The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-06-21
THE SMELL OF THE CAMP FIRD.
Forgotten Experiences Reawakened by
 its Mysterious Familiarity.

Forgotten Experiences Reawakened by
 it's Mysterious Familiarity.
 Is there any odor under heaven that appeals to the primitive man. surviving in all of us, like the smell of the camp fire? Take city man who has spent his whole life thus far within the llm- its of some great metropolis, whisk him off to the woods, and give him one sniff of eddying wood-smoke under the for est boughs, and you have suddenly opened for him a chapter of existence, or pre-existence, so strangely sweet, so mysteriously familiar, that his soul aches with desire to recover utterly what has been thus poignantly suggest cd to it. Oh, the pain and the delight of half-recovered memories! That wave of forest aroma goes over the city dweller, goes over him and through him, penetrating to the remotest recess es of his being, searching out dim, un- suspected corners of psychical con sciousness, half-waking old, forgotten experiences, rousing sensations that
 have lain dormant no pone knows how long, moving him almost to tears with
 the mingled anguish and rapture of an
 inexplcable longing,
 Sometime, somewhere, this city man l ir,, A1,o+ 14 h11ATihd . fire
 of boughs, in the great mysterious for
 est-centuries ago, ages ago, perhaps
 and has inhaled that same aromatic
 odot, night after night, as the stars
 were trooplng forth; morning after morning, as the dawn began to glim-
 mer; until the associations of the flre-
 hous were indelibly impressed upon his
 soul, there to survive as long as the
 soul itself.
 There is something more than the
 mere pleasure of an agreeable sensuous
 impression in the lingering delight
 which every normal man takes in the
 odor of the camp fire. The psyehical
 effect dominates the physical. We hark
 back to enerations-possibly to incar-
 nations-of life in the open, under the
 living roof of the forest, whenever we
 inhale that penetrating, magical aroma
 of wood-smoke A thousand subtle as-
 sociations and memories are interwo-
 ven with that pu1gent appeal to the
 olfactory nerve. Unbidden pictures rise before the inward eye; the picture
 of the sunset kill, the passionate thrill
 of the hunter as the stag lurches for
 ward and falls, the lust of the squirting
 blood; and then the picture of the hum
 ter's fire-building, the fragrant red
 meat dripping and sizzling on the toast
 ing-stick, the fitful glow of the fire on
 the dark forest branches, the formess shadows dancing their wild, silent
 dance among the tree-trunks. By-and- bye we see the hunter as fast-breaker his huge, savage delight in appeasing the long days hunger, his utter luxury | as he lies with his back to the trees and . his feet to the fire, while nature gently , transfers the life of the creature to the life of all-conquering man. What a , chapter of racial memories a whiff of [ wood-smoka revives!
 Good to the soul and renovating to the body, is this cloud of incense that eddies from the forest camp fire. One feels instinctively the wholesomeness of the bitter-sweet, tonic cloud, as it drifts in at the gateways of the lungs, and penetrates to every nook and cranny ot body saturated with the foul emana. tions of a great city. A part, and g . large part, of the healthfulness of camI ! life consists in the cleansing that tht system gets through the agency of pure wild water, and the sitting through [ pores and tissues of those cleansing
 prophylactic clouds of wood-smoke t Let alone every benefit beyond tha , which the aromatic camp fire bestow! l upon ones lungs, and the blood that i l constantly being oxygenated in them ]. and who shall say that wood-smoke i t not one of the best hygienio agents tha l can be invoked?
 ,, Whatever may be claimed as to tn 1 comfort and convenience of the porta ! ble camp stove, it is the writer's flrn ]. belief that much of the healthfulness o . camp life is sacrificed by outfttinl o with this prosaic adjunct of eiviliza r tion. The old way was the better way n and infinitely more picturesque and il t keeping-the huge open fire built il g front of the open bark shelter. Ina e was the way the great pioneers of out
 ing camped, the mighty men of braii ] and brawn who were the first apostle . of the open-air life in this country n men of the Adirondack Murray am s ''Nessmuk" stamp, who went into tn T woods to adapt themselves to tn y woods, and not to adapt the woods t = them; men, who by seeking to conform T to the true spirit of the wilderness . drank therefrom such mighty draught e of inspiration and physical and menta d vigor as are almost unknown in thi s age of portable camp stoves and pneu : matic mattrenses.-James Buckham il
 the Christian Work.