daughters. It was satisfying to see them swaying, winging, or
diving into the wake, swimming strongly until I came around to take them
aboard. I was more than content to operate the boat and laugh.
You may now decide, “This man is talking about a thousand-dollar venture.”
Not so fast. I’m a poor man like most people and I wouldn’t trade with any man
of wealth whose only skill is to make money and buy luxuries. Would two
hundred dollars for the outfit I have described seem an orgy of wild spending to
get started? All right then. Let me set out the costs in a bit more detail.
The trailer of the illustration is a commercial product of early vintage. A
friend of mine built his own using mine for a model. Through his mechanic he
secured axles, three wheels (the third a spare), and springs. He built a box for it,
four feet by seven by one foot deep. Attached to each side was a bed-spring four
feet wide. These were hinged so they could fold over the box, one upon the
other. To each he strapped a mattress. Under the floor of the box he built a
cupboard to hold gear and equipment. The canvas tent, which folded into the
box, was an odd shape—twelve feet wide, seven feet deep, and seven feet from
trailer floor to the peak. Attached to the front was a canvas porch twelve feet
wide and seven feet deep. Being handy with tools, he bought the canvas and
other material for the inner frame and fashioned his trailer camp during the
winter months in his workshop. Sometimes I think the anticipation is as great as
the realization. They certainly go hand in hand. The family share in the planning
and in the work. He even rebuilt an old outboard motor, watched for bargains in
boats that were sound but needful of paint and patching. His living equipment,
like ours, has grown through the years. I am proud of him. Our families spent the
next summer vacationing together. He and I sat proudly watching our happy
offspring who were finding the fun of God’s Great Out Doors—enjoying the
fruits of our winter workshop labors. “Well,” Bill said to me, “You get out of it
just what you put in—yes, with real interest.”
 “If you didn’t have it—this Family Camp on Wheels, what kind of a camp
would you most like to have?”
He gave me that classic answer, “I’d have a Family Camp on Wheels.” And
so would I!
During these twenty-five years with our Family Camp on Wheels, we have
camped on many lovely camping spots—beside brooks, streams, lakes. Often the
family would say after a long weekend in the woods, “Can we buy a place like
this?” Well the “miracle” happened—and all within our pocketbook. You, too,
can find your dream spot—land for one, five, or ten dollars per acre. If too
barren, plant trees. They will grow with your love of the place.
We found our spot in the great Zoar Valley near Springville, New York. It is
bounded by the onrushing, swirling Cattaraugus on one side. On the other,
encircling woodland hills extend to the skies. It is far too rough for pasture, and
with just a bit of river-bottom land for gardening. Three babbling brooks slosh
and tumble down the wooded slopes. Hemlock aplenty for real log cabins
someday. There are wild grapes and berries for the taking. Frogs and frog’s legs
for dinner. Mint for juleps. Wild roots for salads. Springs for cool drinks.
Hickory and walnut trees for nuts and their winter fun. Crabapple and apple trees
planted by pioneers of an earlier generation. Here we will trim, graft new life,
spray, and have perfect apples again.
 We have stopped being roamers. We have taken our beloved Family Camp on
Wheels off the highway, recalling the days when it said to us, “Come on. Let’s
go! I just can’t stay folded up,” and we didn’t talk back, we just packed up and
went—to Maine, to Quebec, to Wisconsin, to Carolina.
But we have taken the trailer off the highway. Like the old fire horse, we
turned it out to pasture. It now serves as the guest camp on our own little ranch
and seems content. Soon we shall build a small cabin. We will build it ourselves,
as we built up our trailer equipment.
You, too, may have your Family Camp on Wheels, or Your Cabin in the
Woods, if such as these are your dreams.
THIS simple outdoor fireplace is easily constructed if you have stones. You do
not need plaster or cement. It can be laid up just as a stone wall is laid. If you
have clay on your land, it will serve perfectly as a binder. The cost involved will
be for a grate. With this type of open fireplace, it is best to let your firewood
burn until you have a thick bed of coals before placing your cooking utensils on
the grate. This will avoid a lot of pot-black on your kettles from the smoke.
The outdoor fireplace with the chimney is really the best for all-round
efficiency. Build the chimney at least six feet high. It will carry the smoke above
your head, especially if the wind is contrary. Standing in front of an open fire,
your body somehow acts as a chimney wall and the smoke will travel toward
you and of course, get into your eyes and lungs. So the chimney on your outdoor
fireplace is worth the time and effort it takes to build it.
Chimney construction in an outdoor fireplace is indeed simple. It does not
call for any of the rules required in building a fireplace in your cabin. An inside
fireplace is more or less draft controlled. It burns best when all doors and
windows are closed. There is usually enough seepage of air from cabin windows
and doors to supply a slight flow of air to the fireplace. Opening a window just a
half-inch will help the circulation and airflow. Then, too, the inside fireplace
must be correctly built; i.e., smoke shelf just inside and below the flue; also
smoke pockets. There is an exact relationship of the throat to the opening of your
fireplace.

In the outdoor fireplace, you need not be concerned with these building
precautions. All you need is the fire pit and a flue large enough to carry off the
smoke.
 The grate covering your ash pit should be eighteen inches wide by twenty-
four inches deep. The front of the chimney should start at the far end of the
grate. In my own outdoor fireplace, I have added a three-sixteenths-inch steel
plate, eighteen by twenty-four inches. Here we have the same as the top of a
kitchen stove without the pot holes. With this steel plate cover, the draft travels
in from the front through the fire pit and up the chimney. The steel plate has the
added value of keeping your kettles free from smoke. It will give ample heat for
all cooking except broiling steaks. To broil steaks or chops, remove the steel
plate, and your bed of hot coals under the grate should be perfect to roast your
meat—rare, medium, or well done.
At this point, the coals in the fire pit no longer need any draft. Instead of
building a damper within your chimney, a simple device will do just as well, and,
again, without cost. Just a piece of tin or sheet iron placed on top of the chimney
flue will immediately shut off all draft. If there is still smoke from bits of
burning wood just slide the tin damper a bit to one side to allow the smoke to
escape.
If there is danger of fire during dry summer weather when sparks from your
fireplace may give you concern, you can control this by placing a wire screen on
top of your chimney flue. Weigh it down with a few small stones. If your fire
burns too wildly in a situation like this, you can quickly discipline it with a cup
or two of cold water.
Make It Attractive

WHILE the mechanics of outdoor fireplace construction are important, let us

also put into the building a bit of simple artistry. There should be ample shelf
space. A big stone slab on either side of the fire pit. Shelves near the chimney.
They will serve also as warming ovens. After a little experience, you will find
the right spots to keep your plates hot, another to keep the coffee simmering.
Add to this a stone seat or two. A bit of rail fence will invite birds and small
animals. The stone slabs on either side of your fire pit will, with constant use,
become covered with grease and pot-black and will show discoloration. This is
easily removed. Simply sprinkle a thin coat of wood ashes over the greasy part.
The lye in the ashes will take up the grease. Brush off and scrub as you would
your kitchen sink. Your stone will sparkle again with its natural color and look
most inviting.
 Here we have a deluxe adaptation of the outdoor cooking place with a roof. I
have seen some very elaborate housed-in cooking contraptions, which left me
with the feeling, “Why after all forsake the efficient kitchen in the house?” The
only advantage of a roof is in the event of a sudden rainstorm after you have
gotten the meal underway. I’ve met this problem with an eight-foot-square
canvas that can be quickly placed.
Make the outdoor stove in your yard a place where friends will gather. Place
benches and garden chairs around it. They will rediscover cooking is not
drudgery, but an art of creating delectables. Here is the place to create new
dishes according to your own ideas. Try cooking with olive oil—you’ll like it.
Try okra or eggplant; try different spices. Your friends will be attracted. Recipes
and new dishes will be shared.
What makes an out-of-doors meal is, first of all, the out of doors. The very
setting is important. Floating clouds, the call of wildlife, birds overhead—the
smell of pungent pines wafting past you and through you. Have you ever woken
up refreshed after a good night’s sleep out in the open and eaten sourdough
pancakes as only an old prospector in the Rockies can bake them? Let’s have
breakfast with one of these old sourdoughs. The delicate sizzling noise of frying
bacon, sputtering eggs, the rich aroma of coffee simmering in its blackened
coffee pot. It does something to you. An occasional whiff of smoke from the
campfire and a stack of golden brown sourdough cakes. I still thrill to that
morning years ago camping on Cripple Creek in Colorado, when Harry E.
Moreland, that grand old camper-prospector, yelled, “The burnt offering is now
served!”
 To prepare such a meal over the campfire, with a nicety, without smearing
pot-black over one’s face and clothes, will add to the art of living happily in the
out of doors.
Outdoor Cookery in the Garden Fireplace

COOKING in your garden fireplace is not only fun, it’s getting back to nature.
It is a real art. For perfect family companionship and participation there is
nothing in this world that will give you and yours more satisfaction, the sense of
accomplishment, and satisfaction after it is done with, than a family-cooked
royal meal prepared in your outdoor garden fireplace.
If you want your friends to come often, try the out-of-doors cooking party.
They won’t come just to eat. You will have created a new and intriguing
situation. Your friends will say, “When do we have another? We’ll bring the
steaks—we’ll bring anything you say, but let’s have another garden dinner
party.”
A few simple suggestions before you start your meal:

1. Take with you to your cooking “den” all needed equipment.

2. Have sufficient wood for the fire (three arms’ full or more).
3. Be sure to include a good axe and a low box or table with a cover.
4. Be sure your fire burns long enough to build up a good bed of coals.
Replenish your fire three times with hardwood if you want hot coals—and
really hot coals are the secret of a successfully cooked outdoor meal. Please
don’t make the common error of cooking over flames. They only blacken your
pots, give unsteady heat—first burning your food and often leaving it half
cooked, underdone—faugh!
5. Take with you a towel and, if you can, a basin of water and soap. This will
help make you a clean outdoor cook and keep your clothes clean throughout.
6. Include a few old newspapers, especially if you must put your steak grill on
 the grass, as well as kettles of vegetables and other foodstuffs. When through,
burn the paper and destroy any evidence of untidiness.
7. Be sure to bring salt and pepper shakers, a long fork, and necessary utensils
for your meal. You will spoil the dignity of your attempted culinary art if you
have to run back to the kitchen for this or that.

HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR STEAK?

Rare
Medium
Well Done
Roasted

Now let’s have a one-inch steak for our party tonight. This calls for a bit of
argument with the butcher. You prefer tenderloin, T-bone, sirloin? You want it so
thick? How long has it been cured? Soon the butcher will meet your
requirements. It finds its way into your icebox until the appointed hour. In all my
experience of broiling steaks to make them just really perfect when served, this
calls for one sure approach. No matter how badly you cook your steak, no matter
how much it is overdone or underdone, you won’t go far wrong at any time if
you are sure your butcher gave you really good steaks. If it comes out right and
the steak is delicious, take full credit for it. Chances are, you won’t deserve the
credit until you have learned to select a good steak.
Broiling steak is as old as time, yet many steaks could be better if a few
simple precautions were taken. I prefer a one-inch steak. Thicker steaks, say two
inches, are hard to broil in an outdoor fireplace unless you have had long
experience.
When we talk of rare steak, do we mean red inside? Dripping in blood? Not
for me. The rare steak, to my taste, should have had the effect of the coals
heating it to a thorough hot throughout. If you like your steak raw, better serve it
raw and call it such.
Place your steaks in a toaster grill. Put one-half-inch strips of bacon across
the steak at three-inch intervals and at right angles to the wire of your grill.
Bacon enriches the flavor. Place the grill on your bed of hot coals. (Put a half-
brick at the far side of your coals and a fresh green log nearest you on which to
rest the grill.) The grill should be about two inches from the coals. Let it sizzle
for two minutes. Then turn the steaks over. Listen to the grease drip into the hot
coals. Watch it jump into the flames. Good! Let it burn. Let the flames play
around the steaks for about three minutes wildly! Turn the steaks over and repeat.
If flames do not start at once, throw in a shaving. (Have you a jackknife? It
counts in broiling a good steak.) After three more minutes of “wild” burning of
your steak, you will have a perfect one—burnt brown on the outside, juicy and
rare within. For your guests who want well-done steaks, just roast them a bit
longer. Add salt and pepper and top with butter before serving.

The meal over with, you will soon start singing folksongs, chatting, singing
again. Someone brings a guitar or banjo. Soon there are blinking stars. Again a
lovely night. In season, we find lovely, inspiring nights in any part of this global
world. Let’s use them. Call in your guests, your friends, for a supper about your
outdoor garden fireplace.

HAMBURGERS
I’ve grown thoroughly dissatisfied with the modern hamburgers as served by
most food shops. To begin with, they come paper-thin—almost as thin as the
oilpaper sheets that separate them. They are then almost burned to a crisp,
cooked through and through, and served with hot sauces to cover the lack of
natural flavor. Beef, to me, must always be rare at its heart. Try rare hamburgers.
First buy good beef and have it chopped. Make it into small balls or fat patties
two inches thick. Put a little butter into the frying pan. Be sure your fire is hot.
Fry vigorously for two minutes. Flatten slightly. Turn, season, and repeat. Your
hamburger is ready to serve. It is as good as a choice steak—costs less and is
most simple to prepare. It’s fun!

HUNTER’S STEW
If you want to serve a meal to a large group without spending half of next
month’s earnings, try Kettle-Hole Hunter’s Stew. It is easily prepared and makes
a satisfying meal. It’s unique and different.
Let’s say you are to have ten or fifteen folks for Sunday supper. Buy boneless
meat—beef, lamb, pork—or all three. Allow six ounces per person. Bones will
add to the richness and flavor but should not be counted on as fillers. Cut the
meat into small pieces and drop into hot salted water. You will not have to watch
your Kettle-Hole Stew, but can return after two hours and find it ready to serve.
Here’s how.
Dig a hole about eighteen inches deep and six inches wider than the diameter
of your cooking utensil. We use a ten-quart pail with a lid. Be sure the walls of
the pit are straight up and down. Now set a crotched stick on either side of the
hole. Across these lay a green pole. Hang the pail on the crosspole so it is half
way down into the hole. Before placing the pail, build a good fire in the hole. Let
it burn until a bed of live coals has accumulated. Now place your pail, filled
three-quarters full of water. Next, build a stockade fence of three-foot-long
branches (about one to three inches in thickness) around the pail. See that the
lower ends of these branches are resting in the coals below. Your fire is now self-
feeding.
 When the water boils, salt it and add your meat. Cover the pail and then leave
it alone. Bring out the camp chairs and cushions and savor the fragrance of your
stew. Control your appetite. Just a half-hour before serving, add vegetables—
potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, seasoning. When all is ready, ladle out a cup of
broth, add a crisp salad, bread and butter, a light dessert, coffee. You’ll like it.
Your guests will go home well fed and happy, and will be eager to try this easy
meal in their own backyards.

POTATOES BAKED IN A HOLE

The earth must be sandy and reasonably dry. Potatoes will bake brown and
mealy in fifty-five minutes in a fire hole. Dig the hole eighteen inches deep by
fourteen inches wide. Build a fire of hardwood. Let it burn until the hole is half-
full of coals. With a shovel push the coals aside, then throw in a layer of
potatoes. Quickly release the shovel and the potatoes will be covered with hot
coals. Now fill in the hole with the loose dirt that has been dug out from the
hole. The potatoes cannot char, but will come out brown and mealy.
 Another way is to wrap the potatoes in clay and bake them in the coals of a
campfire. About the same amount of time is required. A few experiments are
necessary to prove this skill.

NEW ENGLAND BOILED DINNER

Just which of the New England states would claim discovery of this richly
flavored meal, I do not know. It came to me from our Vermont relatives and
shared the honors with Boston Baked Beans and Brown Bread as a Saturday
night repast.
The unit is a lean rump of freshly corned beef. It is covered with cold water
and set to simmer in a large covered kettle. After an hour or so (depending, of
course, on the weight of the piece), the vegetables are added. First (because they
take most time), add golden slices of turnip or rutabaga. Then add quarters of
young cabbage, about three large onions, and as many whole potatoes as desired.
No further salt or seasoning is necessary. Now, in a separate kettle set to simmer
until tender, cook plenty of fresh red beets. Cook them with their jackets on to
preserve their deep-red color. Serve these separately. (Don’t peel the beets with a
knife. As soon as they are cool enough to handle, their jackets can be gently
squeezed off.)

“RED FLANNEL” HASH

 After your New England dinner, drain all vegetables thoroughly. Remove the
corned beef. Add to the drained vegetables the peeled beets. Place in a wooden
chopping bowl. Chop fine and mix thoroughly. Let stand overnight and serve for
breakfast. Just heat thoroughly in a buttered frying pan or skillet. This meal has
become a standard Sunday morning breakfast with us.

CHILI
There is one meal we like to serve on any occasion, where food and simple
preparation are the two points most of focus. It is the kind of a meal, too, that
can be stretched almost indefinitely. It is easily carried, easily salvaged. It is a
one-dish meal with all the needed food elements. Its preparation need take a
mere twenty minutes and, yet, what is often more important in a mixed group of
varied plans and interests, it never spoils by a delay in serving.
The unit ingredients serve five. Into an iron-covered kettle, place one pound
of hamburger. Cover it and let it sear rather than brown. Add one large can of
tomatoes, one jar of prepared kidney beans, one can of spaghetti in spicy sauce.
Add a heaping teaspoon of salt. Stir well and let it heat through. Just before
serving, add two tablespoons of chili powder.
If the group number has not been determined before the purchase of supplies,
double the amount of hamburger, triple the number of cans, and all is set for
most any contingency, provided the kettle space is adequate. Add a quarter-
pound of hamburger and one can of any of the ingredients for each additional
guest. Somehow, though the flavor may be varied slightly in one direction or
another, it won’t ruin the nourishing and appetizing result. The unopened cans,
even the unused hamburger, can be utilized for other meals without waste.

BAKED BEANS
Here is a bit of outdoor bean cookery that works. Beans are put to soak
overnight and then boiled until tender. They are then placed in a stone jar with a
cover. The jar is then filled with chunks of salt pork, syrup, and spice to suit
one’s taste. For an oven, use a five-gallon tin can with the top removed, or a
piece of sheet iron the height of the stone jar and about three feet long, bent into
a circle to fit around the jar. Cover the top with a piece of flat tin. A slow-
burning fire built around the tin cover is the last step, except to dip into the jar
from time to time to taste and to keep enough water on the beans to prevent
burning. But “what a meal” when the pork and beans are served!

