Blazing Your Own Trail

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A TENDERFOOT'S GUIDE
TO PAINLESS CYCLE-CAMPING.

Reprinted from BICYCLING! Magazine/256 Sutter Street/San Francisco, California 94108/Monthly/Single Issue, 60¢/US One Year, $6.00/Foreign One Year, $7.00

It is as appropriate for me, a mere Englishman, to address an American audience on the subject of camping as it would be for a hotel chef to advise the citizens of Olympus on the preparation of ambrosia. But it is possible that while you and the Olympians have such unsurpassable raw material, that chef and I possess mortal scars and bitter experience which could be of service to you loftier beings.

Let's face it, you have all the advantages, the sort of situation that I have often dreamed of, but can never know. In your huge continent you have great areas of solitude: mountains, forest and desert that cry out for adventurous cycle-camping; you have a tradition and literature of overland pioneering second to none, and to cap it all, cycling in your country is a booming sport and pastime.

I believe that the major hurdle one has to jump before becoming a cycle-camper is one of philosophy and logic. Here are four maxims for the apprentice camper to chew over:

"To go light is to play the game fairly. The man in the woods matches himself against the forces of nature. In the towns he is warmed and fed and clothed so spontaneously and easily that after a time he perforce begins to doubt himself, to wonder whether his powers are not atrophied from disuse. "

". . .go light, for a superabundance of paraphernalia proves always more of a care than a satisfaction. "

"To go light, discard all but the really necessary articles. "

"When you return from a trip, turn your duffel bag upside down on the floor. Of the contents make three piles. . . Pile number one should comprise those articles you have used every day; pile number two, those you have used occasionally; pile number three, those you have not used at all. If you are resolute and single-minded, you will at once discard the latter two. "

Those are quotes from American writer Stewart Edward White's "The Forest" written in 1903, long since out of print, but a book I would like to see in every school library. Notice White's insistance on going light. Lightness and simplicity are the most important factors in the selection of your equipment, while you must search your own soul to find whether you yourself are geared to the pastime. Ask yourself the question, "What do I want out of camping?" If the answer is something like, "To travel without fuss, to be really mobile, to be thoroughly independent, to achieve the maxi mum appreciation of the country in all its moods and conditions, to harmonize in every possible way with my surroundings without creating disturbance and show, and to use. my own resources and health as fully as I can to those ends," then the battle is half won. Too many would-be campers make the mistake of trying to modify city methods to suit
open-air conditions, and fail to modify themselves to fit the life of the wilderness.

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