Sleep Outs
A QUICK BACKYARD TENT can be made with just a rope, some stakes, and two tarps—big plastic, waterproof sheets essential to camping. First, string a rope between two branches on two different trees. Then stretch one tarp out on the ground and hang the second over the rope. Lastly, stake the four corners of the hanging tarp to the ground, using a hammer or a rock.
Store-bought tents are much larger than ever before, and come with flexible poles that fold into foot-long lengths and stow away in a nylon sack, making tent-pitching relatively simple. They also better protect us from the number one evil scourge of camping: bugs. (The number two evil scourge, should you ask, is poison ivy.) This leads to the prime rule of tents: Keep the zipper shut, because it’s nearly impossible to shoo a mosquito out of your tent once it’s in.
Before you pitch your tent, you may want to lay down an extra tarp to keep things extra clean and dry. (If you do, tuck the edges under so the tarp is slightly smaller than your tent.) Then set out the tent, and follow directions for inserting the poles. The fly, which protects from rain and dew, goes over the top of the tent and usually clips on, is staked to the ground, or both. Finally, bang the tent pegs into the ground, lest large gusts of wind send your tent soaring toward Kansas.
You’ve just made your home outdoors. Here are the basic furnishings:
♦ The sleeping bag. To make things a bit more comfortable, add a sleeping pad underneath and bring along a pillow or just a pillow case you can stuff with clothes. Sleeping pads have gotten softer, longer, and more elaborate, and can even involve air pumps, which your parents will undoubtedly appreciate if you invite them to sleep out with you. If you don’t have a sleeping bag, a jellyroll does the trick. (That’s when you roll your sheet and blanket together inside your pillowcase, and sling it over your shoulder for the journey to your tent.)
Flashlight and bug spray. Enough said.
A cooler. Filled with lots of drinking water and camping food staples like fresh apples, dried fruit, trail mix, and beef jerky. Marshmallows are a necessity, too, if a campfire’s involved, as are the other ingredients for s’mores: chocolate bars and graham crackers.
The anti-litter mantra for sleeping and camping outdoors is: take it in, take it out. Since there are no garbage cans in the wilderness, bring a bag for your wrappers and other trash.
Once you’ve learned to pitch a tent and roll out the sleeping bag in your backyard, you can graduate to the full-out camping experience, where the refrigerator and indoor toilet are not close at hand.
Camping is gear-intensive and takes careful planning, especially if you’re hiking, a few miles out. You must carry in several days’ food and water in your backpack, not to mention a camping stove and mess kit, soap and a toothbrush, and so much more. When you’re ready for a first experience at a wilderness campground, find a friend whose family are pros, and learn from them.
Whether you are in your backyard or the Rocky Mountains, remember the whole point of sleeping out is to breathe in the night air, listen to nature’s songs, and drift off to sleep under the stars.
The Sit-Upon
THE SIT-UPON is a homemade waterproof cushion that makes the perfect seat for around the campfire, near a tent, your backyard, a sporting event, or any use you can imagine.
The Very Simple Sit-Upon
Needed:
Plastic bags, the kind from the grocery store, about 12 inches by 12 inches with the handles cut off. Can be larger if you wish; any size bag will work.
Lots of newspaper for the padding. The more, the comfier; try a pile 1½ to 2 inches high.
Duct tape, or other strong and wide packing tape.
Stack the newspapers neatly. Cut or fold them to fit inside the plastic bag. Place them in the bag. Squeeze the air from the bag and fold it tightly around the newspaper. Use a second bag if necessary, to catch the other side of the newspaper stack. Tape all sides of the bag to keep out water and debris.
The Fancier Sit-Upon
Like most everything, a Sit-Upon can be made fancier and more decorative. The newspapers in the plastic bag can be covered with a waterproof cover.
Needed:
The Very Simple Sit-Upon, as on previous page.
