On the Trail: An Outdoor Book for Girls. Adelia B. Beard
birds, and small four-footed animals. On all sides you will find evidences of wild life if you will look for it. Here you may make camp for a day and enjoy that day as much as if it were one of many in a several weeks' camping trip.
However, this is not to be a book of glittering generalities but, as far as it can be made, one of practical helpfulness in outdoor life; therefore when you are told to strike the trail you must also be told how to do it.
When You Strike the Trail
For any journey, by rail or by boat, one has a general idea of the direction to be taken, the character of the land or water to be crossed, and of what one will find at the end. So it should be in striking the trail. Learn all you can about the path you are to follow. Whether it is plain or obscure, wet or dry; where it leads; and its length, measured more by time than by actual miles. A smooth, even trail of five miles will not consume the time and strength that must be expended upon a trail of half that length which leads over uneven ground, varied by bogs and obstructed by rocks and fallen trees, or a trail that is all up-hill climbing. If you are a novice and accustomed to walking only over smooth and level ground, you must allow more time for covering the distance than an experienced person would require and must count upon the expenditure of more strength, because your feet are not trained to the wilderness paths with their pitfalls and traps for the unwary, and every nerve and muscle will be strained to secure a safe foothold amid the tangled roots, on the slippery, moss-covered logs, over precipitous rocks that lie in your path. It will take time to pick your way over boggy places where the water oozes up through the thin, loamy soil as through a sponge; and experience alone will teach you which hummock of grass or moss will make a safe stepping-place and will not sink beneath your weight and soak your feet with hidden water. Do not scorn to learn all you can about the trail you are to take, although your questions may call forth superior smiles. It is not that you hesitate to encounter difficulties, but that you may prepare for them. In unknown regions take a responsible guide with you, unless the trail is short, easily followed, and a frequented one. Do not go alone through lonely places; and, being on the trail, keep it and try no explorations of your own, at least not until you are quite familiar with the country and the ways of the wild.
Blazing the Trail
A woodsman usually blazes his trail by chipping with his axe the trees he passes, leaving white scars on their trunks, and to follow such a trail you stand at your first tree until you see the blaze on the next, then go to that and look for the one farther on; going in this way from tree to tree you keep the trail though it may, underfoot, be overgrown and indistinguishable.
If you must make a trail of your own, blaze it as you go by bending down and breaking branches of trees, underbrush, and bushes. Let the broken branches be on the side of bush or tree in the direction you are going, but bent down away from that side, or toward the bush, so that the lighter underside of the leaves will show and make a plain trail. Make these signs conspicuous and close together, for in returning, a dozen feet without the broken branch will sometimes confuse you, especially as everything has a different look when seen from the opposite side. By this same token it is a wise precaution to look back frequently as you go and impress the homeward-bound landmarks on your memory. If in your wanderings you have branched off and made ineffectual or blind trails which lead nowhere, and, in returning to camp, you are led astray by one of them, do not leave the false trail and strike out to make a new one, but turn back and follow the false trail to its beginning, for it must lead to the true trail again. Don't lose sight of your broken branches.
If you carry a hatchet or small axe you can make a permanent trail by blazing the trees as the woodsmen do. Kephart advises blazing in this way: make one blaze on the side of the tree away from the camp and two blazes on the side toward the camp. Then when you return you look for the one blaze. In leaving camp again to follow the same trail, you look for the two blazes. If you should lose the trail and reach it again you will know to a certainty which direction to take, for two blazes mean camp on this side; one blaze, away from camp on this side.
To Know an Animal Trail
To know an animal trail from one made by men is quite important. It is easy to be led astray by animal trails, for they are often well defined and, in some cases, well beaten. To the uninitiated the trails will appear the same, but there is a difference which, in a recent number of Field and Stream, Mr. Arthur Rice defines very clearly in this way: "Men step on things. Animals step over or around things." Then again an animal trail frequently passes under bushes and low branches of trees where men would cut or break their way through. To follow an animal trail is to be led sometimes to water, often to a bog or swamp, at times to the animal's den, which in the case of a bear might not be exactly pleasant.
Returning to camp by the blazed trail.
Note the blazed trees.
Lost in the Woods
We were in the wilderness of an Adirondack forest making camp for the day and wanted to see the beaver-dam which, we were told, was on the edge of a near-by lake. The guide was busy cooking dinner and we would not wait for his leisure, but leaving the rest of the party, we started off confidently, just two of us, down the perfectly plain trail. For a short distance there was a beaten path, then, suddenly, the trail came to an abrupt end. We looked this side and that. No trail, no appearance of there ever having been one. With a careless wave of his arm, the guide had said: "Keep in that direction." "That" being to the left, to the left we therefore turned and stormed our way through thicket and bramble, breaking branches as we went. Sliding down declivities, scrambling over fallen trees, dipping beneath low-hung branches, we finally came out upon the shore of the lake and found that we had struck the exact spot where the beaver-dam was located.
It was only a short distance from camp and it had not taken us long to make it, but when we turned back we warmly welcomed the sight of our blazed trail, for all else was strange and unfamiliar. Going there had been glimpses of the water now and then to guide us, returning we had no landmarks. Even my sense of direction, usually to be relied on and upon which I had been tempted to depend solely, seemed to play me false when we reached a place where our blazing was lost sight of. The twilight stillness of the great forest enveloped us; there was no sign of our camp, no sound of voices. A few steps to our left the ground fell away in a steep precipice which, in going, we had passed unnoticed and which, for the moment, seemed to obstruct our way. Then turning to the right we saw a streak of light through the trees that looked, at first, like water where we felt sure no water could be if we were on the right path; but we soon recognized this as smoke kept in a low cloud by the trees—the smoke of our camp-fire. That was our beacon, and we were soon on the trail again and back in