fire in your hand: April 2020

Stoves And Fire Lexicon

(with additional nonsense thrown in for seasoning)

Lexicon - A list of hard words with their meanings often printed in the back of the book.

alcohol: (1) A relatively clean-burning, safe fuel made from renewable resources. Forms useful to backpackers are ethanol (grain alcohol), methanol (wood alcohol), and denatured (grain alcohol with additives to prevent human consumption – the denaturing agent is usually methanol). Alcohol produces less heat than fuels based on petroleum, so you have to carry more. (2) Muscle relaxant.

aluminum: A lightweight but strong metal. Boy Scouts and other military forces have used inexpensive and lightweight aluminum mess kits for decades. Aluminum has about three quarters the strength of steel but is only about half the weight. It is much lighter and cheaper than titanium, but no longer trendy.

asbestos suit: Handy to have in case of stove accidents. Provides insulation and fireproofing. More useful with older, white gas stoves that are more likely to explode. Also nice for those in the habit of spilling fuel on themselves. A frequent need for one of these is a good indicator that maybe you should find another hobby.

asbestos: Substance used in making asbestos suits. Asbestos it gets for fireproofing. (Read that again, more slowly, please.) Causes a nasty form of lung cancer when inhaled. Therefore, if you have an asbestos suit, then don’t inhale it.

auto gas: (1) “White gas”. (2) Self-inflicted condition from eating the wrong foods.

AYCE: The hiker’s favorite acronym. Stands for “all you can eat”. Sometimes hikers burning 4000 to 6000 calories per day or more, coming into a quiet town hosting an unsuspecting AYCE buffet tend to amaze and frighten local people and inspire rapid policy changes at all restaurants in town.

backpacker: (1) A person who hikes, stays overnight along a trail, and carries all needed equipment and supplies. (2) Irresponsible, antisocial, smelly and pigheaded individual who follows his own rules while grinning madly and/or talking loudly to himself. (Yes, they tend to be male.) Quote: “He came to town with one shirt and $20 and didn’t change either one.”

bail handle: A wire handle like the one on a bucket. If used on a pot, can fall down against the side, heat up, and give you a nasty burn, defeating its purpose and causing you to bail out.

baking oven: On the trail, a pot with a lid (nonstick coating optional) that can be used to simulate baking. The pot should be out of immediate contact with a flame to prevent overheating. This is the kind of thing used by urban pansies in drive-in campgrounds. Backpackers and thru-hikers don’t have the time or patience to play with this sort of toy.

baking: What you can do at home but not on the trail. No really.

bandanna: (1) A small cotton cloth of medium-fine weave. Originally designed as a headscarf, bandannas can be used for everything from washing dishes to filtering water. (2) Not a fruit. Not to be taken internally, especially the ones with paisley designs, unlaundered, or both.

base pack weight: The weight of your backpack and everything you bring home again.

bear: (1) Any species of the genus ursus, and of the closely allied genera. Bears are plantigrade carnivores, but they live largely on fruits and insects. Plantigrade: Walking with the entire sole of the foot on the ground, as humans, bears, raccoons, and rabbits do. Fruits: Those other people, the ones you can’t stand. Insects: See “fruits”. (2) An animal which has some resemblance to a bear in form or habits, but no real affinity, as the woolly bear, ant bear, water bear, or sea bear. (3) Mice, skunks, raccoons, woodrats, chipmunks, rabbits and anything else with teeth and an appetite. Includes bluejays, crows, ravens and other hikers whom you do not like. Generally speaking, anything with an appetite.

bear bag: (1) Bear pinata. (2) A bag that a hiker carries food in. The bear bag is suspended from a tree branch at night in order to keep bears from getting into it. Some high-tech bear bags are made from space age Kevlar fabric to make it harder for bears to rip open (if a bear does find the bag). Some have reported that this can result in an intact, saliva-covered and well-chewed bag containing food crumbs. The usual bear bag consists of a bag (clever choice there!) and rope or cord long enough to hang food and supplies out of the reach of bears, usually from a tree branch. The bear bag and rope are used while in bear country, and wherever other annoying animals could get to the food. Mice, skunks, raccoons, woodrats, chipmunks and anything else with teeth and an appetite are honorary bears. Items that must be protected include toothpaste, soap, deodorant, sunscreen and anything else with a scent. Some claim that anything carrying a human smell qualifies, including clean, scentless odor proof plastic bags. Savvy critters frequently exposed to campers are known to have learned that anything associated with humans may contain munchies, and some of them are rumored to be attracted to the smell of new, clean, ostensibly scentless plastic bags. (3) Property of a bear: what your food bag becomes after the bear gets it. If this happens, then give up already.

bear bagging: (1) A camp game in which contestants attempt to hoist a heavy container of food onto a fragile tree limb without breaking the limb or having the bag crash back to earth. The winner must place the bag a sufficient distance from both the trunk of the tree and the ground. The regulation minimum distances are four feet from the tree trunk, four feet under the limb, and 10 feet above the ground. This is not a deterrent for smart or strong bears. (2) What happens to your food bag when a bear gets it. I.e. the bear has “bagged” your food. A food bag full of ravenous mice is considered to have been bagged.

bear canister: A hard-sided food storage container made of metal or tough plastic. The idea is to deter or prevent a bear from getting at food carried by hikers into the backcountry. Most bear canisters are not airtight, meaning that scents escaping from bear canisters can still attract bears. Bears may become angry when they have located your food canister but found that they can’t break into it. Stand well back.

bear pinata: (1) A delicious find for an ursine, who can have endless fun batting food bags around until they explode and spill tasty treats. (2) A sleeping hiker inside a bivy sack, a lightweight waterproof shell designed to preserve freshness. Snack in a sack. Snack in a wrap.

beer: An alcoholic beverage made from barley, water, yeast and hops. Most hikers crave it, but since there is no dehydrated form, few hikers carry it. Beer cannot be burned in backpacking stoves and must be metabolized by the body. Though useless for cooking, it often causes joy. Beer can lead to mental and physiological changes that range from pleasant and fuzzy emotions to complete and even catastrophic muscle relaxation. Should be taken orally. (See “muscle relaxant”.)

billy can (or billy pot): The traditional Australian backcountry cooking pot, often used for making tea. It is about twice as high as wide (similar in proportions to some large food cans), and usually has both a wire bail handle and a tight-fitting lid. Capacities range from 16 to 64 ounces (0.5 - 1.6L). Makes a handy container for storing and carrying a small stove.

blended-fuel canisters: Fuel cartridges for canister stoves. They contain a blend of propane and butane, sometimes with isobutane or isopropane added to maintain a steadier heat output as fuel is used up. One problem with fuel canisters is that it’s hard to tell how much fuel remains inside one, therefore, a backpacker may accumulate a closet full of partially-emptied canisters.

BOB: Big Orange Ball. (1) The sun. Example: “I wonder if Bob is ever going to come out today?” or “Good morning Bob, glad you could make it, because it has been pretty darn cold lately,” or “Bob, could you please turn it down? It’s too darn hot.” (2) An exploding stove, as seen from a hiker’s perspective. Chain reaction. (3) A hiker who has forgotten his asbestos suit and stood too close to his stove when it went nova, and has then become a secondary form of Big Orange Ball. Once you see one of these, you’ll give up cooking forever.

boiled wool: (1) Wool fabric washed in hot water and felted, resulting in a tighter, more weather-resistant weave that is less prone to shrinking than plain wool weaves. (2) Food you just can’t bear to look in the eye anymore, much less eat. (3) Cotton duck.

bowl: (1) Sort of like a cup but bigger and shallower. What you eat food from. (2) What you can do for amusement when you get back to town.

breakfast: (1) First meal of the day. (2) Act of pulling down your shelter and packing things to make a fast getaway. Sometimes done in the presence of bears, mice or mosquitoes, for instance. In those cases, it is broken into two words, “break fast”, for easier carrying.

broadcast burn: (1) A prescribed fire that burns a designated area. (2) What you get from listening to Rush Limbaugh. Also known as “butthead bite” and “rage rash”. (3) News program telling the story of the small campfire you started that burned down several states. (See “lynching”.)

burner: (1) The part of a stove where fuel magically becomes fire. (2) A stove. (3) A sloppy backpacker who habitually sets everything on fire.

butane canisters: Fuel cartridge for canister stoves that contain only butane. Butane burns cooler, and has a high boiling point so it performs relatively poorly when the air temperature is below 45 degrees F.

buzzardbait: (1) A poorly-prepared hiker, or one who is injured or sick, who requires emergency help or else will be eaten by birds. (2) Ultralight backpackers, as viewed by jealous and unbelieving conventional backpackers, the assumption being that ultralighters can’t possibly be carrying enough gear or food, and therefore will perish soon. Belied by figures such as Brian Robinson and Andrew Skurka, who each used these techniques to safely hike thousands of miles in a single year and set records for distance and speed.

cache: (1) A supply of food and/or supplies left hidden for later retrieval. (2) A party room for mice.

camp coffee: (1) Beverage made from water and dark, bitter substances, usually by adding coffee grounds to a pot of hot water, then drinking the resulting fluid and as little as possible of the bottom sludge. (2) Camp for adults where everything is made of coffee, or coffee-flavored substances. (3) Liquid used as a last resort to restore the will to live during bad backpacking trips. Normally contains 98% caffeine, 95% acid, 5% drowned bugs, 11% ash, and 27% unknown substances, and maybe a few strands of pubic hair.

camp stove: (1) Parody of trail appliance designed by Andy Warhol in 1975 having loud colors, a big floppy collar, and made entirely from synthetic fabrics. (2) A portable range too big and heavy to be used as a backpacking stove. Typically had two burners and closed up like a suitcase. No longer allowed as carry-on luggage, or for for in-flight cooking unless you’re on a fun airline, and traveling with the right people. (Hint: If they bring livestock on the plane with them you may be in luck.)

campfire: (1) The thing that burned down your camp, possibly originating from a big ball of fire (BOB). (2) A fire lovingly made by skilled artisans from locally-grown, organic and all natural materials, precisely selected for size, shape, color and texture.

can opener: A tool used in cities. Canned food is too heavy for backpackers to carry, even “conventional” (i.e. stupid) ones, though that doesn’t stop some of them.

