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Tip o' the Day

There've been a few times when a fire became more than a mere pleasant accompaniment to outdoors adventure -- Like the time I was alone, bringing out the last of our hunting camp on the first day of December. The temperature hovered below zero, and two feet of snow lay across the frozen land. And I lost a mitten.

It was while my packstring trundled silently along the trail. I took the mitten off to dig in my saddlebag for a sandwich. After I'd eaten the sandwich, and wished to slide my already freezing fingers into the fur-line glove, I missed it! My first thought was to stop the packstring and flounder back to look for it. But there were eight laden packhorses back there and I had no idea how long it'd been gone. Besides, it would certainly have been buried in the deep snow by the churning horse hoofs. Later, though, a quickly kindled fire from dead fir limbs broken from trees near the trail saved deadened fingers.

Another time a friend and I returned to road's end after backpacking all day in a drenching rain. We reached a three-sided Forest Service shelter well after dark, scrounged what poor wood we could find with a flashlight, then huddled around a fluttering fire that seemed as if it'd never take off. Then I remembered the battered piece of magnesium wedge (used by tree cutters to tip a tree in a desired direction). An old sawyer had told me they sometimes used battered pieces of old wedges to make warming fires burn hot.

Dumb me! I threw the piece of magnesium (not even as large as a man's billforld) into our fitful fire, then promptly forgot about it while I tried to boil coffee, water for soup, heat campwater for rinsing hands and dishes.

For the uninitiated, magnesium is one of the most difficult metals to weld because its melting temperature and its flashpoint is so close together -- in the neighborhood of 500 degrees. Apparently, some point at the bottom of our little fire, the temperature hovered at 500 degrees.

My friend and I had piled wet wood all around our campfire in hopes it would dry sufficiently to allow us to cook breakfast the following morning. Meanwhile, our coffee water and our soup water and our dishwater barely simmered. Then the magnesium caught!

Instantly the temperature of our fire shot to 2,000 degrees! Flames leaped toward the shelter's shingled roof! Instantly our coffee pot boiled over, the soup pan boiled dry and melted, Luckily I managed to kick the dishpan out into the drumming rain. The wet wood we had scattered around the fire instantly steam-dried, began smoldering, then turned to blaze! My friend and I threw coats over our faces and tried to push the wood out into the rain with long sticks. For a moment we thought we'd lose the building.

Then the magnesium chunk burned out and the flames receded to lick merrily at the charred firewood left in the firepit. Sheepishly we gathered our scattered wood, now all dry, and ricked it along one wall. Then we started cooking all over again.

No, Roland Cheek hasn't been in a gunfight at the O.K. Corral or punched dogies down the streets of Abilene. But he has straddled rawboned ponies over 35 thousand miles of the toughest trails in all the Northern Rockies and spent five decades wandering the wild country throughout the West. Now, after crafting six prior nonfiction books, hundreds of magazine articles, and thousands of newspaper columns and radio scripts about his adventures, the guy has at last turned his talent to Western novels, tales from the heart, dripping with realism, and based in part on a plethora of his own experiences.

BEGINNING BACKPACKER'S DICTIONARY

Backpack: Medieval torture device; holdover from the Spanish Inquisition. Used sparingly, the device hurts but little. Confined, however, within a maze of sadistic straps, buckles, clips, flaps, pockets, and ropes, then placed in the merciless hands of an inconsiderate friend who pretends to help, then loaded with overnight rations and all other accouterments necessary for immediate survival in inclement weather and faced with a three-mile hike or a thousand-foot climb, broken prisoners have been known to recant, gasp out locations to buried heirlooms, or babble endlessy about buckets of ice cream or frosted pitchers of beer.

Beer: Delectable, delightful, deliciously cool, thirst-quenching beverage one has to swear to forego forever when backpacking; or until the end of the present trip.

Campfire: An exhausting rite-of-return to mystic origins. There is, however, a slight chance a campfire could be a functional camping accessory when accompanied by dry wood and some method of ignition. (See match, flint & steel, lightning

Dry wood: An unknown commodity to this researcher.

Flint and steel: Method used for striking sparks into tinder which can then be used to ignite kindling which than be used to ignite dry wood (see above). An easier method is to generate sparks by buying sparklers at your local fireworks stand.

Freeze Dried (or dehydrated) food: Smells good, tastes bad. Supplies minimum daily requirements to lie in a torpor on the dissection table of a metropolitan morgue.

Hiking boots: Pleasingly comfortable sheaths to encircle lower appendages. Used to absorb shock or fend off abrasions, scratches, blisters, and bumps. (See moleskin).

Lightning: Sure-fire method for starting a fire, though somewhat erratic and unpredictable in its ignition.

Match: Reliable method for fire ignition . . . except when wet, home, or in the glove compartment of the automobile you left at the trailhead.

Moleskin: Emergency adhesive repair material for such lower appendage abrasions, scratches, blisters, and bumps, each of which either eluded your hiking boots or was caused by them. (See also iodine, stretcher, and 911.)

Mountaintop: Mythical summit, viewed by modern man only amid haze of induced dreams or from the porthole of a 737. Rumor has it that an ancient named Moses once ascended to a mountaintop, but there's little hard evidence to substantiate the legend.

Poncho: Ludicrous portable tent to be utilized during a rainstorm (as if anyone smart enough to read this weblog would be dumb enough to be caught outside during a rainstorm).

River ford: Unlike mountaintops, river fords are common occurrences to backpackers caught outside in a rainstorm. One must exercise caution when traversing a river ford. Always know the stream bottom, stream depth, stream speed, etc. And how can anybody know that stuff?

Sleeping bag: A silky envelope of nylon and goose down; too hot in August and too cold in March and October. Much too bulky and voluminous to fit back into the stuffbag it was sold to you in.

Sleeping pad: An Oriental torture device akin to fingernail pulling and water boarding. Designed as a skateboard for a nylon sleeping bag. Lay your body down on it and try to sleep -- I dare you!

Space blanket: A handy, tightly-folded, eight-foot square of super-thin foil. Has no earthly recognizable value.

Switchback: A trail reversal. Now you're staggering along under your overloaded backpack -- suddenly there's no trail! Rule number 1: Look around. Likely it's a switchback, but it could be a washout or the trail's end at the top of a cliff. Tip: Avoid switchbacks if at all possible -- switchbacks mean you're climbing!

Trail: Part of our American transportation system. Largely constructed during the Great Depression, then continued during century's second half. Later construction known as the Interstate Highway System. (Latter half more expensive.)

 

 

 

Roland Cheek wrote a syndicated outdoors column (Wild Trails and Tall Tales) for 21 years. The column was carried in 17 daily and weekly newspapers in two states. In addition, he scripted and broadcast a daily radio show (Trails to Outdoor Adventure) that aired on 75 stations from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. He's also written upwards of 200 magazine articles and 12 fiction and nonfiction books. For more on Roland, visit:

www.rolandcheek.com

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