CHAPTER XI

CHOOSING A CAMP SITE

WHEN choosing a camp site, if possible, choose a forest or grove of young trees. First, because of the shade they give you; secondly, because they protect you from storms, and thirdly, because they protect you from lightning.

Single trees, or small groups of trees in open pastures are exceedingly dangerous during a thunder storm; tall trees on the shores of a river or lake are particularly selected as targets for thunder bolts by the storm king. But the safest place in a thunder storm, next to a house, is a forest. The reason of this is that each wet tree is a lightning rod silently conducting the electric fluid without causing explosions. Do not camp at the foot of a very tall tree, or an old tree with dead branches on it, for a high wind may break off the branches and drop them on your head with disastrous results; the big tree itself may fall even when there is no wind at all.

Once I pitched my camp near an immense tree on the Flathead Indian Reservation. A few days later we returned to our old camp. As we stopped and looked at the site where our tents had been pitched we looked at each other solemnly, but said nothing, for there, prone upon the ground, lay that giant veteran tree!

But young trees do not fall down, and if they did they could not create the havoc caused by the immense bole of the patriarch of the forest when it comes crashing to the earth. A good scout must "Be Prepared," and to do so must remember that safety comes first, and too close neighborhood to a big tree is often unsafe.

Remember to choose the best camp site that can be found; do not travel all day, and as night comes on stop at any old place; but in the afternoon keep your eyes open for likely spots.

Halt early enough to give time to have everything snug and in order before dark.

In selecting camping ground, look for a place where good water and wood are handy. Choose a high spot with a gentle slope if possible; guard your spring or water hole from animals, for if the day is hot your dog will run ahead of the party and jump into the middle of the spring to cool himself, and horses and cattle will befoul the water.

If camping in the Western states on the shores of a shallow stream which lies along the trail, cross the stream before making camp or you may not be able to cross it for days. A chinook wind suddenly melting the snows in the distant mountains, or a cloud-burst miles and miles up stream, may suddenly send down to you a dangerous flood even in the dry season. I have known of parties being detained for days by one of these sudden roaring floods of water, which came unannounced, the great bole of mud, sticks and logs sweeping by their camp and taking with it everything in its path.

A belt of dense timber between camp and a pond or swamp will act as a protection from mosquitoes. As a rule, keep to windward of mosquito holes; the little insects travel with the wind, not against it. 'Ware ant hills, rotten wood infested with ants, for they make poor bedfellows and are a nuisance where the food is kept.

A bare spot on the earth, where there are no dry leaves, is a wind-swept spot; where the dust-covered leaves lie in heaps the wind does not blow. A windy place is generally free from mosquitoes, but it is a poor place to build a fire; a small bank is a great protection from high wind and twisters. During one tornado I had a camp under the lee of a small elevation; we only lost the fly of one tent out of a camp of fifty or more, while in more exposed places nearby great trees were uprooted and houses unroofed.

It must not be supposed that the camping season is past because the summer vacation is over. The real camping season begins in the Wild Rice Moon, that is, September. Even if school or business takes all our time during the week, we still have week-ends in which to camp. Saturday has always been a boys' day. Camping is an American institution, because America affords the greatest camping ground in the world.

The author is seated in his own log house, built by himself, on the shores of Big Tink Pond. Back of him there is pitched a camp of six rows of tents, which are filled with a joyful, noisy crowd of youngsters.

It is here in the mountains of Pike County, Pennsylvania, where the bluestone is stratified in horizontal layers, that one may study the camp from its very birth to the latest and finished product of this century.

Everywhere in these mountains there are outcroppings of the bluestone, and wherever the face of a ridge of this stone is exposed to the elements, the rains or melting snows cause the water to drip from the earth on top of the stone and trickle down over the face of the cliff. Then, when a cold snap turns the moisture into ice in every little crack in the rock, the expansion of the ice forces the sides of the cracks apart at the seams in the rock until loose pieces from the undersides slide off, leaving small spaces over which the rock projects. The little caves thus made make retreats for white-footed mice and other small mammals, chipmunks and cave rats. When these become deeper they may become dens in which snakes sleep through the winter.

The openings never grow smaller, and in course of time are large enough for the coon, then the fox, and in olden times they made dens for wolves and panthers, or a place where the bear would "hole" up for the winter.

