Woodcraft and Camping from 1884: A Modern Book Review

This 1884 book has never been out of print. For its first 70 years, that was probably due to utmost relevance. My reading of it still found applicable bits, tons in fact. Yet, there is much that is now distant and foreign, but in an entertaining way.

First called, Woodcraft, later editions go by, Woodcraft and Camping. The author, George Washington Sears (1821 – 1890), wrote for Forest and Stream and was an early conservationist. Appearing under the pen name "Nessmuk", Sears popularized self-guided canoe camping tours in America’s Northeast and championed what is today called ultralight camping or ultralight backpacking.

That is what I find interesting. The tension of being an adventure writer who promotes the great outdoors yet, who wishes no one responds to their prose and calls for exploring, less nature be impacted.

Sears starts off hot. He indicts society for its free spending ways when people have money, and even when they don’t. He takes chip shots at the average summer traveler who gets poor return on investment for their leisure dollars.

I loved his simple advice of going light when camping. Less is more to carry and for the budget. He emphasizes, never losing one’s cool when lost and never “quarrel with the compass”. Sears talks of bugs and how one young man was bit so bad that his eye closed and the brow hung over like a clamshell. The repellant solution? “Three ounces pine tar, two ounces castor oil, one ounce pennyroyal oil. Simmer all together over a slow fire, and bottle for use. You will hardly need more than a two-ounce vial full in a season.”

Sears exhaustively covers knives, canoes, fishing lures, shelters, and camp sites. It is cooking advice that is simply awesome, “Everything has been cooked in a tin pail and a skillet—potatoes, tea, pork, mutton, slapjacks. You wonder how everything would have been prepared in so few utensils.” 

Great prose here suggesting Sears came from money but later struggled, “It is probably true that nothing connected with out-door life in camp is so badly botched as the cooking. It is not through any lack of the raw material, which may be had of excellent quality in any country village. It is not from lack of intelligence or education, for the men you meet in the woods, as outers or sportsmen, are rather over than under the average in these respects. Perhaps it is because it has been dinned into our ears from early childhood, that an appetite, a healthy longing for something good to eat, a tickling of the palate with wholesome, appetizing food, is beneath the attention of an aesthetic, intellectual man.”

Then there is this specific advice:

- To make perfect coffee, just two ingredients are necessary, and only two. These are water and coffee. It is owing to the bad management of the latter that we drink poor coffee.

- Almost any man can cook potatoes, but few cook them well. Most people think them best boiled in their jackets, and to cook them perfectly in this manner is so simple and easy, that the wonder is how any one can fail.

- And do not despise the fretful porcupine; he is better than he looks. If you happen on a healthy young specimen when you are needing meat, give him a show before condemning him. Shoot him humanely in the head, and dress him.

But this is the best. “Fried squirrels are excellent for a change, but are mostly spoiled by poor cooks, who put tough old he's and tender young squirrels together, treating all alike. To dress and cook them properly, chop off heads, tails and feet with the hatchet; cut the skin on the back crosswise, and, inserting the two middle fingers, pull the skin off in two parts, (head and tail). Clean and cut them in halves, leaving two ribs on the hindquarters. Put hind and fore quarters into the kettle, and parboil until tender. This will take about twenty minutes for young ones, and twice as long for the old.”

Sears was not known to have married. Perhaps this passage explains why, “I often have a call to pilot some muscular young friend into the deep forest, and he usually carries a large pack-basket, with a full supply of quart cans of salmon, tomatoes, peaches, etc. As in duty bound, I admonish him kindly, but firmly, on the folly of loading his young shoulders with such effeminate luxuries; often, I fear, hurting his young feelings by brusque advice. But at night, when the camp-fire burns brightly, and he begins to fish out his tins, the heart of the Old Woodsman relents, and I make amends by allowing him to divide the groceries.”

Back to food, specifically spices. He suggests keeping it simple, “Do not carry any of the one hundred and one condiments, sauces, garnishes, etc., laid down in the books. Salt, pepper, and lemons fill the bill in that line. Lobster-sauce, shrimp-sauce, marjoram, celery, parsley, thyme, anchovies, etc., may be left at the hotels.”

Sears’ writing is fun. He calls canoes, ‘a poor man’s yacht’. Descriptions and the excitement behind running into armies of deer and turkey rival rich fiction but must be believed.

His last lines speak to the tension of being both adventure writer and conservationist, “Wherefore, let us be thankful that there are still thousands of cool, green nooks beside crystal springs, where the weary soul may hide for a time, away from debts, duns and deviltries, and a while commune with nature in her undress. 

And with kindness to all true woodsmen; and with malice toward none, save the trout-hog, the netter, the cruster, and skin-butcher, let us prepare to turn in.”

To help you out, here is a glossary of some terms. Duns means dullards. Trout-hog is an over fisher who does not share. Netter is a fisher who does not see the poor sportsmanship in using a net. A cruster tracks game too easily across crusted snow. And the skin-butcher wastes the meat. 

Awesome, simply awesome.