canister: Fuel cartridge for a canister stoves. Canisters contain a pressurized blend of fuels like propane, butane, isobutane, and isopropane that convert directly to gases as they leave the canister. This helps to make canister stoves simpler to operate than liquid-fuel stoves. This fuel is relatively expensive and canisters aren’t generally recyclable.

cat stove: (1) A small, homemade double-wall stove made from empty cat food cans. Invented by Roy L. “TrailDad” Robinson, father of “Flyin” Brian Robinson, first person to hike the Calendar Triple Crown. (Hiking the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide Trail and Pacific Crest Trail in 12 months.) (2) Any stove made by cats, or used to cook cats, or to cook food for cats, or used by cats to cook or burn food. (Very few cats are good cooks.)

chain reaction: (1) BOB. (2) What happens when a chemical reaction breaks its leash and all sorts of interesting and unfortunate things begin to occur simultaneously. Unsupervised chemistry. (3) From physics, a multistage nuclear reaction, especially a self-sustaining series of fissions in which the release of neutrons from the splitting of one atom leads to the splitting of others. Probably not often seen while using backpacking stoves, except for the most cleverly made and ineptly used models.

charcoal: Wood that isn’t wood anymore, and coal that really isn’t coal. Made by heating wood in a closed space without oxygen. The volatile substances (smoky things) are cooked out of the wood, leaving only carbon behind. This is called charcoal. Now you know.

chemical reaction: (1) What’s really happening when fuel combines with oxygen to make heat and light. Molecules of fuel hook up with molecules of oxygen and achieve a lower net energy state and a more relaxed lifestyle. The extra energy has to go somewhere, and that’s how your eyebrows get singed. (2) The blank stare on the faces of students in chemistry class. (3) Result of too much muscle relaxant.

chemistry: A branch of science invented to explain how hotdogs get cooked. Also handy for making beer.

chimney: A chute used to guide hot gases away from a fire, usually associated with a fireplace. Not used in backpacking due to the shortage of hikers who can carry the hundreds of bricks needed to pull it off.

chocolate: A source of calories and energy for hikers. Counted by some as one of the major food groups. Chocolate generates a major rush of energy from its high sugar content, followed by a long period of contented sloth due to its equally high fat content. Effects are similar to muscle relaxant, though chocolate has less tendency to induce stupidity. Many chocolate plants bear fruit twice a year, in the fall and again in the spring, a cycle which has given rise to the two great holidays of Halloween and Easter. The latter holiday is characterized by a wide variety of chocolate edibles in the shape of small bunnies whose heads are just the right size and shape for biting off. One chocolate bar is good, two are better. Bunny heads are absolutely perfect.

chopsticks: (1) East Asian implements of psychological torture inflicted upon restaurant patrons in order to generate a false impression of authenticity during a meal. (2) A method of reducing large pieces of wood into small pieces of wood for burning in a small cooking fire or a wood burning stove. Testosterone-poisoned young men will try to do this with the outside edge of the hand while making loud and aggressive noises, often injuring themselves and scaring others. Women and experienced outdoor enthusiasts will do this by leaning a target stick against a rock or fallen log and stomping it with a boot or shoe sole. Obnoxious yelling is replaced by the phrase “Now that’s how you do it.”

churchkey: A steel tool used to cut triangular holes in cans. Essential for making the traditional cat stove. One end of this tool has a small tab that hooks over the edge of the can and a sharp, pointed triangle that pierces the can and cuts the opening. Churchkeys were widely used in olden days when beer came in steel cans that had to be ripped open to expose the contents.

The origin of the term “churchkey” is lost in the mists of history. It may have arisen from the desperation of beer drinkers on Sunday afternoons, when bars were closed, and the only way they could get at muscle relaxant was to open the cans of beer they already had on hand. Some speculate that “churchkey” is a corruption of the name “Chugach”, an Eskimo tribal name in turn descended from “Chugachmiut” first recorded in the days when Russians claimed ownership of Alaska, though the Russians spelled it “Chugatz” or “Tchougatskoi”. The exact meaning is also unclear, but may it be related to the modern “chugalug”, which, as both the term and the practice migrated west across Siberia into Europe and then to the Americas, may have taken on the name of the implement actually used to get at the beer, rather than the practice of drinking it.

Another school of thought is that the term may have originated with the Chugach National Forest’s policy on pets: “Dog and Cat Policy: Pets must be confined or on a lead or inebriated into submission while in Forest Service developed sites, such as campgrounds, trailheads, picnic areas, and pull outs, to stop them from bothering fish and wildlife on trails and in the backcountry, and for their own safety, and for the amusement of staff.” Again, the thinking was that pets were to be made as docile as if they were in church, and the key to that was beer. From there it was a short leap to the implement for obtaining beer (or unlocking the beer can), the Chugach-key, or later, “churchkey”. What isn’t quite as clear is how the pets were kept from singing bawdy songs at all hours and getting into drunken brawls, so this version may be apocryphal, although a group of cats rolling around singing honkytonk ballads and a bunch of dogs duking it out would be in keeping with the goal of amusing U.S. Forest Service staff, and possibly some of the local fish and wildlife as well, not to mention campers.

cocoa: (1) A drink made from cocoa. (2) Powder produced from cocoa beans, from which cocoa is made. Created by separating the cocoa beans into cocoa butter and tasty solids (the powdery stuff). Yummy.

coffee pot: (1) A cooking pot specifically designed to make coffee in. Has a handle on one side and a spout on the other. Distinguishable from a teapot in that no stupid song has ever been written about a coffee pot. (2) Condition resulting in susceptible individuals from drinking too much coffee, and having to spend time “on the pot”. Also known as “coffee butt”.

coffee: A brownish liquid made by soaking the dried, roasted, ground beans of the coffee plant in hot water. Has an appealing taste if done correctly and provides a jolt of caffeine to the system. Some hikers avoid coffee because caffeine can be dehydrating. Has also been used experimentally as a developer for photographic film, but generally resulted in blurred pictures due to the jitters. Most photography is now digital anyway.

coleman: The greatest name in camping gear. Yeah, right.

controlled burn: Opposite of uncontrolled burn. What you want when cooking lunch, as in food having just the right amount of burn to it.

cooking fire: (1) A fire that is ready for cooking over, as in “that fire is really cooking”. (2) A fire to cook over. (3) An uncontrolled burn, as in “that fire is really cooking!”, often screamed in a loud voice while running away in panic mode.

cooking: The process by which food is made yummy. It separates us from all but the cleverest of our pets and farm animals, even cats.

cootie: Scroggin.

cotton duck: (1) A heavy canvas treated to make it water repellent. (2) Waterfowl made inedible because of overcooking, which turns tender, moist meat into a substance similar to the average washrag. (3) Boiled wool.

cozy: (1) The state of mind induced by muscle relaxant. (2) A cover for a cooking pot, teapot or coffee pot intended to keep it warm. A cozy can extend cooking time by retaining heat so that a cook can simply add boiling water to food and then set it aside to let it finish cooking with residual heat rather than using precious (and heavy) fuel. (3) A way for two or more hikers to simultaneously bond and retain body heat. (See “spoon”.)

cup: (1) The unit of measure for a half-dose of muscle relaxant. (2) Utensil to drink from, used by the cleverest ultralight backpackers as both a drinking cup and a cooking pot, and possibly also as a bathtub or baptismal font. (3) A handful, often spoken of as “cupping a breast”, a term used in the preparation of chicken dishes. (4) Small-scale coziness or spooning used among people who haven’t yet gotten fully acquainted. (See “cozy”, “spoon”.)

daisy chain: (1) A run of webbing loops used for lashing extra gear to the outside of a pack. (2) Arcane and highly intricate sexual practice of wood nymphs, seldom witnessed and far too stimulating to talk about here.

dehydrated food: (1) Food that has been dried. Removing the water preserves the food and reduces its weight. (Water weighs about eight pounds/3.6 kg per gallon.) (2) Food that hasn’t been drinking enough water. Dehydration can cause weakness, dizziness, and death, making the food that much easier to run down and capture, but also hard to swallow if it is too dry. (See “cotton duck”.)

dehydration: A depletion of body fluids. Can hinder the body’s ability to regulate its own temperature and negotiate international contracts.

dehydrator: (1) A desert. (2) A small machine used in the home to reduce healthy, well-adjusted fruits and vegetables into little bits of hard plastic so that they can be carried far into the wilderness where they are found to be completely inedible, indigestible, and are discarded. (3) A person who either creates deserts or tortures vegetables with one of these machines.

dihydrogen monoxide: Also called DHMO. A colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as dihydrogen oxide, hydrogen hydroxide, hydronium hydroxide, or simply hydric acid. The uninitiated refer to it as “water”. Its basis is the unstable radical hydroxide, the components of which are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as sulfuric acid, nitroglycerin and ethyl alcohol. Its chemical formula is H2O. DHMO is a constituent of many known toxic substances, diseases and disease-causing agents, environmental hazards, and it can even be lethal to humans in quantities as small as a thimbleful, if inhaled. For more info, see http://bit.ly/9WbEfQ or http://bit.ly/N4Asgf

dinner: What every hiker wishes for, but few fully achieve on the trail. The subject of frequent dreams and drooling. Usually attained only in town, before or after a backpacking trip.

double burner: (1) A stove with two burners. (2) An ambidextrous cook who can ruin food with either hand.

eskimo roll: (1) Among kayakers the Eskimo roll is the maneuver that rights an upside down boat without the kayaker having to get out. (2) A salted nut roll that has frozen overnight.

fat lighter: (1) A type of pine having a high concentration of flammable sap. Good as tinder for starting wood fires. (2) An overweight hiking partner delegated to getting the stove running.

fauna: (1) Critters. Take away their college degrees and they become just ordinary animals. (2) Meat.

