« THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 1946 A Bit of Variety BONA MORRIS WORKMAN HOCKING W RANCH New-daught«r came trotting into the kitchen last evening just a* 1 was starting dinner. “Oh,” she said, and I thought her voice held a note of disappointment, "have you got dinner very far along? I thought It would be fun to have a picnic supper down by the swimming hole. I’ve got some hot-dogs,” she continued hopefully, “and we can roast them on sticks over the coals. Dinner isn't too far along, is it?” she finished coaxingly. If I had had the whole dinner ready to put on the table I would still have agreed that hot-dogs plus other things served down by the river was to be preferred any old day, that was sunny, to a “sittin’-down meal” eaten in the house. In Sarah Orne Jewett’s delightful book, “Country of the Pointed Firs,” a country woman remarks, “Some folks wash on Monday and iron on Tuesday even if the circus is goin’ by, but I like variety myself.” That wom­ an and I are sisters under the »kin. 8o I eagerly collected my share of the makin’s of a picnic, handed one of the baskets to the Big Boss —who growled like a wolf at having to walk down to the river to get fed—and we went through the barn-lot, across the gravel bar and found a campfire burning, and a card-table spread with the -necessities and a few of the lux­ THE EAGLE, VERNONIA, ORE. uries of picnic eating, in a little alder grove on the island where the river curves. Now I don’t care for hot-dogs as a rule, nor do I eat potatoes, but there was something about a weinie that is toasted brown (and a wee bit black in spots) over glowing coals, and a fat po­ tato roasted in hot ashes, then dusted off and spread with but­ ter, that made a real appeal to that capricious thing we call the appetite, and the smell of hot cof­ fee wafting up from the two steaming pots by the fire blended everything into a perfect meal. We hadn’t gone far from the house. We were not eating food radically different from that which we would have cooked on the stove and served properly and de­ cently on the dining table, and our little excursion didn't cost us an extra cent, yet we four en­ joyed the change it made in our quiet lives. The leaping flames of our campfire, the slowly deep­ ening dusk of evening, and the occasional whisper of wind through the alder leaves made a little world that was subtly different from our routine life. We watched the alder logs burn down to a mass of glowing coals and our talk ranged from lightest jest to the far reach of space and stars so many light-years away, from common every-day events to the wonders that the future may hold. It was good talk, yet when we were silent the river and the might talked with us and, who knows, perhaps in that silence we gained a bit of wisdom, a glimpse of timelesensas that frets little about the transitory things of daily life. And when the fire had burned down to only flickering lights, regretfully we smothered their last glow and and gathering up tha house­ things we walked slowly home through the soft darkness. We all need a change, a bit of variety, to break the daily routine of our days. If we do not have it, there is a hunger that nothing can fill, dreams die, life loses its lilt and laughter and we go plodding wearily along the road of existence. We do noil need to travel far from our hearth­ stone to find a bit of change. Across the road or just around the nearest corner will bring us a new view. Opening our minds to a new thought will widen our horizon; breaking the routine of our daily tasks or introducing new methods of working -will give us impetus for further effort. It is in the mind that the deadly sameness of unchanging routine day after day leaves its mark. If men and women travel the same path to work and thought for too long without change, they forget to “lift up their eyes to the hills.” -Life becomes stale and flat, like a pool into which no fresh water ever runs, yet there are sweet springs of clear water all about us if we just reach out to them. Walk in tha quiet dark alone, or with one who un­ derstands, and look at the stars. out the night and the stars. There are many things that are Let your imagination take wings and fly across the intervening necessary for real living besides light years of space, and when just food and security and the you-come back to your lighted daily routine of existence. A wise house the things which had de­ man once said, “If you have two pressed you before have stepped loaves of bread, sell one and buy back into their proper relationship white hyacinths,” and the gypsy with life. Facing the infinite, the chieftain