This two-part article appeared in the August and September, 1893 issues of Outing magazine

A FAMILY CAMP IN THE ROCKIES

BY CHARLOTTE REEVE CONOVER

     About the middle of July a camping party of eight—four adults, three children, and their nurse—were en route across the plains in a Pullman car.  A few miles east of Denver they were met by a joyful “Cripp” whose anticipations, after a year’s exile from home, would not allow him to wait their arrival at Denver.  It was a happy meeting.  From Denver we went direct to Buena Vista.  (footnote: a Cripp is a Colorado generic term for a consumptive.)

     Buena Vista is situated about one hundred and twenty miles southwest of Denver.  The route passes through Colorado Springs, Manitou, Cascade, and Green Mountain Falls, following the general course of the La Platte River, westward and upward toward the divide, from which it drops gradually into the valley of the Arkansas.  The scenery is called the finest in Colorado, and is remarkably Alpine in character—wild, precipitous and awe-inspiring; an occasional glimpse of Pike’s Peak adding a touch of beauty to it.

     Below lay Buena Vista, in the middle of the valley of the Arkansas—or prairie, rather, for, properly speaking, there are no valleys in our American Switzerland.  The country is either mountain or plain, in dead earnest, and the ranges rise from the flat surface of the prairie like icebergs from the sea.  Five miles of this level country, with the Arkansas dividing it like a ribbon, lay before us, and beyond rose the snowy outline of the Sagouache (footnote: Sy-watch) range, rising peak on peak, until lost in the clear distance toward the south.  Pointing far across the valley, to a pineapple-shaped elevation situated between two larger mountains, Uncle Rob told the children that that was Sheep Mountain.  Our camp was to be in the canon at the foot of it.

     On the principal street of Buena Vista stands a large grocery and warehouse, whose stock of goods includes tinware, crockery, canned fruit, salt and fresh meats, hardware, and all miners’ and campers’ supplies.  Here we spent a morning in deep consultation, endeavoring to reconcile our necessities with our pocket-books.

     “You must remember, “said my prudent brother-in-law, “that you cannot carry any of this stuff home with you, and whatever you buy over and above what you need is dead loss.”

     Our standards, in the matter of kitchen utensils, did especially differ.  I argued from the standpoint of a well-stocked house, he from the frugal outfit of a bachelor’s ranch.  A skillet and camp-kettle seemed to him ample provision for any culinary necessities.

     “Do you mean,” said I, aghast, “to boil the ham and the towels in the same kettle?”

     “To be sure,” he answered with the nonchalance of an experienced camper; “only you needn’t put them both in at the same time.”

     This was too much.  I made a valiant stand for my prerogatives, and secured a stew-pan, wondering if  those classic campers, the Shaybacks would call this going “well-heeled.”

     The list of commodities which we finally decided upon was as follows:

1 heating and 1 cooking stove  1 stew-pan                               1 meat platter         5 tin wash-basins

1 camp-kettle                               1 skillet                                     3 tin milk pans        1 dipper

1 tea-kettle                                    1 doz. stoneware plates        6 mattresses             1 tub

1 coffee pot                                  ½ doz. tin plates                    12 pillows                  1 doz. Clothes-pins

1 doz. Tumblers                           1 doz. stoneware cups          1 fire shovel              1 coal-oil can

3 bowls                                          ½ doz. tin cups                       1 dish pan                 5 lamps

2 pie pans                                     2 vegetable dishes                  3 fiber pails              12 camp-stools

     Total cost of kitchen outfit $46.10.

     Plated knives, forks, and spoons, kitchen ladles and measuring cups we brought from home; also our blankets, towels and bed linen.

     Our list of groceries for six weeks cost us $108.25.

     It included, of flour, 65 lbs.; of cornmeal, 25 lbs.; Graham flour, 10; potatoes, 110; coffee, 15; ham, 50; sugar, 50; crackers, 36; soap, 12; butter, 18; lard, 8; evaporated fruit, 12; 11 packages of rolled oats; 25 dozen eggs; 3 gallons coal oil; 3 ½ gallons maple syrup; 80 cans fruit, vegetables, and soups.