feng shui: (1) The ancient art of flinging bullsnit at the wall, but with a fancy new name. In case you don’t believe it then wallow in these quotes from the back cover of Feng Shui For Dummies: “‘If you’ve ever wanted to know anything about Feng Shui, this IS the book to read.’ - Deborah Rachel Kagan, President, Sacred Interiors; ‘David Kennedy has certainly come up with a gem with Feng Shui for Dummies. I highly recommend this read.’ - James Moser, CEO, Feng Shui Warehouse; ‘David has a unique way of organizing the incredible amounts of Feng Shui information into clear, concise, easy to understand principles...’ - Ileen Nelson, Director of the Feng Shui Studies Department, The Metropolitan Institute of Interior Design.” Available at all fine bookstores. (Look for the sign of the giant bull.) (2) The esoteric process of breaking down and folding up your backpacking stove and fitting it into a space smaller than the individual parts require. Also called “trail shway” or “stove shway”. Spellings vary. Similar to but distinct from “Ray-Way”. (3) Setting up your stove and cook set in such a way as to take the best advantage of the terrain, temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and other features such as natural wind breaks. In this application, it is frequently translated as “cook shway” or “pot shway”. But if pot shway too much, pot fall over, spill your noodles, and ruin supper. Most unfortunate.

fire cycle: (1) The average time between fires in a given area. (2) Flaming circus act. (3) Note on pronunciation: Sometimes pronounced fahr-sahkle. If spoken slowly, then you know you’re in the southern U.S., and among foresters. If spoken quickly, then you may have stumbled into a group of the eastern liberal establishment elite actually talking about something being “farcical”. In this case, you have wandered far from the trail, and are probably standing outside a Broadway theater during intermission. Look overhead for a marquee, or scan the terrain around you for traces of pavement or taxi cabs (these are telltale clues that you have missed a turn and left the trail).

fire regime: Descriptors applying to fires in a given ecosystem (how often, how predictable, how intense, and so on). Don’t you feel smarter already?

fire ring: (1) A circular barrier used to contain a campfire. The primitive version uses rocks. The fancier version consists of an iron hoop. Not needed for small backpacking fires used for cooking. (2) Piece of bodily adornment worn on index finger of right hand by the Dark Lord. Has inscription in flaming Elvish characters and contains immense powers of evil. Also known as “The One Ring”. If you’re the one wearing this baby, you don’t have to carry your own pack. (3) Seldom-heard pristine, bell-like sound that a finely-tuned fire makes while burning smokeless under a clear evening sky when everything is perfect and all is good with the world.

fire starter: Arson investigators know this as “accelerant”. Also known as cheating, but only among amateurs. Pros call it “priming”. If you can start a wood fire with a single match and no gasoline, then you aren’t using it. Some stoves need it, some don’t. Generally required by liquid-fuel stoves of older design but not by canister or most alcohol stoves. Among alcohol stoves it is the closed, semi-pressurized ones that need priming. The simpler, open-cup designs can be lit directly without priming, which makes them especially suited for use by us ordinary idiots.

fire, igloo (a.k.a. igloo fire): Fire made of snow. Very difficult to get started, and even harder to keep lit, but terrible in its effects: the more it burns, the colder the flame. It is believed that the entire Arctic region was created by a giant ancient igloo fire that reached critical mass and burned out of control several thousand years ago.

fire, lean-to (a.k.a. lean-to fire): A type of wood fire having the fuel leaning onto a log, rock or other support.

fire, log cabin (a.k.a. log-cabin fire, crisscross fire): A fire that uses layers of crisscrossed wood rising in a sort of stubby pyramid. Good for making coals to cook over.

fire, pit (a.k.a. pit fire): Started in a shallow pit dug into the ground. Excavated soil can be used to bury it again when done.

fire, tipi (a.k.a. tipi fire, tepee fire): Probably the most common type. Wood is leaned into the center of a circle, like an Indian tepee. This fire is easy to build and burns fast and hot.

fire, underwater (a.k.a. underwater fire): As rare as the igloo fire, if not rarer, since humans are not known to remain deep underwater for long, and there is no fuel to burn. Still, scientists have recently discovered cracks in the sea floor where jets of boiling hot water emerge, fueling speculation that we have yet to discover another species of distantly related sub-human (or perhaps superhuman) backpackers living in the deep waters just off our coasts, and roasting tasty meats skewered on stingray tails. Could the “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin have surprised one of them just before he was stabbed to death? No one yet knows, but the thought is truly frightening.

fire: The six essential elements of fire are are input heat, fuel, oxygen, proportioning, mixing, and ignition continuity. Continuing combustion requires four elements: heat, fuel, oxygen, and uninhibited chain reactions. In other words, fire is the hot, glowy thing. It is not generally intended for internal use. Lots of people spend their entire lives studying fire. Backpackers generally just want know how to cook supper. Fire is one of a backpacker’s favorite four-letter words, ranking just after “beer”.

flame: (1) Like fame, but with an extra “l”. If you like to set things on fire just for fun, then you can have both. (2) Transient, insubstantial but still very hot mixture of gases undergoing combustion and simultaneously giving off both heat and light. Similar in some respects to political speech, though the latter gives off heat and fumes but no light.

flatulence: (1) Gas generated by digestion of food. Can be turned into flame by the application of a match. The light of this flame is typically too dim to read by. (2) Political speech.

flora: (1) Plants. (2) Main character from 1933 movie “Flora Buys a Hat”, in which a giant geranium goes to town to buy an Easter hat and accidentally eats most of the business district, not realizing that she’s carnivorous. Later remade as “Little Shop of Horrors”, in which a giant geranium falls from the sky and hangs around to eat people for the fun of it. Even later remade once more as “Little Shop of Horrors”, etc. This definition is completely irrelevant.

flue: (1) Disease caused by breathing fumes produced by fire, inaccurately attributed to innocent viruses who are only trying to make an honest living. Alternate spellings are flew, floo, flu, and influenza. (2) The wheezing sound of the cough induced by breathing hot gases. (3) A chimney or stovepipe. If your backpacking stove has one of these, then you are carrying several hundred pounds too much weight. Lighten up once, OK?

food bag: (1) Bear bag. (2) A bag that a backpacker carries or hangs food in. (3) A bag resembling the feed bag hung on a horse’s nose. A backpacker can strap one on in the morning and keep snacking all day without wasting time to stop for meals. Available in classic, light, and ultralight models, several designer colors, and paisley. (4) A ditty bag made from edible materials for those who like to eat their gear. Somewhat more sanitary on the trail than edible underwear. The latter, however, does have its place, but that’s in a different book.

food groups: Consortia of political and commercial interests who are secretly conspiring to feed us genetically-modified food and turn us all into zombies by interfering with our precious bodily fluids.

food: Stuff you eat. You should know this by now. Since you are what you eat, go look in the mirror. If you start drooling, you’re pretty yummy, and obviously eating the right stuff. You can stop worrying and have fun. If you start gagging though, then you do have a problem. Don’t call us. Stay indoors.

foolwood: Wood for burning, but too wet to burn. Used by fools (as if you couldn’t guess).

forest fire: A really big cooking fire. If you find that you have to change states to find fuel every time you cook, then you should scale back a little, and leave some for the rest of us. We like to burn things too.

forest ranger: Lower form of life than a park ranger, according to park rangers.

fork: Thing you sometimes find in the road. If you do, then take it. Tool to eat food with, though not effective on soup. Activity sometimes engaged in by backpackers who really like each other. (Note: The Supreme Court has not yet ruled if this is appropriate behavior for those wearing scout uniforms.) Word you might utter after hitting your thumb with a hammer. If you find yourself carrying a hammer on backpacking trips, then you’re definitely not an ultralighter, and may be “forked in the head” besides. Is your name “Maxwell”? Is your hammer silver? If you can answer yes to either of these questions then you’ve wandered into the wrong book. Please go away.

freeze-dried food: (1) Preserved pet droppings sold as backpacking food. (2) Food preserved by a mythical process which is said to remove all water from the food while preserving texture, flavor, and nutritional value. Also known as preserved pet droppings sold as backpacking food. (3) Very expensive preserved pet droppings sold as backpacking food. (4) Animal byproducts coming out of the pet food industry which are frozen and then subjected to a hard vacuum so that the water content sublimates, leaving behind food which maintains the original texture, flavor and nutritional value, and needs only hot water to reconstitute in seconds. Also known as preserved pet droppings sold as backpacking food. (5) Yummy, high-tech goodness, cheap at half the price (or 1/10th the price, or something).

freeze-drying: The process that converts pet droppings into backpacking food for those who have money to buy it but not enough imagination or time to prepare their own food. (See “food”.)

from skin out: Weight of everything you carry, starting from your skin on out. (See “total pack weight”.)

frying pan: (1) Cooking implement useful for those who camp, but not for those who backpack, due to the weight of the pan and the complexity of frying on the trail. (2) If you didn’t listen and took one anyway, then you can use it to fight off bears who smelled your cooking and dropped by for a snack. Swing hard. Aim for the nose. Be ready to die defending your pancakes.

frying: What you do with food when you have a frying pan. You “fry” it. If you just killed a bear with your frying pan, carve off a hunk and fry it up. Bear meat contains lots of fat, so it’s a good choice for cooking this way. If a ranger drops by and asks you just what in the hell you’re up to, offer to throw on another bear steak. Rangers can’t resist a meal of pancakes and bear steak. You might spend a few years in prison but you’ll have a friend for life, and the makings of a warm rug, which could be handy in prison.

fuel bottle: (1) One source describes this as “the container that holds and dispenses gas”, but this could describe your hiking partner, so it isn’t quite precise enough. Listen to this, from Backpacker magazine’s online “More Jargon” file: “Tanks come in several varieties, from separate bottles to screw-on canisters to integral tanks. Most liquid-fuel stoves link via a fuel line to a refillable fuel bottle that must be pumped to pressurize the fuel for use. Most also require priming, or preheating. Liquid-fuel stoves demand varying degrees of assembly and periodic maintenance. While they are bulkier, heavier, and less convenient than canister stoves, they stand up better to strong winds and cold weather. Models that burn multiple fuels, like white gas, kerosene, and auto gas, are valuable when traveling overseas. Liquid fuel is lighter than canisters for long trips with infrequent opportunities to refuel, and it offers you the flexibility of packing the amount you need in fuel bottles of various sizes.” Are you dizzy yet? Well, so are they, obviously. Who said all the bureaucrats work for the government? (2) A fuel bottle is just a bottle to carry fuel in, for a backpacking stove. If using an alcohol-burning stove you need only a container that won’t leak. Since alcohol is non-explosive and about as close to non-toxic as you can get, you don’t have to worry about getting anything that might require a bank loan. Keep it simple, eh?

