The Hudson Bay tent, trapper’s tent, forester’s tent, canoe tent, and a dozen others, including an Indian tepee and wigwam, are all good tents for special purposes. The pictures show the different styles and all of them are designed for special uses, either for warmth or lightness in carrying or ease in pitching. If we go camping in summer and can have our equipment or “duffle,” as the woodsmen call it, carried by team, the wall tent will be the best one to take.
Tent pegs can always be cut in the woods, but it is far more satisfactory to get them ready at home before we leave. If you do cut your own pegs, select hardwood saplings to make them from and to further harden the points, char them slightly in a fire. If you spend a few winter evenings at home making the pegs, it will save you a lot of time and trouble when you reach the camping ground. The best pegs are made of iron or steel. This is especially true when the ground where they are to be driven is hard or rocky, which is usually the case. Steel tent pins may be bought for six cents apiece or possibly the local blacksmith will make them for less. They should be a foot long.
A sod cloth is a strip of canvas eight or ten inches wide fastened to the bottom of the tent wall. Its purpose is to keep the wind and rain from blowing under the tent. After the tent is pitched a ditch should be dug all around it to catch the rain and carry it away. The earth that is dug from this trench may be thrown on the sod cloth to hold it down.
It is an excellent idea, if you are a beginner, to practise pitching the tent at home so that you will understand it better when you are in the woods. Besides this, you can try sleeping out a night or two to see how you are going to like it.
A trapper’s tent
When you reach your camping place, the first step is to clear the ground of all rubbish, loose stones, sticks and brush to have a clean floor. Then unpack the tent and fit the pegs of the two upright poles through the two holes in the ridge pole. Next raise the tent and peg the guy ropes on the four corners first. A little practice will show you how to do this. After all the ropes are pegged at a proper distance from the tent, they should be tightened and the tent made secure.
Always plan to have a full four hours of daylight to make your camp ready. If the drive is a long one and you are obliged to get up very early in the morning, you will have to do it, that is all. I made my first camping trip when I was twelve years old. We had just reached the camping ground, unloaded our kit and sent the team home that brought us when—bang! over the mountain across the lake from where we were going to camp, a terrific thunder shower came up and in a few minutes it was pouring. There was our whole outfit—tent, bedding and food—getting soaked because, instead of hurrying along during the day, we had fooled away our time trying to catch fish in wayside brooks that had never seen a fish and not realizing how important it is to make haste as well as hay while the sun shines.
An Indian tepee