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CHAPTER 1: VARIABLES
CHAPTER 2: RESOURCES AND GUIDES
CHAPTER 3: WHAT TO BRING
CHAPTER 4: FOOD
CHAPTER 5: LISTS
CHAPTER 6: GETTING THERE
CHAPTER 7: SETTING UP CAMP
CHAPTER 8: ALTERNATIVE CAMPING
CHAPTER 9: HOME COOKING
CHAPTER 10: CAMPSITE COOKING
CHAPTER 11: HANGING OUT
CHAPTER 12: FISHING
CHAPTER 13: STAR GAZING
EPILOGUE AND BOOKLIST
Brooklyn Boy Meets Wilderness
Steve looks like a surfer but sounds like a mobster. Behind the day-glo tan and obedient muscles is a bookish film critic from Flatbush who’d never been closer to the wilderness than summer camp at Bear Mountain. The Great Outdoors ("outta daws") meant Belmont Racetrack and Shea Stadium. The only trails he’d ever hiked were asphalt; the only lonesome roads he’d traveled under his own power were the sidestreets off Queens Boulevard on a three-speed bike he had lifted from his cousin Jimmy.
But like many young city slickers, he craved the country. We’d never taken anyone camping who was so eager to "tame" the wilderness. He couldn’t wait to strap on the pack and get started. He was strong and fit. He was ready for bear! He lasted about three hours. Several miles from the trailhead, he began to mutter and grumble. How in hell could anyone enjoy schlepping a forty-pound pack uphill in 80-degree heat all afternoon toward some abstract promise of a cool mountain lake? The farther we got from the last beer, the darker his mood became. His boots were good-looking but a size too small; long before we reached our destination, they had rubbed his heels raw. His pack felt like some mythic burden of the damned. The route was incomprehensible. By the time we stopped for dinner, he was ready for a hotel. But a quarter-inch foam sleeping pad was not his idea of the Waldorf Astoria.
The second day brought no relief. Up too early, we climbed 1,500 feet in the first mile, then set off cross-country around a mountain bowl strewn with rock slides, boulders and steep pitches into space. The streets of Brooklyn seemed safe by comparison. Steve’s every muscle ached from yesterday. We kept up a steady stream of encouragement, however, and by mid-afternoon, Steve made a monumental discovery. You can make the pack work for you, keeping the weight on the hips and off the shoulders. He began to notice that the view before him was improbably remote and beautiful, something he couldn’t see elsewhere. And when we finally climbed down to a granite-girded lake, filled with trout and inaccessible enough to promise a week of solitude, Steve remembered why we came: five days of fishing, cooking, eating and relaxing.
His contentment lasted until we set out to catch our supper. Steve regarded the fishing rod with suspicion. We put a lure on the line and taught him how to cast. But that did nothing to dispel his skepticism. How could you catch fish with a spoon-shaped piece of metal at the end of a nylon string? He cast and cast–aspersions and oaths as well as lures and flies and bubbles. Around the lake he went. No luck. He announced his early retirement from the game.
His mood blackened as the clouds rolled in, necessitating another trauma–setting up his tent. He hesitated. We cajoled. He procrastinated. We insisted. He refused. We quickly erected it. It began to pour. It rained all night. In the morning, Steve’s tent looked like a collapsed dream the day the circus leaves town. Somewhere under that heap of netting, nylon and wind-sundered rainfly lay a sodden camper converted to the virtues of foul-weather protection. While the sun dried his sleeping bag, Steve spent an hour erecting the tent in the ideal place with geometric fanaticism. It looked great, and he never spent another moment in it. But he was glad it was there, waiting.
The next day Steve caught his first fish, an eight-inch brown trout, with a grasshopper. Well, perhaps he’d consider coming out of retirement. Two days later, he returned with seven little rainbows after a tough solo hike to a lake beyond the razor-back ridge. And he began to talk fishing. He studied the "hatch" of flies on the water’s surface, invented fishing knots, and experimented with salmon eggs as extra enticement on his lures. Trout with almonds, trout baked in soy sauce, ginger and garlic, fish grilled over red-hot coals at sunset–all helped make the talk better. Camping began to look–and feel–like fun.
