Chapter 5
The main question is “What shall we take to eat.” A list of food or as it is commonly known “the grub list” is a subject that will have to be decided by the party themselves. I will give you a list that will keep four hungry boys from staying hungry for a trip of two weeks and leave something over to bring home. If the list does not suit you exactly you can substitute or add other things. It is an excellent plan for the party to take a few home cooked things to get started on, a piece of roasted meat, a dish of baked beans, some crullers, cookies or ginger snaps. We must also consider whether we shall get any fish or game. If fishing is good, the amount of meat we take can be greatly cut down.
This list has been calculated to supply a party who are willing to eat camp fare and who do not expect to be able to buy bread, milk, eggs or butter. If you can get these things nearby, then camping is but little different from eating at home.
GRUB LIST
Ten lbs. bacon, half a ham, 4 cans corned beef, 2 lbs. cheese, 3 lbs. lard, 8 cans condensed milk, 8 lbs. hard tack, 10 packages soda crackers, 6 packages sweet crackers, 12½ lbs. of wheat flour, 12½ lbs. of yellow cornmeal, can baking powder, ½ bushel potatoes, 1 peck onions, 3 lbs. ground coffee, ½ lb. tea, sack salt, 7 lbs. granulated sugar, 3 packages prepared griddle cake flour, 4 packages assorted cereals, including oatmeal, 4 lbs. rice, dried fruits, canned corn, peas, beans, canned baked beans, salmon, tomatoes, sweetmeats and whatever else you like.
Be sure to take along plenty of tin boxes or tight wooden boxes to keep rain and vermin away from the food. Tell your grocer to pack the stuff for a camping trip and to put the perishable things in tight boxes as far as possible.
If you are going to move camp, have some waterproof bags for the flour. If you can carry eggs and butter, so much the better. A tin cracker box buried in the mud along some cold brook or spring makes an excellent camper’s refrigerator especially if it is in the shade. Never leave the food exposed around camp. As soon as the cook is through with it let some one put it away in its proper place where the flies, ants, birds, sun, dust, and rain cannot get at it.
Always examine food before you cook it. Take nothing for granted. Once when camping the camp cook for breakfast made a huge pot of a certain brand of breakfast food. We were all tucking it away as only hungry boys can, when some one complained that caterpillars were dropping from the tree into his bowl. We shifted our seats—and ate some more, and then made the astonishing discovery that the breakfast food was full of worms. We looked at the package and found that the grocers had palmed off some stale goods on us and that the box was fairly alive. We all enjoy the recollection of it more than we did the actual experience.
It is impossible in a book of this kind to say very much about how to cook. That subject alone has filled some very large books. We can learn some things at home provided that we can duplicate the conditions in the woods. So many home recipes contain eggs, milk and butter that they are not much use when we have none of the three. There is a book in my library entitled “One Hundred Ways to Cook Eggs” but it would not do a boy much good in the woods unless he had the eggs. If you ask your mother or the cook to tell you how to raise bread or make pies and cakes, be sure that you will have the same ingredients and tools to work with that she has.
It might be well to learn a few simple things about frying and boiling, as both of these things can be done even by a beginner over the camp fire. There are a few general cooking rules that I will attempt to give you and leave the rest for you to learn from experience.
You use bacon in the woods to furnish grease in the frying pan for the things that are not fat enough themselves to furnish their own grease.
Condensed milk if thinned with water makes a good substitute for sweet milk, after you get used to it.
To make coffee, allow a tablespoonful of ground coffee to each cup of water. Better measure both things until you learn just how full of water to fill the pot to satisfy the wants of your party. Do not boil coffee furiously. The best way is not to boil it at all but that would be almost like telling a boy not to go swimming. Better let it simmer and when you are ready for it, pour in a dash of cold water to settle the grounds and see that no one shakes the pot afterward to stir up grounds—and trouble.
A teaspoonful of tea is enough for two people. This you must not boil unless you want to tan your stomach. Pour boiling water on the tea and let it steep.
Good camp bread can be made from white flour, one cup; salt, one teaspoonful; sugar, one teaspoonful and baking powder, one teaspoonful. Wet with water or better with diluted condensed milk. Pour in a greased pan and bake in the reflector oven until when you test it by sticking a wooden splinter into it, the splinter will come out clean without any dough adhering to it.
