How Henry David Thoreau Went Camping
It had been loaded the evening before at our door, half a mile from the river, with potatoes and melons from a patch which we had cultivated, and a few utensils, and was provided with wheels in order to be rolled around falls, as well as with two sets of oars, and several slender poles for shoving in shallow places, and also two masts, one of which served for a tent-pole at night; for a buffalo-skin was to be our bed, and a tent of cotton cloth our roof.
I love finding out how people traveled years ago. Whenever I go into an REI, I think about how so many people have traveled over the last thousand years without the latest technology or load-bearing backpack or carbon fiber hiking poles. And I’m not even talking about crazy adventure explorers like Lewis & Clark & Sacagawea or John Wesley Powell or John Muir. I’m talking about just regular people of all cultures who just had the knowledge and skills to take a trip across a landscape…and do just fine.