     Out tents cost $64.30; labor in putting them up, hauling baggage, and horse-hire, $21.75; milk (two gallons a day), $28.90; butter and bread from the ranch, $7.00; fresh vegetables, $3.55.

     Other items, such as washing, baths at the hotel, fishing-tackle, fresh meat and fruit from town, raised the amount to about $350—the living expenses of nine people for six weeks.

     The stove above mentioned was about the size of a deal cracker box—say 18x24 inches square and 16 high—made of sheet iron, with a division through the middle.  The front compartment was the fire-box, and the back one the oven.  Each had a door with a fastening like an old-fashioned door-latch.

     If we had had an inkling of the diabolical tendencies of that stove, its capacity for ruining our most cherished schemes, we would have kept our enthusiasm for other things.  About eleven o’clock the last purchase was paid for and the procession moved camp-ward.  We and our belongings  filled two wagons.  The one with the household goods went ahead.

     What a ride it was!  The children were frantic with excitement, and we had not a little difficulty in answering their questions.  My mind was torn with anxiety about things possibly forgotten.  Had we enough soap?  Would nine pairs of blankets keep us warm?  Had anybody thought of matches?  Then my thoughts would soar away from blankets and soap to a happy contemplation of the prospect around us.  I had been starving for mountains since I lived in neighborly companionship with the Alps, fourteen years before.

     Between the summits of Princeton and Yale stands Sheep Mountain, which Uncle Rob had told the children marked the site of our camp.  It was directly toward this that our road led, and after five miles of flat prairie, past a ranch or two and quantities of bowlders and cactus, we began the rise into the canon of the Cottonwood.  A hotel stands at the foot of the hills, which we made a convenience of for mail, hot baths (natural), and errands to town.  A mile beyond, and above the hotel, we caught a gleam of white canvas through the dark leafage of the pines.  Here the horses came to a standstill, the children rolled off either end of the wagon that came nearest and dashed away in ecstatic curiosity toward the tents.  The two sent from Denver were already up; the other three remained to be extricated from the baggage in the wagon.  The drivers helped each other unload and then drove back to town, leaving us sitting on a large rock, like the Pilgrim Fathers, with our household possessions piled around us.

     What to do first?

     The magnitude of our undertaking dawned upon us.  Here we were, a family of nine, set down among the rocks and sand and pines, to begin living!  Nothing to sit on, sleep on, eat on, or cook on; no place to lay a thing down or hang it up; two miles from an egg and six miles from a safety-pin.

     During the first half-hour I was appealed to for twine, tacks, a button-hook, court plaster, a big needle, a pencil, the vaseline, a spoon, the measuring tape and wrapping paper, any of which articles might be in either tray of any of the four trunks, or possibly  in one of the six hand-bags.  And as the baggage was mostly buried under the mattresses my state of mind may be imagined.

     Before we had made any headway in reducing the disorder we discovered that we were all tremendously, frantically hungry; not surprising, since we had been in the open air all the morning and were then at an altitude of eight thousand feet above sea-level.  The professor, in the zeal of starvation, proceeded to explore sundry paper packages in the box of groceries, arriving at sugar, navy beans, dried peaches, candles, and other commodities, good enough in their way, but not adapted to immediate necessities.

     “Where is the bread, anyway?” he asked.

     “Bread”------------

     “Why! didn’t you think of the bread?”  we all exclaimed in unison, looking at each other like a village chorus expressing surprise at the unworthy conduct of the tenor bandit.  The bread had, of course, been forgotten, but, as Robert remarked, thank heaven, we still had the field-glass and plenty of patent trout-flies!  Nobody goes camping in Colorado without a box of crackers, so in the dearth of bread, that was  found and the top demolished; as the can opener could not be got at the axe was used on a can of beef; these, with cold water from the stream, made our first camp dinner.

     That afternoon the other tents were erected, the provisions gotten under cover, and we all retired.  I don’t know when or how sleep came, but the last thing I heard was the resonant roar of the creek over the bowlders in the gulch below.  The next day, and for several following, sounds of the hammer and saw were heard from morning to night.

