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Hey. I’m Heather and I wrote, “Let’s Get Primitive: The Urban Girl’s Guide to Camping”. I grew up on Staten Island, New York. I had never camped when I was a kid. I didn’t even know anybody that camped, and it wasn’t until college that I first even realized that people like camping. I’m a total city girl, but I fell in love with camping after my first trip, and I just decided that it was something that I really wanted to convince other reluctant campers of.

I just wanted to explain that it was something that anyone could do. That even if you are somebody who is really attached to the city, really attached to your cellphone, really attached to makeup and taking a shower everyday, and hot coffee, and all the conveniences of life… If you felt like you were one of those people that could never live without those things, like I was, you could camp. You could do it.

So I was writer and I started by pitching an article to Bus Magazine just trying to teach girls who were scared of camping that they could camp and that eventually became a book. So I wrote, “Let’s Get Primitive: The Urban Girl’s Guide to Camping”. It was published in 2007 by 10-Speed Press and I sort of am on somewhat of a campaign trying to convince people who are scared of camping, who are scared of cat holes, who are scared of being without a shower or running water, that they can camp.

I don’t mean campground camping or car camping. I think that those are both really great. They’re cheap. They’re fun. But what I’m really talking about is primitive camping where you have everything that you need on your back and you hike in a mile or two miles, or three miles, or six miles, to your campsite and you set up your site. You poop in the woods, all that stuff.

I’m sort of on the campaign to convince anyone who thinks they can’t do that that they can do it and that it’s worthwhile and it’s fun. It’s amazing to sort of hit the reset button, to be away from your phone, to realize that we are these super-adaptive creatures, that we can get used to almost anything. It’s kind of exciting.

So I’m doing this series for Howcast and I hope that you guys will all be convinced to go pitch your tent.

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You might encounter snakes when you’re camping and the most important thing that you should know is that sucking the venom from a snake bit is not realistic. It only happens in movies and you should not plan to do that. So, if you happen to get bit by a snake, and a good thing to keep in mind is that snakes usually live in dark places, so around your campsite if there’s logs on the ground or what appears to be a hole between two rocks, that could very well be a snake’s home. So anytime you’re disturbing anything around your campsite or in the woods or turning anything over, that’s when you want to think about snakes. Or it’s one of the times you want to think about snakes. If you do get bitten by a snake, the best thing to do is to leave. The thing you need to do is to get to a doctor. There’s really no other advice to give. You should hop in your car. Hike back out. Hop in your car and get going.

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Brown and black bears are scattered throughout the United States. Grizzly bears are found pretty much from Canada to Wyoming. If you’re going to camp in grizzly bear territory, I think you should really do your research, do your homework, make sure you’re an experienced camper and make sure you know what you need to know camping in grizzly territory.

With brown and black bears, there’s a lot of fear about them, but you probably won’t cross paths with them, and bear attacks are really rare. The thing to remember about bears is that you should keep your camp site meticulously clean. You absolutely can’t leave food around, trash around. Anything that smells or tastes like food, even toothpaste. All that stuff needs to be double bagged, tightly sealed and hung if possible. You should really hang your food.

The other thing to keep in mind is that bears that attack usually attack because people got too close, got too curious, taunted them. For the most part when it comes to wild life, if you steer clear of wild life and respect its territory, you probably won’t have a problem.

If by some chance you do run into a bear and it seems like there’s a potential for an attack, there’s a couple of things you should do. Don’t make eye contact with a bear. If you’re near a bear, avoid eye contact and slowly start to walk, backing away. Keep yourself face to face with it and just start backing away, while still avoiding eye contact. Don’t turn and run. Running is sort of an invitation for them to run after you. You can keep pepper spray around at your camp site if you really know how to use it. I think it might be a good idea. I’ve never camped with pepper spray, but it can be a deterrent if you’re being attacked by a bear.

Bears will also often run away if you’re loud and if you clank some pots. If you’re at your camp site and you see a bear nearby, grab some pots and pans and just start making a lot of noise. They’ll actually, usually, just start running away from you.

I think the biggest advice I can offer when it comes to bears is that you should just really do your homework. Make sure you know what the advisories are. Make sure you know what the rules are for where you’re camping, and be as safe as possible. Make sure that you keep your camp site clean, you hang your food, and you don’t go looking for trouble.

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If you’re going to go primitive camping, you’re going to have to get used to the fact that you’re not going to be able to shower or take a bath. I mean, if you’re camping near a river or a lake, then you can jump in and cool off and get clean to some degree, but you’re not going to be able to use soap.

One thing that I should mention is that I love Dr. Bronner’s biodegradable soap. It’s great because, if you get the peppermint one, then it can be used as toothpaste, it can be used to wash dishes, and it can be used to wash your body, and it is biodegradable. That said, you don’t really want to mix it with natural water because whatever lives in that water is not used to surviving with Dr. Bronner’s in it. So you shouldn’t really pollute water with any soap, even if that soap is biodegradable.

But you can somewhat bathe when you’re camping just by doing a little bit of a sponge bath. You can get a bucket, fill it with water, put some of the Dr. Bronner’s in and just kind of sponge off. That’s one way you can get clean.

