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Tip o' the Day

"Check fish hooks. Do they need a touch of emery cloth or honing stone? Does your creel need a clean out? Perhaps a water and brush job inside?"

Knowing what outfitters' cooks do to prepare for a busy summer and fall would be of interest to Campfire Culture readers, I asked Jane to make a list of spring chores. I think it significant the above items were first on her list. Other suggestion:

Clean ice chests with soap and water or a mild bleach and water solution. Rinse. Use water and baking soda for more stubborn odors, or a vanilla solution for those most stubborn. Smells good? Important! Don't close the lid while wet.

How about your campstove? Splattered grease, boiled-over coffee grounds, even a fried potato slice or hotcake batter droplets have been known to lurk amid the darkest recesses of a Coleman prior to cleaning. Much better and easier to clean before heading off to the big lonesome. She says to wipe out with paper towels, then use brush with soap, water, and degreaser if needed. While you're at the stove, check its generator. Take an extra along just in case.

Screw on saltshaker lid with wax paper between lid and shaker opening to keep out moisture and keep in salt. Put in a pinch of cornstarch or a few grains of rice to keep holes from clogging when the air is damp.

Go through your outdoor "kitchen" using a checklist to insure that each untensil, plate, cup, glass, cookware, etc. is in place and in good repair. Replace when necessary.

Jane is careful about her camp facilities, too. She checks her dining fly and each lightweight summer tent to see there are sufficient stakes and aluminum poles. If grommets are missing, she kicks them back to me for replacements.

Her kitchen boxes -- the packboxes used for carrying groceries and kitchenware -- must be in good repair, with easy sliding doors and storage shelves in place and well set.

Other items of interest to her include a small collapsible trenching shovel for handling coals on her Dutch ovens, a whisk broom for sweeping out summer sleeping tents, a cooking grate (we use a collapsible quad-pod -- no fire ring necessary), and folding canvas water buckets. All items must be in good repair. Their carrying cases, too.

Jane takes a lot of aluminum foil: to cover pans used for open fire cooking; for baking potatoes; even for making a gas lantern directional (she presses foil against the globe's inside surface).

And last but not least, she inventories our outdoors library -- the books we take with us into the backcountry: mushroom guide, wildflower identification, guide to birdwatching. Several that are especially suitable: The Savory Wild Mushroom - by McKenny and Stuntz; A Field Guide to Rocky Mountain Wildflowers - by Craighead, Craighead and Davis; A Field Guide to Western Birds - Peterson

Chocolate Legs: Sweet Mother, Savage Killer

LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

I find it fascinating that the ancients had only the most primitive technology yet came to astonishing conclusions without the advantages of telescopes and microscopes, laser imaging, computer keyboards, and combustion engines. They knew naught of the theory of relativity, black holes in infinity, or stem cell isolation. They split no atoms, vaporized no cities, took no journeys to the moon. Most of them spent their entire lives within a few miles of their homes, perhaps on an island. Yet they pondered, not so much on why the earth was round, but why their friends and neighbors still held that it was flat.

We know the ancients were vitally interested in what went on about them. That they believed firmly in the advance of knowledge and pursued its secrets assiduously. They were intrigued with mathmatics and the study of night skies. It was ancients who discovered our earth revolved around the sun -- and not the opposite. They developed writing in order to pass along knowledge gleaned from one generation to the next.

Development of the written word had a downside for memory retention, however. The great tales of Homer (The Odyssey, for instance, and The Illiad) were committed to memory during succeeding generations because during Homer's age the written word had yet to come to Greece. Naturally, with the advent of writing, such prodigious feats of memorization turned no longer necessary, at least for the learned. Then, a couple of thousand years later, a guy named Gutenberg developed movable type and information became available to the masses. Within a couple of hundred years, the art of oral storytelling began to be supplanted by the advent of guys and gals like William Shakespeare and Jane Austen who created novels individuals could read in privacy (home, beach, ship's cabin). All the reader had to supply was the eyes and the imagination. And finally, television took away any reason for viewers to give birth to imagination.

Today, we're light years ahead of the ancients in available information, yet in many ways we're metaphorical babes behind them in understanding what recharges our psychic innards when the sun rises. I should be sorry, I guess, but all the Gutenbergs under creation can't help me understand the Theory of Relativity or what constitutes a black hole. I can't really get het up over a need for me to know how to split an atom or whether there's water on Jupiter. And I guess I'll let those who do understand stem cell extraction argue over stem cell extraction while leaving me to reckon with the beat of a bumblebee's wing, or whether the average genome researcher understands the beauty of a calypso orchid or the crimson of an Indian paintbrush?

That's where the ancients had it all over us; they weren't confused by man's inventions, but contented themselves with the wonders of the Gods. I'm persuaded that no ancient -- not one! -- ever gazed on an orchid without feeling a sense of beauty and awe. Today's modern man can stumble right past a mountain ladyslipper, glance at it without registering, and return to pondering the verities of Space Shuttle launchings, or the golden age of internet startups. Yet Diogenes wandered the streets of Athens in broad daylight, carrying a lantern and "Searching," he said, "for one honest man." Though I'd guess Diogenes engaged in a modicum of theatrics, it was no doubt difficult to ignore his philosophic point.

Neither did Socrates trouble himself about scientific explanations of the world so much as to search for knowledge of the inner man. Socrates's favored teaching method was to ask questions, exploring definitions, turning philosophy away from a study of the way things appear toward a consideration of virtue and the health of the human soul. Socrates asked many questions, but provided few answers, making it necessary for his students to do their own thinking. In essence, Socrates spent his life exposing the errors of those who claimed to have wisdom. And it's probable that his persistence antagonized his city's leaders so much they accused him of heresy and corrupting the youth. As a result, he was sentenced to death, probably history's first notable martyr for philosophical thinking.

Ancient philosophers were the ones expounding the idea of a life well-served amidst an atmosphere of freedom. The goal of philosophy actually evolved into the attainment of individual happiness. "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" -- where have I heard that before? Most of you know, but if there are any who cannot recall, those words can be found in a charter that begins with:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and . . ."

You're reading THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, of course. Its second paragraph reads:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

So there you have our American roots exposed among the philosphers of ancient Greece. Though copious ink went into the dozens of drafts that ultimately became the most famous document in our country's history, and one that yet shakes the world, I see nothing in it about "market shares" or "gross domestic products," nothing at all about "rocket propulsion" or even "steam propulsion." There wasn't even enough interest in "stock indexes" or "Wall Street trading" to warrant a mention.

Instead, THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE targeted the important stuff -- the same important stuff the ancients targeted. May God help us stay focused.

 

 

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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