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By Tamia Nelson August 10, 2004
We do not go to the green woods and crystal waters to rough it, we go
to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home.… Some folks like roughing it, or think they do.
I did, once. My dream of a good time was hanging like an addled bat from the
flank of a knife-edged ridge and snatching forty winks in a gale-buffeted
tent, while waiting for the next avalanche to sweep down off the towering
heights. So when my first long camping trip proved to be a never-ending
ordeal of sodden clothes and blood-sucking
flies, I shrugged off my misery, comforting myself with the thought that
I was preparing for bigger and better agonies to come.
Here's what happened. My brother and I pitched camp in a dank sag along a
riverbank, right in the center of a dense tangle of alder, birch, and cedar.
No hint of a breeze penetrated the thick, interlocked branches. We set up
housekeeping in an Army pup tent,
vintage 1945. It had no floor and no mosquito netting. Whatever the tent's
shortcomings, though, the blackflies and no-see-ums loved it. And they told
all their friends. We were never short of company.
The weather was no help, either. Dense fog blanketed the ground each night
and hung around through the early morning. Then the sun took over, turning
our canvas shelter into a steaming sauna — just before the daily
thunderstorm arrived to fill the sag with standing water. Finding dry wood in
this postdiluvian landscape proved impossible. So we ate cold beans directly
from the can, and made coffee by stirring powdered instant into tepid water.
Our tent, soaked repeatedly by storm and fog and never given a chance to dry,
soon developed a microclimate of its own, drizzling a fine mist down on our
cotton-batting sleeping bags at all hours of the day and night.
But we were young and fit. We survived. And we bragged later about how we
could take it. In truth, though, we'd have enjoyed ourselves much more if
we'd followed Nessmuk's advice. On the other hand, the self-described
"limber-go-shiftless" dean of backwoods letters seldom strayed far from the
nineteenth-century tourist track, and he often decamped to a waterfront hotel
when the going got tough. You may not have this luxury. The longer your trip
and the more difficult your route, the more likely it is that you'll have to
rough it at least some of the time. Nature deals the cards, after all. But
this doesn't mean that you can't try to make the best of even a bad hand.
Preparation, organization, and a keen eye for the lay of the land will always
improve your odds.
First Steps
Comfort, like charity, begins at home. If the authorities who manage your
destination require that you camp only at designated sites, do a little
research long before you leave for the put-in. Not all designated campsites
are equal. Plan ahead. Give a wide berth to any sites that are advertised as
suitable for large groups, unless you're traveling with a lot of friends or
family. Most such sites stay open until they're filled to capacity. If you're
hoping to be up at dawn, you don't want to be wakened at midnight by members
of the Camp Bide-a-Wee junior chorus, practicing a few of their favorite
songs just before turning in.
Even when you travel through a region without designated sites, you're not
off the hook. You have more choices, to be sure — but a lot of the
choices are bad. There are only so many decent campsites to be had along any
waterway. Not surprisingly, many of them have been used for centuries, if not
millennia. We've found ten-thousand-year-old projectile points at some of our
camps. (We left them where we found them. Maybe you'll be the next person to
see them.) To get an idea of what lies in store for you, do a map analysis
before you leave home. You'll be glad you did. Lay out all the topographic
maps covering your intended route. Do this even if you're camping on the
seashore. Nautical charts aren't much help in picking campsites, though they
can save you from floating away in your sleeping bag at high tide.
Next, decide how far you'll travel on each day of your trip. Be very
conservative, particularly at the start, when you're still getting your
sea legs. Wind and weather don't always cooperate, and portages look a lot
longer from under a canoe than they do on a map. Your pack will be heavier
than it was in the living room, too. Trace your route on the maps and look
for several potential campsites near the end of each day's "march." Then mark
them with a pencil.
Of course, map reading won't reveal every one of the landscape's secrets.
