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Show CAMP FIRE GIRLS Junior High School Girls Learn How to Live in Outdoor Camps In spite of eight-cylinder automobiles, auto-mobiles, television sets, electric dishwashers and innerspring mattresses, mat-tresses, America continues to be nation of pioneers. If you doubt it, visit a Camp Fire Girls camp this summer. Out In Whitman, Wash., you would find a group of Junior high school girls living in a primitive clearing, 20 minutes by boat from the main camp where the younger girls live. In Gypsy Haven, the pioneer v ' ' . 'y i1 Blue Birds (junior members of Camp Fire Girls) think breakfast cooked on hobo stoves tastes better than anv other, in spite of such hazards as "sunburned" "sun-burned" noses and pancakes. camp, the only permanent installations installa-tions are a storage tent, tool-shed and toilet. The campers bring along chow pans, axes, rope, lashing cord and sleeping bags. With the Forest Ranger's permission, they cut down trees from which stools and tables are built. Needled, small-stem branches become mattresses under their bed rolls. The girls also make other camp craft necessities such as sunken food-coolers, reflector ovens, stone-lined baking holes, drainage systems and trash pits. During their stay at Gypsy Haven the girls cook their own meals and make friends with the area's wild life. A doe and her fawn visit the camp daily and chipmunks come up to eat from the girls' hands. e IN DES MOINES, 1., seven lucky Horizon ' Club members of senior high school age, accompanied accom-panied by three counselors, last summer paddled a 24-foot war canoe 35 miles down the Des Moines river. Sandbars and rapids added thrills to the trip which involved in-volved five steady hours of hard paddling. When an experienced camper in Portland, Ore., reaches the ripe old age of 14, she gets to live in a unit of tree-houses. An added zest goes with outdoor cooking in Dickinson, N. D., where Camp Fire Girls prepare frogs-leg dinners from frogs they catch themselves. them-selves. Even Blue Birds, who are seven-to-ten-year-olds and the youngest members of Camp Fire Girls, are imbued with pioneer spirit. They love to cook on tin can stoves or on sticks over an open fire. Their pride in their own efforts produces an enthusiasm that occasionally far exceeds results. As one little San Diego Blue Bird said last year while she munched happily on a badly "sunburned" bread twist, "I wish my mother could cook like this." In a recent Issue of The Camp Fire Girl, Ernest F. Schmidt, director di-rector of Schiff Outdoor Activities in Mendham, N.J., gave Camp Fire campers two rules to follow when hiking. The first is to stop, look and listen if they become lost: stop to collect thoughts; look for landmarks, and listen for sounds of trains, automobiles auto-mobiles or running water. The second suggestion is always to carry with them a Litepac Lost Kit of emergency tools. The kit, which each girl can assemble herself, her-self, should include a small compass, com-pass, snare wire and fishing tackle, matches, bouillon cubes, paper and pencil, and razor blade. All these articles fit into a cigarette-type plastic case or a typewriter ribbon box, either of which can be waterproofed water-proofed with nail polish or shellac cut 50 per cent with alcohol. |