Out-Of-Doors Disciple
Dartmouth's Opportunities Along the Trail Are Typified by Activities of Bill Schumacher '43
THIS IS THE FIRST of a seriesof descriptive articles about leadersin the undergraduate body who aresetting high standards in the branchesof student life in which they areprominent.
William E. Schumacher '43 ofHempstead, N. Y., attended the Baldwin, N. Y., high school and is headedfor the Dartmouth Medical Schoolnext year. His scholastic record isabove average and his prominenceand leadership in out-door activitiesand in groups within the OutingClub are outstanding. Ross McKenney, woodcraft adviser on the College Staff, and already a beloved figure among undergraduates, is theauthor of the accompanying story ofthe things in Dartmouth life symbolized by a disciple such as Bill Schumacher.
DID YOU EVER DREAM with your eyes open? I don't mean the jumbled up dreams that roll and skid through your befuddled brain at night when you are dog-tired from work, smoke, noise, and troubles. I mean the kind that rests your soul, that leaves you contented and happy; and most of all, glad you're alive. Dreams that make pictures in the smoke of a campfire or come to you from the soft whispering of pines.
Maybe you are lying on a fresh cut bed of balsam, and the tent or lean-to is filled with that spicy odor that only balsam foliage can give, tempered with tobacco and wood smoke. Boy! What a combination! You just sort of let go without knowing it and drift over old traveled trails that are loaded with pictures. Worthwhile pictures they are, of the kind that never wear out. Time and worry may coat them with dust, but a breath of the outdoors sweeps them clean, and you live them over again. Know what I mean? Come with me and I'll tell you a picture story, a real one—not a tall tale which I have been accused of being a master at telling.
See that lean-to over there? Look at that deep soft balsam bed in the corner, and that campfire with the frypan hanging on the upright, the camp coffee pot suspended over the fire from a wooden hook that hangs from the lug-bar.... a thin column of vapor issuing from the snout tells its own story. Yep! That bright thing in front of the fire is a reflector oven. .. .with that you can make biscuits, corn bread, cookies, gingerbread.
Now lie down on that couch of balsam. Fill your Briar pipe and touch it off—ease back and take a few puffs—now try and stay awake. The pines whisper softly as though loath to disturb the music of the little brook that tumbles and chuckles past the lean-to. The silence of the whole forest seems to press softly against your ear drums and without warning, sounds cease and pictures replace them.
A picture comes across my vision of parts of my own life spent in the forests. I see myself riding a spruce log across a river with a couple of lunch buckets on a yoke across my neck, because I thought I was good enough on loose logs to do it I also see myself crawling out on the bank without the buckets a short time later. I see myself again riding the logs on the same river, only this time with a peavey in my hands and a smile of confidence on my face; filled with that thrill of achievement.
I see myself standing in the stern of a canoe, shooting through the white water of a rapids; knees bent slightly—paddle poised, reading the set of water ahead, knowing just what to do. Boy! You tingle all over, feeling the roll and pitch of the canoe under you, seeing the bow split a swell, and riding the crest like a huge duck.
I see myself standing at the butt of a lofty spruce, the sun striking a flash from the bright bitt of my axe as I swing it back over my shoulder. I hear the thwack as the bitt bites wood, the crack and snap as the tree starts to topple. Another blow on the far corner of the scarf, or one on the near corner, and the tree lurches over to go crashing down right where I want it. The cry of "timber" dies in my throat, twigs and limbs cease falling... .1 look at the fallen monarch—at the clean-cut scarf of the butt, at the axe in my hands with its brightly ground cutting bitts, and again I am filled with that exhilaration of knowing how.
