Camping Progress

Camping progress

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

A FEW WEEKS AGO, EDITOR DAVID EDwards called me and said he was flying into Milwaukee to pick up a new Heritage Softail Nostalgia testbike. The next day, he would join two old friends from Chicago, Tom Daly and Charles Davis, for a six-day trip around Lake Superior. Would I like to come along?

I consulted my calendar and found that, except for work deadlines, family responsibilities, house repair, lawn care and a couple of weddings, birthdays and funerals, the week was completely open. “Sure,” I said, “I’ll go.”

We met at the Spring Green, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed restaurant on the Wisconsin River. Tom was riding his BMW R100RT, Charles rode his just-restored 1975 Honda CB750F, and I took my new Harley FLHS. So, after lunch, we thudded, whirred and rickety-ticked north through the beautiful hills and hollows of the Coulee Region to a campsite on the Mississippi, Perrot State Park.

Setting up camp early, we rode into the nearby village of Trempealeau for dinner and then cruised back to the campground after dark. Time for a campfire, cheap cigars and after-dinner drinks.

We bought a bundle of firewood at the park office, and I proceeded to construct my usual teepee-of-wood campfire in the ring of stones at our campsite, scrounging for some small twigs and kindling to get it going. This is the way I’ve been making campfires since I was a Cub Scout, having been led to believe it was the Indian Way by a long string of Zane Grey novels and campcraft books.

Tom watched me with mild amusement and then said, “Here, let me show you something.” He pulled a small hatchet out of his saddlebag, split several of the small logs and carefully arranged the pieces in a kind of triangular log cabin with an open center, stacking each piece to overlap the last.

“Great,” I said, “but how do you light it?”

“With one of these,” Tom said, holding up an object that looked like something Cheech and Chong might have invented; a piece of waxed paper twisted at both ends. “There’s a small candle in the middle,” he explained. “The waxed paper twisted around the candle acts as a large wick and keeps it burning until the wood catches fire.”

He lit the thing and tossed it into the center of the wood triangle. In about the time it normally takes me to find my flashlight to look for matches (or vice versa), we had a beautiful, effortless, even-burning campfire.

So simple and effective. How had I missed this technique? And me a former near-Eagle Scout and graduate of the illustrious Fort Polk Infantry School. In fairness, of course, the scouts taught a more rely-on-yourwits survival camping strategy. (“Out of candles, Bob. Looks like we freeze to death.”) And the Army was more focused on Night Defensive Positions than camping comfort. Motorcycle touring was not part of the program.

By the time I turned away from the fire, I discovered that Tom had spread a checkered tablecloth on our picnic table, lit a small candle lantern, opened a bottle of wine and was slicing a large chunk of smoked cheese with his Swiss Army Knife.

Remarkable. In five minutes, Tom had transformed our dark, dreary campsite into a little center of civilization with the friendly ambiance of a family-run Italian restaurant. Just by thinking ahead.

A candle lantern. What a good idea. Compact, effective. No Hashlight glare. A warm, pleasant glow. I’d have to get one at a camping store. My third camping lesson of the evening.

Wine gone, fire burned down to glowing embers, we all retired to our own tents, me to my battered and patched 21-year-old Eureka Timberline, a lightweight but conventional cabin-shaped tent .with a rain fly. Its return from retirement was the result of yet another camping lesson.

After a decade of experimenting with round, igloo-style tents, I had concluded that humans in sleeping bags are essentially rectangular, rather than circular, in shape. If you weren’t camping in a 100-mph wind on Everest, the classic raised-wall pup tent had a lot going for it. In camping gear, as well as in motorcycles, we sometimes have a tendency to get bored and disinvent the obvious.

And when I climbed into my sleeping bag, I took advantage of yet another hard-earned gem of wisdom from long ago: I slept soundly and comfortably on a great big fat inflatable air mattress.

Too decadent?

Well, as a kid I always slept right on the ground when I camped (Zane Grey again), priding myself on the Spartan logic of a simple ground cloth or an occasional sprinkling of pine needles. Real men-and real kids-slept on the ground.

Then, one fine autumn, I went on a geology field trip with a Dr. Laudon at the University of Wisconsin. Laudon might have been the inspiration for Indiana Jones; an explorer/ bush pilot/world traveler and highly regarded oil geologist. He’d hiked and camped everywhere in the world.

On the way home from our field trip we camped at Wyalusing State Park, on the Mississippi. We students laid out our miserable ground cloths, while Dr. Laudon blew up his air mattress.

Looking at our campsite, he chuckled and shook his head. “You greenhorns,” he said, “trying to warm the entire Earth with your body heat. Well, I hope you can sleep.”

It was cold that autumn night. Very cold. If you go to Wyalusing State Park now, you will find a rectangular patch of ground that is slightly warmer than the surrounding area. It’s the spot where I tried to warm the entire Earth with my body heat one night in 1966.

Never again.

As author Verlyn Klinkenborg said in his great novel The Last Fine Time, “Progress is so often revenge on the past.”