Rite of Passage

We laid the poles that Riggy and Sonja had collected the day before over fitted slabs to make the roof. I was inside the cabin helping to lay the floor. The slabs of wood were laid rounded side down, side by side, to make a reasonably flat floor, what is called a puncheon floor. If we had had the time, we would have smoothed the flat sides, but as it was, we couldn’t. The result was a floor that I wouldn’t recommend walking on in bare feet unless you have a genuine affection for splinters, but it was a good solid floor. Jimmy was on the roof laying slabs, stuffing moss, and placing poles. A little of the moss filtered through as they worked, but the roof closed in quickly over our heads and when they were done it looked as solid as our floor.

We were clearly beaten by Mr. Marechal’s group, which finished almost an hour before we did and then came over and made comments, but we were done before noon, too. I looked over the other building when we were done along with some curious friends and I’ll have to honestly say that I preferred our cabin to their shed — better workmanship.

In the afternoon we relaxed with an easy hike and then a swim, this one in suits, not in our clothes. After that, I got out my notebook again and made some more ethics notes — these about an easy one, the philosophy of power.

In effect, the philosophy of power says that you should do anything you can get away with. If you don’t get away with it, you were wrong.

You really can’t argue with this, you know. It is a self-contained system, logically self-consistent. It makes no appeal to outside authority and it doesn’t stumble over its own definitions.

But I don’t like it. For one thing, it isn’t a very discriminating standard. There doesn’t seem to be any possible difference between “ethically good” and “ethically better.” More important, however, stoics strap themselves in ethically so that their actions have as few resuits as possible. The adherents of the philosophy of power simply say that the results of actions have no importance — the philosophy of a two-year-old throwing a tantrum.

We slept that night in the cabin with the door latched, and there was a certain comfort and solidity in sleeping in what we had built. I can also say that the puncheon floor was much harder than the ground had been. Or perhaps I wasn’t as tired.

The next day was our last of the excursion and we celebrated it by jumping off the bluff across the river. Then we cleaned up the camp and came home.

It was foggy in the morning, and though the fog lifted, the clouds stayed low and gray over our heads. We set out in one big group this morning with Mr. Marechal leading and Mr. Pizarro bringing up the rear and carrying ropes. Looking at the river, our cabin was on the left and the shed on the right. We had gone upriver for our logs, and Mr. Marechal’s group the other way. We went downriver along the river bank, past the point where their skid tracks went uphill away from the river, and then around the long slow bend where the river curved out of sight of the camp. It was a gloomy day but we were in good spirits, chattering as we walked. Our group of six, reunited, walked together.

We picked our way along for more than a mile, sometimes having to leave the river edge and move inland, but making a pretty good pace of it. At last we came out on a sand shoal and looked across at an easy bank on the other side of the river and a broken and easily climbed bluff.

“We’re going to have to swim,” Mr. Marechal said. He waded out into the water until he was standing in water to his waist about one-quarter of the way across.

Then we were started across with both of our leaders standing guard. The water was cold and it wasn’t half as much fun to get soaked as it had been the first time. Our clothes are dirt and water resistent and dry quickly, but believe me, it is far nicer to have them dry off you than to have them dry while you are wearing them. On the far. bank I dripped and shivered.

We all gathered on the grassy bank and then Mr. Pizarro and Mr. Marechal splashed and swam across to join us. We climbed through the underbrush and turnbled rock and by the time we reached the top of the bluff, if I wasn’t fully dry at least I wasn’t shivering.

The bluff was covered with forest, too, but standing on the edge we could see the easy, forest-covered slope on the other side from above, a dark green rising carpet. Then we turned into the woods and didn’t come out again until we were standing on the bluff edge opposite our camp.