The only way to have it so is to do the work yourself. One can wear ready-made clothing, he can exist in ready-furnished rooms, but a ready-made camping outfit is a delusion and a snare. It is sure to be loaded with gimcracks that you have no use for, and to lack something that you will be miserable without. It is great fun, in the long winter evenings, to sort over your beloved duffel, to make and fit up the little boxes and hold-alls in which everything has its proper place, to contrive new wrinkles that nobody but yourself has the gigantic brain to conceive, to concoct mysterious dopes that fill the house with unsanctimonious smells, to fish around for materials, in odd corners where you have no business, and, generally, to set the female members of the household buzzing around in curiosity, disapproval, and sundry other states of mind.
To be sure, even though a man rigs up his own outfit, he never gets it quite to suit him. Every season sees the downfall of some cherished scheme, the failure of some fond contrivance. Every winter sees you again fussing over your kit, altering this, substituting that, and flogging your wits with the same old problem of how to save weight and bulk without sacrifice of utility. All thoroughbred campers do this as regularly as the birds come back in spring.
And their kind has been doing it since the world began It is good for us. If some misguided genus should invent a camping equipment body that none could find fault with, half our pleasure in life would be swept away.
Horace Kephart.
Camping & Woodcraft, Kephart's book, should be required reading! He had far more 1st hand experience of bush craft than most of us will ever get, certainly where I live, I have little chance to gain so much experience. Maybe we should start a Campaign for Natural Bushcraft, among the forums, such as your reply to the young man on BCUK this morning.
ReplyDeleteAha, I see you are keeping tabs on me Joel. Yes good idea, but I feel kind of lonely out there sometimes, airing my personal views. I just hate to see youngsters thrown to the commercial lions. Starting off in woodcraft making fire with a ferrocium rod is just not right.
ReplyDeleteWell if you are going to be there to watch my back joel, I might risk getting more vocal!
Regards.
LOL:) Not so much keeping tabs on you my friend, but more keeping an eye out for hornets' nests that are being disturbed, so I can take cover! There have been a few scraps on the British site about this very same subject, and some people do get really angry and vitriolic about attacks on their "way of life", as they see it. I keep out of those these days as people don't seem able/willing to play nicely. But I agree with you, I can't stand the commercial interests hijacking everything, would you believe I have already have received Xmas catalogues, about 2 weeks ago?
ReplyDeleteOh, I don't know, maybe I am just a grumpy old man, or maybe, as one song goes, "I was born too late, in a world that does not care"
I have to admit I know what is being said here. I find myself always re-working something to fit my needs and then still tweaking it. Guess it is just in my nature...plus I hate to look like someone else or have the same thing. :-)
ReplyDeleteJoel, I know exactly what you mean about them getting their backs up, can't understand their attitude. I see no point in fanning thr flames so I too just back off.
ReplyDeleteDiane. In 18th century living history many of us try to emulate the common person in history, but even the common person was an individual with their own preferences. I am with you, I like the things that say this is me.
Regards to you both, and many thanks for the feedback.