A sleeping bag is expensive but is excellent for cold weather camping.  It is much too hot for the boy camper in summer.

Do not sleep in your clothing.  Unless it is too cold, undress, about as you do at home.  If the blanket feels tickly, it would not be a great crime, no matter what the tenderfoot says who wanted you to sleep on the ground, to take along a sheet.  I have never done this, however.

At the end of this chapter, you will find a list of things to take with you.

The camp fire and the cooking fire should be separate.  Almost any one can kindle a fire with dry materials.  It takes a woodman to build a fire when it has been raining and everything is wet.  The boy’s method of taking a few newspapers, and a handful of brush or leaves will not do.

First look around for an old dead top of a pine or cedar.  If you cannot find one, chop down a cedar tree.  Whittle a handful of splinters and shavings from the dry heart.  Try to find the lee side of a rock or log where the wind and rain do not beat in.  First put down the shavings or some dry birch bark if you can find it, and shelter it as well as you can from the rain.  Pile up some larger splinters of wood over the kindling material like an Indian’s wigwam.  Then light it and give it a chance to get into a good blaze before you pile on any larger wood and put the whole fire out.  It sounds easy but before you try it in the woods I advise you to select the first rainy day and go out near home and experiment.

To make a fire that will burn in front of the tent all night, first drive two green stakes into the ground at a slant and about five feet apart.  Then lay two big logs one on each side of a stake to serve as andirons.  Build a fire between these logs and pile up a row of logs above the fire and leaning against the stakes.  You may have to brace the stakes with two others which should have a forked end.  When the lower log burns out the next one will drop down in its place and unless you have soft, poor wood the fire should burn for ten hours.  With this kind of a fire and with a leanto, it is possible to keep warm in the woods, on the coldest, night in winter.

[Illustration:  The frame for a brush leanto]

This is the way to build a brush leanto:  First cut two sticks and drive them into the ground.  They should have a point on one end and a fork on the other.  Lay a stout pole across the two forks like a gypsy fire rig.  Then lean poles against the crosspiece and finally thatch the roof with spruce, hemlock or other boughs and pile up boughs for the sides.  A brush camp is only a makeshift arrangement and is never weather proof.  It is simply a temporary shelter which with the all-night fire burning in front will keep a man from freezing to death in the woods.  Any kind of a tent is better or even a piece of canvas or a blanket for the roof of the leanto will be better than the roof of boughs.  Be careful not to set the leanto on fire with the sparks from your camp fire.