Whether it’s a hunting, fishing or general adventure trip, I have every piece of equipment needed for a safe and successful outing. The stuff tends to accumulate when you’ve been doing those things for half a century.
Even my backpacking stove, a classic Coleman 502, is now considered an antique. But, hey, if you treat your gear with care, it can not only save you money, but may even save your life some day in the Cascades.
But I have an embarrassing confession. Every time I’m staging for a new expedition (which I’m doing right now), I can’t help myself: I gotta make a trip to Bass Pro or one of the online outfitters like REI to see what I can buy that’s new. Come on, though, admit it, you’re just like me, right?
Gear and gadgets! It’s part of the outdoor experience, right?
My outlook reminds me of the 1983 movie “Never Cry Wolf.” It’s an adventure story about a young, inexperienced biologist, Tyler, who is deposited alone in the Arctic to investigate why the caribou population is dwindling. He’s dropped off by bush pilot Rosie Little, played by Brian Dennehy. But before they take off into the wild, Dennehy’s character discards about half of Tyler’s gear because there’s too much of it and it’s too heavy to get the plane airborne.
“I really had no way of knowing just exactly what of the department’s gear we donated to the people of Nusack,” Tyler narrates.
“That big wooden box right there,” yells Rosie as Tyler shoves boxes out of the plane, “go on, get rid of it. You don’t need that.”
“But on the third attempted take off, it was what I might really need … I had no way of knowing …”
Yikes, a biologist in the Yukon with no gadgets.
And remember the scene in “The Edge” when Anthony Hopkins makes fun of the Alec Baldwin character for wanting to take battery-heated socks into the wilderness? I recall slumping down in my seat ’cause I thought it was a pretty good idea, but it was being mocked as not-so-manly.
FYI, battery-heated sock liners will run you about 50 bucks.
The Energizer-bunny socks notwithstanding, there are some pretty neat gadgets now available to take outdoors, some of which have been around for a couple of years and some which are new. Here are my favorites:
