Chapter Nine:
Making & breaking camp
The idea is to get the work part of camping done and over with as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Ignore those in your party who are muttering Anal retentive! Control freak! Give yourself time in the light and warmth of day to fumble around with everything. Setting up camp should take less than an hour (max!) but on your first trips allow for a learning curve.
Find a flat spot at least 100 feet from the stream or lake. A little slope is OK.
Spread a ground cover (which should be packed on top) and lay out your stuff. This way you can see what’s what. There’s the tent sack, there’s the kitchen sack, there’s the food sack, there’s the flashlight, there’s the garbage sack, and so on.
Set up sleeping quarters
Remove sticks and stones. Set up the tent so that your head is uphill. Since you’ve practiced putting up your tent at home, putting it up out here is a snap (really!).
Prepare and arrange your sleeping pads and bags. Place a flashlight in a handy spot. Zip it up.
Set up your kitchen
Find a flat place to set up your stove. An elevated flat spot on a rock is more convenient than squatting on the ground to cook. Make sure it’s steady. Arrange utensils and food around the stove so that when cooking and eating commence there’s no hide and seek. (OK, the water’s boiling. Hey, where’s the food?)
Set up your sanitation system
Identify and establish one trash bag.
Now get wood for your campfire
After establishing shelter and food stations, then go out looking for wood on the ground for campfires if permitted. Look for twigs (pencil thickness and smaller), smaller sticks up to an inch in diameter and thicker ones up to three inches. Be sure they are hard and dry. For directions on building a fire, see the “Stoves” chapter.
Cook, eat and drink
See the “Eating” chapter.
Clean up and pack up your garbage and strong smelling stuff and make it critter-proof. Look under “Bears” in the “Safety and Well-Being Chapter.”
Pack for the night
Pack up and protect everything that you don’t want wet from dew or nasty weather. Organize stuff so when you get up, clothes are handy, if it rains, rain gear is handy, if a bear shows up, your whistle is handy... (Image 9.1 and Image 9.2)
Image 9.1
Image 9.2: Backpacking is an efficiency game. It involves a handful of simple systems that will deliver time and time again if you adhere to basic procedures and take care of your gear. That spacious tent folds down and fits into a small sack – tent, poles, stakes, repair kit, rain fly ... everything. Amazing.
Turning in
Sleeping
Backpacking will be among the busiest activities, mentally and physically, that you’ll ever do. You’re either packing, unpacking, making preparations or hiking. Even when you’re resting on the trail, you’re mentally reviewing everything from the weather to the water supply. Sleeping is the only time you are not fussing with something. Enjoy it.
Try not to go to bed too early. Night falls fast, especially in the mountains and valleys. Seven p.m. can feel like 9p.m. Keep yourself occupied with conversation, games or more interesting pursuits until well into the evening to prevent premature waking.
Breaking camp
After morning rituals (200 feet from the water), cooking, eating and utensil cleaning (50 feet from the water), it’s time to put it all back in sacks and packs.
It sounds like boot camp but...
It helps to establish a routine with making and breaking camp. It makes for efficiency in time and effort. The better you get at this the more time you have to fish, frolic, loaf or contemplate the wonder of your navel or nature in general.
Gem
Backpacking trips are not 100% nirvana. You carry a load, the weather may be a problem, for whatever reason you may not sleep well, gear might not cooperate and someone always gets a blister. Of course, there’s plenty of fun to be had at the time, but I think backpacking trips are deeply pleasurable and therapeutic for those moments you bring back with you. Memory gems that keep you going in front of a glowing screen or behind a farting bus.
My favorite memory is of an early evening next to the muffled roar of a mountain river. I was about to throw my line into the water when I looked back at our camp. We had just erected the tent next to a granite wall and in front of that I had started a wood fire that was burning down to a glowing bed of cooking coals. Kathleen was busy laying out a kitchen when she glanced up to wave and smile. Everything was lit the way a September’s setting sun can light things—rich, warm, colorful—the moment before it extinguishes itself. The fire was reflected by the surrounding granite and our white dome tent. Purple shadows slowly framed the entire picture.
Transfixed, I felt like I had walked into a Remington painting, or a Jeep advertisement—the kind where they show a shiny new vehicle alongside a luminous tent next to a pretty lake. The headline says something about getting away from it all. Our camp was perfect. The scene was perfect. The memory is perfect and will remain one of those gems that remind me of what can be real (and available to return to) forever.