The Occasional Fishing, Hunting, Rugged Outdoors Thread, Camping Edition [Bandersnatch]

Welcome Piscators and Piscatrixes, Nimrods and Nimrettes, and Rough Riders of all genders to the current installment of the occasional fishing and hunting and other wholesome outdoorsness thread, Camping Edition.

Let’s start with some rules for camping. I learned a lot from the Mad Croatian, and one of the things he insisted on was that the first thing you do at camp is put up the overhead tarp. I did that in this picture and that was good because a gentle rain set in and the tarp protected the fire without getting all the smoke in our faces.

Note the ridiculous contraption on the right. It’s a tent cot. If there were real rules to camping I would ban it. I told Jon that a real tent only takes 10 or 15 minutes to put up and he said that’s 10 minutes he could be doing something more fun.

Now, what you bring and how you do things depends on what kind of camping you’re doing. There’s backpack camping, where you want everything as light and compact as possible. Canoe camping offers more room for stuff, but if you’re going multi-day what you have with you is finite so you have to pack thoughtfully. Car camping – that’s where you drive to the campground and don’t have to carry stuff far, not sleeping in your car like a damn hippie – affords more room for luxury and comfy things. For the purposes of this post I’m not considering sleeping in a camper to be camping.

This is the two little Banderlings on a canoe camping trip about twenty years ago. As you can see, a canoe offers enough storage to bring Moosie and Bearie. (Ah, kids. They’ve grown up to be utter disappointments).

Yes, this post is a little bit autobiographical because the point of the outdoors threads is Story Time. I tell some stories here, you tell some stories in the grey boxes.

Here’s a story. This is the Old Man of the Mountain.

It’s in New Hampshire, and being that my father was from New Hampshire I considered it part of my heritage. Well, I did canoe camping trips with the Mad Croatian and his family for several years and the very first year we did it exhausted the children. They’d had sunburn and poison ivy and leech bites and a week of living outdoors, so when they were packed into the car for the ride home they fell deeply asleep.

We drove past the Old Man. I wanted to wake them and show it to them but they were so tired I thought, “that thing has been there for 12,000 years, I can show it to them next year”. That Winter the Old Man buckled and his face fell off the mountain. Oh well.

Now here’s a thing I would have considered cheating as a youngster, but darn they’re comfortable. If I’m car camping I am not shy about bringing an air mattress. I would rather sleep in a quiet place in a tent on an air mattress than in the best hotel there is. Also, if you bring a foot pump you can inflate your pie:

If you are buying a tent online, which is to say if you’re not standing in front of it when making the purchase, be aware that tent marketers are insane. They designate a tent as “two man” for people who are comfortable enough with each other to sleep head to foot, like sardines, and not roll over in their sleep. This says “2” right on it, but it’s a one man tent in real life:

Camp cooking is another thing that depends on the style of camping you’re doing and how much bulk you can carry. Some people, even when they have room in the canoe and options, insist on dehydrated camp food that prepares in a jiffy. I will go camping just as an excuse to make my favorite camp breakfast.

That’s potatoes, onions, and herbs, fried with cut-up bacon mixed in, and eggs.

If you camp in a pure Northern clime like New England you can pick blueberries while the kids are sleeping. I don’t know if people camp in the South.

Camping can be a serene solo experience where you contemplate life with only a fire, a bourbon, and your thoughts.

Or you can bring a friend.

And with that we move on to the raison d’etre of this here HQ, the comments section. Brickbats, praise, and fish brag pics are welcome at aoshqfish at sign gmail thing. I have a couple of fish pics in the inbox, they’ll go up the next time I actually talk about fishing.

Tonight’s outdoors thread is brought to you by Sears.

posted by CBD at 07:30 PM

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