     A dining-table was built, a peculiar feature of which was a tendency to spill coffee and upset the temper of the persons at either end, but when we called the attention of the head of the family to this defect  he replied that if any one thought he could build a better piece of furniture with a tack-hammer and six-penny nails he was at liberty to try.  Afterward a kitchen table was built against a large rock; the stove was mounted on a cracker-box and the pipe wired to the branches of a pine tree.  A set of shelves was constructed in the provision tent to hold our canned tomatoes and other bric-a-brac.

     Each sleeping-tent was provided with a small table, which served the double purpose of washstand and dressing-case.  A cracker-box standing on end with a shelf nailed in it, held our books and had papers; another was furnished with a lid and anchored in the stream to keep the butter and milk sweet; a third cracker-box was nailed to a tree and held our dishes.  What would we have done without cracker-boxes?  As the men gradually provided all these conveniences Alice and I arranged our part of the household—put up curtains tacked on table-covers, and “read up” in the cook-book.  As she said, when we had a jar of dried bread crumbs and a dish of cold boiled potatoes on the pantry shelf it seemed as though we were at last really keeping house.

     We were a pretty thoroughly tired-out family at the end of that week.  Our first Sunday in camp was literally a day of rest.  Almost the last thing done the night before was to swing the six hammocks from tree to tree, in a semicircle, near the edge of the cliff, and here we spent the day, gazing, admiring, and drinking in the view.  It was as good as hearing a sermon to look at Princeton, towering so many thousand feet above us, holding great fields of snow in the basin of its extinct crater.  Close on the other side of us another sermon, --the abrupt cliff of limestone rock fully five hundred feet high, the eyrie of eagles and the haunt of mountain sheep.  Behind us, toward the west, Sheep Mountain and Needle Point, lifted their sharp, gray summits into the blue Colorado sky.  Directly in front the outlook was down our canon out into the valley of the Arkansas, which was bounded on the farther side, six miles away, by the purple outline of the South Park range.  In the near foreground, down in the gulch, the foaming stream with its border of cottonwood trees, the pine-dotted slopes each side, and a little farther on the red roof of the hotel making a spot of color in contrast with the green fields of the valley.  This was our daily panorama, varied by sunsets,  storm-clouds, mist, rain and sunshine—all those enchanting atmospheric effects which every lover of Nature knows so well.

  One of the first official topics for consideration after we were settled and rested was a name for the camp.  Our tents stood in an irregular row facing the edge of the cliff, among the pinon pines.  Almost a bush in stature, with ugly gnarled branches growing close to the ground, the pinon is not a beautiful tree, but it develops better qualities on closer acquaintance.  The children learned to enjoy the resinous gum and the sweet nuts hidden in the cones, while the space underneath the low-hanging branches made a capital playhouse.  One sturdy pinon, with a trunk like a cedar of Lebanon, stretched its arms around the provision tent, making a most picturesque background for our kitchen.  A small one near our sleeping-tent we dubbed the Christmas-tree, it being a convenient hanging place for the lantern, Rob’s rubber boots, the fish-bag, hammock pillows and hats.  Still another shaded our dining-table, and a broken branch above the professor’s seat added now and then a surreptitious drop of resin to his cup of coffee.  After such intimate association it was eminently suitable to name the camp after the trees; so Camp Pinon it became.

     It is dry even when it rains in Colorado.  This may seem an over-statement, but there were many things which went to prove it.  If it rained the whole day (which it rarely did) any papers or copies of Outing lying about on the ground were dry almost as soon as the sun came out.  Crackers in an open box remained fresh and crisp to the last.  We ceased to take shelter from a shower unless it pelted us pretty severely.  If it surprised us while reading in a hammock we curled up a little more, pulled our caps over our eyes, and turned another page.  The premonitions of storm were sometimes terrific.  A mass of inky clouds streaked with lightning would pile up over Sheep Mountain and roll down the canon, as if to wipe our tents off the face of the earth.  Then the wind would blow a gale, the mountains hide their heads in darkness, and we expected terrible things.  But, in many cases, after all this impressive prelude the storm would change its course and go roaring and booming down some other canon to the north or south, and leave us rejoicing in our escape from its discomforts and possible dangers.