Pieces of old wallpaper make an excellent cover, as do squares cut from a vinyl tablecloth, oilcloth, or a shower curtain. Be as creative as you’d like; the only guideline is that the material should be as waterproof, or water-resistant, as possible. Cut into 15 by 15 inch squares. If you prefer an even larger sit-upon, choose any measurement, cutting the squares 1½-2 inches larger on each side than the newspaper-and-plastic sit-upon that will fit inside.
A hole punch.
Cord, twine, lanyard, or other strong string, measuring six or seven times the length of one side of the cover.
To Construct:
Cut the square covers to size. Punch holes every inch or so around all four edges of the covers, doing both at the same time, so the holes match up. Then place the Very Simple Sit-Upon between the two covers. To sew, string the cord through the holes using an overcast stitch (start on top, enter the hole, pull the cord through and out to the side, take it over to the top, and then sew in from the top of the next hole.) If needed, wrap tape around the end of the string to stiffen it and make it easier to sew. Leave extra cord at start and finish for the square knot at the end.
The Sit-Upon Traveler’s Edition
You might be taking your Sit-Upon with you on a hike, or someplace where it would be handy not to have to hold it while you walk.
To make the fanny-pack carrier, procure a belt or rope that is long enough to tie around your waist. Before you sew the edges of the Sit-Upon, lay the rope or belt along one side. Stitch the rope or belt to the Sit-Upon as you sew that side of the cover. When you tie on the belt, the Sit-Upon will lay behind you as you walk.
For the messenger-bag alternative, attach an even longer piece of rope that will go over your head and over one shoulder, messenger-bag style, with the Sit-Upon resting across your back.
Lamp, Lantern, Flashlight
TAKE APART a flashlight and you’ll see it’s simply a battery-holding tube with an on-off switch at the side. You can build one with a quick trip to the hardware store.
WHAT YOU NEED:
Some D-cell batteries
Copper wire (long strands of aluminum foil may be substituted)
Electrical tape
Flashlight bulb
An empty mason jar or any glass jar
Possibly tape, aluminum foil, paper, empty toilet paper tube, scissors, or wire cutters
Start with a D-cell battery and a piece of copper wire about 10 inches long or so. With electrical tape, connect one end of the wire firmly to the bottom terminal of the battery. Wrap the other end of the wire tightly around the metal casing of a small flashlight light bulb. Position the light bulb so it touches the top of the battery. It should light up.
You’ve created a simple circuit that works when energy flows from the battery to the wire to the light bulb and back to the battery. If the bulb doesn’t light, fiddle with the wires and connections until it does.
Once it lights, wrap the wire around the battery so the bulb stays put on top. That’s the lamp. If the bottom wobbles, look for a holder. The electrical tape roll usually does a good job. If you spy an empty mason jar on the shelf, turn it upside down and place over the lamp and you have yourself a lantern, for indoors or out.
You’ll notice that the light bulb isn’t that bright, and that regular flashlights use two D-cell batteries. Stack a second battery on top of the first. Use as much electrical tape as necessary to bind the two batteries together. Place the bulb on the top battery and you’ll see the difference. The bulb will become slightly hot; don’t touch it and burn yourself.
To adapt into a flashlight, fashion a holder, whether it be poster board cut and taped to fit, a toilet-paper tube (lead the wire outside the tube), or lots more electrical wire wrapped around the two batteries (its bright colors provide
decorative possibility).
Now for the on-off switch. For simplicity’s sake, this can be accomplished by pulling the wire, forcing the bulb to move away from the battery and turn off. You can also cut the wire in half. To make the light go on, connect the wires and attach a sprig of electrical tape to hold them together. Remove the tape to detach the wires, break the circuit, and turn the flashlight off.