If you want to make the kind of bread that has been the standard ration for campers for hundreds of years you must eat johnny-cake or pone. It is really plain corn bread. Personally I like it better than any of the raised breads or prepared flours that are used in the woods. It should always be eaten hot and always broken by the hands. To cut it with a knife will make it heavy. The ingredients are simply one quart of yellow meal, one teaspoonful of salt and three cups—one and one-half pints—of warm water. Stir until the batter is light and bake for a short hour. Test it with the wooden splinter the same as wheat bread. It may be baked in an open fire on a piece of flat wood or by rolling up balls of it, you can even roast it in the ashes. A teaspoonful of sugar improves it somewhat and it can be converted into cake by adding raisins or huckleberries. For your butter, you will use bacon grease or gravy.
Indian meal, next to bacon, is the camper’s stand-by. In addition to the johnny-cake, you can boil it up as mush and eat with syrup or condensed milk and by slicing up the cold mush, if there is any left, you can fry it next day in a spider.
The beginner at cooking always makes the mistake of thinking that to cook properly you must cook fast. The more the grease sputters or the harder the pot boils, the better. As a rule, rapid boiling of meat makes it tough. Game and fish should be put on in cold water and after the water has boiled, be set back and allowed to simmer. Do not throw away the water you boil meat in. It will make good soup—unless every one in camp has taken a hand at salting the meat, as is often the case.
All green vegetables should be crisp and firm when they are cooked. If they have been around camp for several days and have lost their freshness, first soak them in cold water. A piece of pork cooked with beans and peas will give them a richer flavour. The water that is on canned vegetables should be poured off before cooking. Canned tomatoes are an exception to this rule, however.
Save all the leftovers. If you do not know what else to do with them, make a stew or soup. You can make soup of almost anything. The Chinese use birds’ nests and the Eskimos can make soup of old shoes. A very palatable soup can be made from various kinds of vegetables with a few bones or extract of beef added for body.
The length of time to cook things is the most troublesome thing to the beginner. Nearly everything will take longer than you think. Oatmeal is one of the things that every beginner is apt to burn, hence the value of the double boiler.
Rice is one of the best camp foods if well cooked. It can be used in a great variety of ways like cornmeal. But beware! There is nothing in the whole list of human food that has quite the swelling power of rice. Half a teacupful will soon swell up to fill the pot. A tablespoonful to a person will be an ample allowance and then, unless you have a good size pot to boil it in, have some one standing by ready with an extra pan to catch the surplus when it begins to swell.
There are certain general rules for cooking which may help the beginner although they are not absolute.
Mutton, beef, lamb, venison, chicken, and large birds or fish will require from ten to twenty minutes’ cooking for each pound of weight. The principal value of this is to at least be sure that you need not test a five-pound chicken after it has been cooking fifteen minutes to see if it is done.
Peas, beans, potatoes, corn, onions, rice, turnips, beets, cabbage, and macaroni should, when boiled, be done in from twenty to thirty minutes. The surest test is to taste them. They will be burned in that many seconds, if you allow the water to boil off or put them in the middle of a smoky fire where they cannot be watched.
Fried things are the easiest to cook because you can tell when they are done more easily. Fried food however is always objectionable and as little of it should be eaten as possible. You are not much of a camp cook if a frying pan is your only tool.
A bottle of catsup or some pickles will often give just the right taste to things that otherwise seem to be lacking in flavour.
In frying fish, always have the pan piping hot. Test the grease by dropping in a bread crumb. It should quickly turn brown. “Piping hot” does not mean smoking or grease on fire. Dry the fish thoroughly with a towel before putting them into the pan. Then they will be crisp and flaky instead of grease-soaked. The same rule is true of potatoes. If you put the latter on brown butcher’s paper when they are done, they will be greatly improved.
Nearly every camper will start to do things away from home that he would never think of doing under his own roof. One of these is to drink great quantities of strong coffee three times a day. If you find that after you turn in for the night, you are lying awake for a long time watching the stars and listening to the fish splashing in the lake or the hoot owl mournfully “too-hooing” far off in the woods, do not blame your bed or commence to wonder if you are not getting sick. Just cut out the coffee, that’s all.
V
WOODCRAFT
The use of an axe and hatchet—Best woods for special purposes—What to do when you are lost—Nature’s compasses
The word “woodcraft” simply means skill in anything which pertains to the woods. The boy who can read and understand nature’s signboards, who knows the names of the various trees and can tell which are best adapted to certain purposes, what berries and roots are edible, the habits of game and the best way to trap or capture them, in short the boy that knows how to get along without the conveniences of civilization and is self-reliant and manly, is a student of woodcraft. No one can hope to become a master woodsman. What he learns in one section may be of little value in some other part of the country.
A guide from Maine or Canada might be comparatively helpless in Florida or the Tropics, where the vegetation, wild animal life, and customs of the woods are entirely different. Most of us are hopeless tenderfeet anywhere, just like landlubbers on shipboard. The real masters of woodcraft—Indians, trappers, and guides—are, as a rule, men who do not even know the meaning of the word “woodcraft.”
