Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION I have always had a high regard for Beard's work. I became a Boy Scout only four years after his death, and his influence on the Boy Scouts of America was still quite strong in many areas of that movement. Though I was familiar with others of his books, I had only heard of Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties until I received a copy with the offer to do this introduction. I am happy to have the opportunity to pay tribute to a man who has influenced the outdoor activities of thousands. In his concern with ecology, Beard was on the cutting edge of awareness in his day, recognizing the need for us to retain some degree of our wilderness heritage. He knew the re-creation that came from the wilderness and the challenge that camping offered in pitting one's skills against nature—and the paradox that this is best done by working with nature and against some aspects of ourselves. He even attempted to retain a sense of nature in the formal homes of his day by designing special dens that would suggest a rustic atmosphere. If this seems a bit extreme to us in our informal living today, it is certainly better than the work of some professional "inferior ix FOREWORD As this book is written for boys of all ages, it has been divided under two general heads, "The Tomahawk Camps" and ''The Axe Camps," that is, camps which may be built with no tool but a hatchet, and camps that will need the aid of an axe. The smallest boys can build some of the simple shelters and the older boys can build the more difficult ones. The reader may, if he likes, begin with the first of the book, build his way through it, and graduate by building the log houses; in doing this he will be closely following the history of the human race, because ever since our arboreal ancestors with prehensile toes scampered among the branches of the pre-glacial forests and built nestlike shelters in the trees, men have made themselves shacks for a temporary refuge. But as one of the members of the Camp-Fire Club of America, as one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, and as the founder of the Boy Pioneers of America, it would not be proper for the author to admit for one moment that there can be such a thing as a camp without a camp-fire, and for that reason the tree folks and the "missing link" whose remains were xiii