“How long until supper?” my father asked.

“An hour,” said Miss Pauline.

“All right, we’ll be back by then.” He led us into the woods, stopping only to pick up his camp axe. Miss Pauline didn’t ask where we were going.

As we walked down the path between the pines, my father told us: “We’re going out have a good time, not be miserable. And since we’re going to spend around eight hours every night in bed, let’s make sure our beds are comfortable. Tim, what do you suggest?”

Tim looked at the axe. “A browse bed, I guess,” he said.

“How do you make one?”

“Fell some spruce boughs, spread them out for a mattress.”

“That’s the idea, but that’s not the way,” said my father. “If you want a browse bed to be really comfortable, you ought to thatch it. But first, let’s find a good camp site. Never mind about water, we’ll forget that. But other than water, find me a site fit to use.”

We looked around. I found a sloping hill and pointed it out. “This looks nice,” I said.

My father laughed. “You’d roll out of bed and down that hill the first five minutes,” he said. “Look, here’s what we want. A nice dry, level piece of ground without too many rocks. You two, gather up what there are. Save them for the camp fire.”

As we pried stones out of the ground, my father found a deadfall and cut four poles. Two were around seven feet long; the other two were half that length. When we had the ground ready, he laid the poles down in the shape of a bed, seven feet long and four feet wide, and drove pegs at the corners to hold them in place.

“Now,” he said, “let’s find us a nice evergreen. Balsam’s best.”

“There’s one over near the slope,” said Tim.

We went over, and my father cut another pole. “You hold this, Tim,” he said. Then he began cutting small boughs and draping them over the end of the pole. The needles interlocked and held the big pile of boughs in place. When they got heavy, Tim carried them over to the “bed” and came back for more.

When he thought he had enough, my father began spreading them between the four poles, the heavy butt ends pointed down at the foot of the bed. Each layer covered the bare ends even deeper. When the “mattress” was finished, it was more than a foot thick. My father gave us smaller boughs, and we poked them in wherever we could find a hole.

Father threw down his jacket to keep the needles from poking us, and we took turns lying down.

“It’s softer than my corn husk mattress at home,” said Tim. Tim had the only corn husk mattress in the cabin. Mine was feathers, and so was the one in my father’s bedroom. Every time Tim turned over in the night, you could hear the husks whispering together.