Rite of Passage

Mr. Pizarro climbed over the logs then, needing a little boost, and borrowed my block to stand on. Then he and Riggy cut through the solid logs to make the windows. They made two cuts for each window and removed the sections of log. It was then easier to get in and out, which was good because the logs were becoming harder to raise into place. Riggy came inside, and instead of two boys raising logs, there were now three boys and Mr. Pizarro, plus me when Juanita didn’t have enough mud and moss for me and they needed a hand.

When there were two more rows of logs in place, they cut the door in the same way as the window and suddenly the cabin wasn’t a tight littlз box anymore. Everybody was coming in from the woods then, and I went out of the cabin through the hole that was a doorway. Juanita and I made one last trip for mud together while they were raising the last log into place over the door. When we came back with the mud, everybody pitched in and we finished the outside chinking. It was great fun and at the end we just took mud and threw it at each other. I caught Jimmy a great gob across the back and he returned the favor. All fifteen of us were running around throwing mud while Mr. Pizarro stayed out of range and watched us.

When we were all out of mud, he said, “What are you going to do? You only have one spare change of clothes.”

Jimmy looked at the river, gave an onward ho point of the finger, and said, “There we are.”

He sat down, pulled off his shoes, and then made a dash, fully-clothed, for the river, plopped through the shallows and made a plunge into the water. I had my shoes kicked off in an instant, and my notebook out of my shirt, and followed right after. The water was clear and cold, not too swift, and just fine for swimming. It was much better than my one previous planetary swimming experience. We all splashed and made grampus noises in the late afternoon sun, flipped water at each other, and had a real old-fashioned time. Very quickly we were joined by Mr. Marechal’s group, who were not mud-covered but most of whom had gotten reasonably dirty or sawdust covered in the course of the day and knew a good thing when they saw it. We stayed in until we were called out, and then we came out soggy.

Our leaders were willing to make one concession to the good usages of civilization, and we took our clothes to the scoutship to be quickly dried. The rest of our weekend — sleeping arrangements, hand-done work, handprepared food — was simple enough to please Thoreau, who I am convinced was a nice fellow who confused rustic vacations with life. We did get this one concession, though.

After dinner, freshly dressed, full of food and a warm glow, and thoroughly tired, I wandered over to look at the other cabin along with Jimmy. It was about as far toward completion as ours — that is, the walls were in place and chinked, and the door and window holes were cut — but it looked odd. One of the long walls was higher than the other, and higher than any of our walls. It gave the cabin an odd unfinished look, a hunchbacked look.

We had been issued bubble tents, which can be folded to pocket size and are proof against almost anything, but we had been told not to bring them. Instead we unrolled our beds near the fire and took our chances in the open. I was one of those who drew guard duty, but I was lucky enough to get second hour. I stayed awake, relieved Stu Herskovitz, who hadn’t seen anything, and walked for an hour around the camp. I didn’t see anything except people ready to go to sleep. I yawned my way through the hour, then got Vishwa Mathur up and went to sleep myself.

There were clouds over the sky in the morning and it was gray through breakfast and cold, but then the clouds began to break into white pieces and move apart and then the sky was clear again and it was bright.

We raised the gable ends of the roof into place and fit the doors and shutters. Then all of us working, we raised the three roof logs into place, the ridgepole on top, the other two below on either side, forming a slope. As we were finishing, somebody looked over at the Marechal cabin and saw what they were doing. They were slanting a roof from the tall wall across the short one. “That’s not fair,” I yelled. “You’re building a shed, not a cabin.”

“Ho, ho — too bad,” Venie called back. We booed.