Manifest Publications offers Virginia Cornell's books on biography, environment, and good humor.

He left the woodpile higher than he found it

"Hello, I'm C.D. Miller and I wrote a book!" A short man with a shiny bald head thrust forth his paw toward a startled fellow who was levelling his Winnebago in a campground. The scene was repeated over and over throughout Father's travels. I wish I could have been a tree squirrel so I could have seen the surprise which greeted his proclamation. How many campers have ever met the author of a book? He usually made a sale.

Father wrote a book, printed 2,000 copies of it, then peddled it through the campgrounds of the West. He didn't start writing it until 1972, when he was 72 years old. He called it: Leave the Woodpile Higher Than You Found It. Into it went his life's philosophy — essays on everything from marriage to school discipline to the English language. But maybe I should quote from the first few pages:

Let us enter this book through the North Woods. The musical syncopation accompanying the sounds of the woods is the thud, thud of my axe, beloved tool very close to me as long as I can remember. Spasmodically this low, dull sound is interrupted by the shrill, creaking stridulation of splitting wood, fire wood.

One July morning, 1933, my wife, Trudy, and our sons Dwight and Elwood unpacked our folding boat, duffle, and provisions for a journey up the Tahquamenon River, some 30 miles west of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, coastal of Lake Superior. This 11-foot craft, powered by a single cylinder tiny "kicker" had bourne us along the Mississippi brakes, over the Manistee in Michigan, and afloat the risky waters between St. Ignace and Mackinac Island.

Dwight was a redheaded tyke aged six. Elwood was eight. They loved to swim, make sandpiles, fish, set up the tent — and fight. Hard times. I was in Kansas Education then, a superintendent. We had no money. But we had all summer. And we had the woods, wild cherries, fish, blueberries, flour. Above all, we had each other.

Throughout the picturesque Tahquamenon there were families of waterfowl paddling along the plashy brinks; and here and there a deer thrust its curious head through wreaths of undergrowth to regard us as we floated by. When the afternoon began to wear late, we became uneasy about a place to dock. Suddenly, we came upon a tiny cabin, and a cleared area. A sign made us welcome. Rule of the woods was that backcountry cabins are never locked, but were built for the convenience of hardy and earnest venturers.

Outside the cabin, under the overhang of the roof was a carefully stacked rick of split wood, dry, brittle, tinctured with gum terpentine. Very quickly the campfire was roaring, sending up the familiar pleasant pine odor. When the fire had subsided, the glowing coals were ready for that camp cooking whose pervading aroma stirred and tantalized utterly our sensory systems, for we were ravenously hungry.

Now just above the woodpile was a lettered sign, whittled into a slab of rough board. What do you suppose those letters spelled out?

Friend, Leave This Woodpile Higher Than You Found It.

Of course, the next morning my father busied himself with splitting a stack of wood. That sign became my father's credo — and not a bad one at that.

Some psychologists believe that our lives are "scripted." If so, I was destined to write a book called Doc Susie, perhaps because my father left the woodpile higher than he found it and willed that I should, too. Then I published it and sold copies a few at a time — but not in campgrounds. More important, I keep measuring my own accomplishments in life against that woodpile.

Virginia Cornell is the author of The Latest Wrinkle and Other Signs of Aging — a collection of her humorous essays. For information on ordering, see The Latest Wrinkle.