First Outings - Limited Gear

For our part, my brother and I headed to the ‘upper 40′ of my father’s 100 or so acres in mid-state NY with 2 WW2 canvas army bags, my brand new Timberline A frame and a very suspect canister stove. Only through my brother’s interventions and inventiveness did we get the fire needed due to the useless paperweight I’d brought for a stove, and my ignorance about keeping gas cannisters warm. I have never used one since, and my brother vowed never to winter camp again, but we were only minutes from home and still chose to stay out the night. My mother still tells the tale, and I still appreciate the memory of my brother getting that fire going, just as I do memories of him sharing the last of his food when we were on short rations later and I’d scarfed the last of my food. Him carving up one small English muffin with pb&j into three parts (there was another miscreant aboard), seated cross-legged on a river bed a dozen miles into the southern drainage of Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks.