An important fortnight during the Swami’s stay in California was the time he spent in the redwoods of North California. Swamiji, with a group of other friends and admirers, retreated to a forested area, about thirty miles north of San Francisco in the Marine County. He went there on May 2nd 1900 and stayed till the 16th. The time spent there in close company of devoted spiritual aspirants was something these privileged companions would cherish whole of their lives. This area was called the Camp Taylor.
As had been the case with several things during Swamiji’s West Coast sojourn, this too was not planned beforehand. He mentioned about his return to the East Coast via Chicago several times in his letters, mentioning different dates when he intending to leave, but the stay in California became longer and longer. In one of the letters he had even mentioned returning to India via the Pacific, through Japan and Java. Clearly, none of these plans was set in stone. The Swami had delivered his last public lecture in the Bay Area on April 18th titled the ‘Practice of Religion’ and by this time was all set to leave for Chicago with a ticket in hand gifted by Mrs C.P. Huntington. But the plan again changed quite suddenly. It was because of a planned retreat at the Camp Taylor to which Mr and Mrs Aspinall, along with Ms Lydia Bell and a few others were going and in course of a conversation, Mrs. Aspinall suggested that the Swami visit the Camp Taylor with them.
One evening, Swamiji, Mrs Hansborough, and the Aspinalls were all sitting in the Home of Truth and Mrs Aspinall was talking about where each of them would be a week from then. The Swami was supposed to leave for Chicago and Mrs Hansborough for Los Angeles. Mrs Aspinall then suddenly looked at Swamiji exclaimed, “You had better change your mind and go with us.” Swamiji replied, “Very well, and madam” – indicating Mrs Hansborough – “will go with us.”
The Camp area was built in 1875 by one Samuel Penfield Taylor, as a resort and recreational Campground. It provided opportunity for long hikes in the woods, swimming in the streams, fishing, and even hunting. In 1946 the State of California acquired the Camp Taylor and along with additional 2700 acres established the State Park now known as the Samuel P. Taylor Park.
The particular Camp area where Swamiji visited was called the Camp Irving, belonged to the restauranteur Mr Louis Juhl. Mr Juhl had lent it to Mrs Lydia Bell of the California Street ‘Home of Truth’ for a few months.
Mrs Bell had thus planned a retreat along with her friends like the Aspinalls and the Roorbachs, who too belonged to the circuit of ‘Home of Truth’ institutions.
From Ida Ansell’s memoirs we come to know that on April 22nd, Miss Bell, Mrs. Roorbach, and she had already moved to stay at the camp site. The camp ground was a narrow strip of land between a railroad track and a creek. Ida described the locale of the camp-site as follows :
“There was a circular clump of trees at one end which we used as a sort of chapel for classes and meditation. The kitchen was at the other end and its equipment consisted of a stove under a tree, a trunk for supplies, a rough board table with benches on either side, and some shelves built into the tree for dishes, the pots and pans being hung on nails driven into the tree. Between these two provisions for spiritual and material food there was room for four tents and an open space for a camp-fire.”
But Swamiji’s departure for the camp site was not going to be smooth. On April 24th, the day they had planned to leave for the camp, Alice Hansborough went to his room in the morning. Swamiji had on the English hunting suit gifted to him by someone on the East Coast. He was putting on the detachable cuffs. Alice, already longing to meet her daughter and family back in Los Angeles, was in no particular mood to go to the forests. She told Swamiji that she would accompany him on the ferry to Sausalito and bidding him goodbye there would leave for south. Hearing this Swamiji took off his cuffs and dropped them in the bureau drawer. He said that in that case he too would leave for Chicago. Hearing this, Alice acquiesced to accompany him to the retreat.
But the day had more drama in store. Mrs Hansborough had packed Swamiji’s things in two big wicker hampers and Mr Roorbach undertook to handle them. When we got to the ferry, Mr Roorbach walked on uncomfortably with this bulk, struggling on the way. As mentioned before, Mr Roorbach and all the others in the ‘Home of Truth’ were vegetarians; and as Swamiji saw him struggling with the big baskets he quipped, “Boiled potatoes and asparagus can’t stand up under that.”
In San Francisco they took another ferry to Sausalito, where they were to get the train for Camp Taylor. But the time spent in the morning discussions about whether Alice would join Swamiji or not had delayed their start and as a result they missed the ferry that would have connected them with the train to Camp Taylor. They arrived only to see the train pull out of the station. Mr Roorbach informed that there was also a narrow-gauge train that also went there and that too was leaving. They hurried to its platform. This train too was just getting under way. The conductor called, “If you’ll run, I’ll wait for you.” Alice looked at Swamiji, waiting for what he would do. But he simply said, “I will not run.” Even though the train was there within a few yards of him, he did not hurry to catch it.
