A trapper’s tent

When you reach your camping place, the first step is to clear the ground of all rubbish, loose stones, sticks and brush to have a clean floor. Then unpack the tent and fit the pegs of the two upright poles through the two holes in the ridge pole. Next raise the tent and peg the guy ropes on the four corners first. A little practice will show you how to do this. After all the ropes are pegged at a proper distance from the tent, they should be tightened and the tent made secure.
Always plan to have a full four hours of daylight to make your camp ready. If the drive is a long one and you are obliged to get up very early in the morning, you will have to do it, that is all. I made my first camping trip when I was twelve years old. We had just reached the camping ground, unloaded our kit and sent the team home that brought us when—bang! over the mountain across the lake from where we were going to camp, a terrific thunder shower came up and in a few minutes it was pouring. There was our whole outfit—tent, bedding and food—getting soaked because, instead of hurrying along during the day, we had fooled away our time trying to catch fish in wayside brooks that had never seen a fish and not realizing how important it is to make haste as well as hay while the sun shines.

We quickly pitched the tent, not as it should have been pitched, but in a heap over the rest of our goods to keep out as much water as possible and then ran for a nearby barn where we spent a cold hungry night, wetter but wiser. The next day, out came the sun and dried our things, but if the rain had continued we certainly should have been obliged to go home or at least to a farmhouse to stay until the weather cleared. We soon forgot our unpleasant experience but we have not forgotten the lesson it taught—and that is not to waste time along the road when there is work to be done at the journey’s end.
Next to a good tent, the most important thing for the camper is a good bed. It is even more important than good food because if we sleep well, hunger will furnish the sauce for our grub, but if we spend the night trying to dodge some root or rock that is boring into our back and that we hardly felt when we turned in but which grew to an enormous size in our imagination before morning, we will be half sick and soon get enough of being an Indian. A canvas cot makes the best camp bed if it can be taken along conveniently. There is one important thing to look out for in sleeping on a cot. In my first experience of the kind, I nearly froze. I kept piling things on me until all my clothing, and even the camp towels and table-cloth were pressed into service and was thinking about pulling some dry grass to pile on the rest of the stuff. Still I shivered until I discovered that the cold was coming up from underneath because there was nothing to keep it out but the single thickness of canvas. When I put one of my blankets under me, I was as warm as toast.
Very often it is impossible to carry cots on a trip, and that is where a knowledge of woodcraft comes in. The softest, sweetest, downiest bed in the world can be made with no other materials but those which grow in the forest—if we know how. At least the tired camper will think it is soft and will sleep on it like a top and wake up refreshed in the morning. Perhaps if we had our choice we would prefer our own bed at home, but in the woods we do not have this choice. Most people call this a bed of “pine boughs.”

An “A” tent

The Hudson Bay tent, trapper’s tent, forester’s tent, canoe tent, and a dozen others, including an Indian tepee and wigwam, are all good tents for special purposes. The pictures show the different styles and all of them are designed for special uses, either for warmth or lightness in carrying or ease in pitching. If we go camping in summer and can have our equipment or “duffle,” as the woodsmen call it, carried by team, the wall tent will be the best one to take.
Tent pegs can always be cut in the woods, but it is far more satisfactory to get them ready at home before we leave. If you do cut your own pegs, select hardwood saplings to make them from and to further harden the points, char them slightly in a fire. If you spend a few winter evenings at home making the pegs, it will save you a lot of time and trouble when you reach the camping ground. The best pegs are made of iron or steel. This is especially true when the ground where they are to be driven is hard or rocky, which is usually the case. Steel tent pins may be bought for six cents apiece or possibly the local blacksmith will make them for less. They should be a foot long.
A sod cloth is a strip of canvas eight or ten inches wide fastened to the bottom of the tent wall. Its purpose is to keep the wind and rain from blowing under the tent. After the tent is pitched a ditch should be dug all around it to catch the rain and carry it away. The earth that is dug from this trench may be thrown on the sod cloth to hold it down.
It is an excellent idea, if you are a beginner, to practice pitching the tent at home so that you will understand it better when you are in the woods. Besides this, you can try sleeping out a night or two to see how you are going to like it.