You could even hang a sheet or hang a blanket and make a little shower area. It depends on how long you’re going to be camping for, who you’re camping with, how much privacy you need. But that’s one way that you can sort of get clean, and then just make sure that you dump the waste water 200 feet from any other water, from your site, and from the trails.

Another thing you can do is get baby wipes. They’re used to get babies clean and there’s no reason why you can’t use them yourself. You can use them to just wash off a little bit, your underarms. Another thing that I like to bring is powder, baby powder or corn starch. That’s just one way to feel fresh when you can’t shower or bathe.

The one thing that I like to stress with camping is that your expectations are going to shift so much. The thing that camping really teaches you is how adaptive we all are. You really can adapt to just about every situation, and although during the week, at home, in the city, wherever you live, going one day without a shower is such a big deal.

You’ll be surprised that just your expectations for what your days are like and your threshold for the conveniences of life, for feeling clean, for having a hot shower, all that stuff sort of changes too and you’re just happy to be out there.

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The question always comes up, what did you pack in your first aid kit for camping, and I sort of have two beliefs with first aid kits. First, I trust R E I, and E M S, and Patagonia and Coleman. So if there’s a first aid camping kit, they put out that’s the one I have. I just think they know what they’re doing, rather than trying to stock and create your own, trust the professionals.

The other thing with first aid when you’re camping is that if it’s something more than a little scrape, or a slight rash, or a little stomach ache, or a headache, I say pack it all up and head home. So my first aid kit is pretty minimal, I’ve got Neosporin in case I do get a cut I can fight any kind of infection, I’ve got band aids, I’ve got Advil, aspirin, stomach stuff, so like Pepto.

Your stomach might act differently when you’re out in the woods because you’re not going to have the normal things that you usually eat and drink, so your stomach might act weirdly, so I like to have stomach stuff.

I think alcohol swabs are really nice because if you do get a cut you can wipe it with alcohol, if you brush up against poison ivy you can wipe it with alcohol, so alcohol swabs are really great too.

But when it comes to first aid kits, I think the basic stuff you have in your medicine cabinet that you use regularly is important. If you want to be a little safer buy a first aid kit from one of the camping supply stores, and beyond that I think if anything happens to you while your camping pack it up and go to a doctor.

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I think the thing that’s so scary about poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac is that when you get it, when you brush up against it, you didn’t see it coming. That’s sort of what scares people the most. You go into the woods and there’s green everywhere, and it seems like it’s lurking around and hiding, and I think that’s what makes people the most scared. As much as you know the basic rules: leaves of three, let it be, waxy leaves, red stem, it can be really hard to spot. Also, in certain seasons, poison ivy and poison oak can have berries. There are certain berries; white berries, yellow berries. Keep in mind, leaves of three, red stem, waxy leaves; all that is stuff you should stay away from. It’s possible that you could brush up against it unknowingly; it’s really common. If that does happen, there are a couple of things you should do. First, wash the area where you’re starting to get the rash. You can use cold water or you can use alcohol swabs. That’s another reason why I like alcohol swabs in my first aid kit. If it brushed up against your clothes and all, you want to take your clothes and bag them up, and you don’t want to touch those clothes again. The oil from the plant can get all over everything, so it’s not just on your skin, it’s on anything you were wearing when you came into contact with it. A run-in with poison ivy can be minor, not a big deal, a slight rash. Or it can be major. If you were to grab poison ivy and put it in the fire, all of that stuff is being released into the air and you can actually get the rash on your esophagus, down your throat.

So, it really depends, if it’s a minor run-in with poison ivy, I say deal with it, keep camping, wash the area. Maybe if you’ve got some cortisone or calamine lotion in your first aid kit, you can stop the itching.

If it’s a major run-in, if you’re covered in poison ivy rash, if you manage to inhale poison ivy because you’ve burnt it in the fire, I would say pack up and get to the doctor. But, for the most part, obey the basic rules of poison ivy. Like I said before, leaves of three, waxy leaves, red stem. Avoid trouncing around on plants, and you’ll probably be okay and it won’t be too serious. If you do have a major run-in with poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, I say pack up and head to the doctor.

There are also a lot of home remedies for rashes from poison ivy. Something called jewel weed can be used; you can mash it up into a paste with water and rub that on the affected area. The thing about that is you have to be really good at identifying poison ivy to avoid coming into contact with it. Then, on the flip side, if you do come into contact with it, you have to be really good at being able to identify jewel weed. So, it’s a little bit mysterious, especially for beginning campers. I would just say you want to judge how severe your run-in is and go from there.

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The scariest part of camping for a lot of people, especially beginners, is going to the bathroom. The idea of going to the bathroom without a toilet is so unusual, and I get it. It’s definitely scary. There are some tried and true methods to going to the bathroom in the woods, and once you learn them, I think you feel a lot more comfortable with it. It’s a fact of life, it’s a necessity, and if you want to go primitive camping, you’re going to have to get used to it.

First, for number one or number two, you should do both of those things 100 to 200 feet from where you’re camping, from any water sources, from trails, and also you should do those things downhill from the campsite. You don’t want anything making its way back. I think when it comes to number one, most of us have that covered. We’ve all probably had to go when we’re not near a bathroom.

When it comes to pooping, I think that’s the real challenge, and so here’s how it works. You have to dig a hole. The hole is called a cat hole. We can imagine why, but let’s not even think about that. We just know that we’ve got to dig a hole, and the hole has to be, like I said, 100 to 200 feet from where you’re camping, from trails, and from water. It should be about eight inches down if you’re in the woods. If you’re at beach camping, it should actually be more shallow. Let’s stick to the woods for now.

It should be about eight inches deep and it should be about six inches wide. There are some cool tips for digging a cat hole. One thing some people like to do is to dig the hole right on the other side of a log that’s on the ground. If you think about it, if you do that, you then have a toilet bowl. If you just kind of perch yourself a little past the edge of the log, the stuff falls in the hole and you’ve got a seat. That’s one method.

Another method, which is a personal preference of mine, is to use a small tree. You dig the hole just a couple of feet from the tree, and you can actually use the tree to hold onto while you poop into the hole. This way, you’re not touching any surfaces, because surfaces could have bugs on them. Just a little while ago, there was a slug crawling on this log, and if I had to poop while I was sitting on this log and a slug is next to me watching, I think that might be a challenge.

Those are some great ways to make yourself a little toilet in the woods. Once you’re done, you can absolutely bring toilet paper, just make sure you pack it out. You can’t throw the toilet paper into the hole. You bring the toilet paper back to the campsite with you, put it inside a bag, and put it in the trash. You cover up the hole with everything that you just dug out. One good thing is to mark it so that later on when you’re walking around or your friend is walking around, nobody accidentally steps over on it or wanders into it. Mark your area. Make sure you kind of know oh yeah, that’s my toilet.

Those are the methods for using a cat hole. Once you’ve done it once, you’ve got it down. It’s all natural.

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A campfire that looks like it’s out might not be out and could easily reignite with enough air, oxygen or wind. So when you’re putting your campfire out at the end of the night, you want to make sure it’s completely, for sure, 100 percent out. And the way to do that is with water.

So first you want to make sure that the fire has burned down to white ash. And you can stir it around a little bit and you’ll see that everything that was black is now white. And then grab some water and pour the water over the fire and stir again. And you want to get to the point where you’re not seeing anymore embers. You feel really confident that it’s completely out.

Sometimes a fire can just reignite with a little bit of oxygen or even the warmth of the sun can get it going again. So a fire while you’re sleeping in windy conditions could lead to disaster. So just make sure that when you’re going to bed at night your fire is out and you use water to get it completely out.

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Unlike bears and snakes, which you probably won’t encounter on most of your camping trips, you will come across ticks. Ticks are a serious issue. They carry Lyme disease or they can carry Lyme disease so you want to be prepared for if you do get bitten by a tick and you also want to be prepared and take precautions to make sure you don’t get bitten by a tick.

Ticks are spiders. They’re not bugs. They’re actually arachnids and they come in different sizes, or there are different-sized ticks. Deer ticks, which are the ones that can carry Lyme disease are actually usually the size of a pinhead or smaller, but ticks can be as big as a pencil eraser.

The biggest thing you can do to prevent getting bitten by a tick is to cover up. So if you’re going to be hiking or walking in any kind of tall brush, you want to make sure you’re wearing pants. You should tuck your pants into your socks. If you’re wearing shorts and it’s summer, I would definitely wear tall socks. That’s the way that ticks usually hitch a ride.

From there, ticks are going to look for dark, warm places on your body. Ticks end up in your armpits. They end up on your scalp, under your hair, on your belly. They’re looking for a safe, warm place to live so you really should do regular and frequent tick checks. Check all those places religiously. If you’ve gone for a hike, at the end of the day, just make sure you’re doing frequent tick checks.

If you find a tick, if it hasn’t bitten you yet, you can just pick it and flick it off. If it’s bitten you, that’s where you have to be really careful. Because if you did get the tick with a tweezer, which is one of the most popular ways to remove a tick, if you tear the tick or break its body, if it’s carrying a disease, the disease can actually enter your bloodstream. So if you’re going to use a tweezer to pull a tick out, you want to make sure you get the whole body and you grasp the tick and twist it, and pull it out.

If you get bitten by a tick, you’re not really going to know, most likely, if it’s carrying Lyme disease. If it’s a small tick, I would definitely go visit my doctor when I got back from my trip. Just make sure and see if you can get tested for Lyme disease. Lyme disease usually can present itself with the bulls eye style rash, but a lot of times it doesn’t.

So you might get some other symptoms, feeling like you’ve got the flu. But I would say, even if I’m not getting symptoms, if I was bitten by a tick, I’d definitely go visit my doctor when I got back from the trip. But the biggest things that you can do are just to try to avoid getting bitten by a tick. That’s cover up, do tick checks, and also a lot of people don’t like bug spray, particularly bug spray with Deet in it.

Deet is the most powerful ingredient that wards away ticks. So if you’re concerned about ticks, I would definitely get a bug spray and I would get one with Deet.

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When you’re trying to get your fire going in the rain, you might be tempted to light it under a tarp. So you might hang your tarp and think, “Oh, I can light the fire under here.” That’s super-dangerous. First of all, the tarp could end up going up. And also all that smoke that the fire is letting off is going to be collected by the tarp and you’re not even going to be able to stand under there. So please, don’t think that if you just put up a tarp and a lean-to, you can light your fire under there. It’s super-dangerous and definitely not a good idea.

