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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 holes 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

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT EARTH DAY?

Today is "Earth Day," and it's big to lots of folks--as well it should since the earth is about the biggest touchy-feely thing with which any of us will ever be associated. On a local level kids will ferret out accumulated roadside debris that insufferable pigs have discarded through auto windows during the previous year. We'll hear a lot about recycling--a drumbeat roll that, once we develop both will and mechanics, may save us from fouling our own nests.

Earth Day, 2009 will see conservation documentaries trotted out and dusted off and sensationalized. Nationally, politicians will posture and students will demonstrate for protection of our environment. The news media will report both posturing and demonstrations with a straight face and Americans will listen and watch and read about it with a modicum of bored interest. It's inescable that we'll all be forced to become aware of our environment for that one day.

Then we'll go back to doing things the way we always have. We'll throw orange peels and empty beer cans and disposable diapers out car windows, pollute telephone poles and barn walls with election posters, spew raw sewage into rivers, dump slag heaps upon hillsides, slash and burn forests, and poison land in order to "save" it.

As you may have already guessed, I don't see what's the big deal about Earth Day. Sure, by naming it and currying it and cuddling it, the name Earth Day has a certain nuisance value whereby the public's collective conscience can be piqued, and disgraceful polluters can be tweaked. But to my way of thinking, making a big deal about Mother Earth one day each year can easily lead to acceptance of the premise that it's all right to ignore our vital living room during the other 364.

Fortunately we haven't already fouled our nests beyond redemption. Yeah, I know they say one shouldn't drink water flowing from Glacier National Park or the Bob Marshall Wilderness, but I have, I do, and I will. My reason for doing so? Any pollution there will stem from natural but obscure organisms that God made, instead of stuff leaching from a smelter's tailing ponds, or from downwind smokestacks turning skies gray and settling metallic fall-outs across alpine meadows.

It's comforting to know and be thankful for those folks who, in years past, fought to keep us from Butte-fying all of our places. Glacier Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness didn't happen by accident--folks worked hard for 'em; just like others in later years worked for the Great Bear Wilderness, a Wild Rivers System, clean air, and a big lake still unpolluted from Canadian strip mines.

Thank God the people who made those things happen didn't practice their conservation ethics only one day each year.

George Bird Grinnell campaigned and wrote editorials through his Field & Forest magazine (forerunner of today's Field & Stream) for ten years before enough readers took sufficient notice to help make Glacier National Park a reality.

Bob Marshall carried the Wilderness System torch for half his life before the wilderness bearing his name came to pass after his untimely death.

Most of us aren't slated to be monumental movers and shakers. But it's important that we bear in mind these words from Helen Keller:

The world moves not alone from the mighty shoves of its heroes, but by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each of us.

Isn't it a paradox that strip mined mountains, ravaged forests, flooded valleys, and polluted lakes are hugely significant monuments to the destructive urges of a few; but the names we honor today are not Harriman, Rockefeller, Weyerhauser, or Dominy who left wreckage in their wakes while stampeding to the trough.

Instead, we revere the ones who tried to save the remnants or pick up pieces: Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Rachel Carson, Theodore Roosevelt, et al.

 

 

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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