Outings often produce unexpected keepsakes

Junking is a journey. And its true joy is the pure serendipity, the wonderful promise of adventure offered in each outing. We never know what we will find, and occasionally what we bring home is more than just another object, it is a sense of connection to the past.

Several weeks ago I stopped by a sale in the Gleneden area north of Spokane. I thought at first it might be an estate sale because of the antiques and collectibles spread across the yard. Then I discovered it was actually the second of two sales held after the homeowners closed their bed and breakfast.

There were a few pieces of furniture, framed prints, tables full of vintage lamps and linens, as well other interesting accessories from the inn.

I chose a small crystal lamp, too hard to resist for $1, and a few vintage magazines before I picked up a 1951 reprint of “Woodcraft and Camping,” by Horace Kephart. The book was originally published in 1917.

The small green book was in good condition, with simple and charming illustrations, but it was the preface, dedicated to Nessmuk, a woodsman and writer popular in the late 1800s, that captivated me.

Nessmuk (George Washington Sears) was my grandfather’s great uncle and I grew up listening to stories about him. My grandfather was an outdoorsman and he was proud of his ancestor. When the book “Nessmuk: Woodcraft and Camping,” was reissued, in the mid 1960s I was given a copy.

Sears was born in Massachusetts in 1821. The story goes that as a young boy he spent a great deal of time in the company of a young Narragansett Indian named Nessmuk who taught him how to hunt and fish.

Although he was a small man, just over five feet tall and 105 pounds, and weakened by tuberculosis, Sears became an avid naturalist. After working a number of adventurous jobs across the country, he married and served briefly in the Civil War.

Sears’ poems were printed in The Atlantic Monthly and he wrote a series of letters and articles for Forest and Stream Magazine, which later became Field and Stream. He took his childhood friend’s name, Nessmuk, as his pen name.

Sears believed that time spent outdoors shouldn’t be encumbered by too much gear. “Go light,” he said, “The lighter the better so that you have the simplest material for health, comfort and enjoyment.” In his late fifties, he paddled more than 250 miles of Adirondack lakes in small canoes and documented the trip.

In writing about his own travels, Sears commented on meeting other parties struggling under the weight of heavy clothing, and other items he considered unnecessary.

“My own load including canoe, extra clothing, blanket-bag, two-days’ rations, pocket-axe, rod and knapsack never exceeded 26 pounds, and I went prepared to camp out any and every night,” he wrote.

His most famous canoe, the Sairy Gamp, a 10-pound “eggshell” made by Henry Rushton, is now in the Smithsonian Institution. Sears’ journey in that canoe was re-created in the late 1990s by Christine Jerome and chronicled in her book, “Adirondack Passage: Cruise of the Canoe Sairy Gamp.”

Sears died in 1890, a century before the advent of the high-tech materials used today. I wonder what he would think about the way we enjoy the outdoors now. Although he was no stranger to the elaborate lakeside homes (called “camps”) owned by the wealthy, I imagine the trappings of outdoor life today, from the Kevlar canoe Jerome used to re-create his Adirondack journey, to the large diesel-powered motor homes, would fascinate and perhaps even distress him.

Kephart’s “Camping and Woodcraft,” has been reissued many times. It is still available and is popular with people who like to study a more gentle and classical approach toward enjoying and surviving life in the great outdoors.

When I showed the book to my family and told the children about the dedication to their great, great, great-uncle, I brought out the copy of his book that my grandfather had given me. I even found several Web sites that were either dedicated to “Nessmuk” or sold products, like knives and knapsacks, named for him.

The book I picked up at the sale was a good bargain at 50 cents, but the memories it refreshed are priceless. I feel as though I’ve paddled my own canoe around the world and ended up at home.

It’s that kind of find that keeps me stopping at sales and digging through junk in dim and dusty little shops.

We live in a wide and busy world, certainly beyond what both Sears and Kephart could have imagined, but there are times when it feels just like one big back yard. Full of buried treasure.