It’s not much to look at, and it’s certainly not high-tech, but it goes with me whenever I hit the road. It’s made of stamped steel, weighs next to nothing, and takes up no room to speak of. Known to Pentagon bureaucrats as the “OPENER, CAN, HAND, FOLDING, TYPE I,” for some unfathomable reason this handy gadget was also labeled the P-38, but to several generations of grunts it was always the “John Wayne.” And one came in every carton of Charlie-rations.

Well, C-rations are history now, and few will mourn their passing. Even the P-38 has fallen victim to technological progress, though it’s larger successor, the P-51, is nearly identical in most salient respects. In any case, I have an original. And here it is:

As you can see, it lost its showroom shine some decades back. But looks aren’t everything, are they? Performance counts, too. And my John Wayne is still up to the job. It’s prone to wandering off, however, which is why I’ve fitted the short lanyard. (Some folks attach a P-38 to their key chains. I don’t, however. The sharp, piercing point makes short work of pockets.) But enough throat-clearing. Let’s take a look at the old campaigner in action:

The drill is simple: Having chosen your can, hook the P-38′s little notch over the can’s raised edge. Then roll the sharp steel point down, stabbing it through the can lid. (Heavy steel lids will test the strength in your fingers, but John Wayne wouldn’t let a little thing like that stop him, would he? And we won’t, either.) Now rock the P-38 back upright, stopping just before the point breaks free. Roll down again. Rock back. Roll down. Rock back. Repeat as often as necessary, easing the can round till you’ve rolled and rocked the P-38 full circle.

A couple of cautions: Keep a firm grip on the can at all times. And mind the jagged edges of both can and lid…

Of course, more and more cans come with pull tabs. But you can never be sure that the can in your hand will prove so accommodating, can you? No matter. With John Wayne at your back, you’re covered. But suppose you don’t own a P-38? What then? First, ask around. If there’s a vet in your circle of family and friends, he (or she) may have a spare. No luck? Then try the surplus outlets. P-38s are still being offered for sale, usually for less than a buck. Which is probably less than the Pentagon paid for them. But that’s another story.

 
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A few weeks back I found the quarterly Campmor catalog in my mailbox, and I enjoyed thumbing through the pages as I ate lunch. I’m always favorably impressed by Campmor’s minimalist approach to marketing: newsprint pages, line illustrations, and not a single glossy portrait of an implausibly well‑groomed outdoorsperson to be seen anywhere. I was also impressed by the selection of tents on offer — 20 pages or more. We’ve come a long way from the day when GI shelter halves and elephantine umbrella tents designed for families of car campers were just about the only options.

Which is a very good thing. A tent is a home away from home, after all — a refuge in storms, a sanctuary during mass attacks by biting flies, even a guarantor of privacy in crowded campsites. So it’s not surprising that most paddlers own one or more tents. Usually more. And the most common reason for that is the difficulty of making a choice. Confronted with so many alternatives, it can be hard to decide which one is right for you. I’m not immune. Over the years I’ve acquired something like a dozen. All have served me well, though none was perfect for every clime and place. Living in the field for weeks at a time in a fixed survey camp is very different from high‑altitude mountaineering. Still, even when the intended use was well‑defined, the final choice was always difficult. Luckily, a systematic approach makes any task easier, and selecting a tent is no exception. Just begin at the beginning, with a clear‑headed understanding what’s most important…Read more…

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Some time back (OK, a looong time back), I wrote a piece for Paddling.net that I subtitled “The Virtues of Simplicity.” It concluded with a ringing call to arms, in which I argued that, since “self‑reliance and simplicity lie at the heart of what we [paddlers] do,” we should “heed the warning implicit in the note, ‘Batteries not included.’” The unstated implication, of course, was that we’d all be better off if we left most of our electronic gadgets at home. Good advice, that. Or so I thought at the time. But times change, and change comes increasingly fast. Today, it’s almost impossible to imagine any right‑thinking paddler heading out to the backcountry without a small arsenal of electronic aides: cell phone, GPS, e‑book reader, personal locator beacon…

And I’m no exception. Which is why I figured it was high time to revisit another topic from the past — water disinfection. Here, too, change has come fast. A for‑instance: In my most recent foray into the subject, a column optimistically titled “Water Purification Brought Up to Date,” I pooh‑poohed the idea that portable ultramicrofiltration (0.02 μm) systems would soon become available. But now, only five years on, they’re … well, not commonplace, exactly … but widely advertised. It’s true that field reports are mixed, with some users complaining that flow rates are dishearteningly slow. Still, the technology to filter even the smallest pathogens from water has indeed left the laboratory and ventured out into the backcountry.

Me? I’m not likely to embrace this particular advance any time soon. You can put my hesitancy down to impatience, if you like. Or simple laziness. In my experience, filters are fiddly things, and I blanch at the prospect of maintaining an ultramicrofilter in the field. I do use a gravity‑feed microfilter for bulk‑treating water in camp, but even this comparatively coarse (0.2 μm) filter requires a certain amount of coddling. Which is just one manifestation of a larger problem…Read more…

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