Winter Camping, by Warwick Stevens Carpenter, Macmillan, 1920:
"THE NEW SPORT
IF cold were quite the absolute condition which a materialistic thermometer would have us believe, we should hardly camp in winter. As it is, that soulless and deceitful regulator of modern life has all but subordinated our independence and enthusiasm to its despotic rule. We have become as bats, which are said to retire at a certain temperature to their caverns and hollow trees, there to slumber until a rise of mercury brings them forth, willy nilly, or, like the automatons of the barometer, that can stay in through no fair weather and out in no foul.
Contrary to such unimaginative dictates, cold is quite a relative matter, not to any fixed degree as a standard of comparison, but rather, first, to humidity, a fact of common knowledge, and, second, to whether we are oscillating all day between a super-heated building and out of doors. This second relativity is a chief element in that trans-Stygian conception which holds that as soon as the inhabitants have become inured to extreme heat, the climate forthwith changes to one of extreme cold, and vice versa.
During the last fourteen years I have camped in winter at every available opportunity, in cabins, tents, and lean-tos, and now between black flies, midgets, and all the pests of summer and the problem of warmth in winter, I would quickly choose the latter if I could have but one. Yet companions who were caught out with me on our way to a cabin fourteen years ago expressed gratification at the incident, because, they said, they had learned that it is really possible to stay out all night in the woods in winter without freezing! And we had with us blankets galore, an axe, and plenty of food!
Such ideas regarding the feasibility of camping in the open in winter were far more current ten or fifteen years ago than they are today. Since then winter vacations have become increasingly common and camping in winter no longer excites the wondering comments which our own little expedition into the frozen woods brought forth. In fact, nearly every summer vacation resort is now livened from time to time during the winter months by the more fortunate of its summer frequenters, who return for a taste of that appeal which Jack Frost throws over vacation land."
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