On our fourth day, Steve set out to bake a cake. He’d never before baked anything, anywhere. He had, however, been impressed with the cinnamon nut bread and the chocolate cake with icing we’d pulled from the coals. He hauled out flour and baking powder, corn meal (which he mistook for milk powder), RyKrisps, raisins, apricots and sugar; mixed them all in a pot; added some margarine, sugar and an egg; then poured in just enough water to make the batter run off the spoon like a ribbon. We reminded him to grease the pot before surrounding it with hot coals, wished him luck and went fishing. When we returned, an apricot cornbread awaited us, and Steve carved another notch on the stock of his outdoor knowledge.
After that, we had a wilderness fanatic on our hands. He insisted on doing everything: fishing, sewing, cooking and gathering wood. We managed to keep busy swimming, sunning, eating and reading. Together we invented ways to cook fish, fry corn cakes and coin new names for constellations in the night sky because we weren’t sure of their classic names and didn’t care. By the time we walked out, Steve was a confirmed camper and we were convinced that anyone could become one, too.
What This Book Is About
There are enough texts on hiking, cycling, canoeing, backpacking, car camping, mountaineering, survival and fishing to fill a four-year curriculum on the fine art of leaving your house. This book doesn’t duplicate the other guides. Rather, it illustrates how imagination, improvisation and commitment can unfold the possibilities of the outdoors, whether you get there by car, foot, bike, canoe, llama, horse or wheelchair. It takes an agnostic view of what defines the outdoors. For some, it is a campground filled with RVs and barbecues, sort of a downtown with trees. For others, it is a remote off-trail lake two days away from the nearest human voice. For many, it is somewhere in between–a state park, a riverbank or a day hike away from the madding crowd.
This book recognizes that whatever the outdoors means to you, its pleasures can be enhanced by some common-sense planning, a willingness to slow down and hang out, and a disposition to indulge in minor adventures. The book is based on the Pleasure Principle: A camping holiday is neither boot camp nor a triumph of the will. It is not (necessarily) uplifting or ennobling. It is, or should be, more fun and less expensive than a motel tour of the world’s Disneylands and watering holes. And this book shows you how.
This book is practical. It tells you four things–how to plan a trip; how to get where you’re going; how to cook and eat as never before on a camping trip; and what to do in the long hours between sumptuous meals. If you’re a novice, we’ll show you how to get started and how to finish gracefully, even if you’ve gotten egg on your face along the way. If you are an old hand at camping, we’ll give you new and useful information about fishing, cooking, trail-finding, stargazing, family entertainment and all-purpose, world-class hanging out. If you’ve ever come back from a camping trip bored or discontented, this is the book you need.
A book can’t paddle a canoe, catch a fish or bake a cake. It can, however, provide your initial inspiration, point you in the right direction and above all, cut the time, cost and hard knocks of learning. We’ll show you how to stay dry, stay full, stay busy and stay friends. We’ll run you through the basics–how to get the information you need, including access to the Internet, and how to think about equipment, packing, maps and trails. We’ll then give you hints on improvising: drying food, fishing in the rain, repairing boots and entertaining children. We are equal-opportunity enthusiasts and want you to get a feel for the limitless possibilities of a camping trip.
We do make several assumptions: that you like to camp and love to eat; that you want a vacation, not a forced march; that you like to get away from the grind. (Rick’s grandmother used to complain, "If you’ve seen one tree you’ve seen ’em all." This book is not for her.) We also assume that you are not necessarily a mountain climber, spelunker, Yukon guide or even a member of the Sierra Club. You may never have set foot in a national park or on a wilderness trail, or you may have been haunting them for years. You are reasonably fit but not a triathlete. You may be too young to read this book or too old to believe all its claims; you may be "abled" or disabled. You believe that locomotion by foot or boat or bike or wheelchair is an honorable and even enjoyable way to travel. And that financing a camping trip does not require a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.