Another thing to keep in mind when you’re collecting your wood is to be careful of pine, and that’s a tree that has pine needles on it, an evergreen tree. Because when it burns, it lets out a vapor that smells lovely, pine, but you can end up getting what’s called pine cough, and it sort of burns your throat and you end up coughing all night. But if you just get a few pieces of pine, the really cool thing is that the needles can sometimes light up and shoot up into the sky above the fire, and sort of create this firework effect.

So, if you are around pine, don’t build your fire exclusively using pine and don’t use a lot of it. But once the fire is going, if you put in a branch with a couple of needles, you could end up with that cool effect.

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I took a bunch of friends camping. They were all beginners and they had never camped before, and one girl ate a ton of bananas before the trip because she thought that would have prevent her from having to go to the bathroom the whole time we were out there, and it didn’t work. Bananas don’t do that. I think processed cheese does that if you want to give it that a try. But I think better than that is facing the fact that you’re going to have to poop while you’re camping and here’s just some tips that I think will make it a little easier.

First I used bug spray. I just like to spray myself down to make sure there’s no visitors while I’m out there exposed. Another thing I like to do is to bring something that makes digging the hole easy and a little garden trowel. It’s great. It’s light. You can tie it to the back of your backpack. There’s also cathole shovels. They fold up, they’re light too. You just want to bring something that makes digging the hole really easy and really quick because you want to be in and out of there.

Another thing to bring along is baby wipes. When you’re camping, you’re not going to be able to shower and you want to feel clean and baby wipes are just really good for having to poop in the woods.

Finally, I think my biggest tip is to do anything you can to make sure it happens easily because you’re going to be all scared and your body is going to be eating things that it’s not use to, so already your stomach may be acting funny and not normal. So, I like to eat raw vegetables, drink a lot of coffee. You kind of want to do what you can to make sure when the time comes, you’re totally ready and it’s quick and painless.

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There’s a lot of different methods for building a fire. The one that works for me the most, and that I like, and is my favorite is the teepee method. That just refers to the formation of the sticks.

This is the fire ring that’s at the campsite that we’re at. So, this is a campground, and usually campgrounds are going to have fire rings like this. It’s the fire pit. It’s the place you should absolutely build the fire. You don’t want to build a fire somewhere else because you don’t want the campsite to be littered with fire pits. You want to build your fire where other people have been building it.

If you’re camping in a place that’s a national forest or a state park they might not have these, but they probably will have a rock ring. That’s where you should build the fire. It’s usually pretty clear where you’re camping where you should build the fire because it’s the charred ground and it’s the place where all the fires before you were made.

So the principles of the teepee method are to take the kindling, which is the pepperoni thick branches, and form a teepee formation all around a bunch of leaves and really thin twigs and paper, and that’s called the tinder. That stuff is just really easy to burn up. You create the teepee with the kindling, and then you take some of the smaller twigs and you actually insert them all over the teepee parallel to the ground. They help to get the fire going and get these to burn up. Once these are burning up that’s when you can start to put on your bigger logs.

Once you put the bigger logs on it will take a little while for them to really catch and you’ll see them start to burn. But once they do that’s when the fire will just go and go all night. You’ll just need to keep adding wood to it as it goes just making sure that there’s always enough there for the flame to catch on.

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This is actually not something that you would do on your campsite or while you’re camping, but I want to show you guys how to do it and this is why we’re here today. These are fire starters and all you need to make these are cotton balls, Vaseline and something to put them in. I’m using a Ziploc bag. You could use a jar or a plastic container like a Tupperware container.

What I’m going to do first is take some of the cotton balls and put them in the Ziploc bag and the thing that you’re doing here is you’re making something that is sort of, like a fuel that just goes and goes. These will burn for maybe ten minutes, five to ten minutes. That’s a lot of time when it comes to building fires, because it’s just enough time to get smaller twigs, paper and then, eventually your bigger twigs, going.

Take a couple of scoops of the Vaseline, it’s kind of icky, and put them in the bag. Doing this on the campsite is not ideal, but I just wanted to show you guys how to do it right. I’ve got a bunch of Vaseline in here with the cotton balls and then, seal it up. I’m just going to squish everything around and really get the Vaseline to saturate the cotton balls. Another thing you can do is take the cotton balls and the Vaseline and put them in a bowl and microwave them.

Once they cool, move them to a Ziploc bag or container because that’s just a way to get the Vaseline to really saturate the cotton balls, and that’s what you’re looking to do. You’re trying to get the Vaseline to really saturate the cotton balls.

Once you’ve done that, these little guys, again, are a little bit icky and greasy, but they’re great fire starters. This would go in the base of the teepee with the leaves, with the small, tiny twigs, with the paper and it would burn for so long that it would really give everything a chance to go up. These are great. They’re super handy and I recommend definitely bringing these with you on a camping trip.

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Rainy conditions makes lighting a fire really hard, and sometimes, to tell you the truth, impossible.