On the way back Alice remarked that they had missed the train because there was no engine hitched to our cars. Swamiji turned to her and said: “We couldn’t go because your heart was in Los Angeles. There is no engine that can pull against a heart – there is no force in the world which can pull against a heart. Put your heart into your work and nothing can stop you.”
It was perhaps a stroke of good fortune that they did not go that day. Because immediately after that Swamiji fell seriously ill for a week, during which period Mrs Hansborough attended on him.
They finally left on 2nd May. While travelling through wooded country from Sausalito. Swamiji felt very relaxed. Sitting next to the window he began to sing softly to himself, and said, “Here in the country I’m beginning to feel like myself.” They finally reached the Camp to the delight of other campers who were already there for more than a week.
There were five tents in the Camp Area: one for Swamiji and one each for Mrs. Aspinall, Miss Bell, Miss Ansell, and Mrs. Roorbach. Alice Hansborough, self-effacing as always, slept outside Mrs. Aspinall’s tent. At night Swamiji built a fire on a spit of sand and everyone sat around the fire in the quiet night and Swamiji sang and told stories, a custom followed almost every day during their stay. They then had their meditation. Swamiji said : “You may meditate on whatever you like, but I shall meditate on the heart of a lion. That gives strength.”
They would usually have breakfast sometime between seven-thirty and eight. Swamiji would hold a meditation session in Miss Bell’s tent around ten o’ clock. He insisted on continuously maintaining a mood of God-consciousness, shunning away all thoughts of the world while they were at the camp. He asked them to think of themselves as Yogis living in Indian forests.
There was a delightful pool in the stream for bathing, which all the campers used, except Swamiji, who found the water too cold. Water for cooking and washing was piped to the camp, and all the cooking was done outside.
There were long walks in the afternoon hours. Returning from the walks the campers engaged in meal preparation. Ida Ansell’s reminiscences give a very good picture of the time spent by the campers :
“The grand climax of the day’s activities was the evening fireside talk and the following meditation. After telling stories and answering questions Swamiji would give us a subject for meditation such as ‘Firm and Fearless’ before beginning to chant. One morning he inspired us with a talk on ‘Absolute Truth, Unity, Freedom’ and the subject for the evening meditation was ‘I am All Existence, Bliss, and Knowledge.’
“Swamiji asked everyone to think of nothing but God. He had been invited to the camp to rest, but every day after breakfast he would sit on Miss Bell’s cot and talk to us for a long time, telling stories, answering questions. He told of his hopes for a better understanding of the East and the West and their mutual benefit thereby.
“During one of the talks in Miss Bell remarked that she thought that the world is a school where we come to learn our lesson. Swamiji countered this by saying, ‘Who told you that the world is a school?’ And he then went on, ‘This world is a circus, and we are clowns and come to tumble.’ Miss Bell asked why we tumble. To this Swamiji said, ‘Because we like to tumble. When we get tired of tumbling, we quit.’
“He often said everything is one; Divine Mother is in everything,” Ida recalled, “and he insisted for one of his teachings that we look upon every relation whether brother or husband, or father, or mother or sister, a Mother regardless of sex. We were to tell ourselves that everyone we saw was Mother.”
Swamiji also shared a very personal thought with the campers which, probably, he has not shared with the same candour elsewhere. Once during their conversation, he said, “In my first speech in this country, in Chicago, I addressed the audience as ‘Sisters and Brothers’ of America,’ and you know that they all rose to their feet. You may wonder what made them do this, you may wonder if I had some strange power. Let me tell you that I did have a power and this is it – never once in my life did I allow myself to have even one sexual thought. I trained my mind, my thinking, and the powers that man usually uses along that line I put into a higher channel, and it developed a force so strong that nothing could resist it.”
Ida remembered that the campers had their meals in a jolly and informal manner, with no end of jokes and stories. At one breakfast meal Swamiji, who never cared much for conventions, took a little food from Mrs Hansborough’s plate and remarked, “It is fitting that we eat from the same plate, we are two vagabonds.”
Swamiji carried on with his cooking activities even in the woods. He made curry for all and showed them how spices were prepared in India. He used to cook rock candy and say “the longer you boil sugar, the whiter it becomes and all the impurities are removed.” He also made candy flavoured with sesame seeds and often in the evenings of late afternoons he would make chapatis, mixing flour with pure water of the stream and slapping the dough into big, flat, unleavened patties that he would cook over the coals of the campfire.