Some people think that to know woodcraft, we must take it up with a teacher, just as we might learn to play golf or tennis. It is quite different from learning a game. Most of what we learn, we shall have to teach ourselves. Of course we must profit from the experience and observation of others, but no man’s opinion can take the place of the evidence of our own eyes. A naturalist once told me that chipmunks never climb trees. I have seen a chipmunk on a tree so I know that he is mistaken. As a rule the natives in any section only know enough woods-lore or natural history to meet their absolute needs. Accurate observation is, as a rule, rare among country people unless they are obliged to learn from necessity. Plenty of boys born and raised in the country are ignorant of the very simplest facts of their daily experience. They could not give you the names of a dozen local birds or wildflowers or tell you the difference between a mushroom and a toadstool to save their lives.
On the other hand, some country boys who have kept their ears and eyes open will know more about the wild life of the woods than people who attempt to write books about it; myself, for example. I have a boy friend up in Maine who can fell a tree as big around as his body in ten minutes, and furthermore he can drop it in any direction that he wants to without leaving it hanging up in the branches of some other tree or dropping it in a soft place where the logging team cannot possibly haul it out without miring the horses. The stump will be almost as clean and flat as a saw-cut. This boy can also build a log cabin, chink up the cracks with clay and moss and furnish it with benches and tables that he has made, with no other tools than an axe and a jack-knife. He can make a rope out of a grape-vine or patch a hole in his birch bark canoe with a piece of bark and a little spruce gum. He can take you out in the woods and go for miles with never a thought of getting lost, tell you the names of the different birds and their calls, what berries are good to eat, where the partridge nests or the moose feeds, and so on. If you could go around with him for a month, you would learn more real woodcraft than books could tell you in a lifetime. And this boy cannot even read or write and probably never heard the word “woodcraft.” His school has been the school of hard knocks. He knows these things as a matter of course just as you know your way home from school. His father is a woodchopper and has taught him to take care of himself.
If you desire to become a good woodsman, the first and most important thing is to learn to use an axe. Patent folding hatchets are well enough in their way, but for real woodchopping an axe is the only thing. One of four pounds is about the right weight for a beginner. As it comes from the store, the edge will be far too thick and clumsy to do good work. First have it carefully ground by an expert and watch how he does it.
If I were a country boy I should be more proud of skilful axemanship than to be pitcher on the village nine. With a good axe, a good rifle, and a good knife, a man can take care of himself in the woods for days, and the axe is more important even than the rifle.
The easiest way to learn to be an axeman is to make the acquaintance of some woodchopper in your neighbourhood. But let me warn you. Never ask him to lend you his axe. You would not be friends very long if you did. You must have one of your own, and let it be like your watch or your toothbrush, your own personal property.
A cheap axe is poor economy. The brightest paint and the gaudiest labels do not always mean the best steel. Your friend the woodchopper will tell you what kind to buy in your neighbourhood. The handle should be straight-grained hickory and before buying it you will run your eye along it to see that the helve is not warped or twisted and that there are no knots or bad places in it. The hang of an axe is the way the handle or helve is fitted to the head. An expert woodchopper is rarely satisfied with the heft of an axe as it comes from the store. He prefers to hang his own. In fact, most woodchoppers prefer to make their own axe handles.
You will need a stone to keep a keen edge on the axe. No one can do good work with a dull blade, and an edge that has been nicked by chopping into the ground or hitting a stone is absolutely inexcusable.
To chop a tree, first be sure that the owner is willing to have it chopped. Then decide in which direction you wish it to fall. This will be determined by the kind of ground, closeness of other trees, and the presence of brush or undergrowth. When a tree has fallen the woodchopper’s work has only begun. He must chop off the branches, cut and split the main trunk, and either make sawlogs or cordwood lengths. Hence the importance of obtaining a good lie for the tree.
Before beginning to chop the tree, cut away all the brush, vines, and undergrowth around its butt as far as you will swing the axe. This is very important as many of the accidents with an axe result from neglect of this precaution. As we swing the axe it may catch on a bush or branch over our head, which causes a glancing blow and a possible accident. Be careful not to dull the axe in cutting brush. You can often do more damage to its edge with undergrowth no thicker than one’s finger than in chopping a tree a foot through. If the brush is very light, it will often be better to use your jack-knife.