The style of camping espoused in this book requires no exceptional skills. Getting a canoe across a lake or down a slow-moving river is not the same as taking a raft or kayak through whitewater with the family’s Waterford crystal on board. Our book is about the first, not the second. Riding a mountain bike on a dirt trail or a touring bike into a campground does not require experience in the Giro d’Italia. We know something about the former, nothing about the latter. Backpacking in the wilderness, on or off-trail, takes ordinary, not extraordinary, know-how.
One of us is afraid of heights, but gets along fine even on steep trails. We’ve been lost and even without radar have managed to figure out where we were and how to get to where we were going. We don’t have the newest, most expensive equipment. But we’ve lived on fish we caught, baked breads and cakes, read some of the world’s longest novels, kept our clothes dry and spirits up in 48 hours of steady rain, and come back to spin tales that made our friends’ feet itch and our own thoughts turn to the next trip out. Everything that we write about, we (or our friends) have done ourselves, and most of it we learned by doing. All the stories are true. And if we haven’t done something–for example, performed triple bypass surgery with a Swiss Army knife or coped with a serious injury–we don’t write about it. We prefer to go easy on the detailed information you can get better elsewhere. But we make every effort to show you how to get that information (in Chapters 2 and 3 and in the Book List in the back of the book).
How to Use This Book
We’ve never met anyone who has actually read a camping book from cover to cover. Unless you can’t bear to skip a single page, you’ll want to cut in at functional points and then cut out again. To that end, we divide the book into four parts: Planning a Trip, Outdoor Basics, Cooking and Eating, and the Pleasure Principle: Creative Loitering. Here’s a brief summary of each.
Planning a Trip
Planning a camping trip takes time and energy, though the amount of each depends on your mode of travel. Car and canoe camping are relatively easy. Think of your "vehicle" as an extra-large steamer trunk. Toss in anything you want and get out of town before the IRS comes calling. Biking and backpacking take more planning. You need to consider total weight, packing constraints, route difficulty, the number of people involved, and travel distances. In all cases–however you travel–planning requires making lists, deciding where to go, when to go, how to get there, whom to go with. Then you have to assemble gear, maps, permits, and then more gear.
In Chapter 1, we show you how to plan trips by car, bike, canoe, horse and foot, for one person, two, four or more, for families and extended families–bringing babies, great-grandmothers and disabled friends takes only a little special forethought. We also discuss the great philosophical question, How far should one go? Not on the first date, but on the first day, and on subsequent days, too. We have a formula that operates here and you’re going to like it. It has to do with resting as much as moving, and will prepare you for the great culture shock of PHO (Planned Hanging Out).
Chapter 2 puts at your fingertips the kind of information everybody always asks for: Where do we get maps and permits, find campgrounds, get in touch with experts and guides and like-minded enthusiasts? Where do we find the right fix-it manual, the local or regional outdoor club or clinic, the best advice on equipment, the meaning of life? Let your ham-handed fists do the walking through its pages.
Chapter 3 is all about equipment–with a twist. We show you how to stay warm, dry and comfortable, without spending a fortune. Canoeists, we argue, don’t need the latest second-skin raingear, bicyclists don’t need the newest genetically engineered lightweight frames, and backpackers don’t need freeze-dried tent stakes. What everybody needs is a make-do attitude and a sympathetic sales clerk.
Chapter 4 concerns food: what and how much to take, where to buy it, how to weigh and pack it, what kind of utensils and stoves and pots you will need, even how to cache food on a long trip. Once you’ve got this part of the planning done, the cooking and eating will be a piece of cake! In short, it will take you an hour to read these suggestions, two hours to absorb them, and a few more hours to put them into practice. But we guarantee it’ll save you countless hours, dollars, and hassles.
So will Chapter 5, which is devoted to the exquisite art of making lists. We show you basic lists and arcane, Gothic lists. We’ll help you make equipment lists, tool kits, and medicine chests. Even book lists! If after this chapter you forget something, don’t call us, we’ll call you.
