Under the Stars
IT’ S THE TIME of year when we’ll soon be seeing Christmas nat it scenes appearing everywhere. These always feature a big, bright shining star in a midnight-blue sky, which always reminds me of my childhood. I was born in SWA (Namibia) whe he air is as clean as can be, so the stars are the brig t you’ll ever see from earth. My father got me stargaz and showed me the brilliant full moon so clear and close I thought I could throw a stone onto it. The stars were a mystery to me then and remain so now. Few things fill me with wonder quite like lying in a cosy sleeping bag in the Namibian desert and gazing up at the winter night sky.
This article is about camps and camping. Phillip Hayes struck a chord in his October Trail Talk, “Do Something Different”, discussing the minimally-equipped, remote wilderness hunts undertaken by American Steven Rinella and how he cooks and eats everything he shoots. Phillip questioned our growing obsession with equipment for various fields of outdoor endeavour; here I’ll touch on camping equipment.
I began camp-cooking when I was eight or nine, after my dad taught