fuel supply: What’s in your fuel bottle. If you burn solid fuel, it’s what’s in your fuel bag, or the dry stuff on the ground.

fuel: Dry standing wood and dry dead branches. dry inside (heart) of fallen tree trunks and large branches, dry grasses twisted into bunches, dried animal dung, coal, oil shale, or oil sand lying on the surface (not in my back yard). Let’s just call it the stuff you burn.

fuels management: (1) What bureaucrats in the U.S. Forest Service do when they think people are watching. By managing the combustible materials in a forest they can manage the danger of uncontrollable fire, or plan for controlled burns. (2) Stinginess. Don’t burn all your fuel cooking one meal. Duh. Unless you are the Dark Lord and can just incinerate a few lackeys whenever you need a hot meal.

fuels: (1) Government definition: Plants and woody vegetation, both living and dead, that are capable of burning. (2) Pyromaniac definition: “All them things what make the purty flames.” (3) Backpacker definition: White gas, butane, isobutane, propane, isopropane, alcohol, kerosene. (4) Ultralight backpacker definition: Navel lint, stray threads from hiking shorts (if not traveling naked), nose, ear, and eyebrow hairs, spider webs, moss, twigs, earwax.

fuelwood: Wood for burning. Same as foolwood, but dryer.

giardia lamblia: (1) A tiny, quiet and shy protozoan who just wants to get to know you. (2) Cause of giardiasis.

giardiasis: An intestinal illness consisting of fever, chills, vomiting, explosive diarrhea, foul gas and abdominal cramping caused by the protozoan parasite giardia lamblia. (How could you say it better than this?)

gloves: Pot grippers.

gorp: (1) Scroggin. (2) The sound that a hungry backpacker makes while eating: “Gorp, gorp, gorp, gorp, gorp, ahhh.” (3) Good Old Raisins and Peanuts. (4) Granola, Oats, Raisins, Peanuts. (5) A high-calorie snack food made from mixes of various ingredients including dried fruits, nuts, seeds, rodent droppings, etc. Lovely name, though.

gray water: Used dishwater. Some campsites have designated spots to dump this. Not to be confused with your sixth straight day of rain.

gripper: Pot gripper.

grizzly bear: (1) A notoriously messy eater, scientific name “Ursus arctos horribilis”. Commonly known as “griz” or “silvertip” after its often grizzled pelt. Size: large, six to nine feet long, three to four feet high at the shoulder, weighing from 300 up to 1,400 pounds. Color can vary from blond (Los Angeles / Hollywood / Florida areas) to almost black in less hip regions like New York City. Diet is mostly vegetation (grasses, nuts, berries, and roots), plus small mammals, salmon, bison, elk, caribou, carrion, and backpackers (when in season). Current populations have been documented only in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington. Listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act in the contiguous 48 states. Scat usually occurs in large mounds, often filled with berry seeds or fish scales, sometimes with cans of pepper spray or hiker’s warning bells. (2) Giant hamster. Also known as the “giant mountain hamster”. Exceedingly large, extraordinarily rare, but entirely harmless beast. Often mistaken for a gigantic grizzly bear when seen at all. But since they, like all hamsters, are nocturnal they are, when sighted at all, seen at night, and may only appear as a huge, shuffling and silent shadow in the darkness, which can make them seem all the more frightening. If encountered, which is almost never, one of these creatures may accidentally stuff an unwary backpacker into one of its cheek pouches and carry same home to its tidy and clean underground nest, but will normally release the backpacker immediately after recognizing its mistake, especially if offered a snack such as a handful peanuts or a slice of apple. (This is a good reason to carry gorp.) Hamsters are both solitary and territorial and may fight to the death when encountering one of their own kind, but harbor no innate animosity toward humans at all. So if you happen to be accidentally abducted by one of these beasts and find yourself in its sweet-smelling, grass-lined nest, then relax. You will be safe there, and may even decide to stay a few days, but be sure to do all your cooking outside, and please try to remain polite and respectful of your host, who will treat you as a friend unless you go out of your way to annoy it.

ground fire: (1) A forest fire that stays on or near the ground, without leaping up tree trunks and getting into the tree crowns. (2) When the ground burns. Caused by using nuclear devices as fire starters (also known as “overkill”). (3) Freeze-dried fire in powder form. Handy but expensive. To use, just rip open foil pouch, add hot water and wait five minutes. Comes in yellow, orange, red-orange, red, and three levels of hotness.

hamster: A small, inoffensive rodent totally unrelated to backpacking. Kept by children as pets, and a source of amusement for some addled adults. Hamsters have the shortest gestation period of any non-marsupial mammal (16 days) and by far the finest fur though their pelts are not sturdy enough for coats. It was thought at one time that rather than killing and skinning them, then sewing their tiny dead pelts together, a collection of 100 to 200 hamsters could be trained to hold onto each other with their itsy-bitsy hand like paws, collectively assuming the shape of a coat or cape. And they could, but their little muscles soon tired and one by one they began dropping off and fleeing, so furriers abandoned the idea early on. The hamster’s high metabolism though did provide a wonderfully warm outer garment for as long as the little guys managed to hang together. Another factor in the failure of this idea was that most who tried to wear such a coat were frightened to see so many teeny eyes watching their every movement. These coats also required frequent high-calorie snacks, and, of course, potty breaks.

hanging food: (1) Bats. (2) Fruits. (3) Nuts. (4) Spiders. (5) Preferred method of punishment for those whose food has been very, very bad, in countries where it is still allowed.

(6) A way of keeping food out of the reach of unwanted midnight snackers. (See “bear bag”.) Conventional method of hanging food: First get a rope. If you didn’t bring one, then go home and start over. Find two trees about 20 feet apart. If there are no trees in this part of the country then you are doing it wrong. Go home, pull out a map, and move to a part of the country that has trees, for crying out loud. Your rope should be at least 60 feet long. Pick the first tree. Tie a rock or small animal (hamsters do have a use in backpacking!) to one end of the rope and throw it over a sturdy tree limb at least 17 feet high (no one knows where the number 17 came from, so it must be correct). Tie one end of your rope to the tree. Go to the other tree and repeat. Now take your second rope and tie one end to your bag of food. What? We didn’t tell you to bring TWO ropes? Too bad. Go home and get another one. Again, tie a weight to the other end of this second rope and sling it over the middle of the line you have strung between the two trees. Hoist the bag of food by pulling on the free end of the rope tied to the food bag. Make sure that the bag ends up at least 12 feet off the ground. At this point you will find that either the trees are too thin and lean toward each other while you do this, or that the first rope was tied too slackly, and everything sags down toward the ground. Your food bag is probably three or four feet off the ground. Too bad. Start over, and keep trying until you get it right.

When your food has been hung high enough, tie the free end of the rope holding your food bag to one of the trees. If you are camping in an area with educated vermin, you will find that they know which rope to chew through, so this method is useless. Time to go home in disgust. No one has ever done it this way, though various authors and government agencies keep repeating this bogus crap. Counterbalance method: This is an alternate method that needs only one tree, and does not require you to tie a line where sneaky drooling toothy critters can come along and chew through it. The recommendations from Backpacker magazine are to “locate a branch that’s at least 20 feet up, sticks out at least 10 feet from the trunk, and is about an inch or 2 in diameter (strong enough to hold the food bag but too thin to support a bear).”

Check. Go ahead and try it. Won’t work. You need a limb that is thicker than two inches if you actually want your food bag to stay up there. Finding a branch meeting all the above requirements (except thicker) may take several hours, and you might have to hike well into the next county, but this is important so don’t let that stop you. First, take your trusty rope, weight one end with a rock or your hamster (let’s call him Bob, and it helps if you can get him to stuff some small stones into his cheek pouches while you’re at it). OK, so Bob’s on deck. Hurl him over the limb. If you can’t make it, don’t feel bad. That’s quite a long way up. Now, tie Bob’s end of the line to the first food bag. Whoa, didn’t we tell you that you have to have TWO food bags now? Too bad. Go get another one. Pull that first bag as high up as you can, and while holding it suspended, go get your second bag. Right. Good job. Make a loop in the rope while holding the first bag suspended, and attach the second food bag to it. At this point we should tell you that both bags should weigh exactly the same amount, because they have to counterbalance each other. And you need six hands to do this.

OK, once you’ve done all that, then put any extra rope inside the second bag, and push the bag upward. The weight of the first bag will pull the rope over the limb until you’ve got the second bag as high as you can reach, which should be around seven feet. Not good enough. How about you go off and hunt around for a long stick. Say about six or seven feet long. We’ll wait here for you. Even if it takes weeks. So OK, you’ve got your stick now, and you can push the lower bag up higher and higher until both bags are hanging “at least 12 feet off the ground, 10 feet from the trunk and 5 feet below the branch. When time to eat, hook one of the loops with a stick and pull the bags down.” Forgot to eat first? No problem, just do it all over. Can’t make your stick hook anywhere on either of the bags? So you can get your food down again? No problem, you’re screwed. Just finish your trip without food. We’ve never seen anyone hang food this way either, but the same idiots keep writing it up over and over again.

hunger: The feeling that attacks you from the inside after hanging your food and finding that you can’t get it back down again. Fatal if not treated soon enough.

instant coffee: The beverage version of freeze-dried food, but not made from pet droppings. Made instead from the dried body fluids of ticks and fleas removed from pets. The bugs are then squashed and their fluids dried. No matter how bad it tastes, it’s still high in caffeine. And since it contains no water whatsoever, it is a useful backpacking food, or food-like substance. The preferred way of consuming it is to take a deep breath, put a tablespoonful on your tongue, then wash it down with water before breathing. If done right you won’t have to taste a thing but will still get a nice buzz.

instructions: What hikers don’t follow when using an unfamiliar piece of equipment. So we’re really just like all the other fools out there? Yeeg.

ion stove: A super efficient alcohol burning stove invented by Ernest Engman (trail name, Sgt. Rock). Primo. You can make your own or buy one from him. Another work of genius.

