Get Ready for a Great Year Outdoors

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Cultivate an Inner Compass. If you’ve ever been lost on a hike, or just experienced a few minutes of nagging worry that you might be lost, you know the value of basic navigation skills. Your local library or bookstore has books that’ll teach you how to use a map, compass or Global Positioning System device. But more importantly, try to nurture an inner sense of direction as you go about your daily business. Think in terms of the four compass points instead of right, left, forward and backward (a small key-chain compass can help you start). Observe how shadows lie as the day progresses. Note the directions of prevailing winds, and how the relative positions of the sun and landmarks change as you move from place to place. Practice finding the North Star (see sidebar, below) and learn the compass points of key constellations at different times of the year. Read Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass by Harold Gatty, a classic on the subject.

Find the North Star and Determine North

1. First, locate the Big Dipper. Three stars form the “handle” and four form the “cup.”
2. Now find the pointer stars: the two stars on the cup’s front.
3. Follow an imaginary straight line up from the pointer stars. The first star that the line directly intersects is Polaris, the North Star. It is a medium-bright star. (If you look closely, you’ll see that the North Star is at the end of another constellation, the Little Dipper.)
4. Now trace an imaginary line from a point directly over your head to the North Star. That line points north.

Campfire Cookery. Too often the low point of an overnight camp out is scorched canned food or blah add-water-and-stir fare. I settle for dehydrated mixes stewed over a featherweight backpacking stove when I have to, but when the time and place are appropriate, I favor real, old-fashioned campfire cooking — a tricky but satisfying art. Once or twice a winter I declare our fireplace a “camp kitchen” and practice. The secret is maintaining consistent heat from the fire; good hardwood coals smoldering red-hot but blanketed by a layer of ash are ideal. Move the pan around as the fire changes.

Why not try it yourself? At the least, master good camp coffee and pan bread. The coffee is easy, once you get the hang of it: Bring water in a pot (ideally enamel) to a hard boil, take it off the fire, stir in the coffee (1 generous tablespoon per cup of water), and let it steep, tightly covered, for 10 minutes. To settle the grounds, tap the pot’s sides with a spoon several times and add a few drops of cold water. Ahhh … that’s good coffee.

Pan bread takes a bit more care, but even the “errors” of the trial-and-error process are usually tasty (just scrape off any scorched parts). Skillet corn bread is a traditional favorite, but I’m fond of a spiced version of bannock, a hearty sconelike treat.

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