THE “HOT DOG, BACON, AND MELTED CHEESE DREAM”

For a simple picnic meal at little cost but big returns, try a “Hot Dog, Bacon,
and Melted Cheese Dream.” Wieners or hot dogs, one or more for each member
in the party, split in half lengthwise. Place within a thin slice of American
cheese. Now slit a strip of bacon lengthwise and roll the half piece around the
wiener like a barber’s pole. Place it in a reflector oven and roast. After a few
minutes of broiling, turn the wieners around to roast on the other side. After
another eight minutes, your meat and cheese “dreams” are ready—cheese melted
and oozing out. Have the buns or bread toasted and hot, add a pot of coffee or
tea, and here you have a tasty picnic meal. Add radishes, celery, or olives. (Helps
with the roughage.) Now a bit of fruit or the added homemade pie. Yum, yum.
Burn up the paper plates and cups and go home with no worry about
dishwashing. Reflect on a perfect day and you haven’t ruined your pocketbook.
Every meal need not be a banquet. The fun of eating includes companionship,
working together, the sparkle of the fireplace, cooling embers, and confidences.

CHEESE AND CRACKERS

Brown the crackers in the fireplace reflector oven. When slightly brown, put
a thin slice of cheese between two crackers. Roast for a few minutes. The cheese
will run over, under, and around the crackers. Serve hot and boast, “It can’t be
beat!” Good for late afternoon with a cup of tea—or perhaps a bit “wild,” but
mild, hot buttered rum—but that’s another story.

FIREPLACE CINNAMON TOAST

For a four o’clock tidbit, there is nothing equal to toasted white bread with
cinnamon and sugar. First, toast the bread. Then, spread it with butter, sprinkle
with cinnamon, and spread with sugar. Set it back against the fire ’til the sugar
gets hot and sizzles and the cinnamon spreads—your toast is ready. Add a cup of
tea or coffee. It’s a perfect four o’clock treat. Your guests will like it.

ROLLED ROAST OF BEEF

Before the fireplace or open fire… roast beef, either rib or rolled, needs
constant turning before a reflector fire. Bind the roast with stovepipe wire, both
ways, to hold it tightly together. Have one lead wire running up from the roast
and fasten to a piece of twine or cord. This is to provide for twisting. Fasten the
twine to the top of the fireplace shelf or on a pole in front of your open fire. On
the twine above the wire, place a cross-stick, ends of which run through the cord
strand. These rest against the fireplace wall. Turn this stick every five or ten
minutes so the roast is exposed on all sides. With an outdoor fire, a longer
branch, say three feet long, can be applied to regulate the turning of the roast.
 I forgot to mention the drip pan. Place a frying pan below the roast just in
front of the reflector oven. (See sketch.) Place in this drip pan a bit of lemon,
orange juice, cinnamon, cloves, butter, sugar, and water enough to keep it
watery. Soon the roast will begin to sizzle and drip into the drip pan below. With
a long-handled spoon (fasten a three-foot wooden handle to a large tureen spoon)
dip up the juice from the drip pan and baste the hot roast every few minutes.
Flames will flare up. Keep a hot fire. Don’t worry. This is as it should be. Keep
the fire very hot. An eight-pound roast will require about two hours. Gather
around the fireplace—cushions, chairs, perhaps a bridge game—but watch the
roast. Keep basting often.
When is it done? If you want a rare roast inside and burnt and crisp on the
outside, the preceding will show you the way. The best way to really know is to
cook a few roasts of your own. You will finally find your own answer—rare,
medium, well done, burnt—or all at the same time.
THE SHORE DINNER
Do you really want a great meal full of anticipation? A meal that will keep
you drooling for forty-five minutes as you watch its progress? A meal, which, in
its stages of development, will make you forget business, problems, worries,
and, when finished and eaten, will leave you relaxed and in a happy daze of
comfortable calm? A meal fit for kings, but which today may be enjoyed by
vagabonds?
Are you really hungry, and are you prepared to intrigue your palate with a
real rare experience, which, after eating, will leave your satiated, contented,
satisfied? Then try the Lobster Pot—lobsters, clams, clam broth, chicken,
vegetables—all in one cooker the size of the family wash boiler. Indeed, the
home wash boiler is just about right size to cook for a party of up to ten people.
It is obvious being four to five hundred miles from the seashore (Buffalo,
New York), we must secure the best and freshest lobsters and clams possible.
Through an arrangement I have with a Boston shipper, we get lobsters delivered
here in Buffalo within fifteen hours after being caught.
The meal is a perfectly simple one, or it can be made elaborate. It is not an
expensive meal. Most of all it needs a little dramatics—the out-of-door setting,
the group near enough to the outdoor cooking to watch it casually as
conversation leads to western civilization, war, peace, and humdrum gossip. But
observe all of the food items that are included—the stunning of the lobsters by a
blow on the head and puncturing the brain with an ice pick—not pleasant but
humane—green, fresh, live lobsters that come out of the pot a brilliant red.
The spigot on the lobster pot is not essential, but very convenient, for the first
course is the serving of a cup of broth together with a big bowl of clams and
drawn butter. Serve each person wherever they are sitting—on the grass, in
garden chairs, etc. If the broth is really as it should be—that is, made up of all
the drippings from the food within the cooker, your guests will want a second
helping. So they go over to the cooker and draw from the spigot the steaming
broth, without having to dip down deep into the cooker and risk the danger of
burns from the steam.
Because I could not find the kind of equipment I wanted for my shore dinner,
I had my own tank or lobster pot cooker made. It is nothing more than a tin tank,
16 inches by 16 inches by 16 inches, with a somewhat snug-fitting cover. Within
are four wire basket trays that fit one on top of the other. They contain all the
ingredients except bread, butter, salad, coffee, and dessert.
Here is what to include—clams, lobsters, chicken (if you want to be lavish),
celery, carrots, potatoes, sweet corn, green or wax beans, or any combination of
fresh vegetables, and seaweed. The broth, clams, and lobsters are the important
part of the meal. You won’t want to eat many vegetables—their importance is to
flavor the broth.
But let’s get on with the preparation—

1. Pour a gallon and a half of water into the cooker. Bring to a wild boiling state
—that is, there must be real steam generated in the cooker to the point where
the cover will bob up and down and may need a small stone on top to keep it
in place.
2. Place the lobsters (preferably two-pound ones) in the second tray from the
bottom; cover with seaweed.
3. Wrap each piece of chicken in cheesecloth. When the dinner is done, the
chicken should be white and mealy and will need to be pan-browned in butter.
The cheesecloth will keep the meat from falling apart. Place the cut-up
chicken (broilers are preferable) in the next tray above. If there is any room in
the tray, add vegetables. Note: The chicken is an extra and can be omitted.
4. In the next tray above, put the rest of the vegetables. Sweet corn on the cob is
most desirable and will do much to enrich the broth. (Note: Speaking of these
trays, I have attached to the bottom tray a long wire handle running up on the
inside of either side of the cooker so all trays can be lifted out at one time. A
good pair of canvas gloves with cuffs is necessary to protect your hands and
arms from the steam.)
5. Put these four trays in the cooker and let them steam for forty minutes. And, I
mean steam!
6. At the end of the forty minutes, lift out all trays and fill the bottom tray with
clams. Put all trays back and steam for ten minutes longer. Your shore dinner
will then be ready.
7. Remove the cooker from the fire. Draw off the broth. Serve a bowl of clams to
your guests with dishes of drawn butter. Eat the clams with your fingers and
have plenty of towels or paper napkins on hand. Be prepared to decorate your
face from ear to ear. One just may not be fastidious at this stage of the game.
8. In the meantime, place the trays on a table or bench and let your guests help
themselves. It will be necessary, however, for someone to split the lobsters
into halves after you have removed the seaweed. This is best done with a
small hand-axe or cleaver, if you have one. One-half lobster to each person is
ample.
9. Now add a chef’s salad, bread, butter, coffee, and those other things you may
want for your meal. For dessert, there is nothing I have found that goes better
than just half a grapefruit. It cuts through and brings one back to normal.

If you go to a cottage where you have tables, dishes, and all of the other
equipment, then, of course, it is nice to serve this shore dinner with a bit more
formality. As I said in the beginning, there is nothing unusual about this meal.
Be sure to get seaweed when you buy your lobsters. Do not salt the chicken or
you will spoil the tang of the seaweed. Seaweed will season it sufficiently. The
chicken should be salted to taste when browned.
Another tip. Be sure to watch your broth so it does not boil away. You will
have to determine the amount of water by the size of the cooker you have at your
disposal. To me, the best part of the meal is the clam broth. Save the leftover
broth for lunch tomorrow.

REFLECTOR-OVEN BISCUITS
Do you know how to mix baking powder biscuits without using utensils and
measuring tools? No? Let me give you an outdoor 1-4-3-2-1 method.
Take a handful of flour (as much as your cupped hand will hold). Put it in a
dish, or small pail, if you do this at home. If on a hike, put it in a washed five-
pound salt bag. Now dip your fingers and thumb, drawn to a point, into the
baking powder can and draw out as much baking powder as your fingers and
thumb will hold. It won’t be much, but it will be enough. Next pick up as much
salt as you can pick up with three fingers and your thumb and throw into the
“kitty” (bag). Your next move is to pick up all the sugar you can with two fingers
and the thumb. Add this to the bag. Finally, stick your index finger into a jar of
shortening and withdraw as much as you can up to the first knuckle. You now
have the ingredients for one big biscuit. If you want two or more, increase the
process to the size and number of biscuits you want. Add milk or, if milk is not
available, water and mix to a stiff paste. Sprinkle a bit of flour on a piece of
paper, flatten your biscuit, and cut into inch-and-a-half squares. Place them in
the reflector oven pan and place the reflector oven close to the hot fire. After a
few minutes, turn the biscuits around to bake on both sides. Now get a real taste
of the sunny south. Serve with butter and jam.
PERPETUAL PANCAKES
Ingredients: 3 cups of buckwheat flour, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 yeast cake (in first
mixing), 2 cups buttermilk, sour milk, or water, 1 teaspoon baking soda.
This unit can be varied according to the number of pancakes desired. There
should be at least a cupful of batter left as a starting unit for the next day. Again,
add milk, flour, or cornmeal.