I know a lot of people feel like camping without a fire isn’t camping, and I’m kind of one of those people. But if it is raining really hard while you are camping, you’re going to have a really hard time lighting a fire. The other thing you could run into is that if you’re camping in a place where it has been raining heavily for a long time, a lot of your wood could be really saturated, and very wet, and you may also have a very hard time lighting a fire.

A couple of tips that you can try. First, if you use a fire starter, because if it’s raining, you are going to have a hard time actually even getting a flame at all. If you use a fire starter, something like cotton balls dipped in petroleum jelly, that’s a really great fire starter and it will just burn and burn and burn. So what you can do is take the small stuff, which is the tinder, which is these little, little twigs, leaves, and some paper would be great if you have paper left over from camp.

That stuff wrapped with a fire starter could possibly get you some flames that will go for maybe five or ten minutes. So if you can get that going, you can start to put on the larger stuff, which is the kindling, like this, and even though it might be wet, it will start to dry out. If you can get the flame going at all, and you get it to last for a little while, you can hopefully get some of the kindling to dry. Then, you can start to put your other wood all around the fire that you get going, and hopefully it will start to dry out more. It will steam, it will smoke, that’s just the water coming out of the wood, and that’s really the only way to do it.

So a fire starter is a great thing to have if you are going to a place that might be raining. In fact, a fire starter is just great to have, period. Because you never know, and you can just hope that you can get something going enough that you can dry out the wood that is available and hopefully get the fire going, and get it big enough that you can get a log to ignite. Once you get a log to go, you’re good. It would have to take a lot of rain to then put out the fire.

So, if you can get enough flame to get the logs going, you will probably have a great campfire that night. It’s just getting there that is the challenge. Lighting a fire in wet conditions is a lot of work. It takes a lot of patience, and a lot of fiddling. You kind of have to be prepared for that, or just say “noo fire tonight” and roll with the punches. That’s kind of what camping is all about anyway.

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If you’re going primitive camping, which means that you’re going to be hiking in to your campsite a couple of miles from where you’ve parked your car, then you’re probably not going to have a way to keep your food cold by refrigeration, or a cooler, or ice. The only trick I know, aside from just preparing to bring food that doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and the cool thing is that there’s food that you think that needs to be refrigerated, but really doesn’t. It’s just modern convenience that makes us refrigerate everything.

Things like cheese and butter are things that you can get away with, out refrigerating. The only really trick I know for getting food cold or cool when you’re camping and primitive camping is if you happen to be near a river. What you can do is put the food inside a plastic bag. Make sure it’s completely sealed up. Tie a rope to it, and put the food in the running water. The river is probably cool enough that it’ll get your food cool. It’s not going to make anything cold, but it’ll work for some stuff. If you brought beer, it’ll get your beer pretty cool. It’ll taste a little better.

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There’s three kinds of wood that you are going to need to start a fire. There’s really small, pencil-sized twigs, and this stuff, along with broken up leaves, even paper that you might have lying around from camp, that stuff is all tinder. It’s the stuff that lights really easily and helps to keep the fire going long enough that the bigger stuff can burn.

This, something that is kind of a pepperoni width, or like a baguette width, this is the kindling. You need a good pile of sticks like this, too. These guys, the tinder, burn up real easy, and they are going to get these guys going, then these are going to take a little bit longer to burn.

Then you also need logs. If you are lucky, like where we are today, they have been cutting down some of the dead trees, so they just chop it up and they leave it around for campers to take, which is awesome. That’s not always the case. Obviously if you are in a forest in the middle of nowhere, that’s not going to be the case, so that’s why it is great to have like a camping saw or a hatchet, something that you could use to cut up bigger pieces of wood into more manageable pieces. But these are the three types of wood that you are going to need to get your fire going.

This stuff burns up first, this stuff burns up second, and then this stays lit long enough that it gets these big guys going, and then this is the fuel. This is the stuff that is going to keep you warm and keep the fire going, and allow you to actually cook over the fire. If you don’t get logs like this burning, then you’re not going to be able to cook and you’re not going to have a fire that goes all night. Some tips on gathering wood.

First, you don’t want to go over to a tree and chop off any branches. It’s, “Take only pictures, leave only footprints,” and don’t damage wildlife, trees, anything. You want to look for fallen branches all over the ground where you are. A good place to look is under trees, obviously, and also under bushes, because if it’s been raining where you are, those have been protected from the rain probably. You can often find some dry stuff under bushes.

Just send out the troops, everybody just sort of divides up and starts looking, and you make your piles. I like to keep everything organized by the fire, it just makes building the fire really easy. The rule of thumb is that if it breaks easy, if you can really hear it snap, which you can, it’s going to burn really easy. Anything that’s green or wet or too bendy, that stuff isn’t going to burn as well.

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I think the thing that camping novices are most scared of, unless they’re from the city, and most of my friends are scared of, crazed psychos that live in the woods. That’s completely not true. Most camping novices are scared of bears, and they really think that bears are a big issue when you’re camping, and really they’re not. Bear attacks are really rare, and bear attacks usually happen when people get too close to bears because they’re curious about bears. So if you stay far away from bears, you probably will not have any problems, whatsoever. Especially if you’re not in grizzly bear territory. And if you’re going to go camping in grizzly bear territory, I think you should be a really experienced camper, and you should really know what you’re dealing with.