isobutane: A fuel used in canister stoves. An isomer of butane with a lower boiling point that provides a more constant level of pressure even if a canister is nearly empty.

isopropane: A fuel used in canister stoves. A mixture of isobutane and propane, or sometimes butane and propane. It works better at low temperatures than isobutane but like isobutane it provides more even pressure even if a canister is nearly empty. Now you too can sound smart.

jet: A small opening designed into a stove through which pressurized fuel passes so it can mix with air and burn efficiently. Slowly developed over the centuries by legions of engineers patiently working through a deliberate process of trial and error just so you could have a backpacking stove, you selfish, thoughtless bastard.

kelly kettle: Also called a “volcano kettle”. A one-piece pot and stove. Designed vaguely like a thermos bottle. The place where you’d have your coffee is actually a firebox and chimney. The part around that, where the thermos bottle would have an insulating vacuum, is actually a water jacket surrounding the firebox. Useful only for heating water. Hot gases from the fire heat water in the water jacket as they rise through the chimney and escape. First used by Irish fishermen. Damn clever. Another reason to love the Irish, if you’re so inclined.

kerosene: A light petroleum oil that produces dark smoke and fumes, blackens cookware, and clogs stoves. Non-explosive but smelly. Similar to diesel fuel. Evokes all the romance and charm of diesel, but is no longer easy to find in this country, though it is more available elsewhere. Burns hot if you can get it lit. Have fun with that.

kettle: (1) A pot. (2) Glacier droppings. As glaciers retreated at the end of the last ice age, hill-sized blocks of of ice broke off and embedded themselves in the landscape. After the ice melted, many ice-block-shaped depressions were left behind. These filled with water to become small lakes or ponds. They are called kettles. They are too big to cook in, so smaller aluminum versions were invented for backpackers. Hence the origin of the pot.

kindling: Small twigs, split wood, heavy cardboard. Used in step two of starting a wood fire. Kindling is an arbitrary classification of burnable things encompassing anything bigger than tinder but smaller than fuelwood, whatever those things are.

knife: Something to cut yourself with. Unlike the fork, you seldom find a knife in the road. The ultralight backpacker always carries one but hardly ever needs anything more complicated than a single-edge razor blade. A genuine knife can be useful for cutting and splitting wood for those who burn that sort of thing, or for those who just like to cut and split wood.

laminar flow: A sort of non-turbulent motion of a fluid, whether it’s a liquid or a gas. Watch smoke rising from the tip of a cigarette. At first it rises straight up. That’s laminar flow - straight. Higher up, it goes all nuts. That’s turbulent flow. Some say that laminar flow is important to alcohol stoves because it transports vaporized fuel straight up from the fuel’s surface to the bottom of the pot in a smooth and sophisticated sort of way, at which point it’s finally OK to let it get all turbulent and burn. The idea is that this puts the point of combustion right along the bottom surface of the cooking pot and is more efficient. Some say that it’s better to have turbulence start early in the process so that the fuel and air mix thoroughly long before they begin burning. Some say it tastes like licorice, but hotter, and burns the tongue. Some say where the hell is dinner and why are we talking about all this crap? Some just stare at the sky vacantly and continue to drool in peace for long quiet moments.

lid: (1) Hat. (2) An ounce of marijuana, or at least it used to be. Dunno. Don’t mess with things like that anymore. (3) Fleshy flap found at the top and bottom of the eye. (4) A cover. We’re looking for #4 here, folks. It’s the cover for your cooking pot. For an ultralighter, it could be a folded square of aluminum foil. Aids stove efficiency by keeping heat inside the pot where it belongs.

lighter: (1) Opposite of heavier. If you are prone to extremism, then you are an ultra-lighter. (2) Person responsible for forest fires. If this person is especially nuts, and starts lots of fires, they are an ultra-lighter. (3) Clever little gizmo for creating fire with. Much more efficient than rubbing two wet sticks together. More fun too, since lighters come in a rainbow of colors.

lint: A fibrous substance that collects in the bellybutton and can be used as fire starter, or even as a primary fuel if you are a super-ultralighter and have especially modest cooking needs. If the latter, it still helps to have lots of friends along on a trip in case you run out of fuel and need to go burrowing for more. Make sure your friends aren’t ticklish.

lunch: (1) One of the primary reasons to go backpacking is that it feels really good when you stop, and one of those times is at midday, when you can both stop and eat. This is called lunch, and since you will be outdoors when you do it, you are officially out to lunch. (2) Merging of the terms lunge and lurch. What you do when you are standing somewhere and eating a big messy sandwich full of tasty, wet and sloppy goodness and the filling just foops out of your hand and heads for the ground. Even if you are successful at catching it you will still be at least a little upset, and your hands will be messy, though you will still be fed.

lynching: (1) What happens to you after you burn down a national forest or national park. (2) Hanging your food to keep it away from ravenous vermin. (See “bear bagging”.)

match: (1) A device used to start fires. Has certain magical chemicals forming a blob on one end of a stick. Damn clever. Not as much fun as a lighter, and doesn’t come in as many fascinating colors, but is smaller and lighter in weight. (2) Dumb joke. Q: Got a match? A: Your breath and a buffalo fart.

msr whisperlite: Most amusing liquid fuel stove ever made. Camped across a small lake, we arose one fine, still morning in early fall to admire the sunrise and begin preparing breakfast. Suddenly from across the lake came the sound of a jet plane warming up before takeoff. It was another group firing up their Whisperlite stove. Love them marketing folks. My ears still ring a little.

msr: Name of a manufacturer of outdoor products. Thought to be Mountain Safety Research, but because of its Whisperlite stove, could just as well be Many Sounds Reverberating.

muscle relaxant: Beer. Fermented sugar. Alcohol. Grain alcohol, or ethanol. Used externally it can cook your food. Used internally it can cook your brain. Relaxes stiff, tense muscles while working its magic on brain cells.

nalgene: Brand name for durable and dependable plastic products made by Nalge Nunc International. Most of these are water bottles. Clever backpackers eventually realized that disposable plastic soft drink containers were both cheaper and lighter than the Nalgene kind.

nansen cooker: Devised in the 19th century by the Norwegian Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, this may be the most efficient stove ever. Heat passes up from the burner and around the cooking pot. This is normal, but in the Nansen Cooker the cooking pot is surrounded by a container holding cold water, ice or snow, and the combustion gases also heat this. Then, when the gases have risen above the cooking pot, they hit another container sitting above it. This also contains cold water, ice or snow, so some heat is absorbed there as well. Finally, the gases are forced to flow down the outside of the lower container, giving up the last bit of heat they contain. This arrangement is said to be 90% to 93% efficient at extracting energy from the burning fuel. Who said nineteenth-century technology was just about big iron plates and lumps of coal?

nimblewill nomad stove (a.k.a. “Little Dandy stove”): Invented by Eb Eberhart. A solid fuel stove made from five flat, thin steel plates that assemble without fasteners, and unhook again and fold flat for storage. Used by him in 1998 during his 4400 mile (7084km), 10 month walk from Key West, Florida to Cape Gaspe, Quebec. This stove allowed him to burn anything at hand, and thus to carry no fuel. Smart guy, that one.

o-ring: A stove part that forms a seal, in stoves that need that sort of thing. Usually made of some sort of flexible material, like silicone-based rubber. Not needed in simple alcohol-burning stoves. Like every other complex thing, usually fails at the worst possible time, and can’t be replaced by any old thing that’s lying around. Keep in mind how well o-rings served the space shuttle.

one-pot wonders: Meals that can be made in one pot, but taste as though they were made by a world-class chef who cooked a multi-course meal and then dumped it all into one pot and stirred well before serving. Still better than freeze-dried food.

optimus: (1) One inclined to assume that only good things will happen. “The optimist claims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears that this may indeed be true.” – Queen Elizabeth II. (2) Brand of stoves made in Sweden, from the mid 19th century through the present.

ow! : A word used for the amusement of companions. Sometimes accompanied by words like $#%&#$ to convey special enthusiasm, or with ritual body movements, such as sucking on digits or shaking one hand wildly in the air while hopping around. There is a statistically significant association between these words and activities such as removing hot cookware from the fire without a pot gripper, or using rocks or large, heavy hammers to pound in stakes.

pack weight: (See “total pack weight”.) A confusing and imprecise term which has been picked up by ultralight backpackers and turned into a religious debate and a weapon for scoring points against one another.

pack: (See “total pack weight”.) (1) To carry, as in “I’m gonna pack these here groceries out to the car now, Ma,” which is the way true natives say things in Washington state. (2) The little gemlike world you carry behind you while you are engaged in ultralight backpacking. (3) The monstrous evil demon clinging to your back with six-inch claws while engaged in traditional backpacking.

paraffin: British-speak for kerosene, but what the hell do they know?

park ranger: Better, more moral, more upstanding and higher on the pecking order than a forest ranger, according to park rangers. Possibly more intelligent as well, or at least better dressed.

pemmican: (1) A web-footed water bird having a large, pouchy beak that it uses for fishing. (2) North America’s original pre-Columbian trail food, made by mixing together powdered, dried meat (jerky) with congealed animal fat. Mmmmm, good!

pepsi can stove (Also known as “Scott Henderson’s Pepsi Can Stove”): A successful, semi-pressurized alcohol stove developed by Scott Henderson. Originally designed around 12-ounce Pepsi-Cola cans because their bottoms had a particular shape, this stove can be made from any 12-ounce aluminum cans, which are now all identical. After the design for this stove was first published, Mr. Henderson refined it, using cans of proprietary design from specific types of beverages so that the various parts fit together more easily. This and similar stoves are homemade versions of the Swedish Trangia stove, which is a larger, commercial product that doesn’t work as well.

pinata: Bear pinata.

plate: (1) What you eat off of, if you are hoity-toity. (2) One more thing the ultralighter disdains.

plumber stove: (1) A small alcohol-burning stove once used by plumbers for heating food and drink. The story is that they needed flame for their work, had all the raw materials at hand, and so went ahead and cobbled together little stoves for cooking lunch. (2) A stove used for cooking plumbers, for those of us who have developed a taste for them.

