Camping Out Analysis-1

Camping Out
Ernest Hemingway
Through his life and his work, Ernest Hemingway influenced world
culture more than any other American writer of his time. Born in Oak
Park, Illinois, in 1899, Hemingway began his writing career as a reporter,
and throughout his life he worked for newspapers, often on the front lines
of armed conflicts such as the Spanish Civil War (1936—1939) and the
Second World War (1939—1945). His adventures brought him close to
death several times—in the Spanish Civil War when shells landed in his
hotel room, in the Second World War when he was struck by a taxi during
a blackout, and in 1954 when his plane crashed in Africa.
Writing in an unadorned, unemotional but taut style, Hemingway
placed at the heart of his fiction the search for meaning in a world
disenchanted with old ideals. In his life as in his writing he was drawn to
individuals committed to the art of doing things well regardless of the larger
world's lack of direction or faith; he especially admired those who achieved
grace or beauty in the face of death, such as bullfighters, hunters, and soldiers.
His best-known books are The Sun Also Rises (1926), the novel that
established his reputation; A Farewell to Arms (1929); For Whom the Bell
Tolls (1940); and The Old Man and the Sea (1953). For the last he was
awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and in the following year he received the Nobel
Prize in Literature. Hemingway committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho, in
1961. In this essay, Hemingway uses the pattern of process analysis to order
his materials on the art of camping. He wrote this piece for the Toronto Star
in the early 1920s, before he gained worldwide recognition as a major
American writer. In it, we see his lifelong interest in the outdoors and his
desire to do things well.
Thousands of people will go into the bush this summer to cut the 1
high cost of living. A man who gets his two weeks' salary while he is on
vacation should be able to put those two weeks in fishing and camping
and be able to save one week's salary clear. He ought to be able to sleep
comfortably every night, to eat well every day and to return to the city
rested and in good condition.
But if he goes into the woods with a frying pan, an ignorance 2
of black flies and mosquitoes, and a great and abiding lack of
knowledge about cookery the chances are that his return will be very
different. He will come back with enough mosquito bites to make
the back of his neck look like a relief map of the Caucasus. His
digestion will be wrecked after a valiant battle to assimilate half-
cooked or charred grub. And he won't have had a decent night's sleep
while he has been gone.
He will solemnly raise his right hand and inform you that he 3
has joined the grand army of never-agains. The call of the wild may
be all right, but it's a dog's life. He's heard the call of the tame with
both ears. Waiter, bring him an order of milk toast.
In the first place he overlooked the insects. Black flies, no- 4
see-ums, deer flies, gnats and mosquitoes were instituted by the devil
to force people to live in cities where he could get at them better. If
it weren 't for them everybody would live in the bush and he would
be out of work. It was a rather successful invention.
But there are lots of dopes that will counteract the pests. The 5
simplest perhaps is oil of citronella. Two bits' worth of this purchased
at any pharmacist's will be enough to last for two weeks in the worst
fly and mosquito-ridden country.
Rub a little on the back of your neck, your forehead and your 6
wrists before you start fishing, and the blacks and skeeters will
shun you. The odor of citronella is not offensive to people. It smells
like gun oil. But the bugs do hate it.
Oil of pennyroyal and eucalyptol are also much hated by

