She took a stronger turn with me, though, but I dug in my heels and held back. I didn’t mind learning the stuff girls were supposed to know, because deep down I knew that someday I would have to do those things for my husband and family. It was never even suggested that I might not end up with a husband. So I had to prepare myself. But those home things came easy to me and still left plenty of time to tag along after Tim and my father, which I did.

My father was a good teacher. He seemed terribly old and wise to me then, but now that I am older than he was when he died, I know that he was really a young, vigorous man in his mid-thirties—trim, powerful, firm in his opinions, loyal to his friends and a relentless, unforgiving enemy—traits and attributes that were not uncommon in young men of that day. He believed in punishment and reward. If I broke a fishing rod or lost a hook by accident, it was nothing to fear. But if I did so through carelessness, it meant a switching, and not any I’m-sorry-I-have-to-punish-you-and-this-hurts-me-more-than-it-does-you nonsense either. He laid on the fresh-cut branch hot and heavy.

I would not be alive now if it weren’t for the things my father taught us, Tim and me. We would have died in a matter of days, alone in the forest, that winter, if he hadn’t prepared us. Today, when I read about someone lost in the woods, I shiver and pray for him, for not one in a thousand is trained for the woods. The woods are full of hikers and campers and fishermen who lose themselves with a regularity that keeps the newspapers full of headlines. I wonder why they are permitted to endanger themselves when no state lets a fool with a car onto the road unless he can pass a test proving that he knows how to drive. So many city people feel that just because the woods belong to all of us they must rush out straightaway to grab their share before somebody else gets it, and in so doing, they come to grief. As you know, and as the governor in Albany will attest, no one has been more vigorous in protecting those wild lands that should be held in trust for future generations than Elizabeth Allison, but I must shout “halt” when I see the foolishness of some of the people who would visit the wilderness unprepared. It is as if they somehow feel that those of us who live in the rough are stupid and unskilled and that our knowledge is so easily acquired that it can be gotten from a book skimmed in one afternoon in a comfortable lodge before setting out on foot or by canoe or horse. Not so. I stand here to bear witness. My father was one of the finest guides the north mountains ever produced and still the wilderness killed him. What hope will your soft city dweller have with his guide book?