I see myself sitting astride a load of logs piled high on heavy logging sleds half way down a steep grade. The reins are wrapped around my mittened hands and I am steadying and guiding the big team of horses hitched to the load. Their breath makes great clouds of vapor as it hits the cold winter air. The horses strain back in their harnesses. I can feel the vibration of the snub line that is made fast to the load on one end, while several hundred feet back it is wound around a tree trunk and a man paying it out slowly. I look down the precipitous grade and wonder if I can keep the horses and load in the road if the line breaks, or will I jump? A thousand times no! Hang on! Give those horses all you've got. Their confidence in you is worthy of your best. Your pulses throb with the excitement of that challenge. When you pull up at the river's bank and knock the chains loose the logs spill over on the skidways. The horses nuzzle your hands with their velvety noses. A couple of drops gather in your eyes. You breathe in the cold frosty air. The blood tingles in your veins, and you're glad that you had something to give, glad of unspoken love in return.
I see a picture of a great college in which I play a very small part. I am talking to a student, a Dartmouth freshman, tall, well set up, with a friendly, contagious smile. I am trying to draw him a word picture of this school and its opportunities, especially along my trail.
The picture went with this chap through the following years. I watched him make things from wood—a gun stock, canoe paddles, axe handles, archery sets. I watched him round out into a good axeman. I thrilled at the sparkle in his eyes when he stepped out of the canoe after he had shot his first rapids safely and dry. I was glad when he trimmed me shooting skeet (al- though I didn't let him know). I watched him bounce cans from a rock 150 yards away with his rifle and steadied him when he fought the recoil of a revolver. We fished and hunted together. .. .cooked meals out in the snow in forests over an open fire. We snowshoed for miles over the Dartmouth Outing Club trails, re-marking and clearing them out. He learned to read the animal signs. We lay together in our sleeping bags, gazing up through branches at the stars, and he learned the meaning of the night noises.
I helped to organize a skeet field, and a revolver shooting range indoors. He has charge of them both. He is president of Bait and Bullet, a group of student hunters and fishermen and lovers of the out-of- doors. He wears a Dartmouth New Hampshire Junior Guide's badge. He does all things cheerfully and thoroughly. He is generous almost to a fault. I see him as a counsellor at a boy's camp with me, his first time, with no experience back of him. I was very happy to see him giving his knowledge to those boys—giving freely and willingly, always patient and generous. And he got his reward from the unspoken love of those kids. How much of this gift came from his association with the hills and forests about Hanover? It makes me very happy to feel that a great deal came from what the Dartmouth Outing Club has to give to all who care to appy for it. And it adds to my pleasure to write this chap's name here—Bill Schumacher. You'll find Bill with his cheerful grin right beside you when you hit the last bit of tough going.
There's a whole lot of anything an out- door man wants here at Dartmouth—canoe- ing, one mile or a hundred, hunting, fishing, camping, cabin or shelter building, blazing new trails, climbing mountains, making things with your own hands right out of the forests, or with power tools. Study? Sure you have to study. But every week-end there are trips out somewhere, to cabins or campfires in the forest. In other words it's a great big Wannigan box in which you can find anything you want. There's "Cabin and Trail," "Bait and Bullet," "Ledyard Canoe Club," and other organizations that need leaders and members and organizers. Fun galore, and thrills that will raise the hair on the nape of your neck. There's shooting for deer, bear, raccoon, partridge, rabbit, woodcock and other game. Bill is just one of the boys at Dartmouth learning these things that will last throughout life.
Guess I've been listening and dreaming enough. My pipe is empty. The frost tinted forests are calling to enter them and make real pictures to dream about in later years. Here's to a pipeful of Granger—a balsam bed—and peace.
Hang on,
Ross MCKENNEY.
BILL SCHUMACHER ON A MEGALLOWAY RIVER CANOE TRIP IN LATE SUMMER AND (RIGHT) LEARNS FLY CASTING FROM ROSS MCKENNEY
PRESIDENT OF BAIT AND BULLET AND OUTDOOR LEADER William, E. Schumacher '43 is keen about hunting. He finds partridge and woodcock inupland game covers near Hanover in October. The Dartmouth Grant, northern NewHampshire wilderness country, will be the scene of November deer hunting trips whenhe will use his .30-06 rifle, last word in hunting guns, which he is holding above.
Ross MCKENNEY Woodcraft adviser for the Dartmouth Outing Club, former president of the MaineGuides' Association, and author of the accompanying article.
WOODCRAFT ADVISER, DARTMOUTH OUTING CLUB
