THE AUTUMN CAMP

( Bits Of Woodcraft item )

by Horace Kephart ( Outing Magazine 1901 )

To those who camp in autumn a good fire is the prime necessity of comfort.
Green logs should be used, instead of dry, because they last longer. The best
woods for an all-night fire are hickory (especially shellbark), suger maple,
black birch, yellow birch, red birch, box elder, pecan, dogwood, hornbeam,
and any of the oaks excepting red, willow, and water oak. Soft woods burn
too freely, and leave no durable coals. Chestnut snaps and crackles, sending
sparks and embers in every direction, and so do hemlock, sassafras, dry
cedar, and spruce.

Some woods are almost incombustible when green: such as aspen, buckeye,
red cedar, sour gum, laurel, poplar, sassafras, sorrel, sycamore, tamarack,
and tupelo. Backlogs of buckeye, butternut, sour gum, sycamore, or tupelo
are preferable, because they last so long, and when once glowing, send out a
moderate but steady heat.

For a quick-cooking fire use dry hardwood. It should, as a rule, be taken from
standing trees, stumps, and stubs, for wood picked up from the ground is apt
to be soggy or decayed, and will make more of a smudge than a fire. If you
want long-lived coals for roasting or baking, split some green hickory
(shellbark splits easiest and burns best) to uniform pieces about half the
thickness of common stove-wood, and pile it cob-house fashion. Then it will
all burn down at the some time, leaving hard coals that will give out strong
and uniform heat, without flame or smoke. Good kindling is procured by
splitting the firm, dry wood from an old stump, or from dead but sound twigs
plucked from standing trees, or from dead shoots. In heavy rain it is hard to
start a fire, unless you know how. Dry punk ran be found under the
excrescences of the bark of beech, sugar maple, or yellow birch trees, or in
dead pines; and if there are any fat pine-knots about you are in no trouble.
But in a deciduous forest the simplest way is first to collect plenty of dead
twigs and branches from standing trees, assort it according to thickness at
the prospective fireplace, then cover yourself with a blanket or other shelter
as though your head were the ridgepole of a tent. Now select your best stick,
shave it without removing the shavings, one shaving stopping immediately
behind the other, until you have a bunch of them. Make three such bunches
of shavings, stand them in a tripod, thick end up, arrange your slenderest
twigs around them like a cone, light the shavings, add sticks of gradually
increasing thickness to the cone, shelter the fire as long as you can, and then
let it go. Now get a pair of short sticks several inches thick, lay them parallel,
one on each side of the fire and as close to it as you can without tumbling
everything down. As soon as practicable, lay a dozen thin sticks across the
fire from one bedstick to another, and a half-inch apart, then a similar layer
on top and at right angles to the first, and so on, cob-house fashion,
gradually increasing the size of the stick. Or, you can build the whole affair
wigwam-shape. The idea is to begin with twigs that are small enough to
ignite easily, feed them gradually, and pile the fuel methodically so that air
can circulate freely beneath and through the whole pile.

If you want a torch, use a pine-knot, or strips of birch bark in a cleft stick. To
make a torch that will last several hours, take half-inch strips of cedar bark,
or bark pounded like oakum, and bind together with green twigs into a
faggot two feet long or more. The bark of various trees is very useful in
emergencies for shelter, waterproof ground sheets, ponchos, camp utensils,
canoe coverings, corseaux, straps, twine, rope, etc. The bark of the following
trees peels easily: alder, basswood, paper birch, yellow birch, cedar, slippery
elm, white elm, winged elm, balsam fir, pig-nut hickory, shellbark hickory,
leatherwood, locust, mulberry, paw-paw, and spruce. Basswood bark
(though not of every tree) peels even in winter, and the tough and pliable
inner bark is excellent for straps, ropes, and matting. Its bark should be
removed in long strips, spread on the ground to dry, then soaked water;
thereafter the inner bark is readily separated from the worthless exterior.
(Warning: the loose bark of old basswood trees is a favorite hiding-place for
bedbugs.) Leatherwood (moosewood) bark is so extra-ordinarily tough that
it in used in the Ozarks for gate-hinges and even for whiplashes.

