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^Oh, you got The Curse. It happens. I haven't built a campfire in years, but it's a good skill to have in your back pocket.

Think of it this way: you're creating a column of hot air, which rises and creates a vacuum that sucks colder air from around the base of the fire and heats that too, then pulls it up and perpetuates the cycle. That creates a draft that pulls the particulates (smoke) with it. In a woodstove...

I spent my twenties in my 'bushcraft' phase and got fairly proficient at a lot of woodcrafty stuff including fires, be they ignited by ferro or friction or match or road flare. To this day I carry a pocketful of emergency gear for any trip longer than an across-the-pond afternoon that includes...

The lucis were game changers. I know it's just Latin for 'light' but I still pronounce it like 'lucy'.

I may beat myself up over that for a few days...

I've worn Kebs every day for probably 8 years now, they don't have pads in the knees or slots to install them. There is a brand of work pants called Snickers that look very similar, but do have knee pad slots; they are also much more affordable. The older Kebs were probably the best all-around...

When you buy a Crown Royal bag, you get a free bottle with it! I tend towards waxed canvas bags, but in my Sami/bushcraft/arctic phase I was pretty into leather bags like that. The vast array of pancake-style cordura bags has also infiltrated my storage systems.

What part of Virginia? The geology is very different east-to-west here. One enormous impediment to longer trips is that virtually all riverbank here is private land, and you have to rent a campsite or camp on an island (usually also private) below the high-water mark. They can certainly be done...

I check religiously for widowmakers, they're far more likely than bear encounter or any kind of animal encounter, in my book. But, at the end of they day, there's just some level of acceptance of potential freak accidents that has to happen before you can sleep. A lot of it, for me, was quashing...

I don't need it but if it's still there I may just buy it. Then I'd have 3 canoes to get back to Virginia, though...

https://vermont.craigslist.org/boa/d/burlington-swift-winisk-canoe/7785210949.html

I bought a titanium canteen slash GI-style mess kit. It is unwieldy, loud, and was enormously expensive, but I've always wanted one. One of my pet peeves is 'new gear that requires its own infrastructure' and this definitely counts - the cup nests but the cup lid doesn't, so you need a pouch to...

I've paddled enough boats to know my knowledge of hydraulics as they apply to hull design is whimsical at best, but isn't the whole rationale behind Canadian-style paddling that you're heeling the boat to reduce surface area in the water and thus hull drag? Short canoes are just fun. I bought a...

I lived smack dab in Bear Heaven for a few years, maybe fifteen miles south of Shenandoah National Park. I'd hike maybe twenty miles a week on local trails and the AT, and springtime was bear time. August/September was rattlesnake time. I'd see three or four a week, mostly heading directly away...

I just picked up "Dangerous River" and the Nahanni journals thanks to this thread; so far DR is excellent. Thank you guys for the rec.

Thanks fellas. This is a little Pack I got for a song, and I would be loathe to lose it due to ignorance. Sounds like she'll be fine stuck up in the rafters somewhere. (Vinyl gunwales.)

I picked up my first Royalex boat this year, and while I'm happy to have it, now I'm stuck 800 miles from home with two canoes. The other is a skin-on-frame, and so I'm wondering which canoe will fare better being left in an unheated garage up in Vermont while I truck the other one back to VA...

I am old and creaky enough that a chair and big sleeping pad are in "necessaries" not "luxuries" at this point. - a hammock with a bug net purely for lunch naps, that's a big luxury. I have several but my favorite (which just this week was destroyed by a puppy) is (was) an ENO junglenest -...

Ha! I thought exactly the same thing.

I remember that picture very clearly from being a kid who wouldn't stay still in church unless I got to bring a book. I'd say that's closer to a clinker-built norse faering, romanticized for a modern audience, but the prow does look very canoe-ish.