Cabin Fever

There is a certain malady of the mind induced by too much of one thing.

Just as the body fed too long upon meat becomes a prey to that horrid

disease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon monotony succumbs

to the insidious mental ailment which the West calls "cabin fever."

True, it parades under different names, according to circumstances and

caste. You may be afflicted in a palace and call it ennui, and it may

drive you to commit peccadillos and indiscretions of various sorts. You

may be attacked in a middle-class apartment house, and call it various

names, and it may drive you to cafe life and affinities and alimony. You

may have it wherever you are shunted into a backwater of life, and lose

the sense of being borne along in the full current of progress. Be sure

that it will make you abnormally sensitive to little things; irritable

where once you were amiable; glum where once you went whistling about

your work and your play. It is the crystallizer of character, the acid

test of friendship, the final seal set upon enmity. It will betray your

little, hidden weaknesses, cut and polish your undiscovered virtues,

reveal you in all your glory or your vileness to your companions in

exile--if so be you have any.

If you would test the soul of a friend, take him into the wilderness

and rub elbows with him for five months! One of three things will surely

happen: You will hate each other afterward with that enlightened hatred

which is seasoned with contempt; you will emerge with the contempt

tinged with a pitying toleration, or you will be close, unquestioning

friends to the last six feet of earth--and beyond. All these things will

cabin fever do, and more. It has committed murder, many's the time. It

has driven men crazy. It has warped and distorted character out of all

semblance to its former self. It has sweetened love and killed love.

There is an antidote--but I am going to let you find the antidote

somewhere in the story.

Bud Moore, ex-cow-puncher and now owner of an auto stage that did not

run in the winter, was touched with cabin fever and did not know what

ailed him. His stage line ran from San Jose up through Los Gatos and

over the Bear Creek road across the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains

and down to the State Park, which is locally called Big Basin. For

something over fifty miles of wonderful scenic travel he charged six

dollars, and usually his big car was loaded to the running boards. Bud

was a good driver, and he had a friendly pair of eyes--dark blue and

with a humorous little twinkle deep down in them somewhere--and a human

little smiley quirk at the corners of his lips. He did not know it, but

these things helped to fill his car.