You should probably hang your food, even if you’re not going to be camping where there’s bears, because there’s raccoons, and there’s mice, and there’s squirrels, and there’s lot of other stuff that wants to get at your food. So there’s a couple of things about food storage to be aware of.

First, double bag everything. Bring Ziploc bags, bring garbage bags, and put everything in these sealed up bags, and double bag when you can. I like to bring a whole collection of Ziploc bags, and then a bunch of grocery store bags, and a bunch of garbage bags. They all come in handy. So everything that smells, including toothpaste, should really be bagged up, because that stuff is sweet and it could be tasty to an animal. So everything that’s food-related, and everything that smells edible should be bagged up, and your food and your trash should be hung.

So the way to get things hung, it’s actually a lot easier than you think. You need to find a tree that’s about 100 feet from your tent, and it should have a solid branch, about 15 feet up, and it should be a big enough branch that you can hang the bag 10 feet from the tree itself. And what you can do is, you’ve got all your food, and all the stuff that smells tasty in this bag. What I’ve used in the past is just a messenger bag to store bag. It’s really sturdy. It’s got this great velcro flap, you can put everything in it and it’s got the big handle, and that’s great for tying a rope to.

So you put all this food in there, tie it up with a rope, then you tie a stick to the end of the rope, and then you throw that stick over the branch. You start walking and you pull the stick, and the bag goes up. So it’s really pretty simple.

You just want to make sure that your bag is 15 feet up, and at least 10 feet away from the tree, because animals can climb up the tree, and a bear especially, has a certain reach that it can get at the bag.

That’s one of the best ways just to keep your food safe from just about anything. If you’re camping somewhere where the threats are more serious, like grizzly bear territory, there’s usually other precautions, like these big canisters that are provided by the forest, to put all your food in. But for the average camper going in the forest, this kind of method is going to work great.

It might be tempting to put your food in your tent, to view your tent like a cabin or a house, and that’s probably the biggest rule to be aware of with storing your food. You definitely don’t want to store your food inside your tent, or your trash, ever. Because if there is anything that wants to get at your food, you definitely don’t want it getting inside your tent.

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I definitely don’t want us to suggest that booze is essential for camping, because it certainly isn’t. And if you’re camping in a place like a campground or sometimes a state park where booze isn’t allowed, then you want to abide by those rules. Figuring out your booze menu is a little bit of a challenge when you’re primitive camping because all those bottles, you’re going to be carrying in. So here’s what I like to do.

I bring a six-pack for that very first day when you first get to the campsite and you’ve figured out where you’re going to pitch your tent, crack open a beer. The beer will still be cold, most likely, or at least cool. So beers on the first day are great.

From there, I actually camp with wine. I love bringing a bottle of wine when I’m camping. I know it’s a little bit heavy, but wine is great at room temperature, and camping is all about room temperature. So, a bottle of wine is great.

Beyond that, the hard stuff is really great for camping. There’s a reason why when we think about camping we think about old dudes with whiskey and beans sitting around a campfire. Whiskey is great for camping. A little goes a long way. So it’s light and it doesn’t need to be mixed with anything. It’s kind of warming, so it’s great to sit around a camp fire on a cool night with a bottle of whiskey.

Things that require refrigeration, things that you like to drink cool, obviously aren’t going to work. So, vodka, not so much. Anything that you need to mix with something also is not ideal. But tequila, whiskey, beer on your first day and wine somewhere in between. That’s how I plan my booze menu for camping.

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So, figuring out how you’re going to get fresh, drinkable water when you’re camping is a pretty big concern. If you’re primitive camping, meaning that you’re hiking in a couple of miles from where you parked your car, then you’re probably not going to be able to carry all the water that you need in with you.

I did used to do that when I first started camping, just because it seemed like the most comfortable and safest way to go. I had a couple of five-gallon jugs and I would fill them before I left. It meant taking a lot of breaks when we were hiking in, but at the same time, I knew the water was safe to drink and I just knew that I could bring in everything that I possibly wanted and it just made me feel really comfortable. The other cool thing about bringing in big jugs of water is you can tie rope around them and hang them from trees and then you’ve got running water. So, that’s kind of neat.

Any water that you find when you’re camping, in a river, or a lake, or a stream, you’re not going to be able to drink, because it’s filled with bacteria and viruses. You can boil all that water. So, if you boil water for five minutes, then it’s safe to drink. The thing is, then you’ve got hot water. You also are going to use up a lot of your firewood if you have to boil all the water you want to drink. So it’s not very practical to do, but it can be done. If you boil your water, you should just plan on bringing something to store the water in once it’s boiled, and let it cool.

The other thing you can invest in is a purifier or a filter. You’re looking at spending between 50 and 200 bucks on something like that, but that’s probably the safest, most reliable and most practical way to make sure that the water that you find is drinkable and safe for you to drink.

There’s lots of different options on the market. The one that I is a pump. So it’s a filter. The water runs through a tube, through the filter, and into the container you’re going to use for drinking, but you have to pump all the water. That’s the part, that’s the downside to the filter that I have.

On the other hand, there’s something called a steripen, which is awesome. It’s basically sterilizing all the water that it’s placed into. That’s on the expensive end of the spectrum.