pocket knife: (1) A knife small enough to conveniently fit inside one’s pocket. Usually has only one or two folding blades. (2) Any small knife that’s still too big and heavy for untralighters. (3) A knife small enough to be used by elves to cut their way out of your pocket after they’ve collected everything they think is worth stealing.

pop tarts: (1) Dad’s girlfriends. (2) Thin, rectangular, vaguely foodlike shingles made entirely of synthetic chemicals designed to fit in a toaster slot and melt there before catching fire.

pot capacity: (1) Measurement of a hiker’s gut volume. Used to help determine how much food a hiker should plan to take, or how much beer a hiker can expect to hold, in case he accidentally stumbles into a bar during free beer night. (2) The number of hikers that can be stuffed into a given pot. (3) When translated into time, the number of milliseconds that the average female will spend reading any of these definitions, or any of this book.

pot cozy: (1) An insulating sleeve for a pot or cup. Can be used to keep food or drink warm, or to continue cooking without using fuel (a replacement for simmering that works with some foods). Especially effective for instant foods that need no real cooking, or only a minimum of simmering, such as couscous. (2) An unnatural relationship that a hiker might develop with a warm and defenseless cooking pot after too many weeks on the trail.

pot gripper: (1) An implement used to grab and hold onto hot cooking pots. (2) A pair of gloves used for the same purpose, which is what ultralight backpackers use. Sometimes also a spare sock, in case they’ve quit using even gloves. (3) A knowledgeable, pesky and fearless local critter that has become accustomed to humans and acquainted with their foods and habits, and will glom onto the food in your pot, and the pot as well, if you leave it unattended for more than 1.2 seconds. (4) A famished hiker with a death grip on his cooking pot that won’t be released until he has eaten everything in the pot and then licked it clean.

pot stand: (1) Support that goes under the cooking pot to hold it above the stove’s burner. Some stoves have them built in. (2) Marijuana patch found back in the hills. Usually watched over by cutthroats. (3) Game played by long-distance backpackers who are desperate for entertainment after long weeks on the trail. It consists of putting a cooking pot down in a level place and then doing a headstand on top of it. The one who lasts the longest wins. If no one can do this at all, then the one who comes closest to getting upside down is the winner.

pot: (1) An inhalable form of muscle relaxant. (2) What gives you pot capacity. (3) Thing to cook in, or to heat water in if all you use is instant food. (4) Unnecessary, complicated nuisance if you’ve decided not to cook.

prescribed fire: (1) By prescription only. Most pharmacies are still not equipped to fill this kind of prescription. (2) Intentionally set fires overseen by bureaucrats. Can rejuvenate forests by killing off dead, dying, or diseased trees and by removing insect pests. (3) The opposite of a random fire. If you find yourself just setting fires here and there and still have a growling stomach, then try planning ahead, and set a fire when you are hungry, under your cooking pot, and then cook some food. Next, eat the food. When you have gotten into this habit you will be setting your own prescribed fires, and will not need referral to a specialist for a scribbled note which your pharmacy will not be able to help you with anyway.

pressurized stove: (1) A stove that works by having more pressure inside of it than outside. This pressure works to shoot fuel out the burner jet, after which it can mix with air and burn. The more pressure inside the stove, the more fuel it can shoot out its jets in a given period of time. More fuel means more heat, so a pressurized stove produces more heat than an otherwise identical unpressurized stove. On the other hand, since a pressurized stove burns fuel at a faster rate, it doesn’t burn as long, and it may produce a lot of heat that just can’t be absorbed fast enough, so a pressurized stove can be less efficient to use. Pressure is generated three ways: (a) by a pump that forces air into the fuel container (used by liquid-fuel stoves), (b) by heat created by the stove itself as its fuel burns (used by liquid-fuel stoves), or (c) by volatile fuel that absorbs heat from the atmosphere (used by canister stoves, which have extremely volatile fuels). (2) A stove that you’re really counting on to perform for you. May need counseling from time to time, or at least an occasional aspirin and a pep talk. Be sure to let your stove know how much you appreciate it. You don’t want a depressed stove committing suicide on you, or running away from home due to stage fright while you’re unsuspecting and asleep in your ratty little ultralight tent.

primer: Fuel used in priming a stove.

priming cup: A small receptacle somewhere near a stove’s burner that holds fuel for priming the stove.

priming: Preheating a stove so it will get up to operating temperature. Needed for pressurized stoves that get their pressure from heat they generate while running. Not needed for canister stoves or stoves that are pressurized by pumping air into them. Also unnecessary for unpressurized stoves (Like, duh!). Done by putting a small amount of fuel on top of the stove, or under the burner, and lighting it. Where you need to put the primer depends on the stove design.

push-button ignition: (1) A way of lighting a canister stove without using an external flame, but by the push of a button which generates a spark. Has most of the convenience and all of the charm of watching backpacking on TV rather than actually doing it. (2) Act of pushing someone’s buttons, i.e. talking about a subject that one of your companions is irrationally sensitive about. Source of amusement while on the trail, especially if you don’t have a push-button stove and really miss the elegance and sophistication of watching television rather than admiring the alpenglow.

ray-way: (1) The way Ray Jardine does things. (2) The one and only right way of doing anything. (3) My way or the highway. (4) All of the above. Ray Jardine and his wife Jenny revived lightweight backpacking and changed it from something that a few reclusive, unorganized lunatics did in secret to something that lots of bold, organized lunatics now do in public. The Jardines advocated (a) taking only the things needed, (b) making one item serve several purposes, (c) using lightweight footwear, (d) traveling fast by putting in long days at a moderate pace while carrying light packs, (e) stealth camping, and (f) sleeping under nearly weightless tarps while covered by bottomless sleeping bags called quilts. Since the 1980s and 1990s when the Jardines refined their season-long backpacking trip techniques, their redefinition of backpacking has revolutionized the sport and inspired many. Originally “Ray-Way” was a descriptive term applied to Ray Jardine’s methods by others, but was later been adopted by Jardine himself. (5) The founding principle of Golite, a manufacturer of lightweight backpacking gear. Golite attempted to incorporate Jardine’s philosophy into its products but parted ways with Jardine (or vice versa, depending on who’s right) in 2004, after Jardine posted a “Golite sucks” diatribe on his web site. (6) Prickly. (7) Exceedingly prickly. (8) Insanely prickly.

reflector: Device for bouncing stray heat energy back to where it will do some good. Not much used, for some reason, even among ultralighters, who surround the stove and bottom of the cooking pot with a wind screen, but leave bare the ground under the stove and also leave the top of the pot uncovered. Rudimentary first step toward the Nansen Cooker.

roasting: (1) Method of cooking by radiant heat. If this doesn’t mean anything to you, then think of roasting a hot dog on a stick over an open flame. (2) Since ultralight stoves are so small, and ultralight backpackers so frugal about carrying more than a few drops of fuel, they don’t have much use for roasting, although it could be an option if you find a good supply of small, edible bugs some day. Other than that, roasting is really the basic idea behind a full-coverage wind screen, which allows full use of a stove’s heat output by protecting the stove and pot from wind, and bouncing the heat around inside the wind screen as much as possible before finally letting it escape.

scroggin: (1) Gorp. (2) New Zealand speak for chocolate, nuts and dried fruits mixed together and coated in sugar. The name may have come from the list of ingredients: sultanas (white grapes, presumably dried), chocolate, raisins (as we would use the term), candied orange peels, candied ginger, glucose (sugar), improvisation, nuts. And then again maybe not. Scroggin is probably a “backronym” created to explain the term “scroggin” long after it came into use (note that raisins appear twice, and that you can’t eat improvisation). (3) One of those little things that crawls around on your skin, under your clothes or in your hair, makes you itch, and is too small to find, but continues to drive you nuts. Cootie. Often imaginary. Fear of cooties stands in for fear of bears in those places where you know there are no bears. (4) Anybody who has cooties, or whom you wish would get them. A pariah, an outcast, a former friend or loved one. This attitude can develop among the best of friends who spend too much time together in a proximity that is simply too close. Long distance backpacking trips are not recommended for honeymooners.

semi-pressurized stove: Something like a semi-pregnant woman. Some of this, some of that, not all of anything, and possibly mythical. Some alcohol stoves contain fuel in a confined space, and when the stove heats up to operating temperature, the fuel vaporizes and has only one outlet: through a jet. The moderate pressure inside the fuel cavity forces the fuel vapor through the jet. This makes the stove sort of pressurized but still not explosive. Scott Henderson’s Pepsi Can Stove is one of these. Unpressurized stoves produce heat at the lowest rate but burn the longest. Pressurized stoves produce heat at the highest rate and have the shortest burn times. Semi-pressurized stoves hang out in the middle somewhere.

sigg: (1) Swiss maker of outdoor equipment, including several kinds of bottles. Their aluminum bottles were especially popular for carrying white gas during the heyday of liquid-fuel stoves. (2) Ggis: sigg spelled backward. Has no meaning or significance whatsoever. (3) Snorking sound made by constricting the soft palate while inhaling. Produces a fake snore. For some reason it’s impossible to snore while awake. Real snoring doesn’t make a person’s whole face tingle like that. Anyway, sigging helps to get the goop out of your nasal passages. Frowned on in church, at the opera and during plays, not to mention at business meetings. Used on the trail, it helps to frighten away small animals, and is acceptable among most hikers if not done to excess. Though what you do with the stuff you snork out of your nose does tell what kind of cloth you’re cut from. We shall avoid the indelicate details at this time.

slackpacker: (1) A laid-back-packer, someone who has a casual attitude toward long-distance backpacking and who is also usually self-sufficient, sometimes carrying a relatively heavy pack just because he wants to have certain important things along, like books. (2) The same, kinda, but lazier. Someone who has his pack transported to the next campsite so he doesn’t have to carry it. A backpacker who isn’t really. May carry a day pack while someone else shuttles his backpack for him. (3) Someone who already ate all his food, whose pack is empty, and has his head stuck into your pack, looking for something tasty. A parasite, an obligate yogi. Someone who only wants to be your friend, while you want him only to be someone else’s friend.

