Young Blacksmith said:
That was an unfinished thought. I was trying to pigeon hole the rest of the 21st century "baggage" that we cant really leave behind, or completely hide in an "anachronism bag".
Just to give a little "persona" background, I'm shooting for a early to mid 18th century "persona non grata", who may or may not have been a "run away"
The drinking water question is tough to get around. I'm thinking squeeze filter will pack away easily enough. Water treatment tabs are an easy back up, but require that I bring a suitable container. That points me in the direction of a period military canteen, reproduced in stainless steel. Its heavy, the wrong material and apparently not particularly appropriate for a civilian to be lugging around. Having another container to boil water in is a plus though.
The other 3 challenges and solutions have a bit of over lap.
For bugs, permethrin is an obvious thing to use. Its "modern" but invisible and helps counteract a modern and invisible health risk. I have read that Pfizer is in trials for a Lymes vaccine, and I will getting that asap. I know that some folks take prophylactic doses of antibiotics when on a trip, but that's been beyond me.
The various "bug dope" recipes are more from the post civil war golden age of camping and woodcraft. Carrying a little tin of pine tar and tallow laced with DEET is pretty innocuous though.
Mosquito netting looks to be well enough documented. I've found a couple expensive sources for Linen netting, but could certainly use cotton netting. My most appealing scheme right now is to sew up some sort of cowboy bed roll with commercial oilcloth and add a breathable top and a netting hood. The whole shebang would get treated with permethrin.
It would be an anachronism, but use reasonably appropriate materials. The commercial oil cloth is a modern material, but I think that keeping the weight down for all the "add-ons" is important, being that I intend to carry all this stuff around. Wrapped up with a blanket roll, it's not going to look totally out of place.
The blanket roll is also part of the "leave no trace" criteria. I could add another layer to the bottom to add as a browse bag or to hide a sleeping pad. I'm going to try carrying a sheepskin "torso pad" but if that doesn't cut it I might absolutely "cheat" on this one, because getting enough sleep is a real safety issue, especially when out doing something that needs a bit of cleverness to pull off.
Some sort of additional tarp might be necessary. My self, I'm designing all this around the idea of revisiting area's I'm reasonably familiar with, so If the weather report is clear, I might rely on modern knowledge and leave it behind. I'm interested in seeing how small I can go with a tarp and still stay dry. I'm thinking 6x6 foot may be doable. I'm going to start with an 8x8 foot prototype and try to work it down.
Getting to the issue of a fire, I need to drink a minimum amount of coffee and tea in a given day. So I'm going to need some sort of stove. A Trangia and a flask of fuel is not to much to carry as a back up for heating water. I'm pretty sure a folding fire box will cover the requirements restricting "open fires" where I'm intending to wander around. I think I'd like to have a longer end loading fire box verses most of the modern store bought top loading stoves. I am going to use a rectangular tin gallon solvent can as a prototype to check dimensions and cut the actual panels out with a cold chisel. That's going to be a total anachronism, but old timey...
So that's how I'm thinking about approaching my work-arounds. Looking at the sum of the extra junk, I think I'm going to be carrying an extra 10 pounds. I think that's a reasonable trade off for a leisure activity.. If I was 30 years younger and chasing a hostile war party..... not so much.. I'm more interested in catching and cooking something not to boney with a linen leader and hand forged hook.
Last thing, someone mentioned canoes, and I got to put in a vote for perfect being the enemy of the good. If there's navigable waters, and it's safe to paddle, off ya go. I am slowly coming around to the idea of the birch bark painted Grumman....
