THE WARMEST SOCKS ON EARTH

THE WIGWAM CANADA

I used to work sporting goods store selling outdoor footwear (if you want to get a real education in outdoor gear, go to work for one of the big retailers. You get all sorts of training, and also all sorts of pro deals). We sold A LOT of socks. They were our best sellers, and our real moneymakers. We carried several brands, and there were great things to say about each of them. I outfitted a lot of people going north, not just campers and hikers, but hunters and oil-rig workers going into Alberta or Alaska, and the sock most of them wanted was the Wigwam Canada. This is an incredibly old school hiking sock. It's a super-thick Merino wool/poly crew sock with an extra-heavy cushion. The guy who ran our camping division, a veteran hiker from the cut-off jeans and waffle-stomper days, wore Canadas every single day, inside a pair of old hiking boots (don't know what brand--could be Merrells or Wolverine or Vasque--but the old style with a metal shank). It didn't matter to him how hot it was. That super-thick cushion let him stand all day. Me, I wear them when I go hunting in the snow. They can't be beat--but you will need to buy your boots at least one full size too big.

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What's the greatest tent in the world?

I do a lot of luxury camping. I belong to a medieval tourneying society, the Society for Creative Anachronism , and we camp out at our big events . I grew up backpacking, and still go, but most of my outdoor time is spent either in deer camp, or at tourneys, when I want a bit more luxury. A lot of big camps use canvas cabin tents, which are common at medieval events, and have a great Western feel to them. But they are a lot to haul and set up (I know, I do it all the time). I've found a really great compromise. The Dream House Luxury Yurt Bell is a single-pole, round tent with low walls, inspired by Mongolian Yurts. It's almost nothing like a yurt, mind you: it's really a British Bell tent, a military design from the Napoleonic wars that is REALLY stable and REALLY roomy. The biggest model has a 5 meter diameter and stands almost 10 feet tall. I personally like the 4m version. This is the best field tent you can buy: roomy, sturdy, light, extremely easy to transport and

Heaven for your feet

My trusty, well worn Renegades Teddy Roosevelt and I have a similar opinion when it comes to Whitetail hunting. It's too sedentary. I do it, because it's the only game in New York, but I don't like the sitting. There's just too much sitting around and waiting. There doesn't have to be--I've actually and some success still hunting--and I've had a lot of failures still hunting too--but, for the most part, Whitetails are hunted from stands, so thats how I hunt them. But not always. This one time, I was walking into the woods. My plan was to still hunt up to the ground blind where I was going to post. It was just after sunrise, but it was over cast and a bit misty. It was bow season, in early October. The place where we usually hunt, there's a power-line trail going up hill side, with woods to either side of that. Because there are some houses near by where we enter, we walk into the woods with our rifles unloaded. There is (or was, it's gone

Delta Blues

The Delta with Mt. Diablo at sunset. Photo By Captndelta - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4519866 I'm a California boy, so people don't believe it when I tell them "yeah: I grew up on the delta." They think of the Mississippi Delta, with it's sloughs and backwaters and thousands of islands, levees, flood gates, bypasses, bass boats, house boats, houses on stilts, and Jazz--but that was Sacramento - San Joaquin River Delta in Northern California of my youth. Seriously: all we were missing were gators and Cajuns. We lived on the American River, which fed into the delta at Sacramento. We were on the parkway, a wide nature preserve between the levees. In my suburban back yard we had coyotes, black-tail deer, turtles, beaver, skunks, rattle snakes, and really good trout, steelhead, and salmon fishing. But more than that: we pulled crawdads out of the river by hand. We fished for catfish at night, using stink-bait and Colema

Dugga Boy

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