     The children wore garments long ago laid aside to be sent to the Associated Charities, and having thus defrauded that worthy organization in favor of my own children, my mind was serene to all wear and tear.  They played all day long in the Pinon play-house or wandered about in the vicinity of the camp in search of agates, Indian arrow-heads, and lovely wild-flowers.  No pen but Helen Hunt’s could do justice to the wild-flowers of Colorado, and the hand that held that pen is, alas! quiet forever in her grave in Cheyenne Canon.  A list of the flowers growing around Camp Pinon would include poppies, salvia, bouvardia, geranium, cactus, euphorbia spendens, gentian, clematis, columbine and many strangers.

     I regret to state we adults did not display as much energy as the children.  The proper thing to do, when camping in the Rocky Mountains (for the men at least), is to kill a grizzly bear and come home and tell about it.  I have no such exploit to describe.  The nearest we came to killing a grizzly was to hear some cowboys declare they had seen bear-tracks in the dust of the road about two miles beyond us, in the Cottonwood Pass.  Occasionally one of the men would appear equipped with boots, fish-bag and rod, for a morning’s sport, and then we always had breaded trout for dinner; otherwise their days were occupied as idle men will occupy them, with whist, smoking, reading and sleeping.

     Our regular morning visitor to Camp Pinon was Mr. Ambrose, the owner of a ranch two miles away.  He furnished us with milk, butter, eggs, buttermilk, chickens, vegetables, bread, saddle-horses, and information.  We lost no time in getting on “solid” terms with Mr. Ambrose, who in the end proved a good a friend as he was a provider.  He owned a colossal green wagon with four high seats, which he declared would hold the entire camp, so with this understanding we engaged the equipage to take us to Alpine Pass, eighteen miles down the valley.  It was a two-days’ trip and we might possibly have to spend the intervening night in the wagon, it being a matter of complete uncertainty what food or shelter we might find after once leaving our own camp.  The men calculated that, as ten people might have to be supplied with five meals, we ought to prepare enough provisions to fill the tub,--“as a starter,” they added and walked off leaving us wrapped in consternation at the work before us.  For we had already learned what it was to cook on a camp-stove.  This was the order of proceedings and the general result.  The fire was made, the kettle filled and a ham put on to boil.  This we packed entire, together with several cans each of soups and beef tongue.  Alice made four apple-pies.  I baked six dozen biscuit. We carried two gallons of milk, a jar of pickles, a pail of ground coffee, and I would not dare state how many hard-boiled eggs.  All these when finished did fill the tub, to the exclusion of dishes, which were put into the bottom of the wagon with the frying-pan, camp-stools, blankets, hammocks, and shawls.  We pushed a bench against the provision tent as a protection against stray cattle in search of salt, which it seemed, were the only burglars we had to fear.  Then the children were handed up to their aerial seats in the wagon, where the baby sat smiling and swinging his little feet over the straw beneath.  Robert and I were in the saddle, he mounted on a gaunt bay and I on a roan broncho, with a mouth like gutta-percha and seven distinct gaits, changed often and unexpectedly.

     If cooking rules must be modified to suit Western climate, still more must equestrian methods.  Perhaps you have ridden a horse with a pace or an English trot as a saddle gait, and worn a tailor habit and an immaculate beaver, and considered that, as far as style went, you were absolutely irreproachable.  Three hundred miles west of the Mississippi such an equipment would be looked upon with scorn.  So far from being able to introduce Eastern customs to the natives, you would soon discover that you were considered a “tenderfoot.”  To be in really “good form” in the Colorado mountain country you must first wear a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, gray felt hat.  This is as the fashion-books say, “de rigueur.”  Your saddle must be quite large and fastened by the double girth; the blanket striped with red and yellow, your rubber circular strapped in a roll in front, and an extra wrap similarly arranged behind the saddle.  Various straps and ropes dangle and flap, in true cowboy style from every side, and often there is a coil of rope on the outer pommel.  What I was expected to do with a lariat, if occasion offered, I did not know, but having it seemed to show that I was ready for any emergency.

