Sleeping next to the trail is an important outdoor skill and it’s been one since time eternal. In modern times, we’ve turned this combination of hiking and camping into a popular pastime known as backpacking. As with many outdoor skills, the tool has become an end to its own.
Many of these backpackers put a second mortgage on their home to carry all the comforts of home with them. They have expensive ultralight tents, sleeping bags, and sleeping pads. They have puffy warming layers and breathable rain gear along with expensive footwear. They have stoves and water filters.
While I may appear to be making fun of backpackers, and I am to some extent, this gear can definitely be useful. It not only makes you more comfortable on the trail but also a lot safer. Shelters and sleeping gear protect you from the elements while cooking and water purification gear ensure you stay nourished and hydrated. And it doesn’t take a lot of skill to pitch a tent or cook food over a stove. This lowers the barrier of entry for newcomers and allows more skilled outdoors people to focus on other things like enjoying nature.
As easy and foolproof as modern backpacking gear may seem, however, people still manage to mess it up. And, when they do, they are in for a miserable or even dangerous trip. They get out to the woods and find out their tent leaks, their sleeping pad won’t hold air, or their sleeping bag isn’t warm enough. You should never be testing major pieces of gear 10 miles from your vehicle a half hour before dark. Instead, test your gear and practice your ability to use it correctly in your yard or in a car camping site next to your vehicle. Practice setting up your shelter quickly preferably in the rain. How many rain drops did you get on your sleeping bag? Did your shelter leak in an all night rain storm? Did the ground you chose to pitch your camp flood? Many years back, I tested the temperature rating of my sleeping system when I still lived in an apartment complex by choosing a night in February and sleeping on my balcony.
Regardless, I don’t need any help using backpacking gear and sometimes I’m interested in the fundamentals of what the job requires. Our ancestors didn’t have so many things. Their standard of living was generally lower and they often lived subsistence lifestyles without the cash money required for manufactured goods. In some cases, they could only carry so much being far from home on foot or horseback. Further, they were usually out there for a reason, not just to backpack, and had to carry weapons, prospecting gear, surveying equipment, trapping supplies, or whatever it was they needed. Comfort items couldn’t be carried.
I often use military surplus gear in the woods. Sometimes, surplus gear isn’t the most compact, lightweight, or comfortable. But it’s always utilitarian and it’ll still be around and working long after you are. ALICE gear has been around since the early 1970s and the key advantage to this system is modularity. It’s also nice not having anything on my back collecting sweat.
You won’t be carrying much in the way of tents, sleeping bags, or sleeping pads on your ALICE belt. But you can carry a poncho and a poncho liner. The poncho is multipurpose and can be worn, used as a tarp shelter, or used with the poncho liner as a waterproof sleeping bag/bivvy. Due to the pleasant weather, I used it as a ground cloth. Lacking a sleeping pad, I piled up four inches of compressed leaves to insulate me from the ground by kicking up the forest floor in a seven foot radius. The leaves were damp from rain the day before so the poncho was welcome. You can also use pine bows to make an insulated bed during a winter emergency, but killing pine trees is undesirable and often illegal for a weekend outing.
One benefit of kicking up all the leaves into a pile is it leaves bare ground. This bare ground is a good place to start a fire to cook your food without the fire spreading. Fires can also provide warmth, light in the dark, and a way to deter animals and bugs. But I don’t recommend you try to keep a fire going when you sleep during the summer due to risk of forest fire. An exception would be if you are in a group and can schedule an all night watch. But generally all night fires aren’t worth the work anyways during summer weather.
The best way to start a fire is a cigarette lighter. The only disadvantage of a lighter is they don’t work well in cold weather, but they can be easily warmed next to your body. The best way is to stick the lighter in your armpit to warm it up. Beyond the lighter, you’ll need a good tinder and fuel. One good tinder you can carry on you is duct tape. Otherwise, the best natural tinder depends on your area. Around me the best is birch bark which is impregnated with flammable oils. Be looking for tinder on the trail before you need it, because it never seems to appear around your campsite. Once you have your tinder, you can use small dead twigs for fuel. If it just rained, the dryer twigs will be on dead branches off the ground. I usually drag entire branches back to my campsite and break off the twigs into piles. For larger fuel, you can put branches over the fire and after they burn in half put the two halves back on the fire. This saves you from wasting too much time with a saw.
Your fire is also a good choice for water purification. For this option, you should have a metal container (though some advanced techniques don’t require one). I prefer a metal canteen. The metal canteen will boil water quicker than a container that is more open and will prevent as much ash a debris from getting in your water. But a more open container like a canteen cup is fine and a little wood ash in your water won’t harm you. Obviously, this method is nowhere near as fast or convenient as using my favorite steripen or even using a bag and filter. I’ve also used water tabs, but many of these don’t kill some parasites in the water including those spread by beavers common to my area. For a fire, you need to build the fire, burn the fuel down to coals, boil the water, and cool the container off. You can quicken the last step by placing the container back into the cool water using a couple sticks to handle the hot container.
In summary, sophisticated backpacking gear is nice but not necessary to sleep by the trail. One should remember that our ancestors were often equipped with more skill than they were with gear. Nonetheless, they also lived lives where physical discomfort was a daily reality, risk of injury and mortality was accepted, and they worked hard enough to get tired enough and sleep anywhere. Nowadays, I suggest this sort of approach for a pleasant summer evening with plenty of bug spray. I also suggest that all skills are practiced in a safe environment before attempting them on the trail. In addition to making generations of cowboys, soldiers, and pioneers proud, these skills will make you a better outdoorsman and might even save your life in an emergency.