Explorers
AMELIA EARHART
Amelia Mary Earhart, born in 1897, was a pilot who received the Distinguished Flying Cross—and worldwide fame—for being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. During World War I, she trained as a nurse’s aide through the Red Cross and worked in a hospital in Ontario, Canada, until after the war ended in 1918. Around that time she saw her first flying exhibition, and she was captivated. She stood her ground when one of
TWO OTHER NOTABLE WOMEN AVIATORS
In 1921, Bessie Coleman became the first woman to earn an international pilot’s license, and the first black woman to earn an aviator’s license. One of thirteen children, Coleman discovered airplanes after graduating from high school, but she couldn’t find an aviation school that would teach a black woman to fly. She went to Paris, where she was able to train and earn her license.
Jacqueline Cochran, who in 1953 became the first woman to break the sound barrier, holds more distance and speed records than any pilot, male or female. She was the first woman to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier; to reach Mach 2; to fly a fixed-wing jet aircraft across the Atlantic; to enter the Bendix Trans-continental Race; and to pilot a bomber across the north Atlantic. She was the first pilot to make a blind landing, the first woman in Ohio’s Aviation Hall of Fame, and the only woman to ever be president of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
the pilots flew low to buzz the crowd, and later said of the experience, “I did not understand it at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by.” The next year, she visited an airfield and was given a ride; a few hundred feet in the air and she was hooked. She began working odd jobs, including driving a truck and working at a telephone company, to earn money for flying lessons with female aviator Anita “Neta” Snook. After six months of lessons, she bought her own plane, a used yellow biplane that she nicknamed “The Canary,” and in October 1922 she flew it to an altitude of 14,000 feet, setting a world record for women pilots. In May 1923, Earhart became the sixteenth woman to be issued a pilot’s license by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). She not only broke aviation records, she also formed a women’s flying
Amelia Earhart
organization (The Ninety-Nines) and wrote bestselling books. She was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, the first woman to fly across the Atlantic alone, and the first person, man or woman, to fly across the Atlantic alone twice. Earhart was also the first woman to fly an autogyro (a kind of flying craft) and the first person to cross the United States in an autogyro; the first person to fly solo across the Pacific between Honolulu and Oakland, California; the first person to fly solo nonstop from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey; and the first woman to fly nonstop coast-to-coast across the United States. Her final accomplishment was becoming an enduring mystery: at age thirty-nine, in 1937, Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean during an attempt at making a circumnavigational flight. The official search efforts lasted nine days, but Amelia Earhart was never found.
Alexandra David-Néel
ALEXANDRA DAVID-NÉEL
Alexandra David-Néel, born Louise Eugénie Alexandrine Marie David (1868-1969), was the first European woman to travel to the forbidden city of Lhasa, Tibet, in 1924, when it was still closed to foreigners. She was a French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, and writer, penning over thirty books on Eastern religion, philosophy, and the experiences she had on her travels. By the time she was eighteen, she had already made solo trips to England, Spain, and Switzerland, and when she was twenty-two, she went to India, returning to France only when she ran out of money. She married railroad engineer Philippe Néel in 1904, and in 1911 she returned to India to study Buddhism at the royal monastery of Sikkim, where she met the Crown Prince Sidkeon Tulku. In 1912 she met the thirteenth Dalai Lama twice and was able to ask him questions about Buddhism. She deepened her study of spirituality when she spent two years living in a cave in Sikkim, near the Tibetan border. It was there that she met the young Sikkimese monk Aphur Yongden, who became her lifelong traveling companion, and whom she would later adopt. The two trespassed into Tibetan territory in 1916, meeting the Panchen Lama, but were evicted by British authorities. They left for Japan, traveled through China, and in 1924 arrived in Lhasa, Tibet, disguised as pilgrims. They lived there for two months. In 1928, Alexandra separated from her husband and settled in Digne, France, where she spent the next ten years writing books about her adventures. She reconciled with her husband and traveled again with her adopted son in 1937, at age sixty-nine, going through the Soviet Union to China, India, and eventually Tachienlu, where she continued her study of Tibetan literature. It was an arduous journey that took nearly ten years to complete. She
