Consultations with other physicians had been held
upon him. There was no hope for him. Overstudy (as a school-
teacher and as a university student) and two successive attacks of
pneumonia were responsible for his breakdown. Day by day he was
losing strength. He could extract no nutrition from the heavy foods
they gave him; nor could pellets and powders help his stomach to do
the work of digestion. Not only was he a physical wreck, but he was
a mental wreck. His mind was overwrought. He was sick and tired of
medicine, and he was sick and tired of persons. Human speech jarred
upon him. Human attentions drove him frantic. The thought came to
him that since he was going to die, he might as well die in the
open, away from all the bother and irritation. And behind this idea
lurked a sneaking idea that perhaps he would not die after all if
only he could escape from the heavy foods, the medicines, and the
well-intentioned persons who made him frantic.
So Ernest Darling, a bag of bones and a death's-head, a
perambulating corpse, with just the dimmest flutter of life in it to
make it perambulate, turned his back upon men and the habitations of
men and dragged himself for five miles through the brush, away from
the city of Portland, Oregon. Of course he was crazy. Only a
lunatic would drag himself out of his death-bed.
But in the brush, Darling found what he was looking for - rest.
Nobody bothered him with beefsteaks and pork. No physicians
lacerated his tired nerves by feeling his pulse, nor tormented his
tired stomach with pellets and powders. He began to feel soothed.
The sun was shining warm, and he basked in it. He had the feeling
that the sun shine was an elixir of health. Then it seemed to him
that his whole wasted wreck of a body was crying for the sun. He
stripped off his clothes and bathed in the sunshine. He felt
better. It had done him good - the first relief in weary months of
pain.
As he grew better, he sat up and began to take notice. All about
him were the birds fluttering and chirping, the squirrels chattering
and playing. He envied them their health and spirits, their happy,
care-free existence. That he should contrast their condition with
his was inevitable; and that he should question why they were
splendidly vigorous while he was a feeble, dying wraith of a man,
was likewise inevitable. His conclusion was the very obvious one,
namely, that they lived naturally, while he lived most unnaturally
therefore, if he intended to live, he must return to nature.
Alone, there in the brush, he worked out his problem and began to
apply it. He stripped off his clothing and leaped and gambolled
about, running on all fours, climbing trees; in short, doing
physical stunts, - and all the time soaking in the sunshine. He
imitated the animals. He built a nest of dry leaves and grasses in
which to sleep at night, covering it over with bark as a protection
against the early fall rains. "Here is a beautiful exercise," he
told me, once, flapping his arms mightily against his sides; "I
learned it from watching the roosters crow." Another time I
remarked the loud, sucking intake with which he drank cocoanut-milk.
He explained that he had noticed the cows drinking that way and
concluded there must be something in it. He tried it and found it
good, and thereafter he drank only in that fashion.
He noted that the squirrels lived on fruits and nuts. He started on
a fruit-and-nut diet, helped out by bread, and he grew stronger and
put on weight. For three months he continued his primordial
existence in the brush, and then the heavy Oregon rains drove him
back to the habitations of men. Not in three months could a ninety-
pound survivor of two attacks of pneumonia develop sufficient
ruggedness to live through an Oregon winter in the open.
He had accomplished much, but he had been driven in. There was no
place to go but back to his father's house, and there, living in
close rooms with lungs that panted for all the air of the open sky,
he was brought down by a third attack of pneumonia. He grew weaker
even than before. In that tottering tabernacle of flesh, his brain
collapsed. He lay like a corpse, too weak to stand the fatigue of
speaking, too irritated and tired in his miserable brain to care to
listen to the speech of others. The only act of will of which he
was capable was to stick his fingers in his ears and resolutely to
refuse to hear a single word that was spoken to him. They sent for
the insanity experts. He was adjudged insane, and also the verdict
was given that he would not live a month.
By one such mental expert he was carted off to a sanatorium on Mt.
Tabor. Here, when they learned that he was harmless, they gave him
his own way. They no longer dictated as to the food he ate, so he
resumed his fruits and nuts - olive oil, peanut butter, and bananas
the chief articles of his diet. As he regained his strength he made
up his mind to live thenceforth his own life. If he lived like
others, according to social conventions, he would surely die. And
he did not want to die. The fear of death was one of the strongest
factors in the genesis of the Nature Man. To live, he must have a
natural diet, the open air, and the blessed sunshine.
Now an Oregon winter has no inducements for those who wish to return
to Nature, so Darling started out in search of a climate. He
mounted a bicycle and headed south for the sunlands.
