Your library and camping?

Anytime we embark on a new hobby or activity, we become novices.  We might be experts in our field or other hobbies/activities…but in the new one, we are all as green as can be.  We are dumb, we don’t know what to do, we don’t know how to achieve our goals, and we don’t even know for sure what kind of gear or tools would work best to enjoy ourselves while we learn.

It’s tough being the “dumb” one in the crowd, but its even tougher when your alone and the dumb one.  In some activities, being alone and being dumb is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.  Some disasters can be fatal.

Fortunately, most of us come equipped with something known as “common sense” when it comes to being dumb and involved in a new activity.  This common sense factor can save our butts often, and it also pushes us to fill in some of our ignorant gaps before they do get us in a jam.  With many activities, little will substitute for actual hands on, but a good grasp of the basics can go a long ways towards achieving hands on with minimal pain, agony, fear, uncertainty, and wasted effort.  To get this grasp of the basics, especially when we lack the benefits of a mentor, we can resort to that age old method called “research.”

For most of us, one of our first stops for research will be the internet, and there IS an amazing amount of information available on the internet.  Much of it is in the same form as this blog or our website.  This is great, but sometimes we need things in a clear and concise format, with everything lined out in front of us, easy to take along and use while we’re indulging in our new camping hobby.

Books are ideal for this.  They are portable and easy to reference, most of us have been using books since early childhood.  They don’t require charging, batteries, or electric plugs to work either.  Books are also not cheap, and not all of them work for everyone.  Therefore, the first stop on the book front is going to be the library, where not only the stacks in our local branch have camping information, but there is also something called an “inter-library loan” where we can access books at many libraries, right from our local branch.

Why bother with the library for camping books?

It’s simple–you can take a look at the book, read it, digest what it has to offer as best you can, and then make an informed decision about whether or not you want to purchase a copy for yourself to take along for those times when you wonder what you should do.

So what are my qualifications to evaluate camping books?

Okay, so I’ve not done it all in terms of camping.  I have camped in California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Missouri, Wyoming, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Florida.  I’ve camped on the beaches of the Gulf Coast, a number of mountain ranges in the West, the hot Mohave desert, the Sonoran desert, sand dunes, forests, lake shores, swamps, and more than one dump (literally, but that’s a long story.)  I’ve heard opera singing echoing through a canyon, elk bugling in the fall, the howls of a wolf pack echoing through the mountains, been rained on, flooded out, had my tent collapse, nearly froze to death, been snowed on, ran out of food, ran out of water, forgot the coffee, been scared to death, encountered “desert rats” and full time forest residents of dubious legality, stealth camped, slept in a bedroll in the open, used a variety of tents, camped in RVs, trailers & converted vans, lived in camps for nearly a month, “travel-camped”, camped with kids, camped in a crowd, solitary camped, camped with dogs…I’ve tried a lot of things, sometimes on purpose.  I would put myself in the “somewhat skilled” category of American campers.

So I hit our local library’s online catalog and selected the books I wanted to take a look at before I recommended them to anyone.  Soon, I had a call–they were holding the books for me.  (Libraries are wonderful places, by the way!)

The slimmest was my first selection to skim through, and it was titled “Practical Camping Handbook” by Peter G. Drake.  It sounds wonderful, but…it didn’t quite live up to its title for American campers.  It turns out that the author, Peter G. Drake, is from the United Kingdom, and some of the wording was peculiar (to Americans anyhow) and some of the gear he discussed isn’t commonly available here.  The same went for a number of other issues that he wrote about–it just does not apply to most Americans when they are camping.

Woodall’s Campground Directories are geared more for RVers and vacationers, listing all kinds of information about commercial RV parks, campgrounds, etc. but they do also include a LOT of information about things in various regions to see and do.  For those planning a vacation camping trip, taking a look at the current edition at the library as part of your pre-vacation research & planning might be an excellent idea.  I wouldn’t recommend purchasing the book for camping purposes, although it is an excellent reference for full time RVers and frequent travelers.

Out of the initial trio of camping titles that came home to be read, the best option was Camping for Dummies.  The “Dummies” books are consistent in format and quality of information, and while it may not cover EVERYTHING there is to know, it’s a very complete camping reference book.  It may be a bit large to put in  your backpack, but it is still one I’d recommend for most people to purchase.  It’s just a solid reference book with a variety of topics.  (I may buy myself a copy, just because it is good reference material!)  I genuinely liked the book and its overall tone–it doesn’t talk down to the reader, nor does it assume they have acquired some secret language with technical overtones in regards to camping.  Skimming through it, I didn’t find a single thing that made me go “whoa, that’s not true” or “that’s not really accurate or correct.”

These three will be heading back to the library, as I await the next batch to arrive for me to check out.  Hopefully, it will include other gems like the Camping for Dummies book, and omit the not-very-good ones like the Practical Camping Handbook.  Check out your local library–it offers you a variety of resources, some of which may come as a huge surprise if you have not visited it recently, like e-books, dvds, computers, and the wide variety of books.  Best of all, unlike renting dvds or buying books yourself, it’s all free!

In this economy, finding free entertainment and information is like getting free money (maybe better!)