Camping Books

These books would make excellent gifts for Scouts or Scouters. As a Scouter and outdoorsman they have been a source of inspiration, practical skills, Scouting history, outdoor lore, and for many years. If you follow the links and purchase an item on this page I get a referral fee. A Sand County Almanac I cannot gather wood and light a fire without recalling Leopold’s essay “Good Oak”: We mourned the loss of the old tree, but knew that a dozen of its progeny standing straight and stalwart on the sands had already taken over its job of wood-making....

Kevin Callan is here, it’s time to go winter camping! Canada’s Happy Camper, our friend Kevin Callan, author of the new Complete Guide to Winter Camping joins us on this podcast with his welcoming way of sharing his knowledge of the woods in winter. You’ll see right away how Kevin has earned the name “happy camper”, he’s a passionate, devoted outdoorsman. Whether it’s your first or 101st winter camping trip you’ll find the guide a fantastic resource....

I want to share a great source for developing your skills! Outdoor leadership is different. What works at a Troop meeting or in the boardroom does not always translate well on a week-long backpacking or canoeing trip. Scouting offers great administrative training and valuable supplemental training in outdoor skills and safety. What we don’t have is a comprehensive training course in the group dynamics of long-term outdoor trips. Author Alex Kosseff has assembled what I would call a college level course for leaders in the AMC (Appalachian Mountain Club) Guide to Outdoor Leadership....

Author Sarah Kirkconnell ( Trailcooking.com) has revised and expanded her excellent book Freezer Bag Cooking with the addition of many, many great new recipes. Freezer bag cooking is a simple technique that is perfect for Scouts, hot water is added to dry ingredients in freezer bag much like one adds hot water to a prepackaged freeze-dried meal. (No, this is not like boiling an omelet in a bag (don’t) and there are no BPA worries with these techniques....

Emma Gatewood read about the Appalachian Trail in National Geographic Magazine”I thought it would be a nice lark,” she said. In 1955 at the age of 67, she put on her Keds sneakers, put an army blanket, a raincoat, and a plastic shower curtain in a homemade bag slung it over her shoulder, and headed off to hike the trail. She hiked it again in 1960 and then again at age 75 in 1963, making her the first person to hike the trail three times....

Reading Canoeing Wild Riversis like attending a master class in wilderness travel. Cliff Jacobson’s 30th anniversary edition of the classic *Expedition Canoeing (nowCanoeing Wild Rivers)*is required reading for anyone planning or even thinking about a high adventure trip. This completely updated and revised edition features dozens of full-color photos, how-to illustrations, source charts, canoeing and camping techniques, and a chapter full of hard-won advice from a couple of dozen canoeing experts, and a new chapter devoted to paddling desert and swamp rivers....

After I posted my Ten Essentails Infographic a reader (thanks Andrew!) pointed out the ” Ten Essential Systems” approach from The Mountaineers. I like the idea of a system’s oriented approach rather than just a list of gear: could you respond to emergencies and safely make it through one or more unexpected nights in the wilderness? (Read on, more about the ten essential systems is quoted below.) I’ve looked at lots of ten essential lists....

Mike Clelland is the author and illustrator of Ultralight Backpackin’ Tips, an excellent guide to changing the way you experience the outdoors. (Mike has a great blog too) In the video above Celland touches on the philosophical and practical aspects of ultra lightweight backpacking, and this ought to get you started thinking about camping in general. If I had to identify with a camping philosophy I’d say that my Scouts are hybrid campers, we backpack, car camp, canoe camp and cabin camp; it’s all good....

Kevin Callan is the most famous camping and canoeing expert you’ve never heard of. Kevin is a Canadian, a famous Canadian on Canadian television and radio, he’s a well-known author; a famous canoeist and camper in a country full of canoeists and campers. There’s a whole world of excellent Canadian stuff that we Americans know next to nothing about (you’ve probably never heard of Ricky, Julian and Bubbles or Tim Horton’s) but we ought to....