CORN PONES (FOR EIGHT PEOPLE)

Ingredients: 3 cups yellow cornmeal, 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 8 teaspoons
baking powder, 2 teaspoons sugar, 4 cups water.
Combine the dry ingredients and the shortening. Stir in enough water to be
able to drop the mixture from a spoon.
To bake: (1) Fill a pan ½-inch deep and place it in the reflector oven; or,
(2) put the batter in a frying pan, ¼-inch thick, and hold over the fire to bake
the bottom. Then, bake the top by reflector heat—propping the pan against the
fire; or (3) drop spoonfuls on a very hot rock.

YOUR COMPLETE DINNER ON TWO STICKS OF WOOD

A delicious meal can be cooked on two sticks of wood. Beef, mutton, or lamb
—onion, bacon, biscuits, plus potatoes baked in the coals, a cup of cocoa, and an
apple—a real meal, without any cooking utensils—just a cup for the cocoa. Do
you want to try it in your garden? Well, I have explained the importance of a
good bed of coals, which is vital in any outdoor pioneer-cooking venture.
This meal is simple. Cut a straight branch of dry wood, preferably white pine,
the thickness of your thumb and about two feet long. Some wood is bitter (like
oak), some sweet. The way to find out is to taste it. If it tastes bitter, then
certainly it isn’t sweet—so avoid it. With your jackknife, whittle your stick
smooth and cut a sharp point at one end.
 Now, cut your meat into one-and-one-half-inch squares. Cut the bacon slices
to the same size. Cut the onions crosswise so you will have many rings. Next,
push the pointed end of the stick through a piece of meat, then a piece of bacon,
then a ring of onion. Do this again and again until you have at least a quarter-
pound of meat or more, according to your appetite—first meat, then bacon, then
onion until the stick is filled. Leave an eighth-inch of space between each piece.
Salt and pepper. (If you really want a pioneer salt and pepper shaker, take a piece
of your old bamboo fishing pole. Cut off two inches on either side of the joint.
Fill one end with salt, the other with pepper. Put a cork in each end and put it in
your pocket until needed.)
Now we come to the real fun. Prepare the biscuit using the 1-4-3-2-1 method
as previously explained. Secure another stick like the one for your meat. Flatten
your biscuit batter into a long ribbon about two inches wide and about eight
inches long and one-half inch thick. Wind this around the second stick, barber
pole fashion, and pinch tight at either end of the stick to seal it in place.
Start to bake your potatoes first, because they take longer. Put them deep into
the coals or use the reflector oven. They take about forty minutes and time is
important if you want to serve everything hot.
Cut two branches about two feet long with small branches sticking out at the
side and tip to hold your two sticks. (See illustration.) Force these into the
ground on either side of the hot coals. Place the meat stick on the top crotch.
Give it a quarter turn every five minutes. Soon it will begin to sizzle. The fat
from the bacon will run into the beef and the onion will curl and brown and
flavor your meat. Now place your biscuit stick on the crotch below and,
likewise, give it a quarter turn every few minutes. Soon it will begin to swell and
then brown. (Stop drooling! Wait a bit longer.) Next, the juice from the meat and
bacon above will drip down on your biscuit and you will have a buttered hot
biscuit.
Set your cup of cocoa near the fire, unwrap the celery and radishes, shine up
the apple for your dessert, and—presto—you have prepared a royal meal.

Throw all the waste into the fire,

Take home the cup and now aspire
To simpler life and greater giving.
You, too, will grow by simple living.
Picnic a la “Cart”

TRY out your guests on a party picnic a la “cart.” This is a small, two-wheeled
cart with an icebox, storage room for food, fixings, and cooking gear. All spaces
are arranged for the picnic feed. Make it yourself. I made mine and it works. It is
different.
Two drop-leaf tables that fold on top when open give ample serving space.
You don’t have to go to your backyard fireplace every time you want an outdoor
meal. If on a stream or lake, or at the seashore, have a shore dinner—clams,
lobsters. Start with clam broth or soup. Try hot dogs or a New England dinner
with vegetables.
If you have a favorite spot, a view from a hilltop, a sunset—perhaps a swim
—then load your picnic a la “cart” with food, drinks, and gear and have a hilltop
meal with an inspirational view. It will give you a different setting. Your friends
will like it and beg to come again.

Picnic a la “cart” is a country home variety to your place in the woods. It’s
just a stunt, but different. It is the “tea tray” in your living room, a bit roughed
up. It’s fun. It’s novel. Add a few cushions, a campfire, songs, stunts, the moon,
twinkling stars… a perfect party.
OUR pioneer fathers learned the art of living happily together in God’s Out
Doors. No running water. No electric lights. No radios. No automobiles. No
servants. They lived simply—clear in thinking, clean in relationships, hard
fighting, but friendly to a fault to a neighbor in distress. They lived by simple
standards, asked little of life, were willing to work hard, and contented with
meager returns. Occasionally they relaxed. When they were playful they “played
hard, and when they worked they didn’t play at all.”
Life is different today. It’s easier in many ways, but it is tense and highly
geared. It plays on our nervous system. It does not contribute to wholesome
fatigue at the end of a day as the fatigue of a day of simple hard labor—sweat,
wholesome toil, physical things—accomplished.
We of today have not changed much. Our environment has changed. We still
have it in our blood to “revert to the land,” to the out of doors. And just so,
because of the pattern of city life we need again to learn, as our ancestors did,
the art of living happily together in the woods. In a word, going back somewhat
to primitive thinking and living, simple pleasures, homely tasks. It calls for a
release from the urge of going to the movies, nightclubs—late hours, continuous
excitement as a steady diet—all of which is the result of restlessness, and
restlessness is often the result of overexcitement and too much stimulation.
In our Cabin in the Woods, contentment may come from the quiet of friends
around our fireside, neighborhood news, storytelling, companionship, the
enjoyment of a good book, or, unashamed, we crawl into bed at the “ridiculous”
hour of half past eight or nine o’clock.
 Let us get still closer to the outdoors by living for a spell in a tent. Perhaps
we can clarify a bit how we can come to better understand and enjoy the
outdoors by a mere intimate knowledge and understanding of outdoor life, of the
relationship of ourselves to the elements, to wildlife, to those folks about us—
simple living.
To live successfully out of doors, no matter if one is thirty, fifty, or more, one
needs a reasonable feeling of security. Added to this, we need experience in
outdoor living that will prove or disprove the things we have learned of the out
of doors. Next, the urgent need of friendliness and understanding—friendliness
with those about us, of wild animal life about us that brings happiness to us and
security to them. Finally, we all need approval and satisfaction. Approval from
those about us. Satisfaction in a job well done. To do so we need an outdoor
setting. Will you and your family, therefore, go with me and mine to our favorite
camp spot and camp in tents for a few days? Let’s be primitive. It is June. New
York State. Tents, duffel, and equipment are all packed. A short thirty-mile trip
and we are out in the woods—alone and away from the world. We have chosen
the spot. Soon tents are up. The outdoor kitchen with pots, pans, and improvised
stove is all set. We are away for a long weekend on our own.
Now we must change from city togs to those of the out of doors. Let’s be
comfortable. A red shirt, colorful corduroy trousers or slacks, shirt open at the
neck.
This is lovely countryside. Nothing majestic, just rolling hills, valleys, trees,
farms, fences—a small lake. We can see, as our hillside slopes down to the small
lake below, scattered stately trees, elms, maples—especially one that stands
alone and has spread its great branches, massive, proud, commanding. There are
meadows about, bushes, young trees growing strong. Bushy trees shade our
tents. The tree stump nearby will serve as a feeding station for the squirrel and
chipmunk playing hide-and-seek among the rocks and trees. See, they are
looking us over. The spring-fed stream just beside our camp flows quietly. From
the dugout pool comes a constant supply of sweet, fresh drinking water for our
needs.