     The first nine miles of the ride were positive bliss.  The air, the rank and file of snowy mountains on either side, the laughter of the children, the flap of my skirt in the breeze, even the sight of the coffee-pot swinging  gayly under the wagon, helped to subtract the last ten years of my life and leave me a girl again.  After a while the unaccustomed exercise began to be wearisome, and it appeared that if I expected to come back alive the safest course would be to exchange seats with some one in the wagon.  This was done when we halted for dinner.  The remainder of the afternoon I perched on the back seat and held the baby from falling,  until, when the little head grew too heavy to be held, he was dropped softly upon the deep bed of straw, where, with one last sleepy smile, and his thumb in his mouth, he went quietly to sleep on a shawl.

     Our course down the prairie was directed toward a gap in the mountain chain, between Princeton and Mt. Antero.  In the eighteen miles, therefore, we had passed along the base of Mt. Princeton from the southern to the northern limit, and about five in the afternoon reached the top of a cliff from which we could see down into the Chalk Creek gulch and the opening of Alpine Pass.  Below us, on the bank of Chalk Creek, was a cluster of wooden houses  which we knew to be Antero Hot Springs.  The descent to Haywood was made by a series of ziz-zags cut in the face of the cliff.  Most people get out and walk down this road but I held fast to the seat and the children, shut my eyes and put my faith in Mr. Ambrose.  We reached the bottom safely, with no realization of our nervous fears, but it was a ride I should not care to take twice.  We drove up the pass some two or three miles, intending to visit a camp where several of Robert’s friends were staying, but a sudden storm caused us to turn back and take shelter at a ranch until the rain was over.  It was a log house of three rooms, and the owner and his wife received us with hospitable unconcern, as though the invasion of their home by ten strangers was an every-day occurrence.  It was supper time, we were hungry, and the provisions were in the wagon in the corral—a trio of facts which might have caused an awkward social situation in the East.  But a certain quality of good-breeding seem to flourish in the Western atmosphere, a result, I suppose, of the fact that it takes a pretty high type of man and woman to settle in a new country.

     “Now I haven’t got enough for you all, “ said the hostess, “but you can bring what you have right in here and you’re welcome to make your coffee on my stove and use any milk you need.”  We accepted gratefully the offer of her stove, but not of her sitting-room, preferring to picnic in any Bohemian fashion rather than make ourselves burdensome.  So the “feed-tub,” as the boys called it, was brought to the kitchen porch and we made a trampish sort of a meal with the greatest relish.  I know now how it feels to be fed at the back door with an iron spoon.  After supper the owner of the ranch gave as a typical entertainment—stories of miners’ camps, bears, Indians and various pioneer adventures.  He had lived on the frontier all his life, but was a strikingly well-informed, intelligent man.

     It was quite dark when the weather permitted us to leave this friendly shelter and start back toward the Haywood Hotel.  We were told it was full, but thought best to make an attempt to get rooms, as the idea of spending the night in the wagon grew less and less alluring.  Fortunately there were accommodations for us.  It was my first experience in a log hotel.  The parlor where we were shown was perhaps twenty feet square, with a floor full of ridgy surprises and covered with a flamboyant carpet.   The walls were hidden by lengths of small-figured purple calico tacked smoothly over the logs, and there were rather more lace curtains than windows.  The furnishments of the room consisted of an upright Fischer with a brass piano-lamp and a rack of music near it, a good selection of books, and some rather over-powering family portraits in gilt frames.  The ceiling could not have been more than seven feet six inches high, which brought the portraits so low that it gave one the curious feeling of looking over the heads of a lot of dwarfs.  While I was taking in these peculiar elegancies the landlady came to show me to my room.  It was up a pair of stairs like a ladder, difficult to navigate under the disadvantage of managing a stiff back and a heavy, sleepy child.  Upstairs the ceilings were still lower.  This architectural blemish was worse for the mahogany chamber “suit” than it was for the family portraits, inasmuch as the pinnacled tops of the bed and dressing-case had been sawed off to enable them to fit the room.  Furthermore, the bureau was so encumbered with satin-lined cases of various sorts, a manicure set and a lace pin-cushion, that I was quite abashed, my own toilet accessories, it is needless to say, being quite unassuming.  Such a sudden promotion from unplaned boards and a tin wash-basin to a marble-topped wash-stand and china pitcher might have unhinged a stronger mind than mine.  One fact struck me with dismay.  The bed stood out from the wall and the legs were placed in pans of coal oil.   I had heard ominous stories of log houses before, and this could mean only one thing.  Should we sleep in the wagon after all?  But we were too worn out with our day’s experience to make any new arrangements, so I went gingerly to bad and dreamed a composite dream of Mrs. Carlyle and her four-poster, and George Kennan in Siberia.