It is a favorite substitute for twine and straps. The unlimited utilities of birch
bark are well known. The best substitutes for it in western forests are
basswood and slippery elm bark. The inner bark of the latter tree is preferred
to all others by Indians for ropes, belts, braided tump-lines, nets, etc.,
because it is soft to the touch, can be closely braided, and is very durable.
They remove the outer bark, divide the bast into narrow strips, and boil it in
ashes and water. After drying, the strips are easily separated into small
filaments, and these strings run with the grain several feet without breaking.
The squaws used to weave it into garments. The crushed bark makes a good
substitute for oakum. Slippery elm bark is inferior only to that of the paper
birch for canoe covering. It is said that an elm bark barrel, if properly cared
for, will last a century. White elm bark may also be used for the same
purposes, but it must be supplied by pounding. The bark of balsam fir and of
spruce are good for roofing lean-tos, for corseaux, or packs, etc. Where birch,
spruce, and elm do not grow, the bark of pig-nut hickory may be used for
canoe coverings, etc. The inner bark of yellow locust is fibrous, and makes
good cordage. That of red mulberry is excellent, its fibers being so fine that
the Indians made twine of it fit for weaving. Their squaws took the bark from
young shoots that rise from stumps. After drying it in the sun, they beat it
until all the woody part fell out, then gave the remaining threads a second
beating, then bleached this lint by exposing it to the dew, spun it to the
coarseness of packthread, and finally wove it into clothing. Pawpaw bark was
similarly treated. It is tough and pliable, suitable for fish nets.

When practicable, bark should be stripped in spring or early summer. Select a

trunk free from knots, girdle the tree near the butt, and again at a point as
high as you can reach. Then cut a vertical incision through the bark from
upper to lower girdle, get in under the bark with a wedge-shaped club, and
carefully work the bark free. A two-foot elm, for example, thus yields a sheet
of bark six by seven feet that is excellent for shelter and other purposes.

Good withes are procured from the rootlets of cedar, white spruce, and
tamarack, from the shoots and twigs of hickory, sweet gum, witch-hazel, and
leatherwood. A large withe for binding together rafts or shanty logs is easily
made by cutting a six-foot hickory shoot, shaping the butt end to fit a notch
in a log, inserting and wedging it, and then twisting it. A sprout over an inch
thick at the butt can thus be twisted in a few moments, and it is then almost
as pliable as a hay rope.

For bedding, use, when obtainable, the boughs of balsam fir or spruce, or
beech leaves, basswood boughs, or the bushy fronds of cane ("cane-
feathers," the southern swamper calls them). But anything between you and
the ground is better than nothing.

Durable camp brooms are made from twigs of yellow birch, laurel, white
cedar boughs, branchlets of hemlock, willow, etc. In setting up camp, it is
useful to know that the following woods are straight-grained, split easily,
and can be riven into serviceable boards with a common ax: basswood,
cedar, chestnut, cypress, slippery elm, hackberry, white oak, white pine, and
spruce. Black ash parts readily into thin layers, and so do basket oak and rock
chestnut oak. They can be divided into fine shreds or ribbons for basket-
making, etc. On the contrary, the following woods are difficult to work:
beech, box-elder, buckeye, rock elm, white elm, hemlock, locust, hornbeam,
sugar maple (especially when frozen), osage orange, and sycamore. Winged
elm, sour gum, and tupelo are exceedingly stubborn, and cannot be split with
a wedge. The spots in the sap-wood of swamp hickory will turn the edge of
the hardest steel.

For dugouts, woolen utensils, etc., the best woods are cedar, chestnut,
cucumber, cypress, yellow poplar, and sassafras. I fancy that northern
readers will exclaim at the idea of building a dugout canoe from sassafras,
which is a mere shrub with them; but in southern forests it grows to a height
of one hundred or even one hundred and twenty-five feet, with a girth of six
or seven feet. Being as light as red cedar, very durable in water, and quite
tough when well seasoned, it makes fine canoes.

Tupelo roots are so light and spongy as to make good substitutes for cork.
The outer bark around the butts of balsam poplars may be need for the same
purpose.

Small stems of black walnut are easily perforated and make good pip-stems.
For spiles, use staghorn sumac or elder.

The only common trees from which sap will bleed from a cut are the birches
(especially black and yellow birch), the maples, hornbeam, butternut, walnut,
and sparingly, the hickories. Sugar maple usually bleeds from October to
May, but the flow of sap is greatest from, say, the middle of February to the
first of April. Black birch bleeds from the last of March to the middle of May.
Sugar can be made not only from the sugar maple, but from the silver or soft
maple, box-elder, and, in very limited quantities, even from butternut sap,
while birch sap yields an inferior syrup. In spring or early summer, if one is
traveling through a birch or maple forest and can find no water, he can
usually quench his thirst with sap. Speaking of water, by the way, it is well to
know that the water in cedar or cypress swamps is not stagnant, but
wholesome and palatable.

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