A Tent Away from Home

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First, think tents. Feel you can't afford a brand name family size tent that will stand up through an avalanche, weigh eleven pounds, and cost you a week's wages? Here's an economical and lightweight solution. This tent will cost you less than twenty dollars, weigh less than five pounds, and keep eight people and their gear dry in a downpour.

The catch is, it takes a half an hour to make. Here's how: at the hardware store, buy a 4 millimeter thick, 18 by 20 foot, prepackaged polyethylene sheet, one roll of duct tape, a ball of nylon line, and a grommet kit. Slit the large sheet into two equal sized smaller sheets. Reinforce all corners and at equal intervals, reinforce the edges with duct tape top and bottom. Pound grommets through the duct taped pieces and your tent, dining fly, or lean-to is done. Designate one sheet the ground cloth which is more likely to be punctured. Electrical tape is handy for patching. Use the other sheet for the dome. Mom carries one, Dad the other. With no poles or tent pegs to lose, the tent can be set in any number of configurations. Experiment with it or pitch it between any two trees and weigh down the edges with rocks. While high winds can be of some concern, the tent will hold up quite well in most foul weather and give you years of use. In short, it does the job and the price is right.

Recognizing what makes a good campsite can be more difficult than making a tent. Here are some pointers. Set up camp near running water but not close enough to be swept away if the creek rises. Flat ground may look ideal at first, but may also become a huge puddle, so check drainage. If home is where the hearth is, you will need a tall clearing so sparks from your campfire won't ignite the trees. Fix the prevailing winds with a wet-finger test before you pitch your tent. Face the tent's opening upwind of the fire to keep smoke banshees from spending the night with you. A lean-to, or dining-fly should be crosswind to the breeze and rain.

Settled in camp, biological business may be next on the agenda. When available, pollution control by strict outhouse use is very important. When you must improvise a rest stop, make sure that the facilities are at least two hundred feet from any running water. Backfill over your waste and bury it completely when you move on. The essence of low impact camping is expressed by the words: Leave it better than you found it. Burn stray litter carelessly left by previous campers. When you break camp in the morning, make it seem like you were never there.

Warming Your Bones

Campfire time. Just after you pitch camp, start collecting wood. Darkness sneaks up on you when you are settling in and will make finding dry branches much more difficult. Ask park rangers when you log in for their regional fire policy. Obey it. Your family's lives could be at stake. Build your fireplace in a tall and wide clearing on hard ground, not loam. Underground fires have been known to burrow for weeks before bursting into flame far from where they started, and sparks can leap long distances and ignite dry underbrush. Start small with tinder and add kindling, building up the fire gradually to include larger logs and pieces while being careful not to smother it. While gathering wood remem ber: if it doesn't snap, don't burn it. There is nothing so unpleasant, offensive, and dispiriting as a fire smoldering away under green and rotting wood. Build a trench, tepee, log-cabin or back-log fire depending on whether you want to cook on it, dry out around it, or simply bask in its radiant glow. But remember, the fire is not out until you put the fire out. Drown it, dissemble it, stomp and grind every last piece of it into cold and sodden ash. It's never a bad idea to double-check before bedtime too.

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