Kempthorne Edith (1 results)

Condition: Very good. 6¾? x 10? stringtied album, cloth over boards, thin card leaves. Pp. [60] with 82 photographs (including 39 cyanotypes), 11 newsclips of passages by Enos Mills and 6 other pieces of ephemera pasted down. Photos range from 1½? x 3½? to 4? x 8? and about half are captioned. Very good: boards lightly scuffed and soiled; front hinge loose but holding; first leaf detached. Contents generally very good or better. This is a lovely scrapbook created by Edith M. Kempthorne, a leader of the Camp Fire Girls (CFG), in tribute to noted naturalist and writer Enos Mills just after his death. It features fantastic photographs of a few spots in Colorado, as well as cyanotypes of botanical specimens Kempthorne collected. Now a gender-inclusive group, Camp Fire was the first secular and multicultural organization for girls in America. Its programs include small group experiences such as camping, as well as environmental education. Edith Kempthorne was a pianist from New Zealand who started the first Camp Fire group in Alaska in 1913 and served as the CFG's first field secretary. She traveled the United States, helping to organize Camp Fire Councils and training other leaders, and worked for the organization until she retired in 1949. This scrapbook began with Kempthorne's presentation inscription to the Portland Council of the CFG. She wrote that ?It was in Maine I first got to love and know the birds, trees and wild flowers in the U.S.? and that the album covered ?a favorite holiday resort.? A few pages later ?EMK? noted that ?This little book is dedicated to Enos A. Mills by one of the goodly company of whose vacation he was the inspiration.? Enos Abijah Mills was a writer, speaker and conservationist known as ?The Father of Rocky Mountain National Park.? Mills worked for the United States government to record how much snow fell in the Rocky Mountains, and he used his spare time to write. His stories were widely published in magazines, he spoke about the mountains around the country and, with the help of friend John Muir, convinced Congress to create the National Park. This book contains 11 printed clippings of Mills' writings. Professional photographs corresponded with the subjects of Mills' stories, revealing trees like the aspen and spruce, and shots of a ?Beaver World.? Kempthorne neatly transcribed lines of poetry by the likes of Evelyn Underhill, Walt Whitman and William Drummond under impressive nature images, and eight shots were captioned in the negative, identifying their locations of Estes Park, Longs Peak and Grand Lake, Colorado. Two images were hand-colored and about a dozen might be vernacular, including one that noted: ?It was in this cabin EMK spent the night with a Kansas City woman struck by lightning and helped to save her life.? A standout of the album are the 39 cyanotypes, or ?Blueprints made by EMK from wild flowers from the hillside and around her cabin.? Kempthorne identified all but three of these with the specimen's name and family, and included some lines from an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem: ?I will be the gladdest thing / Under the sun / I will touch a hundred flowers / and not pick one.? There are maps of the ?Longs Peak Trail? and ?Estes Park and vicinity,? and on the final page Kempthorne listed birds, animals and trees she had seen, along with another Whitman quote: ?Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.? An impressive collection of photographs and writings revealing the work of an important naturalist and a noted girls' club leader.