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It’s well known that the wearing of warm clothes will lower the effective minimum temperature-rating of any sleeping bag. But many beginning campers seem confused or indecisive on the question of just what to put on. The idea of wearing anything at all in bed probably strikes many people as hopelessly uncomfortable. Several books, manuals and brochures offer advice on the subject, but the authors of these are often as biased as they are misinformed—entirely apart from their irrational but lifelong prejudices, the writers are often reluctant to do the indispensable research themselves, and would rather get it second or third-hand. A truly broad-based, well-funded and publicized scientific approach to camping methods, tools and equipment has yet to be born. My preferred name for such a field, Wilderness Technology, had three listings on Google five years ago; today it has 2,900,000+. But despite this, the entire field appears, in most people’s eyes, far simpler than it really is. The U.S. military probably has some of the best bivouac equipment, but it’s like them to keep it classified. I’ve never inquired of them. There is also the natural secrecy of competitive designers, who have amassed (between them), a library of data on their own products, but wouldn’t dream of publishing it, patents or no patents. This over-cautious attitude perpetuates the indifference to precision, the old-wives’ tales, the obsolete traditions, the mediocre equipment—all to the detriment of earnest people, mostly young, who truly want to know what they’re getting into, but have a perfectly natural dread of going off into the middle of nowhere and never coming back. They’ve heard enough stories, especially in Canada, to make this fear very real to them and it doesn’t take many stories; their imaginations can easily cruise on little fuel. All experienced campers have known this phase, but by one means or another, they managed to get through it. I will admit that my first camping trip was certainly not in the winter, nor would I ever recommend such a venture for a novice. My opening wilderness exploit was a canoe trip in the Haliburtons in late May of 1976. The weather, during the day, was gorgeous, but old hands will know the reason for the italics: in Canada, late May is really late winter, and this becomes painfully obvious at night, and needless to add, in the water. On my first dawn, the air seemed uncommonly chilly—much cooler than it had been when I’d turned in the day before. The thermometer amazed me by announcing that it was 31ºF. I hadn’t slept well at all, for fear of bears (never saw or heard one on that jaunt), and now I was being greeted by air of a temperature I had hitherto associated with the onset of heavy snow. But the sun across Gull Lake (south of Minden, Ontario) was brilliant and warm, even more so when reflected from the tranquil surface of the water. It felt wonderful. I could see it was going to be another perfect day, but 31°F at sunrise? In May? I remained startled by that figure for some time. Naturally, after breakfast, I had to try out my new (used) camera and get some sunrise shots with a wide-angle lens. The lake had little or no mist above it. But this significant fact was completely lost on me, and it was a long time before its meaning finally took hold. Later in the day, after traversing Gull, Moore’s and Black lakes, a distance of about five miles from my campsite, the air was once again springlike in the open, and downright summery in the woods (the hardwoods were still totally bare of leaves—another heavy hint that I missed entirely). But I found an ideal campsite among a stand of jack pines on Casimir Island in Black Lake (a magical name for my first island camp—it haunts me still), and spent the evening savoring the loveliness of it all, slowly being lulled to sleep by the incessant reiterations of a whippoorwill. My irritation at its ceaseless calling left me the moment I finally recognized its call and knew its species. |
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