Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

!TRIPS AFOOT 109decently, in civilized country? Many summei outerswho enjoy walking and like to explore out-05-thewayplaces are interested in that question.Well, what would you say of a ready-madecamping outfit that weighs just 7 pounds? Tent,jointed poles, pegs, ground sheet, sleeping bag, aircanvas bucket and wash-basin,pillow, toilet articles,spirit stove, cooking utensils—seven pounds to thevery ounce ; and the whole kit is so compact thatit stows in a light rucksack, or a bicycle pannier,with room left for spare clothing and such foodas is not bought along the route of travel. Totalburden about 10 pounds, with w^hich the lone pedestrianor cycle tourist is independent of hotels andboarding-housesI first heard of this campestral marvel in 19 10,when a young Londoner wrote me for a dimensionalsketch of a tomahawk I had recommended. Achatty correspondence followed that introduced meto a new Old World scheme of tent life very differentfrom what I was used to, but one developedto the last line of refinement and full of canny tricksof the outers' guild.For me it was an eye-opener to find the lightestcamp equipments of the world in England, a nation1 had always associated with one-ton "caravans'*Verily hereat home and five-ton "safaris" abroad.was the art of open-air life evolved to a type undreamedof in our own country.Back of this development, I learned, were yearsof patient, thoroughgoing experiment by scores ofmen and women whose one fad (if it be a fad) wasto perfect a camping kit that should be light,lighter,lightest, and yet right, righter, rightest. Then itcame to me from faraway years that the father ofmodern lightweight camping was not the Yankee"Nessmuk," but the Scotchman Macgregor, who in1865, built the first modern canoe, Rob Roy, andcruised her a thousand miles with no bag^eage buta black bag one foot square and six inches deep.was saidgive even a flv deck passage.of Macgregor that he would not willinglyIt