In cutting a tree, first make two nicks or notches in the bark on the side to which you wish it to fall and as far apart as half the diameter of the tree. Then begin to swing the axe slowly and without trying to bury its head at every blow and prying it loose again, but with regular strokes first across the grain at the bottom and then in a slanting direction at the top. The size of the chips you make will be a measure of your degree of skill. Hold the handle rather loosely and keep your eye on the place you wish to hit and not on the axe. Do not work around the tree or girdle it but keep right at the notch you are making until it is half way through the tree. Do not shift your feet at every blow or rise up on your toes. This would tire even an old woodchopper in a short time. See that you do not set yourself too fast a pace at first. A beginner always starts with too small a notch. See to it that yours is wide enough in the start.
When you have cut about half way through, go to the other side of the tree and start another notch a little higher than the first one. A skilled man can chop either right-or left-handed but this is very difficult for a beginner. If you are naturally right-handed, the quickest way to learn left-handed wood chopping is to study your usual position and note where you naturally place your feet and hands. Then reverse all this and keep at it from the left-handed position until it becomes second nature to you and you can chop equally well from either position. This you may learn in a week or you may never learn it. It is a lot easier to write about than it is to do.
When the tree begins to creak and show signs of toppling over, give it a few sharp blows and as it falls jump sideways. Never jump or run backward. This is one way that men get killed in the woods. A falling tree will often kick backward like a shot. It will rarely go far to either side. Of course a falling tree is a source of danger anyway, so you must always be on your guard.
If you wish to cut the fallen tree into logs, for a cabin, for instance, you will often have to jump on top of it and cut between your feet. This requires skill and for that reason I place a knowledge of axemanship ahead of anything else in woodcraft except cooking. With a crosscut saw, we can make better looking logs and with less work.
Next to knowing how to chop a tree is knowing what kind of a tree to chop. Different varieties possess entirely different qualities. The amateur woodchopper will note a great difference between chopping a second growth chestnut and a tough old apple tree. We must learn that some trees, like oak, sugar maple, dogwood, ash, cherry, walnut, beech, and elm are very hard and that most of the evergreens are soft, such as spruce, pine, arbor vitae, as well as the poplars and birches. It is easy to remember that lignum vitae is one of the hardest woods and arbor vitae one of the softest. Some woods, like cedar, chestnut, white birch, ash, and white oak, are easy to split, and wild cherry, sugar maple, hemlock, and sycamore are all but unsplitable. We decide the kind of a tree to cut by the use to which it is to be put. For the bottom course of a log cabin, we place logs like cedar, chestnut, or white oak because we know that they do not rot quickly in contact with the ground. We always try to get straight logs because we know that it is all but impossible to build a log house of twisted or crooked ones.
It is a very common custom for beginners to make camp furniture, posts, and fences of white birch. This is due to the fact that the wood is easily worked and gives us very pretty effects. Birch however is not at all durable and if we expect to use our camp for more than one season we must expect to replace the birch every year or two. Rustic furniture made of cedar will last for years and is far superior to birch.
Getting lost in the woods may be a very serious thing. If you are a city boy used to signboards, street corners, and familiar buildings you may laugh at the country boy who is afraid to go to a big city because he may get lost, but he knows what being lost means at home and he fails to realize when he is in a city how easy it is to ask the nearest policeman or passer-by the way home. Most city boys will be lost in the woods within five minutes after they leave their camp or tent. If you have no confidence in yourself and if you are in a wilderness like the North woods, do not venture very far from home alone until you are more expert.
It is difficult to say when we are really lost in the woods. As long as we think we know the way home we are not lost even if we may be absolutely wrong in our opinion of the proper direction. In such a case we may soon find our mistake and get on the right track again. When we are really lost is when suddenly a haunting fear comes over us that we do not know the way home. Then we lose our heads as well as our way and often become like crazy people.
A sense of direction is a gift or instinct. It is the thing that enables a carrier pigeon that has been taken, shut up in a basket say from New York to Chicago, to make a few circles in the air when liberated and start out for home, and by this sense to fly a thousand miles without a single familiar landmark to guide him and finally land at his home loft tired and hungry.
No human being ever had this power to the same extent as a pigeon, but some people seem to keep a sense of direction and a knowledge of the points of compass in a strange place without really making an effort to do it. One thing is sure. If we are travelling in a strange country we must always keep our eyes and ears open if we expect to find our way alone. We must never trust too implicitly in any “sense of direction.”
Forest travellers are always on the lookout for peculiar landmarks that they will recognize if they see them again. Oddly shaped trees, rocks, or stumps, the direction of watercourses and trails, the position of the sun, all these things will help us to find our way out of the woods when a less observing traveller who simply tries to remember the direction he has travelled may become terrified.
Rules which tell people what to do when they are lost are rarely of much use, because the act of losing our way brings with it such a confusion of mind that it would be like printing directions for terror stricken people who are drowning.