Now, see that the skirt you wear is of durable material; blue serge or tweed (corduroy is often too heavy); that it has been thoroughly shrunk, and is six inches off the ground anyway. Twelve would be better. Your skirt should be provided with ample pockets; the sweater and jacket also. Under the skirt wear a pair of bloomers, the lighter and slimsier they are, the better; and the stouter the material, the more practical for wear. I have tried many kinds, and believe percaline which is light, strong, slimsy and washable, the best. Silk is not suitable at all. A flannel shirt waist or blouse, a windsor or string tie, a soft felt hat with a sufficiently wide brim, but not too wide, complete your costume.
Into the knapsack put two coarse handkerchiefs, a silk neckerchief to tie around your neck, the stockings and combination suit already mentioned, a string of safety pins clipped one into another, a toothbrush, tubes of cold cream and tooth paste (tubes take up the least room and are the easiest to carry), a cotton shirtwaist, a nail file, comb, small bottle of the best cascara sagrada tablets, a pair of cotton gloves for rough work, a cake of castile soap, a towel, a stiff nail brush, and, if you are wise, a book for leisure hours, preferably an anthology of poems or a collection of essays which will afford food for reflection.
In your preparations let it be the rule to strip away every unnecessary article. Take pride in getting your kit down to the absolute minimum. Keep weeding out what you don’t need, and then after that, weed out again.
The same principle of rigid economy in selection will obtain in the check list for food. It is the minimum of expense in the woods that will bring the maximum of comfort. In arranging for the “duffle” to be taken with you there is one thing that can be counted upon with mathematical certainty: hunger. You are going to be hungrier than you have been in a long time. The problem is, then, how to tote enough food and get enough food to supply your wants. The carriage, the keeping, the nutritive value, all these things have to be taken into consideration in wood life. At home we have fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, fresh meats in abundance. How can we supply these things for our camp table? We can’t! But desiccated potatoes, dried apples, apricots, prunes, peaches, white and yellow-eye beans, dried lima beans, peas, whole or split, onions, rice, raisins, nuts, white and graham flour, corn meal, pilot biscuit, rolled oats, cream of wheat, cocoa (leave coffee and tea at home), sweet chocolate, syrup for flapjacks, baking soda, sugar, salt, a few candles (helpful for lighting a fire in wet weather, as well as good for illumination), matches, molasses, a little olive oil—all these things, with careful planning, we may have in abundance. To these items you should add good butter—the best salted butter is none too good—some cans of condensed milk and evaporated milk and cream, and a flitch of bacon. Meat makes a dirty camp, and a dirty camp means skunks and hedgehogs prowling around. In a properly thought-out dietary it will be entirely unnecessary to tote meat. All that is needed for use you can get at the end of your fish rod or through the barrel of your shotgun, and upon the freshness of what you catch or shoot you can depend. Dr. Breck, in his “Way of the Woods,” says that if he were obliged to choose between bacon and dried apples and chocolate, he would always take the apples and chocolate. Both portage and health will be served by avoiding the carriage of a lot of tin cans. The ration of each article needed you can work out with your mother or housekeeper, according to the number of people to be in the party, the menus you plan, and the length of your stay. For a cooler for your food, you will find a wire bait box, sunk in clean running water, excellent. The question of grub, or duffle, as it is called in camp life, in proper variety, abundance and freshness, is the most difficult question of all. To this problem a seasoned camper will give his closest attention.
There are other articles, plus the food stuffs, which we must add to our check lists—chiefly articles of equipment. Two or three pails nesting into each other, a tin reflector baker for outdoor cooking, enamel-ware plates, cups and bowls, pans, dishpans, dishmop, chain pot-cleaner, double boiler, broiler, knives, forks, spoons, pepper and salt shakers, flour sifter, rotary can opener, long-handled and short-handled fry pans, a carving knife and a fish knife. The cost of these things carefully bought, will be about six dollars. There should also be in your kit some nails and a hatchet, toilet paper, woolen blankets, mosquito netting (tarlatan is better), twine, tacks, oilcloth for camp table, and some fly dope.
With these articles, plus a little knowledge of woodcraft, there is almost no wilderness into which a capable girl cannot go and make an attractive home. But a little woodcraft we must know; the rest we can learn as we go. There is one fuel in the woods which skillfully used will kindle any fire, even a wet fire, and that is birch bark. You can always get an inner layer of dry birch bark from a tree. Keep a check list of different kinds of wood and have it handy until you learn these woods for yourself. Brush tops or slashings will help to start a quick blaze. Hickory is fine for a quiet hot fire. The green woods which burn readily are white and black birch, ash, oak and hard maple. Look for pitch, which you are most likely to find in old trees, and that will always help out and start any fire. Woods that snap, such as hemlock, spruce, cedar and larch, are not to be recommended for camp fires, as a rule. To be careless or stupid about the camp fire may be to endanger the lives not only of thousands of wild creatures in the wilderness, but also the lives of human beings.
Be careful to have pure water to drink. You cannot be too careful. If you are in doubt about the water, don’t drink it, or at least not until it has been thoroughly boiled. Take with you, besides those I give, a few useful recipes for cooking experiments. They will bring pleasure and variety on dull days. Choose a good place for your cabin or shack or tent, whichever you use, especially a place where the natural drainage is good. Know before you set out whether black flies, mosquitoes and midges have to be encountered and go prepared to meet them. They are sure to meet you more than halfway. Don’t take any risks on land or water. The people who know the way of the woods best are those who are least foolhardy. Common sense is the law that reigns in the wilderness, and, in having our good time, we cannot do better than to follow that law.
So much for skeleton check lists, many of which, in the chapters to come, at the cost of repetition, I shall amplify. Among the questions which I shall take up are the all-important ones of camp clothes, camp food, cooking, the place, camp fires, furnishing the camp, the pocketbook, the camp dog, the outdoor training school, the camp habit, wood culture, camp health, camp friendship, homemade camping, the canoe, fishing, and the trail. This great, big, beautiful country of ours is full of girls, real Camp Fire Girls, who love the keen air of out of doors and the smell of wood smoke and the freedom of hill and lake and plain, and to them I want my little book to come home and to be a camp manual which will go with them on all journeys into the wilderness.