As for safety’s sake it will be best to drink boiled water, it will be well to take a supply of ground coffee in tins. Most people find boiled water taken in the form of coffee more palatable.
If not sufficiently sturdy to make a fire without them, matches in a waterproof container should be included. However, the real pioneer can make out without pail, skillet or matches. If he is doubtful of his skill at making fire without matches, he may provide himself with one of the fire-making outfits sold for about a dollar by the Boy Scouts’ supply house in New York. This outfit will enable him to make a fire from two pieces of wood in about a minute. If the motor camper has to make his own fire with pieces of wood, he will be better master [[159]]of his fire, will use it more skillfully, and extinguish it more carefully.
Making His Own Coffee-pot
He will need a container in which to make coffee or boil food. The tin pail would answer, or the skillet. But we are supposing that these have been discarded. If so, the pioneer camper can make his own container from a short length of log. It can be done. It has been done. Here is how to make a dug-out coffee-pot in which coffee can be made or food boiled. Cut a small log of young maple or black birch (cottonwood or other soft wood will do) about two feet long and six inches through. Flatten this on one side. Chamfer out on this side a shallow hollow or trough one and three-quarter inches deep, three and a half inches wide, and fourteen inches long. Finish it out with a knife and hot coals. This trough or container will hold one quart of water. Cut a pouring lip at one end.
Boiling Water in Wood
Now you are ready to proceed. First fill your container with water. Next heat six stones about the size of a hen’s egg in the camp-fire until they are red-hot. Quartz stones are the best. You will be likely to find some in the bed of any near-by stream, or in any gravel formation. Slip these hot stones into the water carefully, one at a time, and at the [[160]]end of your wooden pot. Six of these stones will bring to a boil a quart of water in less than five minutes. Of course, in winter with water ice-cold it will take a little longer. It will probably take you an hour or more to make the wooden bowl as described. However, the bowl does not wear out, and you can keep it for future use. On the other hand it may be more fun to make a new bowl at each camp.
To make coffee or tea put a pinch of tea or a small spoonful of coffee in your drinking cup, pour it full of the boiling water, let it stand for four or five minutes, and it will be ready to drink.
Soup may be made in one of these wooden bowls from prepared soup stock such as Erbswurst, or from any other of the prepared, dried soups on the market. To make soup place two teaspoonfuls of the powder in your bowl, pour in a quart of water, stir up, and then begin slowly adding your red-hot stones, one at a time, at one end of the trough. Ten stones will keep the soup boiling for ten minutes—stones, as mentioned, the size of a hen’s egg. In about fifteen minutes one-half of the soup will be boiled away and there will be left a pint of rich, satisfying soup.