Things that bug us...

After living in the field for a while you realize that certain things really bug you. They may only happen occasionally, but when they do you are instantly annoyed. Here are just a few of those things that we thought you might find amusing:

Mosquitoes. Now it's not what you think – mosquitoes are a regular part of summer camping. You get used to them, some places are worse than others, and you use a good repellent when necessary. But in the backcountry they rarely see humans and tend to be less wary than they should be. So you can often swat them before they have a chance to get their blood meal. Additionally, you can frequently snatch them right out of the air before they even have a chance to land. You squeeze you hand into a tight fist so that the little bloodsucker will be crushed between your powerful fingers demonstrating how superior you are to the miniscule insect you have chosen to obliterate. Except that when you open your hand to assess the carnage, the mosquito, having found some tiny refuge among your digits, simply flies away – unscathed. Now that is annoying.

Places that are “Lost”. Lakes, rivers, creeks, mountains, etc. By definition, if something is “lost”, you don't know where it is. So how can it appear on a map? If you needed to find “Lost Lake” you could simply look on a map (between Buster and Strawberry Mountains in the Okanogan National Forest of eastern Washington State), and if that is the case, is it really lost? (You could actually just follow the trail up from Strawberry Mountain, you can't miss it.) It makes me wonder if there is a map out there for my keys... maybe the problem isn't that I lose my keys, but that I lost the map to them...

In general, breezes are nice. And on a hot summer day, cool breezes are almost universally welcomed. But there are times when you'd prefer to forgo them. Like when you are sitting on a US Forest Service vault toilet. Now, I'm not talking about the old pit toilets that you'd do anything to avoid - most of the modern ones are fairly clean, have toilet paper, and don't smell too bad (not to mention you don't have to dig your own hole). But you can imagine what must be down in that vault. So when you are sitting there, enjoying the fact that you don't have to squat over a small hole in the ground, and a cool breath of air rushes past your backside on its way toward your nostrils... an open air cathole in the woods starts to sound pretty nice.