Camping 1968

We twenty-nine Scouts and two Scout leaders went to the woods for four days and three nights in the first week of January around 1968.
Our campsite was a place called Salt Peter Cave; a couple of miles walk cross-country from a back road near Piney Fork, Kentucky. The “cave” was an undercut bluff providing shelter maybe a hundred and fifty feet across the rock face to a depth of fifty to sixty feet from front to back.
This was a dry shelter with woods all around. So dry, in fact, that the ground within was six to fifteen inches of finely powdered dust and ash from the campfires of a hundred years and countless inhabitants. Small animal bones as well as teeth resembling human, might be sifted from any good scoop of dust.
Now, a good Scout could start a campfire in any weather using only one match. That good Scout also knew that extra canteens were for kerosene. The scout leaders frowned on this short cut to a quick fire, so we kept this to ourselves as best we could.
We had scattered out in groups of four or five so we could sleep close to a campfire within the group. The first night we had several campfires under the bluff, which was convenient and warm, but the increased smoke caused one Scout to have an asthma attack. We were then limited to one central fire full time and individual small fires for cooking only.
After that, the nights were near sleepless as we shivered in rolled up balls, without the benefit of a nearby fire. Completely buried in my sleeping bag, my only respite from the cold seemed to be my own breath warming my fingers.
For bedding, we laid our sleeping bags atop leaves we’d gathered earlier, which were piled, into hollows in the dust. No matter how many leaves we gathered, there was always some big pointed rock that wasn’t noticed during the day that would keep you company all night long.
In the very early morning hours many of us would gather near the main fire to warm up, listening to the splattering of the water in the pool and the chase of squirrels in the woods.
Icicles had formed on the overhang high above a shallow, partially frozen pool. Most of us immediately placed eggs and other perishables along the edge of the pool, which served as our outdoor refrigerator. A good idea, we thought. The raccoons thought so, too.
One morning it had snowed and must have warmed up somewhat to cause the icicles to fall into the pool, dispatching anything that the raccoons might have missed.
I was not, at that time, familiar with the role of cooking oil in food preparation, so scrambled eggs ultimately became egg crumbs scraped from the mess kit’s fry pan. They were tasty just the same.
Partially burnt Vienna sausage and cold pork and beans with mustard is an acquired taste. Food like this builds memory cells in the brain, for after forty years, I still vividly remember the taste, but at the time, we felt like we were eating like kings.
One of the Scouts within our group used an improvised foil reflector oven to bake biscuits, which turned out a little doughy but did not go uneaten. Some also baked potatoes or corn on the cob wrapped in foil and laid in the coals of the fire.
We learned to smear dish washing soap on the underneath side of our mess kits to make an easy job of removing the black soot after cooking.
We tended to lean more towards military type provisions rather than the traditional Scout supplies. Many a surplus WWII artifact came out of retirement in those days. Nearly every Scout had some memento of their fathers’ service during the war: a shovel, a duffle bag or a canteen. One Scout even brought a helmet. I had one of my fathers’ Army belts, along with a canteen on an ammo belt, which I got from the Army Surplus store.
My Yucca pack always looked very straight and uniformed. I was complemented on this and felt no need to mention that there was a cardboard box neatly fitted into the pack to hold its shape.
I had borrowed my father’s leather boots, not to be deterred by the fact that they were a little small and smaller still with two pair of socks. They had that military look about them that blended well with my “look”. As always, fashion before function.
But the boots soon got wet and then froze overnight. I placed them by the main fire in the morning only to see the toes curl up as they thawed. The boots became torturously small and contorted with almost no room for feet let alone any socks.
I suffered though the third day before resorting to my only backup, a pair of low top house moccasins. The moccasins had a low tolerance for the wet weather and soon gave up their very soles in protest. I ended up using my bootlaces to tie the fragmenting moccasins to my feet. These lasted long enough to make it to the last day.
By the time we were ready to go home, the dust had thoroughly infiltrated everything we had brought with us. I was obviously filthy from head to toe, but didn’t seem to care since everyone else was equally mortified.
I remember standing in the shower at home watching the streams of mud swirling down the drain. I was certainly happy to get into my warm bed that night.
I lost most of my toenails over the next few weeks, which grew back eventually. I still wonder if it was the cold or if it was the constrictive boots which caused this.
Maybe it was both.