Backpacker Magazine’s Complete Guide to Outdoor Gear Maintenance and Repair is your ticket to becoming a camping gear repair guru. Author Kirstin Hostetter’s well illustrated, carefully explained directions return your investment with the first piece of damaged gear you save. Maintaining and repairing modern clothing, sleeping bags, backpacks, stoves and tents is not a simple as slapping on a bit of duct-tape. You are much more likely to find siliconized nylon, GoreTex titanium and Fastex buckles rather than canvas, brass or leather in a Scout campsite these days....

Richard Francis “John” Thurman (4 April 1911 – April 1985) was Camp Chief of Gilwell Park from 1943 to 1969. In 1943, he introduced the Gilwell woggle awarded on the completion of basic training, and the Gilwell scarf and the Wood Badge beads were awarded on the completion of Advanced Training. Thurman wrote a number of instructional booklets, many on Scout pioneering. The folks at The Dump have scanned many of Thurman’s works and created free PDF versions of them....

Horace Kephart was born in Pennsylvania in 1862 and found his way to Hazel Creek in western North Carolina (later to become part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Kephart campaigned for and is considered one of the fathers of the national park. He helped plot the route of the Appalachian Trail through the Smokies. Mount Kephart was named in his honor two months before his death in an auto accident in 1931....

Cook wild is not a new concept; cooking over anything other than a wood fire is a relatively new development for the human race. A recent study showed that 43 percent, or some 3 billion members, of the world’s population rely on wood fires for their primary source of cooking and heating. Gas or electric stoves are great but we are in danger of losing the knowledge and skill required to cook over a fire....

Why? –in a world of matches? Ernest Thompson Seton answered well when a group of ‘practical business men questioned his zest for the rubbing stick fire – said he, pointing to the ground, ‘You are thinking of the fire that is lighted down there,’ and pointing to his breast continued, ‘I am thinking of the fire that is kindled in here!” Impractical it is only to staid, prosaic oldsters who have forgotten that enchanted world of dreams called childhood!...

My first backpacking trip was a hike to a trail shelter in Shenandoah National Park in the early seventies. My brother and I carried frame-less canvas backpacks with webbing shoulder straps that my dad padded with upholstery foam. I don’t recall the sleeping bags or much else about the gear we used because my brother and I were much more interested in the creek near the shelter. Dad poured over Colin Fletcher’s new book The Complete Walker and so did I....

Read about the book Natural Navigation at The Next Challenge blog by Tim Moss. Tim took a course with Tristan Gooley the author of Natural Navigation: On an east-west running path in the northern hemisphere, you’ll find more puddles and dips on the southern side as it invariably gets less sunlight. You can sometimes get a gauge of north and south by putting a hand on different sides of a rock to see which has been warmed more by the sun....

Ellsworth Jaeger was an educator, author and curator of the Buffalo Museum of Science in Buffalo, New York. Born in 1897` Jaeger’s early inspiration was author and Scouting founder Ernest Thompson Seton. Jaeger later became one of Seton’s associates and business partners. He was an early television commentator and published seven books about nature and the outdoors, two of which are still in print. My favorite Jaeger book is Wildwoods Wisdom....

Years ago I tuned into the new ‘reality’ show Survivor thinking that it would offer some kind of practical advice on the subject, or at least provide an honest depiction of what happens in a true survival situation. Boy was I disappointed. Survival soon became a hot commodity for television shows. Most of them were predictably shallow, sensationalized and, in some cases, downright silly. All but one; Les Stroud’s Survivorman series; an honest depiction of how a skilled outdoorsman reacts to some pretty grim situations....

My first reaction to a book titled camping’s top secrets was “yeah, right”. I’ve been a camper all my life spending a thousand or more nights under canvas or on the trail. My camping education started forty years ago with Colin Fletcher’s book ‘The Complete Walker’ and expanded to the classics written by Horace Kephart, Nessmuk and Bradford Angier. I thought I knew all the tricks until I read ‘Camping’s Top Secrets’....

Just to be extra clear about this freezer bag cooking has nothing in common with the well known ‘omelet in a bag’ technique where you crack an egg into a plastic bag, add some veggies and cheese (or whatever) and then put the bag in boiling water. (If you haven’t tried the omelet in a bag you haven’t missed anything – it doesn’t work all that well and a boiled omelet has a very different taste and texture....