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The Original

The Portability of Pot(s)

Saddle Sore

Fungal Infections

Tent Tension

Leaving the Ground

Surviving Driving

Deeper

Outdoor Survial Tips


If you've heeded my advice in the last three columns, you've got a good start on what you'll need to survive in the outdoors. What I'm about to cover next is probably the most important piece of equipment you'll need - depending on length of trip and expected weather.

Tents rank among the most important items you can take on a backpacking trip because it's your shelter. Now, if the weather forecast for your trip looks good (meteorologists are usually close, but I wouldn't trust their guess work) a tent is really not a big deal. My old Scoutmaster used to just take a small tarp and string it up between a few trees and sack out underneath. If the weather wasn't too bad, he was snug as a bug.

But, and that's a big but, if you don't like hiking in soaking wet clothes, carrying an extra few pounds in water weight and lamenting on the tissue paper-like consistency of the skin on your damp feet, I would suggest a decent, water-tight 3- or 4-season tent. 4-season tents are going to be the best for water tightness since they are expected to survive snowstorms and heavy thunderstorms. They are also going to be a little heavier (depending on materials) and cost a little more. Either way you go, don't skimp on quality. It counts when the rain comes.

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Next issue to consider when purchasing your shelter is size. Obviously, the smaller the tent the smaller the load on your back, but a small tent is not necessarily the best selection. I would go for a good quality, 2-3 person tent. You'll want to have enough room to move around and store your gear (and, possibly, a friend and his/her gear). And that extra room will come in really handy if you get caught in a downpour or if the mosquitoes won't stop sucking your blood. Thinking about the right tent for the right situation brings back old memories of my early mistakes in tent selection.

My biggest mistake was taking my old, leaky tent for a weekend trip to the Smokies. Me and Yo started the trip on a humid summer day where the clouds and sky ran together in a muddy mess of gray. We neglected to check the forecast. After hiking up a well-traveled trail that wound beside a cool creek we stopped for the night to await Yo's friends from Tennessee.

We were weedless and the friend's arrival was eagerly anticipated as he was to bring a few oz's of green, green mountain bud. The friend, with his girlfriend in tow, staggered into the campsite about 4 in the morning. The buds (although a little light in the sack) were with him and we promised to spark it up at daybreak.

The early light slit through my tent and Yo and I woke to eye crusties and pungent bud burning. Yo's friend, we'll call him Slim, was up and toking, ready to hit the trail. So we started off. The rocky trail followed the creek for about 6 more miles and we found a decent site to set up camp for the night. The hike was hot. Slim and his girl were puffing cancer sticks the whole way up and, as a result, they pulled into the new site about an hour after Yo and I.

At this point, Yo and I split some weak blotter that had been resting in my sock drawer for about 3 months. The paper hit us slow and gave us a permanent grin followed by some nice tracers and visual patterns. Yo had brought his fly rod and I set up on a fallen tree beside the creek. After a few extremely focused casts and a bit of a mind meld with the fish that I knew were in the water... I saw the glints of scales and swishes of aquatic fins, they couldn't escape my probing pole... bam! A drag across the slowly curling eddies into the tearing white water yielded a strike.

Salt for SlugsThe sensations of the fish struggling to take it's supposed meal down the throat and swim back to it's hidey hole telegraphed through the line and pole into my acid-charged fingertips. It was a great fight - I struggled for what seemed like hours against the current and the craftiness of the Smoky Mountain trout, finally hauling him in over the skeletal branches of the downed tree. The fish measured a total of 5 inches.

Anyway, back to the tent lore. That night after the LSD wore off and Yo and I were curled up in the tent, the rumbling of a nearing summer thunderstorm and slow slap of fat drops of summer rain woke us up. Luckily, my tent was a 2-3 person so we could sit up and talk, play cards and smoke some doobies. The rain wore on. The night wore on. The card games grew tiresome and talking grew tiresome.

Yo came up with the idea to play Thumps. Thumps (I'm sure there are other names for it in other states or communities) is the game where you and a partner face each other, and one person sticks out their hands formed in a horizontal tent-like prayer gesture. The object of the game is to thump, with one finger cocked back behind your thumb, the elevated knuckles of the opponent until one person gives up.

Now, this sadomasochistic game went on for about an hour with Yo and I screaming with delight whenever one of us would "score" big by hitting a perfect thump which would resonated along the person's finger bones and be amplified by the hollow cavity formed by the tent-like prayer position. Eventually, when our cabin-fever bloodlust abated and after our knuckles were red and swollen we stopped.

At this time we noticed the pool of water at the front of the tent. It was about two inches deep and had entirely soaked the foot of my sleeping bag. The seams on the old tent were like sieves, water came trickling in but couldn't leave because the fabric itself is waterproof. As the floodwaters rose in harmony with the staccato beat of thousands of gallons of rainwater striking the tent roof, Yo and I gathered our bags around our bodies and scooched to the highest ground within the tent. Now, it's not very much fun to try and sleep while you're crammed into one corner of a hot tent next to a sweaty and smelly friend (unless it's a member of the opposite sex or same sex, if that's your thing).

Anyway, we didn't get much sleep. And from the sound of the scrabbling and screaming spewing out of Slim's tent, they didn't get much either. When the morning sun came and scrubbed the sky clean, Yo and I had come perilously close to drowning in a 6-inch deep pool of rainwater - enough water to have let my previously caught fish swim in. Slim and his girl fared much worse. They had located their tent at the bottom of a depression and everything they brought was soaked. The late-night sounds we had heard emanating from their tent became clear when Slim and his girl stepped out of the water-logged dome.

His eye was on its way to being a nice purplish-black shade and the girl didn't say a word besides "Let's get the fuck out of here!"

Luckily for us the sun was out, so we spread out our wet material and after an hour or two it became dry enough to pack. Spirits were low on the hike back to the cars - until a shiny bowl packed with green was produced.

When I got home, I immediately ordered up a brand-new 4-season tent. I haven't slept in a puddle since.

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