Time is not considered by Dame Nature; she has no trains to catch, and as years and centuries roll by the little openings in the bluestone become big enough to form a shelter for a crouching man, and the crouching man used them as a place in which to camp when the Norsemen in their dragon ships were braving the unknown ocean. When Columbus, with his toy boats, was blundering around the West Indies, the crouching man was camping under the bluestone ledges of old Pike County, Pennsylvania. There he built his campfires and cooked his beaver and bear and deer and elk, using dishes of pottery of his own make and ornamented with crude designs traced in the clay before the dishes were baked.

We know all this to be true history, because within a short walk of the author's log house there are overhanging ledges of bluestone, and underneath these ledges we, ourselves, have crouched and camped, and with sharp sticks have dug up the ground from the layer of earth covering the floor rock. And in this ground we have found bits of pottery, the split bones of different wild animals--split so that the savage camper might secure the rich marrow from the inside of the bones--arrowheads, bone awls and needles, tomahawks, the skulls of beaver and spearheads; all these things have been found under the overhanging bluestone.

Wherever such a bluestone ledge exists, one may make a good camp by closing up the front of the cave with sticks against the overhanging cliff and thatching the sticks with browse or balsam boughs, thus making the simplest form of a lean-to. The Indians used such shelters before the advent of the white man; Daniel Boone used them when he first visited Kentucky and, in spite of the great improvement in tents, the overhanging ledge is still used in Pennsylvania by fishermen and hunters for overnight camps.

But if one uses such a site for his overnight camp or his week's-end camp, one should not desecrate the ancient abode by introducing under its venerable roof, modern up-to-date cooking and camp material, but should exercise ingenuity and manufacture, as far as possible, the conveniences and furniture necessary for the camp.

Since the author is writing this in a camp in the woods, he will tell the practical things that confront him, even though he must mention a white man's shop broom.

In the first place, the most noticeable defect in the tenderfoot's work is the manner in which he handles his broom and wears the broom out of shape. A broom may be worn to a stub when properly used, but the lopsided broom is no use at all because the chump who handled it always used it one way until the broom became a useless, distorted, lopsided affair, with a permanent list to starboard or port, as the case may be.

To sweep properly is an art, and every all-around outdoor boy and man should learn to sweep and to handle the broom as skillfully as he does his gun or axe. In the first place, turn the broom every time you notice a tendency of the latter to become one-sided, then the broom will wear to a stub and still be of use. In the next place, do not swing the broom up in the air with each sweep and throw the dust up in the clouds, but so sweep that the end of the stroke keeps the broom near the floor or ground.

Now a word about making beds. In all books on woodcraft you are directed to secure balsam boughs from which to make your beds, and there is no better forest bedding than the fragrant balsam boughs, but unfortunately the mountain goose, as the hunters call it, from which you pluck the feathers to make your camp bed, is not to be found in all localities.

A bag filled with dry leaves, dry grass, hay or straw will make a very comfortable mattress; but we are not always in the hay and straw belt and dry leaves are sometimes difficult to secure; a scout, however, must learn to make a bed wherever he happens to be. If there happens to be a swale nearby where brakes and ferns grow luxuriantly, one can gather an armful of these, and with them make a mattress. The Interrupted fern, the Cinnamon, the Royal fern, the Lady fern, the Marsh fern and all the larger ferns are useful as material.

A camping party should have their work so divided that each one can immediately start at his own particular job the moment a halt is made. One chops up the firewood and sees that a plentiful supply of firewood is always on hand; usually he carries the water. One makes camp, puts up the tents, clears away the rubbish, fixes the beds, etc., while a third attends strictly to kitchen work, preparing the meals, and washing up the dishes.

With the labor divided in this manner, things run like clock work and camp is always neat and tidy. Roughing it is making the best of it; only a slob and a chump goes dirty and has a sloppy-looking camp. The real old time veteran and sourdough is a model of neatness and order. But a clean, orderly camp is much more important than a clean-faced camper. Some men think so much of themselves and their own personal cleanliness that they forget their duty to the others. One's duty is about in this proportion: first to the animals if any, secondly to the men, and lastly to oneself.

Before pitching your tent, clear out a space for it to occupy; pick up the stones, rubbish and sticks, rake off the ground with a forked stick. But do not be rude to your brother, the ground pine; apologize for disturbing it; be gentle with the fronds of the fern; do not tear the trailing arbutus vine up by its roots, or the plant of the almond scented twin flowers; ask pardon of the thallus of the lichen which you are trampling under your feet. Why? O! well--because they had first right to the place, and because such little civilities to the natural objects around you put your own mind in accord with nature, and make camping a much more enjoyable affair.

