God's Caravanserai

THE grease from the bacon, stretched on forked sticks, was trickling musically onto an already riotous fire, when my fiancé, that afternoon on the Palisades, suggested that we spend our honeymoon in the Adirondack, ‘away from everybody and everything.’ I thrilled, volubly. It would be one blissful continuation of the Saturday afternoon picnics we had been enjoying all spring; it would be very heaven to get away from people we did n’t want to see.

I recalled my desire at fifteen, after reading Travels with a Donkey, to emulate Stevenson. Enthusiastically I quoted all the lines in praise of the outdoors which I had memorized — a sure sign, we said, that I was a born camper.

‘That’s the idea,’ my lover said, ‘only we must have a general knowledge of the country. We must know about water and all those things, you know.’

I continued: —

I lapsed into my undergraduate ardor for Robert W. Service: —

My fiancé looked at me askance. ‘Do you really mean that you want to go to the deep woods? I’m afraid most of the trails I was thinking of have been tried; but if you want to —'

‘Oh, yes, let’s get as far away as possible,’ I urged.

‘You’re a good sport!’ My fiancé’s voice was full of pride. I agreed with him, silently, I thought I was.

We talked further. Why not camp every summer? It would be an ideal life. My lover knew it would be, because he had camped often before. I thought it would be, because I had never camped. Why should I doubt my enjoyment of the existence, when the mere poetry of camping and tramping appealed to me so irresistibly?

My husband thrives on camping. That was clear the first day out. He harnesses a hundred pounds or so of duffel-bag on his scholarly shoulders, tramps twelve miles over an overgrown trail, puts up the tent, makes a fire with wet w ood, eats doughy pancakes powdered with ashes, blows up two pneumatic mattresses with what breath he has left, smiles with contentment, and sleeps until dawn. The following day he digs ‘ice-boxes’ in the ground, builds cupboards on the trees, constructs all sorts of wife-saving devices, and is as happy as a three-year-old with a sand-pile and a spade. By the end of each summer he is tough and brown, and totally unconnected, in appearance, with a pedagogue.

My husband thinks I thrive on camping. He has never guessed that through all the first nights in camp, and most of the others, though I ache with exhaustion, I sit up from starlight till dawn, clutching the flashlight in one hand and the hunting-knife in the other. If sleep does begin, finally, to close my rebellious eyes, a cedar-ball falls on the tent and brings me up to military attention, eyes stretched wide for a sight of what I hear. By the end of each summer, if it were not for mid-day naps or pretended laziness in the early morning, I should look as thin and hollow-eyed as I feel.

The first few nights, I accepted this insomnia as natural. I was not even ashamed to mention it to my husband. I agreed with him that, after a night or two, I should not know a thing; that it required a very little while to learn to sleep in the woods. Eagerly I waited for the night when I should not know a thing.

It has never come. I have learned to eat supper, to hear the first sounds of approaching darkness, without working myself into a panic. But I’ve never learned to sleep in the woods. I do it, unexpectedly, sometimes for whole nights in succession; then again, I lie as on the first night, tense, expectant, waiting for some vague Horror to emerge from the trees, lurch past my soundly sleeping spouse, and grab me! Back in the forest, on those nights, foxes bark; over the lake, loons laugh; on the bank, beavers splash; at our feet, the field-mice gnaw the food-bags; at my side, my husband snores — and nothing happens. I know nothing will happen. I never wanted anything to happen. And, yet, if one morning I could have pointed out the footprints of my enemy on the damp earth, it would have been with pride.

Once, when I did mention casually having heard footsteps around the tent, my husband said, ‘Only the woods animals — they have as much right here as we have.’ There was no comfort in that; that was exactly my difficulty. I knew that they had more. For the same reason, I felt hesitant about complaining to the Management;. I was an interloper. I could not object to the pastimes of the guests in His hostelry. If I could not sleep to the tune of their merriment, I could at least keep my difficulties to myself. It behooved me to be an humble listener.

So my husband has never known the significance of my matin song,

He thinks it a bit of self-directed irony at late rising, after he has been ‘ up and doing’ for two hours or more.

I love the days in camp. Such household tasks as airing the tent, shaking the blankets, peeling birch-bark for the fire, — and, incidentally, tidying the forest, — washing the pans in the lake, never become routine. I idle away the morning, watching the adolescent fish frisk their tails in the transparent water, or the trim little vireos frisk theirs on a near-by limb. I paddle away the afternoon, or lie in the canoe. Then I forget that night is coming, and believe, after all, that I am all I thought I was. I fairly purr with contentment there in the sunshine. I feel an honored guest— so long as the caravanserai is green. But at twilight, when the woods are dim, I, unlike Rupert Brooke, long for the sound of many human voices.

To-day I came upon our camping outfit, all neatly packed away in the attic of my husband’s old home. The woodsy odor it still exhaled made me wish for the sight of sun-flecked forests and tailored vireos; but the worn handle of a hunting-knife and the scratched nose of a flashlight, protruding from the duffel-bag, made me — write this.

I feel like a Tarpeia, or a Benedict Arnold, or both. As I have written, I have had one ear alert for the approaching footsteps of my husband’s eldest sister, who gave us two folding camp-chairs, or of his brother, who gave us the pneumatic mattresses, or of his mother, who gave us the roomy tent which folds compactly into a shoulderbag, or of his youngest sister, who gave us an aluminum cooking-kit, or of all of them together, who, for each Christmas, anniversary, and birthday since our marriage, have heaped upon us khaki wall-pockets, woolen hose, fishing-tackle, books on wood-craft, folding washbasins, folding lanterns, folding water-buckets, folding broilers and ovens. Perhaps, if I had not been ashamed of my insomnia, they would have given me, long ago, a compact sleeping-draught. Perhaps, if they read this, they will give me one which will fold my tent like the Arab. But I care not. My soul is already at peace. I shall camp no more. I feel again as gay as on that Saturday afternoon when I so innocently thrilled at the thought of life in the woods with the chipmunks and lizards.