The small lake below us is fringed with trees. A few tents on the far side add
contentment, for we know there, too, are lovers of the out of doors. Out of
hearing distance, they add to the setting. A bright-green upturned canoe on the
sandy beach is clearly visible. The day is sunny and warm. Still. Serene.
Beyond the lake, the land rises upward for several miles until it reaches the
great skyline, dotted with trees, farms, forests. The hillside is laid out in great
patches of farmlands, each surrounded by fences, some still with picturesque
old-fashioned rail fences. Each plot is fringed with bushes, trees. To the right is
the cow pasture—green—where contented cattle spend lazy long days. Far to the
right is the great balsam swamp. We must make a trip there someday. It is really
a bird sanctuary.
In the middle of all this setting are our neighboring farmer’s house, barns,
silos, garden spots, and orchards. The Moores are hardworking folks. They live
simply. They have no need to envy city folks. They are the salt of the earth and
the backbone of our democracy.
So I welcome you to enjoy with me this lovely countryside.
Security: The North Woods

NOW that our camp is all set, let’s sit down for a heart-to-heart talk. Let’s talk
about the art of living happily together in the woods.
What do we mean by “security in the out of doors”? Is it self-preservation?
Or, is it accepting nature happily and living without mental reservations?
My daughter and I once made a canoe trip into Canadian waters. On arrival at
a waystation, we loaded our duffel into our canoe and paddled several miles
down Pickerel River, stopping for breakfast with friends. It was raining hard.
They wanted us to stay with them because of the wet weather. My daughter, after
thanking them, turned to me and said, “Daddy, let’s camp. We can take it.” So
we paddled on. We found an island to set up our camp and it became our island.
We took one- or two-day trips from our island camp. One day on returning, we
paddled nearly twenty miles. It was a stormy rainy day. It was a hard pull against
the strong headwind. Late in the afternoon, I asked my daughter whether she was
getting tired. “No,” she said and paddled on. I was grateful she didn’t ask me. At
last, we found our island and our tent camp. We unloaded our duffel and,
dripping wet, hurried to our tent. We quickly started a cheery reflector fire from
dry wood stored within our tent. A change to dry linen, a good supper, and my
daughter sat back and said, “Daddy, isn’t this snug?” She was really saying she
enjoyed the security of a companion who could “take it.” Security in that Great
Out Doors—miles from the nearest supply station and, yet, there we were,
happy, comfortable, with the feeling we could take care of ourselves in those
faraway primitive conditions and enjoy it. That is a bit of real security.
All of us who live in the woods need mental security. I wish I could, by a
miracle, relieve all folks who, through their childhood days, had their lives
spoiled by superstition, inhibitions, fears—those things that have gripped them
and distorted their thinking because of misinformation. Do you still hesitate
when a black cat crosses your path?

FEAR
I have been in many “tight” places in the Rockies, the Canadian woods, and
streams when fear gripped me to the point where mental processes ceased
suddenly to be rational. Environmental influence can play tricks with one’s
thinking.
Once while “shooting” swift rapids, my canoe shipped water. The going was
tough—“can’t make it”—fear—fright—then panic gripped me. “Help! Help!”
But there was no one within miles. I pictured myself dead—stiff and cold at the
bottom of the falls miles below. I hate water in my nose.… My last will and
testament—what will happen to my new camping equipment?
This kind of thing comes with lightning speed. Fear grips you and strangles
the ability to think sanely. Do something—attack and your fear begins to give
way. Take a firm grip on your paddle and say over and over again, “I won’t give
up. I won’t give up. I can make it. I will.”
I’ve been lost on the trail. “The compass is ‘cockeyed.’ It points the wrong
way.” I started to run. Crazy? Of course. You’re really not lost. You’re just
confused. Get a hold on yourself. Sit down on a log. Take a deep breath and look
around. Gradually, your tension lessens and normal thinking brings a returned
faith in your compass and, eventually, the way back to the trail.
Fear keeps close companionship with doubt, flirts with misinformation,
encourages lack of self-confidence, welcomes superstition, inconsistency, and
goes hand in hand with worry. Fear is the hobgoblin of confused thinking. It
comes from within. Grandmother used to say, “It’s in you what ails you.” I
believe she’s right. What ails you and what cures you are within you. Even night
noises, stealthy footfalls, the panic of seeing a snake too suddenly—all met by
thought or built into “mountains” by worry. “It’s in you what ails you.”

AT HOME IN THE FOREST

Did you ever have that empty feeling when by yourself in the deep woods,
when eerie noises from the wildlife, the movement of trees and bushes gave you
a bit of jitters and the sense of utter aloneness? I have lived through that
experience but have outgrown it. Now the woods are full of friendliness. I have
learned to know the wildlife by name, and nature and noises that have simple
homely meanings. The squirrel scolds. The chipmunk chirps. The crow calls,
“caw, caw, caw,” a rally or a warning.
Look about you. You will discover three worlds teeming with abundant life.
Beneath you—the underground world—small holes in the earth, home and
security to hundreds of small animals. A world from which man is barred. Back
doors and front doors, storage rooms and communication tunnels. Then there is a
world for the long-legs that depend on speed for their livelihood. They step
noiselessly, creep stealthily, or crash boldly through the trails or brush, according
to their natures. The fox, the wolf, the deer—not often seen by one who has
never learned the art of stalking, who cannot avoid snapping twigs, who
“telegraphs” ahead of his approach as he brushes and stirs dry leaves in passing.

The third world is that of the treetops and the sky. Here, squirrels use the
interwoven branches as their natural thoroughfare. Songbirds flit from tree to
tree, hawks circle and swoop, wild geese in patterned flight thread seemingly
charted paths across the dark blue ocean of the sky.
 Man is never alone in the woods. Even at night, you can see the gleam of tiny
eyes watching you, fearful, ever alert. The satisfying triumph of their confidence
in you is worth the time and patience it takes to win it.

LOST AND FOUND

Being lost in either the woods or the city, or anywhere else for that matter,
can be largely attributed to just plain ignorance. The uninformed get lost. The
would-be sailor who takes a sailboat out in a light breeze becomes “lost” when
the fog descends and he realizes he is not wise in the ways of the water.
Being lost is closely allied to being confused. Confusion comes from lack of
pertinent information. How often we meet people who join in discussions “over
their heads” and find themselves utterly “lost” because they were misinformed
or uninformed.
But let’s talk of being lost in the woods. When one loses one’s sense of
direction, one becomes confused, then frantic and apt to do silly things. To
cringe in the presence of a black snake is to be “lost” in the woods. To know
good snakes from bad is to know a black snake is as tame and playful as a kitten.
It is an unwise man who tampers with wild mushrooms. Many have paid the full
price for ignorance.
When in doubt, sit down on a log, take time, and bring your best reasoning to
bear. You will soon get your bearing. A good woodsman entering a thick woods
stops occasionally to look back, realizing the way in and the way out will have
different landmarks. He breaks a branch here and there. Leaves a stone or two at
a turning point in the trail; watches the treetops and notes each out-of-the-
ordinary landmark.

ANIMALS AND INSECTS

Let us try sleeping out on the grass in the open. Along about two o’clock in
the morning, could you lie there peacefully, realizing suddenly you had a visit
from a skunk who sniffled all around you? A skunk is really one of the nicest
little pets and has been unfairly accused over these years. He will come to your
bed because he is just a curious fellow. He is getting acquainted and has the
cutest little sniffle. After looking you over, he will quietly amble off without
harming you. I warn you, however, if you reach for a gun or an axe, the polecat
will “shoot” first. Go to sleep, my friend, and feel secure in the thought that the
polecat is your friend, too.
How many of us step on a spider as he crosses our path? Do we do it because
we have added to God’s great scheme of things and reduced the several billions
of spiders by one? Or are we stepping on it to relieve some innate fear of ours—
the fear that something might bite us? That’s mental insecurity. I have known a
mother whose little boy proudly showed her a great big toad, which he carried in
his hand. She stiffened, withdrew, tensed—and gave him as his reward the
assurance he would have a handful of warts.
What I do want to say is real security comes in the knowledge that God is in
his heaven and has organized his great universe for our good. He has given you
and me the privilege of being on it to enjoy it.
Years ago, I met a man who had an uncanny dislike for mosquitoes, bugs,
beetles, and all creepy and crawling things. It was more than a dislike. He was
fraught with fear. He termed them all insects—things unnecessary in the world,
things to be despised. He was the product of misinformation in his early days.
Then someone brought a change in his life. He met a naturalist in whom he had
confidence. They sat on the grass on a dark night with several others. The
naturalist lit a small candle and placed it in the damp grass, and said to the group
as we circled about, “I’m going to show you a new world of insect life in which
each has a purpose in the great scheme of the universe.” We were fascinated. We
forgot ourselves. With a long, thin, stick the naturalist pointed to each of the
strange creatures as it crawled toward the light. A small bug crawled laboriously
to the top of a blade of grass only to drop to the ground and then crawl up the
next—always toward the light. Long spindly legged mosquitoes hovered over
the flame. June bugs harmlessly jumped and flew with a force past the candle
and would stop with a thud against one of us. Millers moths would flit about. It
was like going to a miniature circus or zoo. We were so deeply interested we did
not even notice the hum of an occasional mosquito. Well, neither did our pioneer
fathers.
My friend with the fears and inhibitions had a rebirth and an understanding in
which he became a part and accepted, at least in part, this wildlife of the
outdoors. He said finally, “It’s all in the way you look at it.” It gave him a mental
readjustment, a new evaluation, released him from many foolish fears, gave him
an added security, and, finally, made him a decidedly better camping partner.
This is not so easy to achieve in later life. Unless you, too, learn to accept this
wildlife, you will constantly be in conflict with yourself.
There are a squirrel and chipmunk flitting about our camp. They wonder who
we are. Let’s get acquainted. Put a bit of food on the nearby tree stump. The
chipmunk will sneak up cautiously on the far side of the stump, blink one eye,
and seem to say, “Well, I’m going to try you out.” The squirrel will grab his
morsel and retire to a more secure spot, sit on his haunches and eat greedily
while watching us. They are going to be our good friends before we get through
with this camp; so will the birds and other wildlife.
Experience

SO much for security. Let us now discuss the value of experience in which we
can prove the information we have been given as true, or possibly disprove the
misinformation from people who just do not know God’s Out Doors. True that
experience is a wonderful teacher, yet we must remember in dealing with the
outdoors, nature is relentless and exacts a costly price for ignorance.

