Even though a man rigs up his own outfit, he never gets it quite to suit him.

An acquaintance in Nova Scotia just apprised me of this great quote by Horace Kephart, and it would seem to describe me to a T. To me half the fun of getting out into the wilds is the preparation, the making of kit, the tweaking of kit, the seemingly never ending quest for the perfect set up.

“The only way to have it so is to do the work yourself. One can wear ready-made clothing, he can exist in ready-furnished rooms, but a ready-made camping outfit is a delusion and a snare. It is sure to be loaded with gimcracks that you have no use for, and to lack something that you will be miserable without.

It is great fun, in the long winter evenings, to sort over your beloved duffel, to make and fit up the little boxes and hold-alls in which everything has its proper place, to contrive new wrinkles that nobody but yourself has the gigantic brain to conceive, to concoct mysterious dopes that fill the house with unsanctimonious smells, to fish around for materials, in odd corners where you have no business, and, generally, to set the female members of the household buzzing around in curiosity, disapproval, and sundry other states of mind.

To be sure, even though a man rigs up his own outfit, he never gets it quite to suit him. Every season sees the downfall of some cherished scheme, the failure of some fond contrivance. Every winter sees you again fussing over your kit, altering this, substituting that, and flogging your wits with the same old problem of how to save weight and bulk without sacrifice of utility. All thoroughbred campers do this as regularly as the birds come back in spring.

And their kind has been doing it since the world began. It is good for us. If some misguided genius should invent a camping equipment body that none could find fault with, half our pleasure in life would be swept away.”