smoke: (1) Gassified food. Made so by overcooking. (2) Byproduct of making charcoal. (3) The stuff that comes out of a wood fire, along with light and heat. Makes you smell kind of OK, even if you’ve been on the trail for a week or more without bathing. (4) What mosquitoes don’t like, because it makes you smell like you’ve been overcooked.

snack in a sack: (1) Bear pinata. (2) Backpacker sleeping in a hammock.

snack in a wrap: (1) Bear pinata. (2) Backpacker sleeping in a tent, bivy sack, or sleeping bag.

snack: (1) Food that isn’t part of a regular meal. (2) Gorp, scroggin. (3) Food that can be inhaled while walking, the timing determined by one’s metabolism, with an alarm sounded by one’s tummy. (4) Your food supply, from a mouse’s point of view. (For “mouse”, you can substitute almost any beast with a mouth and an appetite.) (5) Hikers, from a grizzly’s point of view.

snow peak: (1) Manufacturer of canister stoves. (2) High mountain. (3) Mounded food with dry powdered milk poured over the top of it, just because you really are that hungry.

solid fuel: (1) Misnomer (see “wood”). (2) Fuel that is not liquid or gas. Duh. (3) Choice of traditionalists everywhere. (4) Cheese.

spoon: (1) The only eating utensil a real hiker will consider carrying. (2) A sleeping position that hikers can innocently and unintentionally assume while sleeping in a trail shelter. I.e. to share warmth with a friend. (3) “That tool you dig food with,” according to Homer Simpson. (4) Unnecessary complication.

spork: (1) A spoon with teeth. (2) Some clever person’s attempt to cross breed a spoon with a fork, resulting in a spoon that can take bites out of your face even as you attempt to take bites of your supper. (3) A fork you can eat soup with.

stainless steel: An alloy of iron and chromium resulting in a form of steel that is very slow to rust or corrode. A good material for making automobile bumpers and bridge railings, and for some kitchen-bound pots and pans. While extremely slow to rust, it still has all the weight of ordinary steel, and so, as the sun sinks slowly in the west, we bid farewell to all our stainless steel pots and continue on our ultralight way with aluminum.

stampede: Result of weapons-grade pandemonium.

stand: Pot stand.

stealth camping: (1) Camping invisibly. The art of turning off-trail, then creeping through the brush until you find a suitable campsite far off and invisible from the trail. This usually requires camping away from water and toilets, parking lots, freeways, convenience stores, churches, bars, laundromats, and brothels. Generally the idea is to have privacy and safety, both of which can be in short supply in areas frequented by uncouth people (car campers, weekenders, townies, police, and so on). Since no one knows that you are camped, and couldn’t find you anyway, especially if you crawl into a snug little hollow surrounded by brush, and keep quiet, you are likely to be very safe from humans, the most dangerous animals around. Other critters can be defeated by eating and washing down the trail somewhere, at least a mile or two before you locate a campsite. Since you eat somewhere else, wrap up your food and scented items, then wash up, you are not carrying any food odors with you. All you have to do is to hang your food, set up camp, and go to bed. In the morning, you pack up and go, leaving no trace. By definition stealth camp sites are clean, since no one uses them. If you need a campsite with spilled food, human and pet feces, used toilet paper, crumpled beer cans, shreds of waste paper, discarded plastic bags, and prowling night vermin, then a stealth site is not for you.

(2) What happens after a really good party. You wake up somewhere and can’t remember where you are, how you got there, who you are, or who this semi-human creature next to you might be. If you are really lucky, this thing is not actually a person but only an old, dirty and odorous coat that appeared from somewhere and that you have managed to keep in a close embrace throughout the night. This experience is often accompanied by dehydration, a massive headache, confusion, disorientation, and disgust. Sometimes referred to as a “fun wake” or just “the aftermath”. Sometimes also called a “pre-death experience”. Less fun than real camping. Usually the result of a close encounter with large quantities of muscle relaxant.

steaming: (1) Method of cooking that uses a bath of steam to transfer heat to the food. Because of the heat of vaporization, steam at the temperature of boiling water actually contains much more heat energy than the boiling water it comes from. When steam hits the surface of food it cools and condenses, transferring its heat to the food, which cooks the food. Submerging food in boiling water also heats it, but requires enough water to cover the food. Instead of using a large amount of heat to boil a large amount of water, it’s possible to use a small amount of heat to vaporize a tiny amount of water and cook food faster with less fuel. Amazing! But true! Also, after food is boiled, you are left with a large amount of hot water that you typically don’t need for anything, so you throw it out. When done steaming you’ll have only a trace of water to toss out, and therefore you save even more fuel. Food can be steamed “bare”, in a pot, or inside a heat-proof bag. Cooking food in a bag is roughly equivalent to baking it, but making use of steam instead of hot air. Since air is a poor carrier of heat, true baking is extremely inefficient, and even more so for the ultralight backpacker. (2) Getting rid of an unwanted companion by simply being annoying enough that the person leaves your vicinity. (Don’t try this with someone whom you know has a concealed weapons permit.)

stock pot: (1) Any cooking pot without racing stripes, big headlights, or an internet connection. (2) Boring. (3) Formerly, in primitive, ancient times, when people somehow managed to get by with pots having no tail fins, a stock pot was one with deep, straight sides and was used to boil large amounts of water or to make meals for groups.

supper: The big meal that comes some time after lunch. Even better than lunch because, though you might stop during the middle of a nice day and eat lunch, when you stop for supper you usually won’t be moving your legs again for several hours. To be even more clear, supper time is when you get to pig out and then crawl into bed and snore mightily. Supper is often the high point of the day, a realization you come to after several long days or weeks on the trail when you begin to appreciate the validity of the term “hiker midnight” (9:00 p.m.). Even without being excessively hungry, a backpacker can learn to look forward to supper with growing love and anticipation because it marks the end of the day and a chance to just stop all the damn walking and lie down and be unconscious for a while.

svea: (1) Wheezing sound made as your stove runs out of fuel. (2) Whistling sound coming from your nose when it’s full of goop. (3) Brand of brass, white-gas-burning Swedish stove first made around 1880 and only recently discontinued. Last listed by Recreational Equipment Inc. as the “Optimus Climber Svea 123R”.

thirst: (1) What you get from not drinking enough water. Similar to lust but occurs higher in the body and is not as much fun. (2) What gets slaked by drinking some water. Again, not as much fun as slaking lust, but as with many things in life, it depends on who you’re with at the time. (3) What my hamster developed the first time he encountered beer. Since he was an adult, and it was his choice, I let him have as much as he wanted. The little sucker wouldn’t quit. It was his night out, and he had free run of my bedroom. Who was a drunk little hamster going to hurt anyway? I later found him asleep in the closet, curled up in a cozy little ball, snoring quietly.

thru-hiker: (1) A hiker who completes a long trail from end to end. Usually refers to someone who has hiked the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail or another long route, especially one requiring careful planning and grim determination. (2) A hiker who intended to complete a long trail from end to end (one like the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, or the Continental Divide Trail) but couldn’t make it, and decided he was through with hiking.

tin can:A steel can. Can be used as a cheap cooking pot, or made into a small wood-burning stove. (See “wood gas stove”.)

tin: (1) Another name for a tin can, which is actually a steel can. (2) Another name for an aluminum can, which is actually made of aluminum. (3) Metal that the original Mountain Safety Research wind screen was made from. It could be used and refolded many times before metal fatigue finally cracked it into useless bits. (4) Nit, if spelled backward. In that case it’s a tiny, possibly imaginary skin-surface creeper. (See “scroggin”.)

tinder: (1) Highly flammable fuel that almost explodes into flame if you just look at it crosseyed. Used to light the stuff that in turn lights your fire: a match lights tinder, tinder lights kindling, kindling lights the fuel. When the fuel burns you have a fire. We’re talking wood fires here. Tinder can be made from wispy dry inner layers of bark, fine wood shavings, dead grass, ferns, moss, fungi, dead evergreen needles, rotten wood, downy seed heads (milkweed, dry cattails, thistles, and so on), paper, navel lint, and so on. Basically anything that can be lit with a match. Magnesium is available in bar form. Its shavings burn white-hot, are next to impossible to put out, and can ignite even wet kindling. Solid magnesium is impossible to ignite with a normal flame so it is safe to carry. (2) The base fuel for a fire. (3) Elvis-ish for “tender” (as in “Love me tinder, love me sweet, never let me go. You have made my life complete, and I love you so.”).

titanium: (1) Proof that you’ve spent more money on your cook set (or stove, or boot lace tips) than anyone else in your group. (2) Proof that you’re a trendy idiot. (3) Metal incorrectly described by absolutely everyone stupid as “amazingly lightweight and strong, and perhaps the way to go if you’re obsessive about ounces.” It isn’t. Titanium is a metal. Titanium is light, compared to uranium, but not compared to steel. Aluminum is the way to go if you’re obsessive about weight. Titanium is only 12% lighter than steel, though it has most of steel’s strength. Aluminum is 54% lighter than steel and has 75% of steel’s strength. Titanium doesn’t ding or dent very easily (making it tough), and is highly resistant to corrosion (which keeps it pretty). If you want a cooking pot and you don’t care a lot about how pretty it is, but you do care about how heavy it is, then aluminum is the way to go. You sort of care how tough a pot is and you probably care a lot about how much it costs. You may also kind of care how gunky it’s going to end up looking. Titanium is significantly heavier and vastly more expensive than aluminum, but tougher, and those who own titanium gear feel smarter because it looks new longer. A lot of people who feel that way don’t go backpacking because if they go backpacking they will get their clothes dirty, they will get sweaty and tired, and they really above all want to keep that just-off-the-shelf look. Titanium is for them. Titanium is for people who don’t want to sweat or ever walk uphill. (4) The Fairy Queen in Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Nope. Wrong again. That was Titania. Dang.

total pack weight: (See “pack”, “pack weight”, “base pack weight”, “from skin out”.) Pack weight has several elements. FSO: “from skin out”. W: “worn”, the weight of everything on or hanging from your body that is not in or on your pack. TPW: “total pack weight”. BPW: “base pack weight”, the weight of your pack and everything in it that will not get used up. C: consumable, everything you use up or could use up during a trip (food, water, fuel, and so on). The formulas are: FSO = W + TPW, and TPW = BPW + C (Weight from skin out is everything you wear plus your total pack weight. Total pack weight is base pack weight plus consumables.)

