A Weekend with the Conway River, pt 1

Friday, 03 April 2009

My buddy and I (we'll call him "Earl") went camping this weekend in the Rapidan Wildlife Management Area. I met Earl at his house around 1 o'clock... a half hour ahead of schedule. We enjoyed a beer, gathered some gear, and hit the road. A quick stop at the grocery store to pack the cooler and we were on our way to BFE, or Outer Mongolia, as I like to call it.

About twenty minutes north of The Bavarian Chef we arrived in Wolftown, Virginia. We passed the Wolftown Mercantile Country Store and five minutes later we arrived at the park. My cellphone beeped right around the entrance to the RWMA - no signal. Ahhhhhh.... we were now out of the reach of civilization.

We drove into the RWMA along a ridge into a valley in Earl's Toyota Corolla. The road was sometime very rocky, often crossed by fast moving streams, and was gravelled in places. The Conway River was visible to our left for much of the drive.

It had been raining on and off for nearly a week before our trip, and we could see that the river was very swollen. We continued to drive into the RWMA until we finally ran into a stream crossing that looked too dicey for the Corolla's low undercarriage.

Fortunately we found a great little spot right near the uncrossable stream. It was about twenty five feet from the river on a solid piece of high ground. The wind was whipping along the river and buffeting our campsite.

I had brought my six person tent, thinking the extra space might be nice. It's about 8x10... kind of like a bivouac or mobile command post. With the wind gusting like it was, setting up this monster tent was challenging.

I had to break out my uber-stakes to pin the bad boy down - no whimpy thin little aluminum stakes would do this night.... oh, no. After Earl and I got the tent stood up and staked down, it was time to setup the rainfly, which promptly about blew off. We fastened every little piece of velcro strapping and tied down every cord on the thing, but I was still less than confident that the rainfly wouldn't fly away in the middle of the night.

So I used some rope to lash down one side of the rainfly to a tree next to the tent and we made a little side shelter on the other side of the tent under which we could stow gear. Some carbiners, a little rope and one tarp later we had the other side of the rainfly secured.

Earl's tent was a small, one-man arrangement that you could only really lie down in. His tent was setup in a flash.

After the site was all set, we got the fire started. Gathering wood wasn't really an issue. There was plenty of standing deadwood around, so we had a nice pile of wood in short order. I had brought a tin of cattail dander (fluff? seeds?) because I read in one of my Tom Brown books that it was an excellent firestarter.

Basically, you harvest a cattail head... that bit that looks like a corn dog, right when it looks like it's starting to burst, or go to seed. Then take it home, let it dry out a bit if necessary, and then use your thumbs to break it apart. Make sure you have a container that is at least twice the size of the cattail you're harvesting because the volume expands massively.

In any event, it lived up to expectations and then some! We piled up a bunch of it at the base of the fire and Earl hit it with a spark from his flint and steel set and fwoosh! The stuff went up like napalm! I mean it really flared up. Unfortunately the wind was so harsh that we had a to use a touch of camp fuel (for Earl's lantern) to get the fire going well.

The heat reflector wall we built did a damn fine job helping with the heat. Basically we hacked up a log into two pieces of roughly equal length and used stones to stand them up against the firepit and then tied a reflective emergency blanket in between. It held up surprisingly well against the gusting wind.

Shelter and warmth attended to, we broke into the beer. Fine ales were at hand, too. We had some homebrew Belgian Ales (14), homebrew Nut Brown Ale (2), a 22 ounce Double Bock homebrew from my brother, some West Coast IPA (3), some Left Hand Pale Ale (2), and a twelve pack of PBR for good measure. Not that we drank it all that night or anything!

We basically sat around the fire, bullshitted and drank and then went to bed. I turned in a bit earlier than Earl... I was looking forward to a good night's sleep with no kids to wake me up early the next morning.

The wind continued howling all night, with the river's rush heard in between gusts of wind. At one point I woke up, dreaming I was being rolled into a giant's cigar only to find out that the wind had blown the side of the tent almost all the way over top of me. Between my sleeping bag and the tent I practically was being rolled into a cigar!

TO BE CONTINUED...