Lastly, you should probably plan for a worst-case scenario situation and bring some iodine tablets. They’ll purify any water. They’re going to make the water taste like iodine, and it’s also not safe for you to consume large amounts of iodine, so the tablets like that are just used in emergency situations.

When it comes to purifying water, water is a necessity, you’re going to need it, so it’s just a matter of figuring out what solution you’re comfortable with, in terms of ease when you’re camping and how much money you want to spend.

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I love cooking. It’s my hobby. It’s a thing I do when I’m not working and sleeping, or eating.

So camp cooking is challenging. First, probably the first thing you’ll realize once you’re cooking around the campfire is that there’s nowhere to really do it. There’s nowhere to prep your food. So what you want to do when you’re setting up your kitchen, put some nice logs around the fire, like this one, and this will be a way for you to chop stuff. So chopping stuff like, chopping garlic, chopping vegetables, preparing even rice with water, all that stuff, there’s no counter. So the counter is the thing you’re going to probably miss the most, other than the stove.

So I like to set up a nice log and then I bring a lot of plastic, really hard, durable, not throw-away plastic plates, but just like outdoor plates. And these double as plates to eat on and cutting boards. So I sit next to the campfire, I’ve got my plate on my lap and I’ve got my knife, and that’s where I do all my chopping and prep work.

The other thing you’re going to need when you’re setting up your kitchen, other than your fire, is a place to do your dishes. My favorite way to dishes when I’m camping is to use Dr. Bonners soap. It’s edible, or you can brush your teeth with it.

It’s totally safe to consume. So that’s why I really like it. It can double for hands, it can double for toothpaste, and it can do your dishes. And I use peppermint. Peppermint is something that you don’t mind putting on your body, and you also don’t mind tasting.

What you want to do is set up a bucket, or bring a bucket with you, and that will be where you do your dishes. You fill it with water, put some of the Dr. Bonners in, and as soon as you’re done eating or cooking, you throw them in there and then just make sure before you go to bed for the night that you do your dishes. And be sure to dump the waste water 200 feet from any streams.

Even though the cool thing about Dr. Bonners is that it’s biodegradable, you still don’t want to pollute the water with anything that is not normal, because animals are just not used to eating that stuff. They’re not used to eating, you know, bits of pinto beans, or bits of egg, or cheese, or any of that stuff, and they’re also not used to eating Dr. Bonners. So, you want to be good about where you dump your waste water.

The other thing about your kitchen is that you want to make sure that you’re hanging your food. So, every time you need your food you’ll take it down, but when you’re not using it, your food should be hung, and your kitchen, your food, all that stuff should be at least 100 feet from your tent.

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Beach camping is one of my favorite types of camping. The thing about beach camping is that you’re getting, for probably free, a beautiful beach, almost entirely to yourself, that most people are paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to experience, to have a beach all to themselves. I’ve done beach camping on Fire Island, I’ve done beach camping on the outer banks, and both times were awesome.

Beach camping is definitely more challenging than camping in the woods. The biggest issue is that there’s no shade. So there’s no trees. There is no way to escape the sun, unless you go in your tent, and the tent is going to be so hot, it’s like a sauna in there.

So, you want to prepare or figure out a way to avoid the sun without having to stay in your tent all day. What I did was, we brought a tarp and we found some driftwood and we set up a lean-to with the tarp and the driftwood, and we were able to be away from the sun. We got a great breeze and we just lay under the lean-to a good part of our days.

The other thing is that sunscreen is not going to cut it. Of course, bring sunscreen, but you’re going to want to bring t-shirts and hats and pants and stuff to actually block the sun.

Another thing is that tents, when they’re in the sand, will probably require longer tent stakes. If it’s windy, the ten stake could come up, even if just the sand gets moved around. They’re really cheap, you can get them at most camping stores. Just a longer tent stake and it’ll keep the tent more securely in place.

Something else on some beach trips is raccoons. Raccoons may be at the beach in some places so you may need to bury your food or figure out a way to store it so that the raccoons can’t get at it. Another thing about beach camping is that there’s not going to be a lot of wood around to build a fire.

If you’re lucky, you might be in a place where a lot of driftwood washes up. In North Carolina on the outer banks that was the case. We would wake up in the morning and there would be so much driftwood, you would just collect it and have it for fire at night.

Also, if you are lucky enough to have firewood or you brought some with you, you’re going to probably want to dig out a little bit of a hole in the sand and start your fire in a pit.

The other thing I should mention to you about beach camping is that a lot of times, it’s not permitted to camp on the dunes, and dunes on beaches are kind of where it’s the most secluded. People are often really attracted to it, because it’s got some greenery and you can kind of hide your tent in the dunes, but dunes are a sanctuary for so many animals.

They’re also the place where there are a lot of ticks sometimes, so just make sure you follow the rules of wherever you’re camping. If they’re protecting the dunes, they’re probably protecting them for a really good reason. I mean, for all the little additional heartaches that camping at the beach causes, it couldn’t be more worth it. You will have a beach pretty much to yourself. Oftentimes you get to go skinny-dipping. It’s great. Beach camping is fantastic.

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I love cooking, and although when I’m camping I don’t have access to things like lamb shoulder, duck, or bacon, all that good stuff that requires refrigeration, it’s still super fun to cook when you’re camping. These are just some easy recipes that’ll make you feel like you’re a good campfire chef and really will be super simple to make.

