“All right,” said my father, “but it ain’t all going to be fun. There’s lots of work to be done. We’ve got gear to stow, supplies to plan, and we don’t have much time. You’re both of age to pull your own weight. I don’t want any kid stuff. No fights, no arguing.”

Tim said, “Thank you, Dad. I’ll do my part.”

“I will too,” I said.

My father smiled at us. “I know you will,” he said. “Well, what’s the holdup? When do we eat?”

My stepmother got up and started putting supper on the table. Maybe it was where I was sitting, maybe it was only the reflection from the fire, but I was sure that she had tears in her eyes.

These days, camping is so simple. But think for a moment how it was fifty years ago. We had no plastic, no way to waterproof food or anything else. There were no down-filled sleeping bags—at least not for poor people like us. We made do with blankets held together with safety pins. There were no pump-up gas lanterns for light. We used stubby candles with an oiled-paper shade. We didn’t have fancy Coleman stoves either. We cooked over a wood fire. Our utensils were one heavy Dutch oven and a skillet blackened by many seasons of camping. We had a flint and steel, but my father had taken three hundred kitchen matches and poured melted candles over them so they were encased in a waterproof block of wax that ought to see us through a dozen trips. Freeze-dried meals? The nearest thing to that were the dried pinto beans that would be our staple food, along with the fish we would catch and the game we would shoot. Our fishing gear was basic. No spin casting rods or Fiberglas poles. We had a couple of hundred feet of heavy twine and some hooks. We would cut our poles as we went. Probably the only item of gear we had that was better than the equipment most people have today were our knives. Each of us had a four-inch hunting knife, hand-forged by Harry Perkins over in Deer Creek and sharpened to a fine edge on my father’s whetstone. Our boots were raw leather, uninsulated. Our clothing was rough, heavy wool—uglier than today’s Dacron but much warmer, especially when wet. We wore itchy long underwear, the kind that legend says pioneer children were sewn into from October until April. It kept us cool on warm days and warm on cold ones. Our hats, by today’s standards, were ugly, flop-brimmed messes, but they kept off the sun, and the rain didn’t run down our necks. Tim had his single-shot .22 Winchester rifle and fifty rounds. He had paid for every single round himself with money earned helping the farmers bring in their hay. My father had a five-shot .44 Colt, with a long barrel, and a 30–30 rifle wrapped up in an oil-soaked rag. I wasn’t allowed a gun, although I could recite ballistic tables of all the major calibers from reading them in my father’s gun books. We had no tent, just a heavy canvas fly that we could hang from four trees to keep off the rain. Our jackets were heavy, brown wool with bright patches. When wet with rain, one could weigh at least twenty pounds. But they kept out the cold and the wind.