The attractiveness of the outdoor life, its health giving attributes and its satisfying of the primitive in civilized man yearly draws hosts of enthusiastic adventurers into the wilderness. If he is experienced the woodsman sets about in a prosaic way to get pure enjoyment out of each day’s routine and he is able to do this because he knows how. The novice however is apt to be influenced by poetic dreams and his ideas of kits and methods of woodcraft likewise theoretical and idealistic and sooner or later he is to be rudely awakened to his lack of the elemental, essential creature comforts which are so necessary to his welfare and enjoyment. The wilderness dweller, if he chooses to be a true disciple of the Red Gods must ‘go light’. In travelling light of course one must necessarily deny himself many things that under ordinary circumstances are deemed essentials, yet it in no way needs to be a deprivation. On a back pack trip he must put his outfit selection through a rigid exclusion test. The equipment must be restricted to actual necessities such as food, requisites for cooking, shelter for the night and a good bed--all suited to the method of transportation. In camp and on the trail one will astonish himself at the makeshifts which he will invent to overcome camping discomforts as they arise. The selection of any outfit lends itself to dispute because the choosing of its component parts is not an exact science but is more a question of temperament. The novice will suit himself as to what he will take, for he naturally follows the dictates of personal desires rather than absolute needs and usually he accumulates about twice as much equipment as conditions demand. Sooner or later his experience will guide him into the safe course: he will learn the science of smoothing it--of being comfortable--when he goes out to ‘rough it.’ It goes unquestioned that the less you carry on your back the less will be your fatigue at the day’s end: the smaller the burden you carry in your pack the more must be your knowledge of how to employ the artifices of woodcraft in utilizing nature’s primitive stores. The weight and bulk must be accommodated to the means of transportation at hand. Thus for a hike in the wilderness with full outfit carried on the back you must boil the necessaries down to that irreducible minimum consistent with comfort whereas were you travelling by wagon or canoe you could be more indulgent. You will have “boiled” it down to the essentials when you carry the outfit from season to season without adding to or subtracting from it. This then is _your_ ideal kit for it has withstood the “acid test” of experience. What one man calls a necessity another calls a luxury, yet this same luxury if the second man wants it bad enough becomes forthwith a necessity.