Canoe and Camera: A Two Hundred Mile Tour Through the Maine Forests

A love for the woods and out-door sports begins early in life. I can hardly remember when the sight of a gun or fish-rod did not awaken within my boyish fancy a feverish desire to follow their lead, be the tramp ever so hard. There never was anything to stop the growth of this passion until I reached the age of ten years, when I nearly destroyed a boy’s eye with an arrow, in my endeavors to excel in archery.

This act slightly dampened my ardor for some months, and retarded that progression in field sports I was then making.

There is also something so free, so stimulating in the woods life, uncontaminated by the gossip, allurements, and exacting dress of the usual watering places, that after one season’s enjoyment, a return to these wildernesses, and repeating its pleasures, is the constant thought of the future.

It also teaches very early self-reliance, and a philosophical endurance of many conditions of life, which add to one’s cheerfulness, while one is surprised how few of the necessities are essential to produce happiness.

“Man’s rich with little, were his judgment true;

Nature is frugal, and her wants are few.”

The study also of natural history in the woods takes one into a realm which has no bounds, constantly enlarging his love and admiration of God’s works. The oft-repeated quotation, “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” has been misconstrued for many a long day, and if I had known early in life its real significance it would hardly have made so doleful an impression.

There is no doubt to-day in my mind that this “rod” meant a fishing-rod, and that the timely cherishing of it in youth tends to develop that portion of one’s nature to which the former use was entirely innocent.