town food: Food that comes from a restaurant and often includes muscle relaxant as a side dish. Hikers often seek town food in the form of an AYCE buffet. Town food is considered one of the four hiking food groups by some hikers.

town gut: Condition that afflicts hungry hikers who spend too many days in town tracking down the greasy, high-calorie, intensely-flavored food (pizza, submarine sandwiches, burgers, AYCE buffets) that is unavailable on the trail.

trail animal: A long distance hiker at peace with being dirty, smelly, sleeping on the ground, and hiking 20 or more miles daily. Usually has wild eyes, a chilling laugh, and may be seen talking and gesturing wildly even when hiking alone. Happy to eat noodles or oatmeal for weeks on end, but may still incite a stampede for pizza or beer at any moment. (See “weapons-grade pandemonium”.)

trail magic: (1) That which surrounds a yogi. (2) Unexpected goodness falling on the heads of thru-hikers, unbidden. Can include being invited home for dinner, being given clothing, shelter, a warm place to shower, a ride, or be the discovery of a full stash of water deliberately left trailside for hikers. (3) Sex in the woods, preferably with someone smart, fun, good looking, and cleaner than you are.

trail tiger: Small, striped creature frequenting camping areas. They lie in wait for GORP, granola and other trail bits dropped or left unattended. Then they pounce and make off with as much of a hiker’s food as they can carry. Also known as chipmunks.

trangia: Swedish brand of alcohol cook sets and stoves. Small, light, well-made, efficient and elegant. Ultralight backpackers eventually began making similar stoves from aluminum beer cans. The homemade stoves proved to be smaller, lighter, more efficient and much cheaper, though not as well-made or as elegant. Trangia stoves are to alcohol stoves what titanium is to aluminum, but with substance. They are not just for trendy idiots, or any kind of idiot at all.

underburn: (1) The U.S. Forest Service defines this as “a burn by a surface fire that can consume ground vegetation and ‘ladder’ fuels.” Since they get paid for what they do, it probably means something. (2) Partially-cooked food. (3) The sensation you get from the lower part of your body after you’ve eaten something you shouldn’t have. (4) The sensation you get from the very bottom part of your body the day after you’ve eaten something really really spicy, and it’s suddenly leaving you to set out on its own.

utensil: (1) The human hand, for those who are fastidious eaters. (Comes in washed and unwashed versions, left or right hand models.) (2) Human lips, teeth and tongue, for those who are not fastidious eaters and simply stick their head into a pot and slurp. (3) Spoon. Normally not considered essential among ultralight backpackers, but may be fun to bring along for special occasions. (4) Useless affectation such as a knife, fork or spork, especially if made of titanium. (5) What you find in the road in upscale neighborhoods instead of a fork.

water: (1) A colorless, odorless, tasteless liquid that is a perennial favorite. Water sometimes comes as vapor (known as steam) or as a solid (ice). Water in the back country may have very, very small critters living in it, so small that they are visible only to scientists with advanced degrees. Sometimes these critters (water cooties) make a hiker sick. To avoid this, hikers often boil drinking water or carry chemicals or filters to purify water. Water is essential for hikers because they like to drink lots of it, lacking anything else to do besides walking, and that gets old. Water is also normally added to most hiker foods which are often made inedible by a process known as drying. (2) Dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO).

water bottle: (1) Vessel to carry clean water in. (2) As a “raw water” bottle, it is a vessel to carry untreated water in. This can serve as a reservoir of water to treat later, when making a dry camp, or can be used as-is for bathing. (3) Either of the above, but you’d better keep track of which is which. Originally, a water bottle was an appurtenance of the effete, but later became accepted as mandatory equipment, replacing metal canteens, mason jars, and lapping directly from streams at the time when hikers came to think of “bottle” and “Nalgene container” as synonyms, and began to fear untreated water. Currently most backpackers will not recognize anything as a water bottle unless it weighs at least four ounces (113g), costs at least $8, and comes in designer colors. Soft drink bottles are equivalent, except that soft drink bottles weigh only about an ounce (28g), cost a dollar or two, and come with free sugary, fizzy drinks inside. Those who don’t want to pay anything at all can scrounge soft drink bottles from friends or trash bins (and give them a good wash before first use).

water purification: (1) Fear attenuation, sometimes justified. (2) Process of taking water that may or may not be safe to drink and turning it into water that may or may not be safe to drink. (3) Filtering. Used by those who prefer to spend the most money and carry the most weight for a solution to a hypothetical problem that is least likely to be addressed by filtering. Filters clog and provide great homes for masses of unlicensed bacteria. (4) Ritual treatment of water. Chemical treatment and brief boiling are the most reliable, filtering the least so. More people who always treat their drinking water get sick more often than people who never treat their water. Those who filter water forget that there is a “dirty end” and a “clean end” to a filter. Rolling everything together and stuffing it away contaminates the clean end. And so you can still get those internal cooties. Chemical treatment with chlorine dioxide is the lightest and most effective method.

weapons-grade pandemonium: An insane rush in the direction of hot, greasy and spicy town food, initiated by a famished trail animal who has pizza on the brain, and imagines that it is available, even if at an unreasonable distance. A rational consideration of mileage and logistics generates a result of impossibility, but once the idea is planted food lust overwhelms brain cells and a stampede begins. Stampeding backpackers normally limit stops to pee breaks and glugs of water until either the goal is reached or death intervenes.

white gas: (1) Stove fuel that has been left in the can too long and has lost its healthy tan. (2) Special petroleum-based fuel popularized by the Coleman company, and said to produce the most heat per pound, at a price of $20 per gallon. Yeah, right. (3) What you get from eating too much rice.

wind break: (1) See “white gas”. (2) Wind screen. Boosts efficiency of a stove by preventing heat from being carried off with the wind. (3) What you prefer to be on the far side of when your hiking companion is actively breaking wind.

wind screen: (1) Term used for “wind break” in polite society. (2) Like a porch screen, but tuned for wind instead of mosquitoes. Used to protect oneself and one’s stove from biting winds. Or even nibbling winds, come to think of it.

wood: (1) The original solid fuel. (2) What you’d do if you could. Oh, wait a minute, that’s “would”. Never mind. (3) Complex naturally-occurring polymer of sugar generally regarded as a pretty nifty thing, used to make furniture and pencils, among many other fine products. Unfortunately wood, like everything else, is at least 99% blank, empty space seething with random energies and subject to violent quantum fluctuations that can be understood feebly at best, and then only through sophisticated stochastic methods requiring the attainment of advanced educational levels at obscure institutions. It’s a strange and frightening universe, so watch out next time you throw a stick onto that fire there, Bud.

wood gas stove: (1) A simple but clever type of wood-burning stove in which the fuel burns from the top down, so that smoke rises into the flame and is consumed. Can be made simply enough to serve as a lightweight and nearly foolproof backpacking stove. (2) A stove that burns fumes from wood that’s been eating the wrong stuff. (3) A mythical device created to burn naturally-occurring but evasive gas emanating from forests. Based on the “swamp gas stove”, which burns naturally-occurring gas emanating from swamps. Also mythical. This was derived from the “spirit burner” a device used by third degree initiates into the secret society of transcendental esoteric ectoplasmic spiritualist chemists, who worked exclusively in the dark, behind heavy, locked, oaken doors draped with thick, sound-deadening curtains. Also mythical.

yogi: (1) The art of swindling food from others, normally from gullible campground residents and clueless tourists, amazed that anyone would actually walk somewhere without being forced to at gunpoint. Technically, yogiing must be managed without actual begging. The mark has to believe that he is being magnanimous, and acting on his own volition. Named after Yogi the Bear of cartoon fame, who specialized in making off with picnic baskets (pronounced “PIK-a-NIK”). (2) One who yogis. A con artist in hiking boots who looks pathetic enough that otherwise normal people will go out of their way to help. (3) Sometimes used to describe one who steals bits of another hiker’s food, especially after poor menu planning by the yogi-er. A common excuse is “Oh, I didn’t know you still wanted that.” Punishments can range from a mild reprimand to involuntary separation of reproductive organs from the yogi’s body. (4) mythical being thought to be responsible for episodes of trail magic. sometimes seen during the hours of dusk, or at night hovering in a vague aura of ghostly luminescence on or near deserted trails. anyone seeing this phenomenon is advised to leave an offering to ensure good luck.

yurt: (1) The process of food shooting up into your nose when you have a simultaneous hiccup, belch and gag experience while eating. You know what I mean. (2) The sound you make when this happens. (3) A small in-tent fart that you hope no one else hears. (4) The soft, hairy, white stuff you get on yogurt when you’ve let it sit too long in the container after opening, or the hair itself, which is really a fungus. Go fungus! (5) A circular tent with a low conical roof, traditionally made of yak hide. Native to the steppes of north central Asia. (6) The thing you wake up in, suddenly, alone and naked, somewhere on the steppes of north central Asia, in the dead of night, after seeing the supposedly mythical trail yogi and failing to leave even a token offering. You poor, stupid bastard.

zero day: A day without hiking. Zero miles are covered. A day dedicated to bathing, laundry, refitting, resupply, screwing off, mindless sloth, and gorging on town food.

zip stove: (1) A sort of wood-burning stove made of discarded metal zippers. Can be zipped together for cooking, and then quickly unzipped again for breakdown and storage. When broken down, it resembles a pile of useless zippers, and can safely pass even the most rigorous customs inspection, though it can take hours or even days to reassemble if you lose the instructions, which will likely spoil your lunch and make you cranky. (2) A sort of wood-burning stove made of sheet metal. Now called the “Sierra” stove. Has a battery-powered electric fan built into its base so it can operate like a tiny blast furnace. No, really. Has a battery-powered electric fan built into its base? What the fork? Actually works pretty well, but it’s big and bulky. Some clever individuals have made their own from empty coffee cans and computer fans. A no-moving-parts, no-battery-required wood gas stove works just as well, and is simpler, cheaper and lighter. So there.

fire in your hand

Thursday, April 2, 2020

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Stoves And Fire Lexicon

Stoves And Fire Lexicon

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