mosquitoes, and with citronella they form the basis for many
proprietary preparations. But it is cheaper and better to buy
the straight citronella. Put a little on the mosquito netting that
covers the front of your pup tent or canoe tent at night, and
you won 't be bothered.
To be really rested and get any benefit out of a vacation a
man must get a good night's sleep every night. The first
requisite for this is to have plenty of cover. It is twice as cold
as you expect it will be in the bush four nights out of five, and
a good plan is to take just double the bedding that you think
you will need. An old quilt that you can wrap up in is as warm
as two blankets.
9 Nearly all outdoor writers rhapsodize over the browse bed.
It is all right for the man who knows how to make one and has
plenty of time. But in a succession of one-night camps on a
canoe trip all you need is level ground for your tent floor and you
will sleep all right if you have plenty of covers under you. Take
twice as much cover as you think that you will need, and then put
two-thirds of it under you. You will sleep warm and get your rest.
10 When it is clear weather you don't need to pitch your tent if
you are only stopping for the night. Drive four stakes at the head
of your made-up bed and drape your mosquito bar over that, then
you can sleep like a log and laugh at the mosquitoes.
11 Outside of insects and bum sleeping the rock that wrecks most
camping trips is cooking. The average tyro's idea of cooking is to
fry everything and fry it good and plenty. Now, a frying pan is a
most necessary thing to any trip, but you also need the old stew
kettle and the folding reflector baker.
12 A pan of fried trout can't be bettered and they don't cost any
more than ever. But there is a good and bad way of frying them.
13 The beginner puts his trout and his bacon in and over a
brightly burning fire; the bacon curls up and dries into a dry
tasteless cinder and the trout is burned outside while it is still raw
inside. He eats them and it is all right if he is only out for the day
and going home to a good meal at night. But if he is going to face
more and bacon the next morning and other equally well-cooked
dishes for the remainder of two weeks he is on the pathway to
nervous dyspepsia.
The proper way is to cook over coals. Have several cans of
Crisco or Cotosuet or one of the vegetable shortenings along that
are as good as lard and excellent for all kinds of shortening: Put
the bacon in and when it is about half cooked lay the trout in the
hot grease, dipping them in corn meal first. Then put the bacon on
top of the trout and it will baste them as it slowly cooks.
The coffee can be boiling at the same time and in a smaller 15
skillet pancakes being made that are satisfying the other campers
while they are waiting for the trout.
With the prepared pancake flours you take a cupful of pancake 16
flour and add a cup of water. Mix the water and flour and as soon as
the lumps are out it is ready for cooking. Have the skillet hot and keep
it well greased. Drop the batter in and as soon as it is done on one side
loosen it in the skillet and flip it over. Apple butter, syrup or cinnamon
and sugar go well with the cakes.
While the crowd have taken the edge from their appetites 17
flapjacks the trout have been cooked and they and the bacon are
ready to serve. The trout are crisp outside and firm and pink inside
and the bacon is well done—but not too done. If there is anything
better than that combination the writer has yet to taste it in a lifetime
devoted largely and studiously to eating.
The stew kettle will cook you dried apricots when they 18
have have resumed their predried plumpness after a night of
soaking, serve to concoct a mulligan in, and it will cook
macaroni. you are not using it, it should be boiling water for the
dishes.
In the baker, mere man comes into his own, for he can make 19
a pie that to his bush appetite will have it all over the product that mother
used to make, like a tent. Men have always believed that there was
something mysterious and difficult about making a pie. Here is a great
secret. There is nothing to it. We've been kidded for years. Any man of
average office intelligence can make at least as good a pie as his wife.
All there is to a pie is a cup and a half of flour, one-half tea- 20
spoonful of salt, one-half cup of lard and cold water. That will make pie
crust that will bring tears of joy into your camping parmer's eyes.
Mix the salt with the flour, work the lard into the flour, make it 21
up into a good workmanlike dough with cold water. Spread some flour
on the back of a box or something flat, and pat the dough around a while.
Then roll it out with whatever kind of round bottle you prefer. Put a little
more lard on the surface of the sheet of dough and then slosh a little flour
on and roll it up and thenroll it out again with tha bottle.
Cut out a piece of the rolled out dough big enough to line 22
a pie tin. like the kind with holes in the bottom. Then put
dried apples that have soaked all night and been sweetened, or
your apricots. or your blueberries, and then take another sheet
of the dough and drape it gracefully over the top, soldering it
down at the edges with your fingers. Cut a couple of slits in the
top dough sheet and prick it a few times with a fork in an artistic
manner.
Put it in the baker with a good slow fire for forty-five minutes
and then take it out and if your pals are Frenchmen they will kiss
you. The penalty for knowing how to cook is that the others will
make you do all the cooking.
24 It is all right to talk about roughing it in the woods. But the
real woodsman is the man who can be really comfortable in the
bush.

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Camping Out

Oil of pennyroyal and eucalyptol are also much hated by

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