When you feel you are sleeping on the breast of _your mother_, the earth, while _your father_, the sky, with his millions of eyes is watching over you, and that you are surrounded by your brother, the plants, the wilderness is no longer lonesome even to the solitary traveler.

Another reason for taking this point of view is that it has a humanizing effect and tends to prevent one from becoming a wilderness Hun and vandal. It also not only makes one hesitate to hack the trees unnecessarily, but encourages the camper to take pride in leaving a clean trail. As my good friend, John Muir, said to me: "The camping trip need not be the longest and most dangerous excursion up to the highest mountain, through the deepest woods or across the wildest torrents, glaciers or deserts, in order to be a happy one; but however short or long, rough or smooth, calm or stormy, it should be one in which the able, fearless camper sees the most, learns the most, loves the most and leaves the cleanest track; whose camp grounds are never marred by anything unsightly, scarred trees or blood spots or bones of animals."

It is not the object of this book to advertise, or even advise the use of any particular type of outfitting apparatus other than the plain, everyday affairs with which all are familiar. What we want to do is to start the reader right, then he may make his own choice, selecting an outfit to suit his own taste. There are no two men, for instance, who will sing the praise of the same sort of a tent, but there is perhaps no camper who has not used, and been very comfortable in, the old style wall tent. It has its disadvantages, and so has a house, a shack or a shanty. As a rule, the old wall tent is too heavy to carry with comfort and very difficult for one man to pitch alone--unless one knows how.

TENT PEGS

Are necessary for almost any kind of a tent; you can buy them at the outfitter's and lose them on the way to camp; they even have iron and steel tent pegs to help make camping expensive, and to scatter through the woods. But if you are a real sourdough you will cut your own tent pegs, shaped according to circumstances and individual taste. Fig. 286 shows the two principal kinds: the fork and the notched tent pegs. For the wall tents one will need a ridge pole (Fig. 288), and two forked sticks, or rods, to support the ridge pole; the forks on these should be snubbed off close so that they will not thrust themselves up against the canvas on the top of the tent and endanger the fabric; these poles should be of a proper height; otherwise if the poles are too long, the tent will not touch the ground at all, or if the poles are too short, the tent will wrinkle all over the ground like a fellow's trousers when his suspenders break.

See that the ground is comparatively level, but with a slant in one direction or another so that water will drain off in case of rain. Never, for instance, pitch your tent in a hollow or basin of ground, unless you want to wake up some night slopping around in a pool of water. Do not pitch your tent near a standing dead tree; it is liable to fall over and crush you in the night. Avoid camping under green trees with heavy dead branches on them. Remember the real camper always has an eye to safety first, not because he is a coward, but because the real camper is as brave a person as you will find anywhere, and no real brave person believes in the carelessness which produces accidents. Do not pitch your tent over protruding stones which will make stumbling-blocks for you on which to stub your toes at night, or torture you when you spread your blankets over them to sleep. Use common sense, use gumption. Of course, we all know that _it hurts one's head to think_, but we must all try it, nevertheless, if we are going to live in the big outdoors.

At a famous military academy the splendid cavalrymen gave a brilliant exhibition of putting up wall tents; it required four men to put up each tent. Immediately following this some of the scouts took the same tents, with one scout to each tent, and in less time than the cavalrymen took for the same job, the twelve year old boys, single-handed, put up the same tents.

HOW TO PITCH AND DITCH SINGLE-HANDED

Spread out your tent all ready to erect, put your ridge pole and your two uprights in place, and then drive some tent stakes, using the flat of your axe with which to drive them, so that you will not split the tops of the stakes (Fig. 287); drive the two end stakes A and B (Fig. 289) at an angle to the ends of the tent. After the tent stakes are arranged in a row, like the ones in Fig. 289, adjust the forks of the uprights two inches from the ends of the ridge pole (Fig. 288), then make fast the two extreme end guy ropes A and B to the tent pegs; the others are unimportant for the present, after that is done, raise one tent pole part of the way up (Fig. 290), then push the other part of the way up (Fig. 291); gradually adjust these things until the strain is even upon your guy ropes. You will now find that your tent will stand alone, because the weight is pulling against your guy ropes (Fig. 292). This will hold your tent steady until you can make fast the guy ropes to the pegs upon the other side, not too tightly, because you need slack to straighten up your tent poles.

Next see that the back guy pole is perpendicular, after which it is a very easy matter to straighten up the front pole and adjust the guy rope so that it will stand stiff as in Fig. 293.

