Luckily the day has stayed warm. In every other way the weather has been dismal and dreary. Driving rain, drizzle, gray, lowering sky, gusty winds. We’ve managed fifteen miles, but mostly because we’ve had a bit of river current to help us on our way and no portages to contend with. The feeling of triumph at dawn, when we got off before the rain hit, has long since dissipated. Now we’re looking for a home.
The rain has stopped, but it looks like a brief reprieve rather than a real change. There’s an oppressive quality in the air, as if the next storm is about to pounce. We’ve been looking for a camp for two miles. The gravel bars have been too barren and exposed, openings in the forest that looked promising from a distance turn out to be choked with vegetation, a clearing that had campsite written all over it ended up being impossibly lumpy.
We’re getting testy with each other, chemistry produced by a day spent in marginal conditions with no relief on the horizon. Nothing personal, but who else are we going to take it out on?
“Let’s check that little island coming up,” I suggest.
“Fine,” Marypat says. “Whatever.”
We paddle in silence. I’m sweating inside my rain gear in the brooding, close air. A great blue heron rises out of some shallows, slate gray, prehistoric looking. The air is absolutely still, but not comfortably so.
The bow scrapes up against shore. Marypat stands, disengages from the cockpit skirt, and steps out to investigate. I lean back against the stern plate when she disappears up the slope. She isn’t gone long, but by the time she returns I’m fully informed on mosquito density. They seem to rev up to a frenzy in this sort of heavy, prestorm air.
“Looks doable,” she says, “but the bugs are intense.”
“I think it’s going to rain any minute. With our luck today finding sites, we might want to make do.”
CAMPSITE PRIORITIES
Pitching camp under benign conditions is no big deal. You can do things in whatever order you feel like, take a walk before you set up the tent, go fishing. But eventually there will come a day when the weather slams you, or bugs are intense, or the wind is roaring, and you’re faced with the final exam of campsite erection. These are my priorities, in order:
1. Scout the site with two essential ingredients in mind—a place for the kitchen tarp and a spot for the tent(s).
2. Unlash and unpack the boat, working as a team, and pile the packs nearby. Don’t go off on trips with gear until the canoe is unloaded.
3. Get the boat onshore, in a secure spot, and turn it over. Tie the bow line to a stout anchor—tree, solid root, clump of willows, big rock. Stow the paddles and odds and ends under the hull.
4. Take some packs to the tarp site, pull out the tarp (which should have been packed on top that morning), and start pitching the fly. If one person can handle the tarp, the other can keep ferrying gear.
5. With the tarp rigged, at least at the corners, get the packs and gear under shelter.
6. If you’re in the middle of a hard shower that looks like it will taper off soon, wait for a break to set up the tent. Otherwise, get the tent up and rain fly on as efficiently as you can and stow the sleeping gear inside.
At this point you’ve managed the basics. If you’re building a fire, you may want to get in some dry wood, but you’ve kept your gear as dry as possible, you’ve erected the cooking and sleeping shelter, and you’ve gotten the canoe stowed for the night. Maybe it’s time, right about then, to uncork that merlot!
Both of us open our ammo boxes and apply bug dope to hands and faces, then I start unsnapping the deck. When the deck is peeled back past the center, Marypat takes over and I unlash the load as quickly as I can. One by one I heave the packs and loose gear forward as I free them up. Marypat wrestles them ashore and leans them into a pile. When the canoe is empty we drag it upslope into a sheltered alley behind shrubbery, turn it over, and tie off the bow line to a stout clump of willows. Under the hull we store our paddles, life jackets, the deck, and other bits we won’t need in camp.
At one point I look down at the back of my hand and count eleven mosquitoes all pumping away like greedy oil rigs. Light rain starts as we heft the first packs and stumble uphill toward the campsite.
“I figured the tarp can go over there,” Marypat points to a small clearing between low trees. “The only tent site is here in the woods. It’s marginal, but protected.”
“Let’s get the tarp up first,” I say, and pull the ten-by-ten square of coated nylon from the top of the equipment pack. I tie off the front corners as high as I can reach in the trees, high enough so we can easily stand under the eave of the tarp. Marypat attaches the back end about waist high in some vegetation, so the fly slopes down to about the height of the packs. As soon as we have the corners rigged, we hustle the packs underneath. Everything is still pretty dry.
Tarp rigged for shelter and cooking area.
Marypat unstraps the tent and poles from the gear pack, and we traipse over to the small opening between shrubs, barely large enough for the tent floor. Being of the old school when it comes to ground sheets, I lay out our plastic ground cover first, then roll the tent out on top of it. I understand the rationale of the ground sheet inside the tent school of thought. In my heart I even admit that it probably keeps you drier in a hard rain. But I don’t like sleeping on my ground sheet, and it’s one of those new, improved practices I refuse to adopt. Must be getting old and irascible.
TAUT-LINE HITCH
That I love this knot so much has nothing to do with the fact that I learned it from a young woman I was infatuated with in college. Anyway, that was twenty-five years ago and I have no idea where she is now, but the knot has withstood the test of time and faithfulness.
The great attribute of the taut-line hitch is that it’s fast and easy and that it tightens up without slipping back. Those qualities make it the perfect knot for pitching tarps and guying out tent lines.
Take the line around the tree trunk, branch, or rock you want to tie off to and bring it back against itself in a bight. Make two wraps on the inside of the bight, then take the free end over those wraps and cinch down a final half-hitch (see illustration). Cinch the knot tight, then slide it taut. The tension of the wraps keeps the knot from slipping back while still allowing you to tighten the line. If the cord is slippery nylon or doesn’t seem to be holding as well as it should, add one or two more wraps to the first part of the knot. Often, simply tightening the knot on itself is enough to stop slippage.
Trust me, once you get it, you’ll use it so much you’ll never forget it.
The taut-line hitch.
I do, however, make sure there’s no corner of ground sheet peeking out under the eave of the rain fly. Too many times I’ve been ambushed by a little rivulet of water dripping onto the ground sheet, wriggling its way under the tent, and pooling where it shouldn’t. I tuck the ground sheet a good six inches under the sides of the tent to compensate for any sagging of fabric or shifting of the winds.
Tent up, we quick-march the sleeping pads and bags, along with the clothes bags, over to the door and throw them in fast before the bugs invade. Marypat crawls in to set up the bedroom, and I head back for the kitchen tarp to think about dinner.
First I finish the tarp rigging. I tighten up the corner lines and tie off a couple of side cords to convenient shrubbery. There’s no good tie point at the middle of the back of the tarp, so I go to the canoe and retrieve a paddle. A snug clove hitch around the paddle shaft keeps the cord from slipping, and I angle the line down to a small stump of wood to tie it off taut. Now the kitchen tarp is tightly in place. Rain drains off the back. Our packs stand at the rear of the shelter, leaving us room to stand or sit while we cook.
Rain is falling harder now, beating down the bugs. We’ve managed to make it through a day of pretty awful weather, from morning to night, without any gear getting appreciably wet. I start up the stove under a pot of water. A first course of hot soup seems only fair. Marypat comes over from the tent, and we both strip out of our clammy rain gear. I pull over the ammo box, get out the journal, then sit on top of the lid to write while the water comes to a boil.
Camp setup, with everything in its place.