Outdoor Basics
You’ve planned and prepared for your camping adventure for a week. You’ve got everything. You’re in the saddle, on the dock, or at the trailhead. Chapter 6 takes you from there to your destination. It shows you how to read maps, load and adjust a pack, pannier or canoe, and how to hike or bike a trail and negotiate off-trail terrain. It gets you through weather and around obstacles. It tells you how to get acclimated to altitude, heat, and cold. Above all, it stresses the importance of remaining flexible. A blister, a storm or just a meadow full of wildflowers may slow you down and make you change your plans. This is a vacation. Look around, enjoy and take it easy.Chapter 7 shows you how to choose a site and set up camp. If you don’t know where to pitch your tent or stow your canoe, how to build a fire, protect your food from small and large creatures of the night (your partner excepted), stash your gear, enjoy or at least survive a storm, the information is there. Use it.
Chapter 8 introduces you to three alternative camping modes:snow camping, desert camping, and ultra-light camping. If you've never been on snowshoes or in the indescribable moonscape of the desert; if you've wished for ways to lighten the load: we'll tell you how it's done and what's in store. No sense letting the seasons or gravity put a damper on your outdoor yearnings.
Cooking and Eating
Eating is at the heart–well, gut–of the outdoor experience. Our attitude is this: If you enjoy eating in your own kitchen, why deprive yourself of the pleasure just because you’re three days and 9,000 feet away from a home with a range? Stick with us and you’ll be able to have your cake and eat it, too!Chapter 9 tells you how to avoid the library-paste peril of freeze-dried foods by preparing your own dried meals at home, simply and inexpensively. It takes you through cooking basics with the expectation that even if you have never boiled an egg, you can still bake a trout or make the best Brazilian black bean soup this side of Rio.
Chapter 10, is the collection of recipes that have made us famous from Kneejerk Junction to Toehold Lake, from Chez Panisse in Berkeley to the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station: freshwater fish, homemade soups and sauces, stewed fruits, jams and chutneys, baked breads, cakes and pizzas. The recipes are keyed for time, ease, heat source (stove or fire) and perishability. Read ’em and drool. Chapter 10 is also full of useful how-to information for preparing food in the outback. Need to clean or bone a fish? Cook in the rain? Use a camp stove? Need to eat fast and travel light? Want to carry a 40-pound reflector oven and microwave blaster into a campground? We have answers to all these questions and more. We show you how to become an outdoor chef without burning yourself, the food or the forest.
Pleasure Principle: Creative Loitering
Chapter 11 pulls together all the good things to do on a lazy day (well, all the good things fit to print), whether you’re in a paved campsite or stuck in an aerie below the summit of Mount Vertigo. This is a chapter dedicated, but not limited, to children. Whatever your age, if you don’t know what to do with time on your hands 200 miles from the nearest game show, take heart. Help is at hand. Here. Now.
Chapter 12 is the amateur angler’s guide to the briny deep. Some people fish for sport. Others fish to relax. We fish to eat. Here is the info on everything from gear to casting to landing the big cahoonga. You even get a fish-eye view of the whole thing: where they hang out and why, what they’re looking for and at. We don’t use the latest in laminated fly rods, and purists might cringe, but we’ve never gone hungry and never left a lake or stream dissatisfied, even when we didn’t catch a thing.
Chapter 13 is an introduction to the heavens. Stars are just about the only nighttime-viewing entertainment in the backcountry, and viewing them is the second most popular sport conducted in a prone position after dark. We have tried in this chapter to give you a couple of working methods for making personal sense out of the slice of sky above you; it is legitimate to see constellations with your own mind’s eye. Just as ancient Greeks and Chinese discovered different formations in the same stars, you may rearrange the classical sky for yourself with much pleasure and no damage to the astronomical establishment. On the other hand, if you’re a traditionalist and want to know how to read a star map, the information is here. But either way, you’ll never know how bright the night sky is until you see it unobscured by city lights and a pall of smog.