     The next day our party divided for the trip home; two riders left us to make the ascent of Princeton, which, as it is a hundred odd feet higher than Pike’s Peak, takes a full day to accomplish.  Tired from my saddle ordeal the day before, I took the train back to Buena Vista, while the rest returned in the wagon, and I was, therefore, the first to arrive at camp.  The fire was soon re-built, the table set, and supper cooking; a cheery, homely look that went straight to my heart made me glad to be back.  Our little friends, the ground squirrels, seemed to welcome me home.  They flashed in and out of the provision tent, or sat up on the rock back of the kitchen table and watched me work, with their little beady eyes following every movement.  Our scavengers, the “camp robbers,” were on hand, too, waiting their turn.  They are pretty gray-and-black-plumaged birds, the size of a pigeon, but with a dismal squawk which they keep up incessantly.  They will carry off anything from a biscuit to an iron spoon, and are very useful if they confine their depredations to refuse and garbage.

     Supper was soon ready, and although I missed Barbara, my step-taker, the baby did what he could to help by bringing sticks for the fire and kisses for myself.  This is the bill-of-fare for that supper, and I challenge any camper who has ever climbed a mountain to say whether he would enjoy it.

     Broiled chops, baked potatoes, new pease, a hot tea-cake, peach marmalade, Mocha coffee, and a gallon can of milk.

     Our campers, at least, found no fault with it.  Just as the last dish was ready I heard the “camp yell” from the road, then the rumbling wheels of the big wagon.

     There was always a controversy among the men as to whose turn it was to go for water.  Papa declares he brought the last six bucketfuls.  Uncle Rob says every one knows he is the invalid, and can’t be expected to do heavy work.  (N.B. –He had just climbed Princeton and ridden twenty miles in the saddle.)  They both insist that it is Dick’s turn, but Dick is looking at the scenery and does not hear.  Then Robert speaks:

     “Come, you lazy citizen, get a move on yourself.  Go up to that spring and bring us some water.”

     Dick rises, takes the buckets with an air of gentle resignation and says in a tone of sorrow and reproach, “Robert, I wouldn’t have your disposition for a thousand dollars.”

     Dick was always refusing imaginary thousand-dollar bribes to exchange his disposition for ours.

     At last we are all seated around the festive oilcloth, Barbara stepping quickly to keep up with demands from both ends of the table.

    
     “Is there anything in the tent for breakfast, Barbara?”

     “Yes, ma-am;  ham.”

     “Oh!!!”  (a groan goes round the table, and the professor falls off his camp-stool).

     “I thought, “ said Alice, “that the omelet on Monday was positively the last appearance of that ham in any role.”

     “No,” I replied, firmly (and I had often to be very firm), “there is enough for one more meal, and it must be eaten up.”

     “Good-night,” said Robert, airily.  “I’ll take mushroom patties and strawberries and cream for my breakfast.  Please bring them to my tent about nine o’clock.”

     “Very well, dear,” I answered; “just keep on ringing the electric bell until they come.”

     There was one week at Camp Pinon that we should all be glad to forget. In the first place it rained and in the second we had sickness among us.  These are two disagreeable contingencies apt to occur at camp as well as at home.  Our good luck in this respect lasted so long, that we began to think ourselves exceptionally favored, but fate overtook us at last.