WOMEN EXPLORER TIMELINE
1704 Sarah Kemble Knight journeys on horseback, solo, from Boston to New York.
1876 Maria Spelternia is the first woman to cross Niagara Falls on a high wire.
1895 Annie Smith Peck becomes the first woman to climb the Matterhorn.
1901 Annie Taylor is the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
1926 Gertrude Ederle is the first woman to swim the English Channel.
1947 Barbara Washburn becomes the first woman to climb Mt. McKinley.
1975 Junko Tabei of Japan is the first woman to climb Mt. Everest.
1976 Krystyna Choynowski-Liskiewicz of Poland is the first woman to sail around the world solo.
1979 Sylvia Earle is the first person in the world to dive to a depth of 1,250 feet.
1983 Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.
1984 Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to walk in space.
1985 Tania Aebi, at nineteen, becomes the youngest person ever to sail alone around the world.
1985 Libby Riddles is the first woman to win the Iditarod Dog-Sled Race in Alaska.
1986 American Ann Bancroft becomes the first woman in the world to ski to the North Pole.
2001 Ann Bancroft and Norwegian Liv Arnesen are the first women to cross Antarctica on skis.
2005 Ellen MacArthur breaks the world’s record for sailing solo around the world.
2007 Eighteen-year-old Samantha Larson becomes the youngest American to climb Mt. Everest and also the youngest person to climb the Seven Summits. (She and her father, Dr. David Larson, are the first father-daughter team to complete the Seven Summits.)
returned to Digne in 1946 to settle the estate of her husband, who had died in 1941, and again wrote books and gave lectures about what she had seen. Her last camping trip, at an Alpine lake in early winter, 2,240 meters above sea level, was at age eightytwo. She lived to be 100, dying just eighteen days before her 101st birthday.
Freya Stark
FREYA STARK
Dame Freya Madeleine Stark (1893-1993) was a British travel writer, explorer, and cartographer. She was one of the first Western women to travel the Arabian deserts, and was fluent in Arabic and several other languages. She traveled to Turkey, the Middle East, Greece, and Italy, but her passion was the Middle East. When she was thirty-five, she explored the forbidden territory of the Syrian Druze, traveling through “The Valley of the Assassins” before being thrown into a military prison. In the 1930s, she went to the outback of southern Arabia, where few Westerners had explored, and discovered the hidden routes of the ancient incense trade. During World War II, she joined the Ministry of Information and helped create propaganda to encourage Arabic support of the Allies. Even in her sixties, she continued her travels, retracing Alexander the Great’s journe
ys into Asia and writing three more books based on those trips. By the time of her death, at age 100, she had written two dozen books on her adventures.
Florence Baker
FLORENCE BAKER
Lady Florence Baker (1841-1916), was born Barbara Maria Szász. She was orphaned at seven, and at age seventeen she was due to be sold at an Ottoman slave market in Hungary when a thirty-eight-year-old English widower, Sam Baker, paid for her and rescued her from her captors. She was renamed Florence, and years later she became Samuel Baker’s wife. They were a perfect match: Sam was an established explorer, and Florence a natural-born adventurer, and so the two of them traveled to Africa, searching for the source of the Nile and shooting big game. They managed to reach the secondary source of the Nile, which they called Lake Albert in honor of Queen Victoria’s recently deceased husband, and then in 1865 they made the journey to Britain, where they married (and where she met her stepchildren, Sam’s children by his first wife) and where Sam received a knighthood. They returned to Africa in 1870 to report on the slave trade along the Nile. Later they journeyed to India and Japan before returning to Britain. Florence outlived Sam by twenty-three years and was cared for in her old age by her stepchildren.
Building a Campfire
SITTING AROUND A CAMPFIRE is probably one of the oldest human activities. Nowadays, unless you’re on a solo wilderness hike, a campfire is less a tool of survival than a social event—a chance to sing songs and tell stories and be out in the dark in nature with friends.
The Daring Book for Girls Page 15