A wall tent

The three important things then are the water supply, the firewood supply, and good drainage.
Next in importance to the camp site is the outfit, and the most important thing is the tent. For a party of four boys on their first camping trip, the best kind will be a wall tent. A tent, 11 x 14 feet will be large enough to provide sleeping quarters and to have every one comfortable. A simple shelter of canvas outside can be provided as a dining-room but this is more of a luxury than a real necessity.
Canvas or duck is the common material from which tents are made. The standard eight-ounce khaki duck used in the United States army will, for this size tent, cost about twenty dollars. This will include a fly, which is merely a second roof to the tent. The best material for tents is balloon silk. It is much more waterproof than canvas and only weighs a quarter as much. It is also much more expensive. A tent can be made at home, which is of course the cheaper way. They can also be hired from previous campers or from some awning maker who is also usually a tent maker.
A canvas tent without a fly will leak in a rain storm if the roof is touched on the inside either by our hands or our clothing. It may be made partially waterproof by a coating of paraffine which has been previously dissolved in turpentine. The simplest and at the same time the warmest tent for an experienced camper who knows the tricks of the trade is a leanto tent, one with one side entirely open, in front of which a blazing fire may be kept burning. This is hardly adapted for boys on their first trip, however.
Another very good and very simple tent is the “A” tent used in the army. This looks like a “V” turned upside down. We can pitch it without the aid of tent poles by simply hanging it be ween two trees to which a rope has been stretched.

The jug by which we obtained pure, cold water

2. The next important thing in selecting a camp is being near a supply of firewood. A week in camp will consume an amazing amount of wood, especially if we have a camp fire at night to sit around and sing and tell stories before turning in. In most sections there is plenty of dead wood that we can use for camp fires. This does not mean a lot of twigs and brush. There is no use trying to go camping unless some one knows how to use an axe. In another chapter I will tell you something about the proper use of axes and hatchets. For the present it is sufficient to say that an excellent place to practice handling an axe is on the family woodpile. You will thus combine business and pleasure, and your efforts will be appreciated by your family, which would not be the case if, like George Washington, you began your lessons in woodcraft on the favorite cherry tree.
Almost any kind of wood will burn when it is dry, but it takes experience to know the kinds of trees that will burn when they are green. If there is no dry wood in the neigborhood, and we are obliged to cut a tree down to get our supply, it is very important to pitch our camp somewhere near the right kind of a tree and not be obliged to carry our firewood a long distance. The best “green wood” for the campers’ fire is hickory, although birch is excellent. Hickory is also the best dry wood. Other trees that will burn well when green are cedar, white ash, locust or white oak. There are comparatively few places, however, where dry wood is not available and of course it is always best to avoid such a place.
3. The camp site should be in a fairly open spot. Thick woods and underbrush are either hot or “damp” cool. If you can find a site that is shaded during the heat of the day so much the better. It is unwise to pitch the tent under a tree that stands alone on account of possible danger from lightning. If your tent is shaded by a tree be sure there are no dead limbs to blow off and wreck it during a storm.
Be sure that the drainage is good, so that in case of heavy rains, the water will run off and not flood the camp. It is very important if your camp is along some river or stream to be high enough to avoid the danger of sudden floods. This can usually be determined by talking to some one who knows the country. You can also tell it by studying the previous high water marks in the trees. In case of floods there are always some wisps of straw, pieces of brush, etc., caught and held by the limbs of trees after the water settles back to its former level. It is a good chance to practice your woodcraft by trying to find them.
Damp locations are very bad. The higher we can get, the drier it will be. We avoid both fogs and mosquitoes. Usually there is some prominent place that will give us a good outlook and where the breezes can reach us.
There are both good and bad points in pitching our tent on the site of a former camp. As long as the former campers have not scoured the surrounding neigborhood for firewood nor have left a place littered up with all sorts of rubbish and garbage to draw flies and vermin, they may have fixed up things around the camp site to save us work and to add to our comfort and pleasure. Each case will have to be decided on its own merits.

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