About the Swami’s culinary activities, Ida recalled :
“He would sit on the floor in his tent with a hollow stone in his lap. With another smooth, round stone he would grind the spices much finer than we can do with a bowl and chopper. This would make the curry quite hot enough for us, but Swami would augment it by eating tiny red-hot peppers on the side. He would throw his head back and toss them into his mouth with a great circular movement of his arm. Once he handed me one of them, saying, ‘Eat it, it will do you good.’ One would eat poison if offered by Swamiji, so I obeyed, with agonizing result, to his great amusement. At intervals all the afternoon he kept asking, ‘How is your oven?’ Another time he made rock candy for us, explaining how it is the purest kind of candy, all the impurities being removed by boiling and boiling.”
The campers also incidentally learnt many more things from Swamiji. Once, Mrs Roorbach had made a very big fire by placing a lot of wood. Swamiji quipped that all that wood was enough for a funeral pyre. He undid it, and after a few rearrangements, built a small one with much less wood. Surely the experience of someone, who had for years traversed entire India as a wandering Sadhu, was in full demonstration here.
Swamiji, ever-inquisitive, and particularly interested in cooking, also learnt a few culinary tricks from the camping ladies. Mrs Roorbach was a particularly good cook, and she once prepared some asparagus with mayonnaise. Impressed by the mayonnaise, the great spiritual teacher asked Mrs Roorbach, “Show me some mayonnaise.” Mrs Roorbach was only delighted to impart her knowledge to the Master, which the latter earnestly learnt.
Ida also related a funny happening near the camp site : “Some work was being done on the place by a Mexican or American Indian boy, and Swami noticed that he watched us having breakfast. Later on he talked to the boy, who complained of not having been given any coffee. The boy said, ‘Black man like coffee; white man like coffee; red man like coffee.’ This amused Swami very much. He requested that the boy be given some coffee, and all the afternoon he kept repeating the boy’s remark and laughing.”
The campers could sometimes be adventurous too. Once, Alice went walking in the creek with Ida walking on one bank holding her hand. It was pretty dangerous and Swamiji got quite worrisome seeing this. He placed himself on the other side just ready to plunge if anything happened to Alice.
The ambience around the Camp area was usually quiet during the daytime. The only exception was when the train would pass the camp area. That was four times in the day, twice in each direction, on an embankment which was just ten feet higher than the camp and very near.
However, there were odd occasions when outside tourists would walk into the camp area inadvertently or out of curiosity. Seeing one such woman, who had wandered inside, Swamiji felt horrified and rushed back into his tent. Again, once, he found a lady’s comb in the camp area. He asked everyone whether it belonged to them. When none replied in the affirmative, he dropped it like hot charcoal.
According to Marie Louis Burke, it was there at the Camp Taylor that the famous incident of eggshell shooting took place. At the footbridge there, several boys were unsuccessfully attempting to shoot a number of eggshells strung together. Seeing a brown-skinned man smiling at the situation they, probably a bit peeved, challenged him to try. Swamji took the gun and shot a dozen shells in as many shots. The group was left stupefied and was convinced that the Swami’s was a seasoned hand. When the latter assured them that it was the first time he was handling a gun, they, of course, found it exceedingly difficult, if not outright impossible, to believe.
On May 4, it rained heavily all day and the Swami was again seriously ill. In the morning he sat on Miss Bell’s cot and talked for a long time even though he had fever. At night he felt so unwell that he made a will, leaving everything to his brother disciples. Mrs Hansborough and Mrs Aspinall took care of him, with Mrs Hansborough herself getting drenched in rain to put an extra covering over Swamiji’s tent.
One Saturday, Ida had to leave for San Francisco. When Swamiji asked her why she was leaving she told him that she had a piano lesson to give. Swamiji told her if she wanted to make money she definitely should and send half a million dollars for his work in India. He then saw her off to the train. Swamiji waved to have the train stop. When the engine passed them the fireman said to the engineer, ‘Hello! Who is this sky pilot?’ Ida had never heard the expression but later realized that it must have meant a spiritual teacher and that it was evident to anyone who saw Swamiji that he was one such person.
Swamiji really enjoyed his stay at Camp Taylor. He returned to San Francisco on 16th May after a stay of two weeks. Upon return he stayed at the house of Dr Logan, a very gifted man interested in Vedanta.
▶Next Chapter: Last Fortnight in California