Remember, when you are cutting the ridge poles and the uprights, to select fairly straight sticks, and they should be as free as possible from rough projections, which might injure the canvas; also the poles should be as stiff as possible so as not to sag or cause the roof to belly.

DITCHING

Just as soon as your tent is erected and you feel like resting, get busy on ditching; no matter how dry the weather may be at the time, put a ditch around the tent that will drain the water away from your living place. There is no positive rule for digging this ditch; it varies according to surface of ground, but the gutter should be so made that the water will run away from the tents and not to it, or stand around it (Fig. 294). Fig. 295 shows how to make a tent by folding a floor cloth or piece of tarpaulin; of course it must have a tent pole to support the top, and the floor pieces may be drawn together in the center. Make one out of a piece of writing paper and you will learn how to do it, because although the paper is small, the folds would be just the same as if it was as large as a church.

In sandy or soft ground it often taxes one's ingenuity to supply anchors for one's tent; an anchor is a weight of some sort to which the guy ropes may be attached. Fig 296 shows a tent anchored by billets of wood; these are all supposed to be buried in the ground as in Fig. 308, and the ground trampled down over and above them to keep them safe in their graves. Fig. 297 shows the first throw in the anchor hitch, Fig. 298 the second throw, and Fig. 299 the complete hitch for the anchor. Fig. 303 shows the knot by which the anchor rope is tied to the main line. Figs. 300, 301 and 302 show the detail of tying this knot, which is simplicity itself, when you know how, like most knots. Fig. 303 shows the anchor hitch complete.

Stones, bundles of fagots; or bags of sand all make useful anchors; Fig. 304 is a stone; Fig. 305 are half billets of wood, Fig. 306 shows fagots of wood, Fig. 307 a bag of sand. All may be used to anchor your tent in the sands or loose ground.

SHEARS, GINS OR TRIPODS

Are the names used for different forms of rustic supports for the tents. Fig. 312 shows the ordinary shears, Fig. 313 shows the tent supported by shears; you will also note that the guy ropes for the tent (Fig. 313) are made fast to a rod instead of to the pegs in the ground. This has many advantages, because of the tendency of the rope to tighten or shrink whenever it becomes wet, which often makes it necessary for a fellow to get up in the night to adjust the guy ropes and redrive the pegs. When the rain is pouring down, the thunder crashing and the lightning flashing, it is no fun to go poking around on the wet ground in one's nightie in order that the tent pegs may not be pulled out of the ground by the shrinking ropes, and the cold mass of wet canvas allowed to fall upon one's head. It is always necessary to loosen and tighten the guy ropes according to the weather; naturally the longer the guy ropes are the more they will shrink and the more they will stretch as the weather varies. To prevent this, lay a rod over the ends of the guy rope between the pegs and the tent (Fig. 316A) and it will be an automatic adjuster. When the ropes are dry and stretch, the weight of this pole will hold them down and keep them taut; when the guy ropes shrink they will lift the pole, but the latter will keep the tension on the ropes and keep them adjusted. The arrangement of Fig. 313 has the advantage of making a clothes rack for your bed clothes when you wish to air them, while the weight of the suspended log keeps the tension on the ropes equalized. Fig. 314 shows the shears made by the use of forked sticks. Figs. 315 and 318 show the ridge pole supported by shears, and the ridge poles supported by forked sticks; the advantage of the shears in Fig. 315 is that it gives a clear opening to the tent. Fig. 316 shows an exterior ridge pole supported by shears to which the top of the tent is made fast. Fig. 317 is the same without the tent. Fig. 318 shows the famous Vreeland tent; in this case the ridge pole is supported by a crotched upright stick, but may be equally well supported by the shears as in Fig. 315. Fig. 319 shows the gin or tripod made by binding the three sticks together. Fig. 320 shows the same effect made by the use of the forked sticks; these are useful in pitching wigwams or tepees.

Fig. 309 shows some of the ordinary forms of tents, the wall tent, the Baker tent and the canoe tent. Fig. 310 shows a tent with a fly extending out in front, thus giving the piazza or front porch. In the background is a tepee tent. Fig. 311 shows two small Baker tents in the background, and the Dan Beard tent in the foreground. These comprise the principal forms, but the open-front tents to-day are much in vogue with the campers. A mosquito netting in front will keep out the insects and allow the air to come in freely, whereas the old-fashioned way of closing the tent flap stops circulation of air and makes conditions as bad as that of a closed room in a big house, and the air becomes as foul as it did in the little red school houses and does now in the Courts of Justice, jails and other places of entertainment.