The first is something that college kids all know, and it’s what I call lazy noodles. It’s just taking ramen, throwing out the spice packet, and making your own kind of pasta dish with the ramen. They’re really easy to carry. They’re really easy to make when you’re camping. They just require a little bit of hot water, and then you can chop up some broccoli, chop up some onions, and throw a little soy sauce in. If you brought peanut butter you can even make peanut noodles with some hot sauce and it will taste like you’re having sesame peanut noodles around the camp fire. Everyone will be impressed.

Another thing that I like to make and that makes me feel like I’m somehow connected to ancient campers is bannock. Bannock is a native American staple. It’s just flour, baking soda, oil, water, and salt. What I do is mix all the dry stuff and put it in a Ziploc bag before I go. Then I just mix a little water with it when I’m on site. Bannock can be fried up in oil. It can also be wrapped once you mix it all together and knead it up a little bit. You can also wrap it around a stick and bake it in the fire. It’s a really fun thing to do. Kids really like it. Again, it just feels like you’re connected to ancient campers when you make a recipe like that. It’s an ancient recipe.

Another thing that I really like, because I hate smores, is bananas stuffed with chocolate. So you can take a whole banana. Don’t peel it. Just slice it length wise, tuck little bits of chocolate inside, wrap the whole thing in aluminum foil, and place it in the coals of the fire, not really in the flame but just in the warm part on the bottom just for a minute or two. Then eat the banana and chocolate out with a spoon. It’s awesome.

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What you eat when you are camping is going to be as individual as what you eat when you are home, for the most part. If you are primitive camping, and what I mean by that is, that you are hiking into a campsite a couple of miles in from the road, then you probably are not going to be able to bring a cooler unless you are camping with a bunch of people who are willing to carry a cooler that far. But if you are hiking in six, eight miles and the terrain is rough, then you’re definitely not bringing a cooler.

So what does that mean? It means that stuff that you would normally need to refrigerate, you’re not going to be able to. A situation where you are not going to be able to refrigerate, that’s where the planning really has to come into play. If you’re able to refrigerate, or you are driving into your campsite, then your camping menu should include everything you love to eat. Ribs, steak, eggs, everything you love to eat. You can put it in a cooler, you can drive it in, you can walk it in, and it will be awesome. If you’re not in a situation with a cooler or a car, then you need to plan.

Here are some basics that I like to plan for. Protein is going to be not as plentiful, so I usually bring beans. I bring cans of beans. They are heavier, but they are easier. Dried beans in bags are light, they are a great source of protein, you just have to plan ahead with soaking them overnight. Those are really great for camping. Another good source of protein, believe it or not, is cheese.

Cheese traditionally doesn’t really need to be refrigerated. In the United States and in modern times, we refrigerate our cheese, but you don’t really have to, at least for a couple of days, particularly with really dense cheeses. So, I always bring cheese camping, I think it’s awesome.

Rice and grains, any kind of dried grains are going to be great for camping, because again they are light to carry. Pasta is a great camping meal, because it’s light.

One thing I like to do, is for my first day, I will plan to bring stuff like maybe bacon, maybe even a steak, depending on how far I am hiking in, and I’ll eat that stuff that normally has to be refrigerated that very first night. So, the first meal is awesome and it’s all this stuff that you really can’t usually have when you’re camping, but it will last long enough un-refrigerated for a couple hours.

You can really treat yourself on that first dinner when you’re camping. Then from there, I usually just go to beans, beans and rice. In the morning, I do a lot of flapjacks and biscuits and oatmeal. I often bring a lot of seeds and nuts. Fruit is great for camping. Again, it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. It’s a great snack.

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Vegetables are really great for camping, for primitive camping because they’re light, they don’t need to be refrigerated, and they make meals fun. Milk is a problem if you like milk in your coffee and if you like coffee, so I just bring dehydrated milk and mix it up with some water. That works pretty okay.

A really fun dessert is bananas stuffed with chocolate and then wrapped in foil and just tucked into the fire to melt a little bit. You just slit the banana length-wise and stick chocolate pieces inside, wrap the whole thing in foil and just warm it up in the coals of the fire just for a couple of minutes. That’s an awesome campfire dessert. And again, nothing needs to be refrigerated and it’s light.

The biggest thing with camp food, especially with primitive camping, is to bring spices and hot sauce and lemon juice and garlic. All that little stuff makes camp food delicious. Salt and pepper. It’s light. So I always bring little thing of hot sauce. Rather than bringing lemons, I buy one of those fake plastic lemons filled with lemon juice, and those make everything like pasta dishes and beans add a little bit of acidity to your food and makes it super delicious. I fill old film canisters or Tic-Tac containers with spice mixtures, and I plan out the spices for every meal before I leave. Everything is measured and each canister is labeled with the spices for that meal.

Then, butter. Butter is another thing that doesn’t really need to be refrigerated, so if you freeze your butter or refrigerate it so that it’s really nice and cold before your trip, then you can bring it with you. It probably won’t melt, especially if you keep it in a Ziploc bag. Keep it away from warmth. You should be able to have enough butter for all of your meals. Butter makes everything taste delicious.