CAUTION
If camping on our own, obviously we must be our own “doctor, baker, and
candlestick maker.” We must look after our own bodily needs and safety. If we
are to enjoy our experience to the fullest, we must do all things based on correct
information—but better still, on plain “horse sense,” sound judgment.
Should we unwittingly drink from a stagnant pool of polluted water and
discover during the night a bit of a stomachache or even worse as the ditty goes:
“If in heaven you awaken and find you were mistaken,” we will never live to tell
the rest of the world of our adventure. If you love to swim and swim out beyond
your depth and endurance and find you go under the water twice and can only
come up once, your camping experience will not be in line with your plans and
anticipation. Sound judgment must come into play in our every experience.

FOREST FIRES
Forest fires caused by natural forces can be easily controlled. It is fires
caused by individual carelessness and ignorance that play havoc. Dry leaves and
pine needles, inches deep, need but the slightest spark to launch a forest
conflagration. Surely a person must be lost mentally and morally if he would
deliberately start such destruction. He has never seen the results of fire in a
forest—the flight of wildlife toward water. Water that shrinks with the heat—so
their haven becomes a death trap. He has never seen beautiful proud trees
denuded of branches, their trunks living red coals, turning at last to gaunt ghosts
in a barren hell of charred death.

The cigarette smoker who carelessly flips his still-glowing butt from a car
window, or drops it as he hikes, is a destroyer of life. He loves none but himself.
He can be classed with the hunter whose inaccurate aim leaves his prey to run
wounded, to die of fever and helplessness and starvation. Leo King, that great
Adirondack woodsman, shocked me once when we were in the woods together.
As he finished his cigarette down to the last half inch, he spit in the palm of his
hand and dipped the still glowing stub into the spittle, rubbing it into nothingness
before he was content to throw it away. Not a tidy procedure this? This man had
once been driven before a forest fire. He had been burned in fighting forest fires.
He knew and was protecting the life and forests he loved. God give us more
people as thoughtful.
The casual camper is another menace to our forests. Be sure to put out your
fire! If you cannot find a rock for a base, or an open spot away from deep
vegetation, then do a bit of digging and have on hand buckets of water to soak
the ground underneath. Better still, if you are not woods wise, build no fire in the
woods, but resort to public parks where outdoor fireplaces are provided.

BAD JUDGMENT
Suppose you choose a lovely grassy spot down near a little babbling brook
for your camp—a spot that looks like a perfect setting on a sunny day. You set
up camp, pitch your tent, make up your bed, enjoy your campfire, retire and
“wrap the draperies of your couch about you and lie down to pleasant dreams.”
Having gone to sleep, a quiet, slow drizzly rain starts to refresh the earth. But the
overflow has been running down the hillside and into your little babbling brook.
The waters have risen higher and higher—“stealing in on you like a thief in the
night.” Suddenly you have that embarrassing awakening to find the heaviest part
of your anatomy quietly bathed by lapping waters from under your bed. So you
grab your searchlight from under your pillow and have the added chagrin of
finding your shoes, your coffee, canned goods, and underwear playing hide-and-
seek with each other as they float about within your tent. Pray God tomorrow
will be a sunny day because you will need spend all of it drying out. I am sure,
next time, you will set up your tent on higher ground. This knowledge one does
not get out of books. It takes experience. This is applied education.
Then there is the camper who goes out to rough it. He wants to be able to
“take it.” So, with a little cotton blanket and minimum equipment he rolls out on
the grass and goes blissfully to sleep. Along about two o’clock in the morning he
finds he is propped up on two “piers”—one nice little stone under his shoulder
and one under his hips, and he spends the next day nursing what he thinks may
be lumbago. So he, too, will find the value of carefully preparing a good bed if
he wants a good night’s sleep. Experience is a great teacher.
Weather Wise

“IT’S going to rain,” says my farmer friend. My own mind, at this point,
reverts to the upper left-hand corner of the newspaper, or to the on-the-hour
broadcast of weather reports. These weather observers do our thinking and
interpreting for us. Thanks—but it is not enough. We have grown dependent on
clocks, bells, whistles—mechanical devices. We have lost the ability to read the
skies and the earth. Nature has always been full of advance information, would
we but heed it. The city has dulled our perceptions. We idle at street crossings
until a dummy green light flashes “SAFE CROSSING.” A noon siren tells us it is time
for lunch. We have forgotten to note the sun at the zenith. We no longer wait for
that nice empty feeling in the pit of our stomachs. School bells regulate our
children’s lives. Time clocks and office hours or bus schedules determine for us
a good day’s work. What automatons we have permitted ourselves to become!
“It’s going to rain!” Of course. But you can’t see this from your office chair. I
hope you need not always feel tied to factory or office, because, if so, your
outdoor mind will grow dull. Soon birds, wild animals, trees, and the skies that
dome over you will lose their meaning. Let us heed the call of the outdoors
before we become hothouse plants and have to say, “I can’t take it.”
The grandest life in the world is in the out of doors—nature in the rough.
Elemental life—where storms play symphonies that interweave themes from the
gurgling brooks and rushing creeks, varied by staccato sleet and rain increased
into the demonic splendor of the wind; returning to the reposeful triumph as the
sun bursts through the clouds. Storm or sunshine, it’s God’s weather and all
weather is good.
 When you build a roof over Your Cabin in the Woods for warmth and
security, and stay within that cabin, you shut out the sky. Instead, think of your
living room as the out of doors.
My friend John A. Stiles wrote, “There is no such thing as bad weather, only
improper clothing. Who cares whether it is raining or not, as long as he is
prepared for it? Have you ever asked yourself if you like rain? I love to stride
along with the rain beating in my face. How wonderful to come home with your
feet going squash, squash in your boots—then to take a hot bath, a rub down,
and sit before the fire reading a book, your body all aglow with the exercise, the
bath, and the increased circulation.”
How grand to have a friend to share this enthusiasm. I, too, like to hike
through a storm, tucked into a long raincoat. Try spending half an hour sitting on
a log watching the animal life before or after a storm. Stormy weather will bring
you closer together. Squirrel and I seem to be buddies, drawn closer through
delight, perhaps fear, of the storm. We like the fierce wild weather.
But let’s get back to weather signs. “It’s going to rain.” How do we know?
First, a shift of the wind. The lowering cloud ceiling announced by the swallows
circling low. Gray nimbus clouds gather. Thunderheads pile up on the horizon.
The robins’ rain song. The small animals scurry for shelter. The herd of cattle
huddled together. You, with eyes to see and wit to interpret, need no barometer
to forecast a storm. There are signs, too, for the weather wise that guide spring
planting, that warn of a long hard winter. “Deep snow this year,” says the farmer.
“Heavy lush foliage and the bees are hiving high. Bees always store honey high
in the trees when snowbanks will be high.” So, when you see them making a
beeline for the treetops, mark it down there will be heavy snow that winter.
“Early winter,” says Leo, “rabbits already have their winter fur. Bird migrations
are two weeks ahead of last year. Scarcely a berry or nut left to pick up. The
creatures are taking no chances.”
 When you live with the weather, when your livelihood depends upon your
awareness, you learn to watch the trembling of the aspens, the turning to the rain
of willow and poplar leaves. You pay attention to all the simple signs of
changing weather—even the sweat on your water bucket—the sounds—the
silences.
Fruit trees bud by the first warmth of spring sun—sometime to an early, false
warmth in April. Fruit growers fight to keep their orchards warm for just those
few frosty nights. They build smudge fires. They cover their trees with canvas
and build fires among the trees. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes not. Only
the oak can be counted on as a weather prophet. In Wisconsin, we planted corn
when the oak leaves were the size of squirrels’ ears. The oak will not respond to
warm weather until it has really come and frosty weather is really gone.
Grandma King said, “Never plant cucumbers (in New York State) until June
thirteenth. If you do they will be scrawny.”
So here you have an introduction to signs and weather signals. An odd
mixture of fact and old wives’ tales—from rings around the moon to Grandpa’s
“rhumatiz” or aching corns. It is fun to cultivate the skill to be able to stick your
finger dramatically into your mouth, then up above your head and announce with
accuracy, “The wind is from the north” as you feel the sharp line of coolness on
that side of your finger. We really need this trick when sailing in a small craft.
Funny how we humans think we can command nature. We build cities along
the riverbanks, and spend millions of dollars to build levees and dikes to keep
out high water. Engineers think they have control but, each year, somewhere, the
floods break through, inundating houses, farms, villages, and bridges. Nature
shows her power.
This I know: God has an ordered universe. The answers are there to be read.
To understand nature is a step toward understanding God. The good green earth
belongs to Him. He made the weather signs.
Night Enchantment

SUPPER over and the campfire. Eyes focused upon the flames. We are drawn
closer together. Confidences are shared, and friends are in tune. Cooling embers.
The moon overhead. Enchantment. A longing. “Time to retire,” something
within says. Let us pause. Drink deep of the night as we look at the stars—the
great beyond. Have you ever really looked searchingly at the stars? Have you
really gazed and studied long enough to see not only one million, but two, three,
and more millions of twinkling stars—so many, so myriad that finally there is no
room in the sky because of them? Do this. Do it long and do it searchingly and
you will realize, again and again, that “God is in His heaven.”
The Bursting Splendor of Sunrise