Maps tease and
tantalize, but they never tell, or show, all. There's just no substitute
for the Mark One eyeball. That's why you should never turn down a
site that looks good, just because you didn't pick it up in your map
analysis. The reverse is also true: don't assume that all the sites you
pencilled on your map will be suitable. They won't. Sometimes even the
Mark One needs a little help, however, particularly when you're trying
to check out a campsite from the water. If your eyes have seen their best
days, or if haze and shadow obscure important detail, take your binoculars
out of the ammo can or
other waterproof case and put them to work. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
The Ideal Campsite
But just how do you recognize a good site when you find one? First
off, don't expect perfection. Ideal campsites are few and far between, and if
you won't settle for second-best, you'll spend a lot of nights in your boat.
Still, it helps to know a perfect site when you see it. The ideal campsite
is…
These criteria are mostly self-explanatory. Unless you really like
fireworks, you don't want to camp under a single tall pine. Lone trees make
great lightning rods. In fact, you probably don't want to camp under
any tall tree, even if has plenty of nearby company — at least
you don't want to do so until you've made sure that no dead branches
("widow-makers" in nineteenth-century logging-camp patois) overhang your
tent. Standing dead trees are another obvious hazard, but even seemingly
healthy trees sometimes fall without apparent provocation, and without giving
any notice. Cathedral groves of old-growth pines are awe-inspiring places to
visit, but it's best to spend the night somewhere else. In and around camp,
small is beautiful.
Camping
on tropical and subtropical beaches also requires a little thought. Don't
pitch your tent under the palms. Period. Ripe coconuts hit the ground with
the force of cannon balls. And some tropical trees — manchineel
(Hippomane mancinella) is one notorious example — weep poisonous
sap, while others, including the aptly-named "poisonwood" (Metopium
toxiferum), are powerful contact irritants. If you normally paddle in
temperate waters and you're heading toward the equator, local knowledge is
imperative.
No paddler needs to be reminded of the importance
of clear, clean, drinkable water. Inland boaters can count on having
running (or at least standing) water — fresh water — on their
doorstep, but sea kayakers and other coastal explorers aren't so lucky. A
topographic map can be a big help here. Once again, though, local knowledge
is essential, particularly along desert coasts. A lot can happen between the
time a map is field-checked and the day you come looking for the only spring
that's shown for twenty miles. Not all surprises are happy ones. And speaking
of unpleasant surprises: whatever your water source, don't go too much by
appearances. Even crystal-clear wilderness springs can be contaminated.
Sadly, many are. If in doubt,
doubt — and then purify.
After securing your site against bolts from the blue and slaking your
thirst, you'll want to catch some shut-eye. But you won't sleep very well on
a slope. That's why level sites are at a premium. In many places, however
— the banks of lowland rivers in the North come to mind — all the
flat ground is string bog or oatmeal-like muskeg. Not the best place to bed
down for the night. The upshot? You'll have to camp on the slope of the riverbank.
Make the best of it. Pitch your tent so that you're sleeping on the
"fall line," parallel to the path a stream of water would take in running
down to the river. (But don't pitch your tent in a stream of water!)
If you spread your sleeping bag out terrace fashion, at right angles to this
imaginary line, you'll roll off your pad almost as soon as you close your
eyes. A minute or two more, and you'll be wedged against the downslope wall
of your tent, where you'll soon be joined by all your companions. Cozy?
Maybe. But it's not exactly comfortable.
And here's another heads-up: When you settle in for the night, even on a
slope that's so gentle as to be almost imperceptible, make sure your head
is higher than your feet. If you don't, I can guarantee that you'll have
some of the most disturbing dreams of your life.
Let's get back to that stream of water for a minute. No one needs to be
told not to pitch her tent in a puddle. (Well, almost no one. I've met a
couple of folks over the years who took the "waterproof floor" mentioned in
their tent's ad copy a little too seriously.) It's much harder to avoid sites
which will become puddles or torrents in a rain, however. Dry stream beds are
an obvious no-no, particularly in the mountains, where a thunderstorm many
miles away can turn a dry wash into a raging river in just a few short hours.