     One of the party complained of headache and stomach trouble; then followed a bad night, a worse day, and before we knew it we had a case of sickness that might reasonably be called severe, though there was no cause for anxiety.  A doctor was called from Buena Vista, and the camp drugstore held things likely to be needed for any ordinary illness.  So we were by no means unprovided for.  Yet oh! the tribulations of that week, that followed!  Sickness, in any form, is not a pleasant episode, when it occurs in a well-arranged home, but in a tent it is unspeakable misery to the patient and wearisome anxiety to the nurse.  How many journeys were made by me or one of my “aids” from the sick-room to the kitchen tent on errands concerning poultices, broths, and hot compresses; paddling through the wet sand at midnight with a lantern that went out when most needed!  How many times during those journeys in the dark did I fall over the tent-pin, spilling the last cup of beef-tea made from the last scrap of meat within six miles!  It can be imagined it was no easy thing to make beef-tea  on the stove under the most favorable circumstances; but when it happened to be needed in the middle of the night, amidst a deluge of rain and an occasional crashing explosion of thunder that threatened to tear tents, stove and pine-trees up by the roots and send them whirling over the cliff—then it was most decidedly neither easy nor pleasant.

     Of course my duties as head nurse left me no time for the preparation or superintendence of meals.  For a day or so the domestic affairs were in a state of chaos, then to our surprise, Robert, who had from the first been a self-elected Critic of the Breakfast-Table, volunteered to take my place and show us that he could do as camp housekeeper.  So he was installed as “chef,” and if anything could raise my spirits, amidst the general worry and drippiness  it was to see Robert, under that leaky awning, with my perforated apron tied up under his arms, glaring through his glasses at the pages of the Boston Cook Book, and repeating as an incantation, “a teaspoonful of soda to a quart of flour.”  One morning I said, “Robert, these pancakes have been dropped in the sand and stepped on; I’m sure of it.”

     “So help me George Washington, never”—but he looked warningly at Barbara, who retired into the provision tent to giggle, so whatever the dark secret was we never fount it out.

     It was during the latter half of our stay at Camp Pinon that a note of introduction was sent to us bearing this inscription as a letter head:

CAMP “GALATEA,”

SUMMER QUARTERS OF

THE ANDRESS DRAMATIC COMPANY,

COTTONWOOD LAKE, UNDER THE SHADOW OF

MAJESTIC OLD “ PRINCETON.”

ALTITUDE 9,500

     So we had neighbors!  This was interesting.  We had not expected the Rocky Mountains to offer any social opportunities, but here were next-door neighbors, so to speak, for Cottonwood Lake was only six miles from us, farther back in the range and two thousand feet higher. Our Cottonwood Creek was the outlet for this mountain lake, and the road which led to it followed the wanderings of the stream up the canon.  As the oldest residents in this vicinity, we felt that we should open the civilities, so, one fresh, breezy morning, Robert, Professor Dick, the Head of the Family, and I, started on horseback for Camp Galatea.  Four riders proving a strain on the resources of Mr. Ambrose’s stables  I was obliged to ride an old bay mare, whose colt ambled vaguely along with the party, getting under foot or falling behind and having to be waited for very much after the manner of our own babies when taken out for an airing.  With this clog our progress was not very rapid, but we succeeded in getting a great deal of enjoyment out of the leisurely expedition.  It was a delicious rest and change for me after having been shut up in the hospital tent for ten days.

     As we approached Camp Galatea, Mr. Andrews came out to meet us, bearing what the members of his company were in the habit of calling “his ten thousand dollar smile.”  The gate was thrown open leading us into an inclosure of the bank of the lake, in which, under a sheltering canopy of noble hemlocks, stood a well-built log house and three tents.  The surroundings bore a tinge of Alpine grandeur.  The lake, black with the reflection of its mountain walls, lay, nestled among the highest peaks in the range, ten thousand feet above the sea.  The cliffs rose precipitately from the water’s edge on all sides except the small plateau where the tents were pitched.

     Princeton’s crater towered above the cottage and stood between their camp and ours; so we had made the circuit of the peak in our morning’s ride.  Under a striped awning at the back of the house stood a stove and a rickety table, both bearing a family resemblance to some of ours.  Flitting about with pans and spoons were several female figures wearing aprons, which, I perceived with a mental smile, had small round holes burned in the middle breadth.  This circumstance set me at my ease at once and the ice was broken.

     “Yes,” Mrs. Andrews laughingly explained, “these are our ‘property’ aprons and we shall have to get new ones before we can go on with our engagements.  Indeed most of our outfit is from the property trunks, we are so far from home and have only come for a few weeks.”

