Wild Life (24 page)

Here I sit—“staying put” another day, as the rain pours, and I fear taking a fatal chill should I venture onward. In any case, my clothes remain damp (at best) and I am thoroughly exhausted and sore from these last few days (and especially the last) of unaccustomed exertion. The bark and boughs with which I made my little shelter served only to confuse the rain until I was snugly stowed away, then the descending torrents found their openings and let in a deluge, soaking my bed and clothes and person. I have necessarily put a good deal of work into improving my roof, which, though it continues to leak somewhat, is now better protection against the worst of the downpour. After desperate searching, have found another cache of firewood—the bole of a lightning-splintered hemlock blown slantwise by later winds, and part of which (the underside, lying toward the south) is relatively dry—slivers can be cut away with a knife as needed. I try to keep a high blaze going, for I fear if my fire is allowed to smolder, the rain will quite put it out. This is a continual struggle. I believe if I should ever come upon an abundance of dry fuel, I would be tempted to build a house on the spot and live in it until civilization arrives at my doorstep.

I have a wish for some of the oddest things: food, of course, which is not odd at all; but oh! my toothbrush! hot coffee! I am nearly in tears over want of a comb to work out the tangles in my hair, and a ribbon for tying it back (not for reasons of vanity but for the practical reason of keeping the stuff out of my eyes, as most of my pins are long lost); and a deck of cards so as to play solitaire, which I always have found a soothing habit, a sedative, when confronted by dull depression and anxiety. It occupies the mind enough to avoid thinking, but not enough to tire.

Since repairing my roof, I have been mostly lying here in a gloomy lethargy, staring into the downpour, venturing out only to get quantities of wood and to relieve myself at a sanitary distance.

I am fortunate to have this notebook as a place to write down the details of my adventure, which is an immediate relief to my feelings and may someday be of use in plotting a story, which naturally has been forming in my mind. (A girl archaeologist, escaping an attack by wild bears, wanders lost in the Cascade wilderness and is driven by terrible storms into the deeps of a volcanic cave, where she discovers a secret cache of golden treasure and artifacts from an ancient civilization, heretofore unknown to Science.) I know I should further make use of these blank pages to advance the story—here is the unaccustomed solitude and leisure which every woman writer has pined for!—should try to keep my mind busy, at the very least. I have two barely used pencils—sufficient to write an entire novel!—yet as to story, I cannot bring a single worthwhile sentence onto the page. Even this little report of my condition is written with difficulty, by fits and starts, as my mind is tired and wishes only to feel bleak and not be forced to think. I have in times past waved away crossword puzzles, petit point, and knitting, but should find them now more restful than writing, which has usually come easily for me and been my comfort. I am sure I will be ashamed, in later days, in the comfort of my own house, to see the penciled scribbles in these margins—not full-fledged sketches, which could have been excused, but meaningless mazes and chicken scratches and curving scrolls; this is what I do while I try to think what to write down here—shall I say that I am heartily downcast? that I am filthy?—and then another listless sentence, and then more useless scribbling.

The day passes slowly, and yet I dread the night, which shall pass more slowly still. To say that I am homesick, discouraged, and lonely is but a faint description of my feelings.

 

The Artist ever has been a man, living in terrible but splendid isolation, far from the comforts of family life, having sacrificed them to his Art. If a woman is present, she tiptoes in and out, bringing his tea on a tray; and in other rooms of the apartment she quiets the children and manages the mundane complexities of the household so that he might devote himself to his great work. Think of Sophie Tolstoy and of Wordsworth's sister—was her name Dorothea? Women may write pot-
boilers, certainly, as a hobby, or in order to fortify the household income, but they are incapable of great Art, not only for the distraction of bringing up children—so very little time left in a woman's day—but for the same reason women are excluded from Science academies, literary clubs, and other places where men discuss the great questions: “Because of their childish ignorance and want of ideas.
”

I count on the irrefutable literary power of the Two Georges to eventually put such idiot notions to rest. But I recognize that I am, myself, small beer. Such writing as I have done in recent years has been easy work, a story of three or four thousand words dashed off in three hours—an afternoon's effort. Sometimes I have to copy it, or change it a little, but usually it is written and mailed off as lightly as a letter. This is not, in the artistic sense, “literature”—I cannot make any pretense of being literary.

There was only a short period after the birth of the twins when I undertook to write a serious novel. Of course, I should have been content with finding time and mind for any sort of writing at all—most women, in the first months, give themselves over physically and mentally to a new child. And I was opposed in the undertaking, by my literary agent, whose portion was threatened, and by my husband, who worried that his children would grow up more devoted to their nurse than to their mother. It was generally believed that I might continue to write of pygmies and radium power and trips to the moon, in the afternoons while the babies napped, but that a Mother could never expect to write a Novel of Ideas. Here is the truth: I had had a girlish ambition to be famous, revered, on a plane with the great writers of the day—think of Kipling, of Stevenson—and now that I was so thoroughly closed in the jaws of motherhood I flew into a kind of panic. I began to swim hard upstream, all the while with my legs in the crocodile's mouth and my hands desperately reaching for a drift log, which I supposed must be my serious novel. Or rather several novels, as I skipped from one Great Idea to the next, never quite settling, always convinced (if briefly) that the new one surpassed the old—that
now
everything would shake together—I would grasp it all and not be afloat with only broken little bits.

There were heady moments when I was taken with my own cleverness—the words standing solidly on the page, this paragraph and that one moving well and sounding well in my ear, the people striking utterly human poses, the inner workings of theme and style seeming well wrought
and important. Of course, these moments were inevitably followed by dark fantasies of the book failing in the worst ways—public humiliation—airy disregard. And so on, and so forth.

