In the late ‘60s the McCorquodale family was living in New York City having moved there from Houston in January of 1966. One weekend Dad and I went on a camping trip in the Bear Mountains. I must have been about eight years old, nine at most. My mother, Robin, stayed home with my two younger brothers.
We had a lightweight tent, special dehydrated camping food, a special lightweight stove made specially for hikers and two canteens. Since we couldn’t carry enough water, Dad had maps showing where on the trail we could find streams for refilling canteens. Imagine drinking water that didn’t come for the faucet! Dad said that this was ok, as long as we dissolved a little water purification pill in our canteens after refilling them with water from the stream.
Before we started the hike in earnest, we stopped at a little store to get some last-minute supplies and information. I remember that we couldn’t find exactly where the trail started, but with the aid of a compass and a map we started through the forest and shortly found a trail marker. A trail marker was a symbol attached to what seemed like a random tree along the trail.
We hiked and hiked and almost ran out of water before we found a brook where we filled out canteens.
Later that day we made camp near a brook with drinkable water. To cook dinner, Dad had a small cylindrical propane burner that was about 6” long and a couple of inches in diameter. The burner was placed inside a circular container that was maybe 12” inches in diameter designed to shelter the flame from the wind. A “cooking pot” was placed on top of this and a few minutes later the re-hydrated contents of the dinner packs were ready to eat. After diner we had to clean our plates. We went to the brook, rinsed our plates and then used some brook sand as an abrasive to make sure that our plates were really clean.
The next morning, using the same stove, Dad re-hydrated some scrambled eggs and that he took a couple of pictures with me posing, sitting-up, partially in my sleeping bag eating the scrambled eggs that we made. I think I may have a picture of this somewhere.