AFTER a night’s refreshing sleep, there is no sweeter awakener than the

morning sunrise of many colors. I love sunrise because it brings a new day, a
new opportunity, a new world. Rising early, you will feel refreshed and wide
awake. You will discover a peace of mind, relaxed muscles, and, suddenly, an
urge to get up and about and do things. You warm yourself twice—first by
cutting your firewood, which loosens muscles and stirs the blood. Then, again, in
front of your fireplace, campfire, or kitchen stove. The sweet smell of frying
bacon, the rich aroma of coffee, and, finally, a “royal” breakfast.
Where is the morning paper full of stock markets, murders, war, births,
deaths? Well, sit back, Mr. Cabin-Builder, and enjoy breakfast. Let the world go
by. No radio? Tune your ears to the song of the birds and wildlife about you. A
cricket may chirp on your hearth. You will find the stillness most restful.
The sun is now over the horizon—many brilliant colors—shifting shadows. It
is morning—early morning and a new day. This indeed is a different world.
Woodland Sounds

There is no place in the whole wide world where one may find sweeter
melodies than in the Great Out Doors. God composed the songs for nature and
made them vocal. Away, far away from the manmade noises, woodland songs
are recorded on the delicate auditory nerve—always rhythmic, satisfying,
stirring—if we will only train ourselves to listen.
The clang of streetcars, the blare of automobile horns and sirens, the screech
of brakes and tires—city noises have become so natural to us we scarcely realize
how they tighten our nerves and dull our ears to the delicate sounds of the
outdoors. Indeed, the poignant stillness of one’s first day in the woods may be
oppressive and lonely. An afternoon is not long enough to establish the
closeness, the desire necessary for a mood of receptiveness to what God’s Out
Doors has to give. People in the busy whirl of city life may not retreat long
enough in the outdoors to find this great musical secret—indeed, phenomenon. It
takes almost solitude for a few days—or awayness with a companion with whom
you are in tune. Tune not only your ear, but also yourself, to the quiet. Turn the
dials of your human radio down, down to the wavelength of the wind’s whisper.
It takes patience, relaxation, time, but the inspiration, the refreshment, is worth it
—and more! A new song world is yours for the taking. Zephyrs flowing through
the trees, causing idle leaves to laughingly brush one another. Breezes and winds
sigh or roar. It is a singing world we live in—from the trickling stream, the
gurgling water as it falls over rocks, to mating songs of birdland, and the
wailing, warning, and wooing calls of wild creatures. Even the grander sounds of
the rhythmic pattern of pounding ocean waves and driving storms have music.

Wind, in its many moods, is always musical. The varied names for the wind
in its ever-changing tempo are, in themselves, musical. Zephyr, breeze, wind—
ring in the ear. Tempest, hurricane, cyclone, typhoon—dangerous in their import
—yet sounds that are strong, vibrant, resonant. As a youngster, I used to call
across the small valley on our farm, “Heigh-ho!” and “Heigh-ho” came back to
me from the rocky cliff in that mystical echo of tempered tones. I called more
softly, and the words came back to me no longer raucous, but quiet, reassuring,
and soothing. Grownup, I still trek back to the farm (long since in other hands),
but the echo is still mine and returns “Heigh-ho” when I call. Ours is a singing
world!

I despair today of the brash radio’s canned noise. I say “noise,” because when
sounds are jumbled, discordant, meaningless, they are no longer sounds, but
noises. Thomp-thomp—thomp—bass notes; croonings and commercial jingles,
squeaks and dronings; screams and shots to add “color” to a bit of lurid mystery
and drama. These are noises—not music.
Music had its beginning in the sounds of Nature’s Great Out Doors—
whispering winds, laughing springs, babbling brooks, and rustling leaves. The
deep notes of the croaking bullfrog, the hum of the bee, the high-pitched call of
the goldfinch on the wing—the rumble and crash of thunder, the scream and roar
of the windstorm. Wagner, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and the other
immortals, through their magnificent symphonic music, have portrayed
woodland sounds for man.
But we need not always go to manmade concerts for our inspiration. Sit on a
tree stump and relax, without “fuss or feather,” or the price of a front-row seat.
Tune your ear to the song of the brook. Hark to the meadowlark as she welcomes
spring from the fields still brown and dull. Listen to the catbird’s mimicry, the
cardinal’s mellow whistle, the plaintive mourning dove and hermit thrush as they
greet the twilight. Move to the edge of your lily pond, to the cheery assurance of
the peepers. Drink deep the vibrant melodies of an awakening world. Sit on your
cabin veranda and enjoy the majestic sounds of the Storm King, the gusts of
wind singing as they rush through the trees. Note the homey sounds a storm
brings to life—the old hanging saw on the woodshed hums, the taut clothesline
whines, a loose shingle or an overhanging branch beats rhythmically.
 As a boy, I was once told of the “Master Violin Builder” who created a giant
violin by stretching wires across a great valley and pulling them taut. Nary a
sound from them until the gentle breeze increased to gale velocity. As harder and
harder it blew, there came from the strings a heavenly harmony of sound and
song, mild and deep tones mingled with those on high, until heaven sang forth a
great symphony and those who heard it were lifted and inspired.
So tune your ear to the simple and beautiful music of woodland sounds. God
composed these songs to lift our hearts—if we will but listen.
When the Snow Is Deep

IT is wintertime. The snow is deep. Cold frosty night settles. Snow begins to
drift. Then from earth and heaven, a billowing storm of crystal flakes bites your
face. Toes tingle and legs twinge with the in-and-out pull against the drifts. Time
for snowshoes and skis. Cover your ears. Pull up your collar. Tuck your chin into
your muffler and keep going. A good steady gait will stir the blood and warm
you as you carry your pack on your back.
 Just where are we going on this bleak, frosty, stormy night? We have left the
city far behind. The car is parked on top of the hill in the barn of a neighborly
farmer. We (my wife and I) hear a call from the wild as we trudge to our cabin.
Is it a dog, a coyote, a wolf? The dark shadow of our cabin looms through the
storm—black, cold, forbidding. The trick latch quickly opens the door. Tinder
and kindling prepared on the last trip lie ready for the match. Shadows yield to
the glowing, sparkling fires in stove and fireplace. Cold changes to warmth and
we peel off our snowy outer garments. Within the hour, our cabin will be ready
to reward our four expected guests with its warm radiance, fragrant with
steaming coffee.
 They come. Each laden with packsacks of duffel, woolens, food, and fixings
for the weekend. (No going back to the grocery store for added supplies.) Such
an adventure calls for careful planning. On snowshoes or skis, they trudge
breathlessly up the last slope. I go out to meet them as I hear their merry shouts
and laughter, and help pull the toboggan, now laden with duffel. Tomorrow it
will be ready to give fun and excitement. Packs are lowered onto the piles of
cordwood sheltered on the porch. We stomp our feet and pant our greetings—
breathing deep. The kitchen broom comes into play as we sweep each other free
of clinging snow. Finally, all are inside, toasting “fore and aft” before the blazing
warmth. We need to dry out a bit.

Do you, now, my reader, feel “goose pimples” and shiver at the thought of
sleeping in a cabin on a zero-degree night? Read on a bit. You are missing one of
the grandest of winter adventures, a winter weekend in the woods.
If you have sleeping bags or plenty of blankets (four woolen ones are
essential), you can nestle in and let the fires go out. If you have less, one of the
party must keep watch and rebuild the fires every three hours. Either way, you
will sleep well and dream sweet winter dreams. I keep a half-dozen quilts in the
cabin for those guests who may be inexperienced and so are caught a bit short.
 Clothes for winter fun should include two pairs of woolen socks, good shoes,
an extra pair if you have no overshoes. (I prefer galoshes.) A woolen shirt, a
sweatshirt, and, of course, warm underwear. Better get out Grandfather’s red
woolen undershirt and drawers. No wonder our pioneer fathers “could take it” in
the woods—good or bad weather. They were prepared to take nature in their
stride. So can we.

The group relaxes. In for the weekend! No cares. No worries. No jangling

telephones. The wind howls increasingly, packs the tiniest cracks with insulation
of snow that makes the cabin even more secure. Supper is underway. Two kettles
of steaming vegetables; fireplace biscuits in the reflector oven. The aroma taxes
our patience. But wait no longer. A bowl of savory soup is served to each as we
sit about watching the fire’s flames and the last act… the smoking grill. The
coals leap into momentary flame as the rich steak grease drips. “Ready with the
rare steaks,” and the discriminating are fed. A moment more and even the chef
admits dinner is a feast for kings.
 Cooking over a glowing open fire can be done with a nicety, and to the
entertainment of the guests. Sly remarks will be passed. Interesting queries, too,
from the cook who knows only the kitchen stove, wood, gas, or electric
technique. Fireplace cooking requires a bit of a different skill. Onions and
potatoes in their “jackets” are dropped deep into the fireplace and covered with
four inches of coals. Leave them for an hour. Dig them out, brush off the ash.
You never tasted the like.
The fire dies down a bit. The candles on the table flicker softly. Deep
contented sighs and easy conversation rise. Someone draws the last delicious
drops from the copper coffee kettle. The movement breaks the spell and the
group is in action once again. All the lamps are lighted. The kitchen crew cleans
up, for we’ve found half the fun comes from sharing all of the living in the
Cabin in the Woods. The smoldering logs are set ablaze with a small piece or
two of wood. Wood for the night, kindling for the morning are brought in. Beds
made snug and tight to climb into. Food is prepared against spoiling or freezing.
The icebox will keep the cold out in winter if the temperature is zero. An added
hot brick will keep it warm. We are ready for the evening fun.
 Out comes the box of games. Bridge? Anagrams for the wordsters? Jigsaws?
Monopoly? Sometimes we just yarn, cracking hickory and walnuts gathered in
the fall. Sometimes we vie at toasting marshmallows or try our skill at candle
dipping. Whatever the beginning of a winter evening, the end is always the same
—the magic of the quiet—of the leaping flames—inspiring security, and our
deeper thoughts well up in that last half-hour before going to bed. The chill of
night is held back by the gleam of fire on the hearth. The curling flames and
smoke are in control. When February winds are most persistent at the windows,
when drifting snow gathers at the corner of each pane, our fireplace is a glowing,
yes, a living symbol of the warmth and security of home and family and friends.
It warms the feet, hands, and body, but it also warms the heart. The slow, steady
glow of the backlog, the spit and sparkle of the deep lingering coals stir warm
companionship, invite imagination, philosophies, close confidence.
Friendliness

WHAT is sweeter in life than friendliness? If there is any place in the world
that will produce friendliness and kindliness, it is the out of doors. Did you ever
have that rich experience of sleeping in a tent with a friend who got up quietly in
the morning without disturbing you, rebuilt the campfire of the night before, and
started the day’s program? After reheating the double boiler of porridge that had
been steaming all night, instead of saying to you, “Get up, old man, don’t expect
me to do all the work,” he waits until the aroma of cooking bacon and coffee
waft their way toward you. Suddenly you arouse, stretch your arms, and say,
“Why I have only slept ten minutes.” You have really slept like a child and here
your friend has added to your happiness in getting the breakfast. So down to the
creek to make your toilet; back refreshed and then to do justice to an unrationed
appetite. Describe and do it justice? Who can? You must live through it.