     Then followed introductions to the other members of the “company,” and vague conjectures on my part as to the relationship involved.  It was largely a family party, consisting of a white-haired mother, her two married daughters and their husbands, a granddaughter of eight years, a cousin and a nephew, who with several friends made thirteen in all.

     The six miles additional nearness to supplies gave Camp Pinon a decided gain in comforts over the lake camp.  No Mr. Ambrose flourished in these upper regions, to contribute ranch supplies to the Galateans, so they were reduced to the dismal necessity of using condensed milk and canned vegetables.  Still, the dinner they served was appetizing and enjoyable in more ways than one.  After dinner the gentlemen betook them selves to a shady spot on the beach to play “High Five” or some such wicked game, and the ladies gathered on the piazza to discuss the great questions of the day.  After awhile these topics resolved themselves into more personal matters and discussions.  The sun  began to set about four o’clock, as it has a habit of doing where the mountains are fourteen thousand feet high, so we mounted our horses and with the tired little colt tagging at our heels, we left Camp Galatea, their cordial good-byes echoing down the canon in the evening air.

     Some days later seven of the Galateans appeared at our camp, bringing with them their own plates, knives and forks, according to the terms of the invitation.  They made an imposing procession.  First came a two-wheeled cart, drawn by a shaggy burro and occupied by two ladies, with the little girl standing up behind.  Others of the party straggles along on foot or mounted on burros; the largest man riding the smallest animal.  They were enthusiastic over our artistic furniture, book-shelves , and china closet, and at dinner were particularly struck with the fact that we possessed nine stoneware cups, all alike.  This opulence, we explained, was the result of preparing for a summer in the mountains instead of a two-weeks’ sojourn.

     The next Wednesday our visitors were to break camp and play a one-night’s engagement in the Buena Vista Theatre.  In preparation for the evening’s entertainment we laid aside flannel blouses and unearthed from the bottom of our trunks, bonnets, stiff linen, gloves, all the abominations of civilized garb, and drove to Buena vista.  Never was an evening’s entertainment so heartily enjoyed, apart from its excellent dramatic quality.  All the camp jokes, allusions to Cottonwood Lake, and Camp Pinon were dragged, nilly-willy, into the lines of that play.

     The next day we had to bid farewell to Cousin Dick and his belongings.  We missed his music, his jokes, and his capacity for griddle cakes.  There was no one to abuse about going for water, and nothing to remind us of him but six tent pegs, some broken pipes and a discarded pair of trousers on the clothes-line.  Our summer had indeed ended.

     One frosty morning, in the middle of September, we were surrounded by the confusion of breaking camp--collapsed tents, lariated bedclothes and stray tin-ware.  We became again decently attired members of society and the children felt once more the crushing responsibility of clean clothes.  We were glad to set our faces homeward and anticipate the comforts and conveniences of our own homes, but none the less did we turn at the top of the hill and waft back to the rocks and pines of Camp Pinon a hearty and unanimous

Auf Wiedersehen!

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     I have been often asked if camping in Colorado “paid.”  For that question I have a provisional answer.  If you are merely bent on rest and pleasure, if you have a family of children to consider, and especially if you live anywhere east of the Mississippi, then I should say decidedly, it is too great an undertaking.  It is far from conveniences, and there are many risks, such as sickness and unexpected expense to be considered.  Or, if you are a person who can enjoy a sunset from a hotel piazza but do not like to get your feet wet;  if you cannot eat with a plated spoon and drink out of a tin cup; if you cannot make yourself luxuriously comfortable on a camp stool with a broken leg, then my advice is, “don’t go camping anywhere.”   But if you have a strong back and a good temper; if you can laugh at difficulties and put up with inconveniences; --above all, if you are on sufficiently good terms with nature to take pot luck with her in good weather or bad,--then you have in you the stuff of which a good camper is made.  Beyond all this, if you are a lover of outdoors in the intense sense of Wordsworth’s stately metre,--if the sounding cataract “haunts you like a passion,”—if the mountains are to you “an appetite, a feeling and a love,” –if you have felt—

“A sense sublime,--of something,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky.”***

---then pitch your tent wherever you will, on the shores of  Connecticut or in the mountains of Colorado, in Maine or Minnesota woods, and you will be happy.