I have a lot of camping and bushcraft manuals that I’ve gotten a lot from, but lately they’re getting a bit dated: time marches on, new technology gets invented and things aren’t what they used to be. I offer the following, and if you know of any others please add them.
How To Blaze A Trail: cutting your way through underbrush and leaving directional markers. Pretty much a no-no now unless you’re in the Canadian north woods or the interior of Alaska.
Mantel Lamps: High-efficiency LEDs and high capacity lithium batteries can now give more light for the same weight; plus they won’t burn down your tent or give you carbon monoxide poisoning.
Tents: How to pitch and stake an old-fashioned canvas tent. Now replaced by free-standing nylon tents.
A Swiss Army knife that includes a bottle-cap opener and a ratchet-style can opener. E-Z open packaging has made those nearly obsolete, and if you were planning to bring cans with you, you’d use a real opener, not the “cut your fingers off” ratchet version.
Matches: modern propane lighters are better in every way.
Emergency phone money: always have a [del]dime[/del] [del]quarter[/del] fifty cents on you? Nowadays anywhere you could expect to find a payphone probably has cell service.
Yeah, battery-powered LED lights have changed everything. We experienced this wrt power outages. After twenty years in places where they didn’t happen, we had a long one last fall … and realized, in wonder, that we didn’t need candles.
my childhood memories in the 70s and 80s include epic car trips to the western US national parks, dragging a pop-up camper, during which we would dine on (among other things) fried spam and baked beans by the light of a Coleman lantern with mantles set aglow by a hissing burner stoked with camp fuel. Makes me nostalgic.
Thinking back on the size and weight of that lantern, yes, an LED lamp with a few pounds of rechargeable battery attached to it could give comparable performance while also being more easily directed/constrained (to minimize light pollution) and eliminating the burn/fire/chemical hazards that came with the old Coleman unit.
And modern lamps can easily be made to shine in one direction. Old-style lanterns with their 360° output could often end up shining in your eyes.
For the most part, yes, but there’s still some value in knowing how to use stakes and guy lines (and the associated knots).
A number of good beers come in bottles without twist-off caps, and I think it’s wise to have the can opener blade as a backup, especially considering how little space and weight is involved.
All told, though, yeah. Improvements in camping gear have been pretty cool.
Heh, I was just remembering the first time I saw a modern dome tent. Our family camping equipment was, shall we say, vintage, and a friend of the family was about to join us on a trip. When he showed us his tent, all five of us were gobsmacked.
I still have a dome tent I bought at Gemco in… 1981? 1982? If I replaced the fiberglass pole segments with modern, shock-corded poles, it would be perfectly serviceable. (My current tents are a North Face Hotel 46 and an REI NiteLite.)
I don’t want to sugarcoat the past, but there are a lot of things in favor of an old canvas tent. So many of the modern pop-up nylon tents ought to be marketed as “disposable” and come in three-packs so that you have enough of them to last the whole weekend.
Growing up, my family used a sort of hybrid between the two. It was made of heavy canvas, but supported with aluminum poles. Ropes and stakes were a good idea in high winds, but optional most of the time. It weighed about eighty pounds, but it fit the whole family on one side, with a screened “porch” on the other. That thing lasted forever.
Not specifically camping advice, but the old standard treatment for rattlesnake bites is pretty outdated… slice the victim open, apply suction, watch them bleed out…
Agree with everything but these two points; while modern high pressure flintless propane lighters can start a fire in nearly anything, they also have a tendancy to occasionally leak fuel and leave you flameless. If I’m expecting to start a fire I’ll carry both, but my basic camp kit just has matches (both normal strike anywhere and weather-resistant matches).
There are plenty of places outside of urban areas with little or no cell service. However, there are also fewer and fewer public phones as the phone company sees little use and not is not required to maintain them. I still carry cash just in case I find myself in need of supplies, or for gas money if I have to hitch my way out. (This has never happened but I like to be prepared.).
Modern low impact camping is certainly different than what you’ll find in 1950’s era camp and Scouting manuals, but honestly, lightweight and ultralightweight camping is nothing new. John Muir used to stuff his overcoat pockets with biscuits and sleep under the stars even in winter. I spent ten weeks wandering around the desert (don’t ask) with little more than a canteen, small food sack, and a camp knife. Now we recognize the need for water filtration, but much of what people carry is purely for comfort, not necessity. Really, the most significant advances in camping and backpacking gear, aside from filtration pumps, are lightweight internal frame packs designed to modern ergonomic principles and fast-drying wicking baselayers.
The lightweight freestanding hiking tents are a godsend for those who want more privacy or sheltered space when backcountry hiking than a bivvy sack can provide, and can be set up even if you don’t have trees or rocks to string a tarp, but for stationary camping for days on end in inclement weather, a nice heavy canvas tent provides much better shelter against wind and rain, and if properly rigged will stand up to nearly any amount of snow. The only synthetic fabric tents that are even comparable in strength are some of the very high end North Face and Hilleberg expedition tents.
My REI Half Dome 2 has survived some pretty strong winds and rain – though I would not want to try it with snow (I’ve woken up with frost on it).
Setup is pretty easy. The two (aluminum) poles go into the opposite corners, then attach the hooks. Put the fly on top and put the 4 straps onto the poles. stake down.
(There are also some Velcro straps to secure the fly to the poles)
Carrying cash is good for multiple reasons, sure, but the specific advice was about payphones, and, as you noted, they’re going the way of the dodo.
(As a purely anecdotal note, in Missoula, the only places I’ve seen cell phones recently are at truck stops on the highway, where there is most certainly cell service.)
Also, if you can convince people to pick you up when you’re hitchhiking, you must have quite a way with people. I agree that the bad rap hitchhiking has now is mostly undeserved, but from my experience most people don’t do it and most people don’t stop for the very few who do.
The original 1969 edition of the US Army FM21-76 “Survival Evasion and Escape” contained a lot of useful stuff about how to evade being detected and escape from hostile territory, but that’s been excised from later editions, which are now simply called “Survival”. Amazon still has listings for the older editions. Even the expurgated edition has some good reading on Survival, which doesn’t say anything about tents, flashlights, can openers or phones.
A +1 to: Those flimsy nylon, internally-braced “tents” are cute and clever"
BUT
For real ‘sleep outdoors no matter what/when/where’ I want real, heavy canvas and real steel uprights with a choice of stake styles for varying soil types.
I can see fiberglass poles the same way I see fiberglass vertical fins on airliners. It can be done, but the usual ‘consumer grade’ crap is not what I have in mind.
There are plenty of modern tents/shelters/tarps that aren’t freestanding, particularly among the super/ultra-light crowd, so this skill can’t be considered obsolete.
I’ve also had enough lighter failures to include waterproof matches and often a sparker/firesteel as. I’ll still use a lighter as my primary means of making fire.
Also regarding tents: Digging a trench around your tent. By the time I was in Boy Scouts, it was mentioned as something to definitely not do. I assume that meant it used to be common practice. Low-impact that definitely is not.
For that matter, except for definite car camping, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything other than low-impact. Especially not when I had to carry it all on my back. The past seems like it was a strange and somewhat disturbing place.
IME many of these knives are built poorly and the can opener cannot actually used to open cans because the hook won’t fit under the lip or the blade isn’t sharp. It’s just for show or opening beers.