The chipmunk on the nearby stump where you placed food cautiously steals
up, blinks one of his little bright eyes at you, and seems to say, “I like your
friendliness.” Birds come down to your feeding station—perhaps a bit cautious
at first, but they come. Having been served a “royal” breakfast, you now will
want to take your share of the load by cleaning up camp. If on a hike your
partner develops a sore toe or blister, you say with nonchalance, “Give me your
pack. I’ll carry it.” That’s friendliness.
 The trail in the woods is friendly. One does not stalk with heavy feet through
the woods, but with the lithe tread so as not to disturb the wildlife. Go through
the woods lightly and with music in your heart. As you trail through the woods,
you will be amazed to find nature full of “signs, signals, and symbols.” These,
too, are friendly signs if you can read them. True you will find no highway
marked “ROUTE 20,” but every trail is marked equally effective by Mother
Nature. There are signs that tell you a spring is near, where to find food, of
approaching storms. We need only to learn them, to find that nature is friendly
and eager to tell us through her method of signs and symbols how to enjoy
wildlife. She guards her secrets from those who treat them lightly, but gives of
them willingly to those who study her ways.
Approval

NOW we come to the most important part of our discussion—the need for a
right attitude toward life; a balanced understanding of what brings security to us.
Out of that friendliness built through experience one with another comes the
very foundation of the good life. No four people could go up into the wilds of
Canada and live for a week or more together and have one of the four a “drone.”
Each must carry his share of the load. National wealth comes out of honest hard
labor and effort of the individual “to earn a little and to spend a little less.”
Somehow, in our cities there creeps into our communal life poachers, parasites,
people who live off other people. They contribute little to the world, but, in the
Great Out Doors, in this whole field of friendliness, comes this conception of
building a democracy. The desire of one to do a little more than his share to add
to the happiness of the group.
I have seen over and over when a group of six or eight camp together, one
will be selfish, self-centered, stingy, greedy. After a period of a week or two in
the woods with friends, he comes back a changed person. It may mean a bloody
nose. The treatment may be a bit severe from his peers, but he will finally carry
his share of the load if he has the fortitude to “take it” and stand by. Then, some
day, one of the boys will make up his bed and he will come in and say, “Who has
been monkeying with my bed?” The next lad will say, “Well, you carried in
wood today and I sort of thought I would help you out.” Something tremendous
is happening to this selfish lad. It will take a day or two before he will do a
kindness in return, but, before the camp is over, he will give a good account of
himself. When he returns home, he may say to his father, “Do you mind if I cut
the lawn today?” No, he has just learned to carry his share of the load.
If you were to say to me, “You can broil the best steaks in the world,” I’d just
swell with pride and love it, and I’d try harder to justify that approval you have
given me. You know what I mean by the glow that comes to you when someone
slaps you on the back and says, “You did the job well. You conducted an
inspiring campfire.” Recognition comes from our friends who not only approve
of us, but, in the approving, also indicate they think well of us. In slang we hear,
“He is a good egg. He is the kind who can take it on the chin. A regular fellow.”
To be in tune with the outdoors you must have a song in your heart and the
song gives its own approval. Perhaps the most material proof you are a “regular
fellow” comes from the little chipmunk on the stump who no longer pays any
attention to you—has taken you in as a part of the woods. And the squirrel
overhead no longer scolds, but accepts you. The birds that come to your feeding
stations and pay no attention; when your friends like to be with you, not because
of your money, not because of your influence, or any possible superior
advantage or abilities, but just because you are you—a balanced individual—a
regular fellow.
When you merit all these the world will salute you as a master camper, a
partner, a friend. You have learned the art of living happily together with folks,
with nature, with wildlife in the woods. Most of all, you have learned to live
comfortably with yourself.
The Latchstring Is Out

AND now we must part. As I said in the first chapter, I pictured you sitting on
a log while I nestled against a notch in a big tree, talking over the project of
building a Cabin in the Woods. So I say farewell with a real twinge of regret.
Conrad E. Meinecke
About the Author

BORN of sturdy pioneer parents in a northern Wisconsin log cabin in 1883,

Conrad Meinecke’s youth was spent ruggedly outdoors. He worked on a farm
with his family, roamed the woods with Native Americans, hiked across the
prairies, climbed the Rockies, fished in Canada, and traveled in Europe, Asia
Minor, and North Africa. During that time he learned how to make himself and
his companions comfortable under all kinds of conditions. These experiences
also taught him to understand and love mankind. He lived by the motto “We all
walk this road together, none goes his way alone. All that we give into the lives
of others… comes back to our own.”
This was reflected in Meinecke’s career as a social worker, including time as
the director of men and boy’s work for the Westminster House Social Settlement
in Buffalo. He then ran the boys home for the Buffalo Children’s Aid Society.
From 1923 to 1948, he was the chief executive of the Buffalo NY Boy Scout
Council, during which time he developed a number of camps, including a 1,200-
acre complex in Schoellkopf, New York.
As a hobby, Meinecke was a cabin and wood craft builder. He constructed
scores of cabins scattered throughout the United States and Canada. He received
many requests to put all of his accumulated wisdom on the subject of cabin
building into book form.
In 1944, Meinecke wrote his first book, titled Your Cabin in the Woods,
which was filled with cabin lore and his own simple philosophy of living. He
printed the first edition on a small press in his home and bound it in cloth laced
together with cord. In 1945 the book was published by Foster & Stewart
Publishing. In 1947, he wrote his second book, titled Cabin Craft and Outdoor
Living, also published by Foster & Stewart.
Wishing to maintain closer contact with his readers, he formed the Darnock
Cabin Craft Guild for the interchange of ideas between cabin builders.
Membership was free and thousands of members were scattered all over the
world.
Meinecke died in March 1971 in his log cabin in Springville, New York.
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 Contents

Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Foreword
Lifting the Latch

Your Cabin in the Woods

Start Making Notes
Plan Wisely and You Plan for the Future
Who Knows? This May Be Your Future Home
A Cure for Restlessness

One Room or Seven?

The Family Camp—Summer and Winter
The Guest Tent for Two
Our Window Picture Frame

Cabin Composition
One-Room Cabin
Two-Room Cabin (with Storm Porch and Toilet Room)
Four-Room Cabin (with Kitchen and Storeroom)
The Amateur Architect

Let’s Go to Work
Cabin Tools—Keep ’em Sharp
Nails
Building Rules You May Not Violate
Land Cost
Cabin Cost
Logs for Your Cabin
Tie Your Cabin Together
Notching Your Logs
Cabin Detail
Windows, Doors, and Gables
Drainage and Grading
Upper and Lower Bunks Converted into Couches
Painting and Preservatives
Chinking

Indoor Fire
Fireplace Magic
Fireplaces Successfully Built by the Novice

Tricks of the Trade

Running Hot and Cold Water
Waste: Johnnies and Incinerators

Beautifying Your Cabin

Lamps, Lighting, and Illumination
Rustic Furniture
Storm Doors
Trick Door with Secret Lock
Trim Plate Decoration
Wooden-Peg Coat Hangers
Skylight
Natural Icebox Cooler
The Frame House
Flagstone Floors
Steppingstones

Personality Plus
Landscaping Your Cabin Setting
Your Flagpole
Sign Posts and Trail Markers
Let Mother Nature Be Your Gardener
Shrubs, Trees, and Reforestation
Your Treasure Chest
Sugarin’
“Tune In” on the Birds
Gateways, Guardrails, Fences, and Friendliness
Friendly Trails
Springs

Your Family Camp on Wheels

Outdoor Fires and Cooking

Make It Attractive
Outdoor Cookery in the Garden Fireplace
Picnic a la “Cart”

Great Out Doors

Security: The North Woods
Experience
Weather Wise
Night Enchantment
The Bursting Splendor of Sunrise
Woodland Sounds
When the Snow Is Deep
Friendliness
Approval

The Latchstring Is Out

About the Author
Newsletters
Copyright
 Copyright

Your Cabin in the Woods was originally published in 1945 and Cabin Craft and Outdoor Living in 1947.

Copyright © 2016 Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers Inc.

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ISBN 978-0-316-39549-6

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