Sags (small depressions) are also best avoided. Even in a soft drizzle they
often become pools. And if you're camping on the seashore, don't forget the
tides. Pay close attention to the wavering "bathtub ring" of driftwood,
seaweed, and trash that marks the sea's highest recent incursion. Pitching
your tent below this strandline is obviously asking for trouble, but camping
just above the tide wrack is no guarantee of a dry camp, either. The tidal
range varies from day to day. High tides are higher and low tides lower when
the moon is full or new, and storm surges can send water rushing high above
the strandline at any time, as can undersea earthquakes and ice-falls from
calving glaciers. Be prepared.
The risk of a sudden deluge isn't confined to the seacoast.
Lakeshores are often inundated by storms. Look for a strandline before
pitching your tent. And there's danger of a sort even in camps perched next
to a waterfall. When the wind's blowing away from you, the view is charming.
You may even have a semi-permanent rainbow hovering in the air above you. But
if the wind unexpectedly shifts, you can get the drenching of your life. That
will certainly put a damper on the rest of your day.
While you're checking out a campsite, pay attention to what's underfoot,
too. Although modern gear makes it possible to camp on bare rock — in an
emergency, you can even use tent stakes in the same way that climbers once
used pitons, driving them into thin cracks in the rock — most of us
prefer something a little softer. Sandy soils drain quickly, while heavy,
clay-rich loam hangs on to water for a much longer time. You don't need to
dig down to see what lies beneath the surface, however. Cutbanks and cliff
faces will tell you all you need to know. (Don't get too close to either one;
use your binoculars, instead.) Much of canoe country was covered by the great
Pleistocene ice sheets. If this is where you'll be paddling, look for the sinuous
tracks of eskers on the map. These gravelly remnants of ancient rivers
are often ideal campsites: high, dry, and airy. An esker's steep sides can
make for a strenuous climb, to be sure, but it's usually worth the effort,
especially when the surrounding landscape is swampy or thickly forested.
After all, when it comes to campsites, high is usually good. An exposed,
breezy camp may need extra attention in a windstorm, but it's blessedly free
of biting flies. Just don't camp too close to the edge of a cutbank or cliff.
The forces that created them are always at work, night and day. You don't
want to be sleeping on the next bit to tumble down into the water.
Speaking of exposure, give some thought to the sun. In the North,
campsites facing south or southeast get the morning light. By midday, though,
they're often hot and steamy. The moral? On travel days, when you'll want to
be up with the sun and on your way, look for a camp on the northern shore of
a lake or river. On rest days, when you'll be sleeping late and pottering
about camp for hours, pick a north-facing campsite. In the high Arctic, where
the summer sun never sets, orientation is less important. Here, shade
is a welcome luxury, but don't expect much help from the local vegetation. If you want
shelter from the sun, you'll have to make your own.
Lastly, avoid camping on a dump. This is surprisingly hard to do, even in
remote areas. Over the years, we've hauled hundreds of pounds of other
peoples' garbage away from camps in northern Ontario and Québec, cursing
the load on every mile of every portage. In more "civilized" places, the
problem is even worse. You may remember how Garrison Keillor described the
Europeans who first settled in Millet, the fictional hamlet nearest to his
imaginary hometown of Lake Wobegon: "They came to the New World to get drunk
and throw away their garbage." From what we've seen, those early Milletians
left a lot of descendents.
Why does this matter? Garbage — food scraps, fish guts, human waste,
and the like — isn't just an eyesore. It also attracts camp followers
looking for a free lunch. Some of them — chipmunks
and deer
mice, for instance — are usually little more than nuisances. But
others, like bears and feral dogs, can be bad news, indeed. So if you don't
want to be disturbed by things that go bump in the night, don't camp on a
dump, and be sure to hang your food, too, or store it in air-tight plastic
drums ("bear barrels"). Then you'll be able to sleep sound.