Days and weeks of feeling the new work to be shabby, and these wild swings of mood, depressions which robbed me of confidence—I believe it was these and not the ordinary problem of the mother and her “work” that eventually drove me back to dime novels and cheap romances, where my aptitude was proven and I might write four thousand words in an afternoon, tearing it off with hardly a pause, the smooth, swift, easy flow, like racing one's bicycle along a country path for the sheer and splendid joy of it.

So if I have given up trying to be a writer of the First Rank, it cannot be due to specifically female “limitations”; my concentration upon the lesser subjects is simply due to laziness, and perhaps to inferior powers, which a man may suffer from as easily as a woman.

C. B. D.

April 1900

Sun came out today, which raised my spirits to a considerable degree. How our bodies and minds are tied to the sky! Had to leave behind my neat lair after so much work to build—this was hard. But if I'm to be found, must get myself nearer the lava field or into the watershed of Canyon Creek or the Lewis River. Therefore heading northerly, sure of my direction now, though did not reach any place today. I'm not wet, which is exquisite relief, but am somewhat weak, as my food is now all gone. Far too early for blackcaps or wild berries, though there were plentiful bushes with tiny furled buds at the edges of a clearing which I at first thought to be made by farmers or loggers but proved to be an open field of blackened stumps and widowmakers, an old forest burn. (I stood in the cleared space with my face turned up to the sun. Oh the heat and light, delicious! To find the sky! So hard to go into the
trees again.) Have left the watercourse I named Sorefeet Creek, and camped tonight beside a meager little rivulet, a mossy rockfall which is a winter stream course for the runoff of rain and snowmelt, and therefore at this season is wet (though barely) and furnishes my necessary and only refreshment. I heated water in the soda cracker tin, which is a poor sort of pot but holds enough water to make a stab at cleaning my hands and face as well as private parts—used the handkerchief as washcloth, which I then washed (alas, no soap) along with socks and hung to dry. As to shelter, since no rain threatens, my lean-to is not so tight as before—a mere roof pole leant from ground to the crotch of a tree, and blown-down branches arranged upon it at a steep pitch. If it rains after all, I'll discover its deficiencies, but I lie here now in relative comfort and warmth. Firewood is a terrible problem, but I have become alert to certain likelihoods: dry sticks lying under rock shelves, splinters in the cores of old stumps or along the undersides of large fallen logs, dead softwood trees leaning to the south, which underside wood and bark ofttimes will be dry. I have a fire going against the base of the tree so as to throw heat back into my little tent, and I am fairly snug and in positive spirits, though hunger is ever on my mind. I sing, to keep my mind occupied.

As I sit here writing, the eyes of beasts watch my activity from the darkness, and there are rustlings in the brush, which do not alarm me—I have become quite used to them. I do not sleep soundly, which I suppose is a sort of blessing, as the fire does not burn unattended for long and has no opportunity to extinguish itself. I have read that one can influence one's dreams with careful concentration and planning, and I plan to dream of Melba's walnut chocolate fudge and of fried lamb chops which are, of course, smothered in cream sauce.

I have never been alone for so long before, nor thought so much. It is an interesting thing that while one part of my brain churns away upon practical matters—improvising to improve my situation—and upon morale—to recognize and overcome the signs of fear and panic—the other half is quite detached and records the circumstances in which I find myself—hardship and danger and so forth—with the impersonal eye of a writer.
Ah, I see, this is the point at which a lost person gives up fretting over possible embarrassment (what if she should be found a stone's throw from the trail?) and devotes herself entirely to a wish for rescue from her jeopardy.

 

T
WO
B
ABES IN THE
W
OODS

 

Oh do you remember a long time ago

When two little babes, their names I don't know,

They wandered away one bright summer's day

And were lost in the woods, I heard people say.

 

And when it was night, so sad was their plight.

The moon had gone down and the stars gave no light.

They sobbed and they sighed and bitterly cried

And those two little babes laid down and died.

 

And when they were dead, a robin so red

Brought strawberry leaves and over them spread.

And all the day long they sang their sweet song,

Those two little babes who were lost in the wood.

POPULAR SONG OF THE AMERICAN WEST

Hope! Here is Canyon Creek! and Camp 8 must lie very near—I shall be there tomorrow.

Climbed to the top of a high knob today, which was terrible work, with the summit always seeming to recede before me—upon the higher slopes, patches of old snow hardened to ice in certain hollows and tree wells, the wind blowing gusty and fierce, the view of trees and more trees and an infinity of mountains and canyons in which every pointy cone is seemingly of volcanic origins and every one a twin to every other. I was too exhausted to cry. Left the knob by means of a northerly route which started well but was deceiving, and later fell off steeply into a declivity; I despaired of reaching the bottom alive. But the ravine opened unexpectedly into the gorge of a stream which I am certain is an upper reach of Canyon Creek, as it wends away to the northwest (which it should) and is of a familiar size and appearance (caught between steep walls, with whitened logs, stumps,
broken branches tangled in debris amidst tumbled lava forms and boulders brought down by the spring freshet). A relief, in any case, to be next to flowing water again.

My camp (the last!) is a poor thing in the hollow stump of a decayed tree, which I share with spiders and centipedes, but tomorrow I will have a soft bed free of vermin, and a hot bath, as well as a delicious rest while someone else tends to the fire; and FOOD. Footsore, infinitely bruised and battered, and of course cold, as rotted wood throws off so little heat, but these things are as nothing beside the simple fact of hunger. (I wonder if the human body exists for the sole purpose of eating, for when sustenance is denied to it, the stomach asserts its importance and becomes the central organ.)