Settling In
That brings us to the business of deciding on a campsite and making it
into a home away from home. Mid-afternoon isn't too early to begin looking in
earnest. Even in high summer and high latitudes, the light has a way of
failing before you expect it to, particularly in the mountains. Peaks and
canyon walls cast long shadows, and the perpetual dusk of much of the great
northern forest doesn't make things any easier. You want everything running
smoothly before night falls. Nighttime is not the right time to set up
camp. Accidents happen when you're tired, hungry, and harried, and navigating
unfamiliar surroundings by the light of a headlamp can be hazardous. It's
almost always better to make do with a second-best site than to end the day
struggling to pitch your tent in the dark — or, worse yet, to let night
overtake you while you're still paddling.
This is a good time to review the Gospel of Low Impact. Whether or not
it's required by regulation, use established sites whenever possible. (Let's
hope they're not also established dumps!) Leave the camp carpentry, drainage
ditches, and other "improvements" where they belong — between the covers
of nineteenth-century camping handbooks. Think twice before making a wood
fire, and never set match
to tinder when the nearby woods are dry. Whatever the forecast,
always bring a stove and
extra fuel, just in case. Carry all your garbage back home with you, and
when you
gotta go, do your business well away from any water source.
Anarchy and doing-your-own-thing have their place, but that place isn't
the campsite. When everyone works together to get the necessary chores done,
each person has more time to enjoy the remainder of the day. Small parties of
friends and family groups can usually get by with an informal division of
labor. Larger parties will find it makes sense to do things by the numbers:
Breaking Camp Ain't Hard to Do
All good things come to an end, and when it's time for you to leave, don't
dangle about. The voyageurs, who knew a thing or two about making miles
before the sun's heat woke up the "Old Woman" and started the wind machine
blowing, made sure they were on the water by three in the morning. (Breakfast
had to wait till eight.) This is a bit too much for most of us, but it still
pays to get an early start.
To make things easier, break camp by the numbers, too. Just reverse the
tape: pack up, eat up, finish your packing, strike tents, load up, and go.
Leave your tent and tarp standing as long as possible. This gives you
sheltered work areas for sorting and packing. Then, when the last pack is
stowed aboard the last boat, take a minute to police your site, looking for
stray gear and trash. Make sure your fire is drowned dead. If you're
afraid to stir the ashes with your bare hand, you need to do a better job. As
you pull away from shore, look over your shoulder one final time. Your last
sight of your home away from home should look better than your first. You'll
want to come back someday, and you don't want to be disappointed, do you?
Canoe and kayak camping ought to be fun, but bad campsites — even a
single bad campsite — will put a chill on your ardor for the great
outdoors in a hurry. The remedy? Don't rough it. Smooth it, instead. It's not
a hard prescription to follow. Take only the gear you need. Make sure it's
waterproofed, and pack it so that
unpacking isn't a chore. Follow Jerome K. Jerome's timeless
advice: bring "enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than
enough to drink, for thirst is a dangerous thing." (Don't forget that you
can't count on drinking the water straight out of the lake or river, even in
the backcountry. Purify it
first.) Leave a copy of your floatplan
with a friend or family member before setting out. Carry repair kits for
your boat and gear, and a medical kit for
yourself. And unless you're trying for a place in Guinness, don't hurry
from campsite to campsite. Slow down. Enjoy the moment. Get to know the
neighborhood. And when you stop for the day, pick the site carefully. It may
only be your home for one night, but if you choose badly, that one night can
seem endless.
We go to the woods to smooth it. That's the secret of a happy
camper.
Copyright © 2004 by Verloren Hoop Productions. All rights
reserved.
Smoothing It
Secrets of a Happy Camper
tamia@paddling.net
— Nessmuk (George Washington Sears)
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