A Vested Interest

When I cannot find a certain piece of my gear, anything able to be toted in one hand, there is one place I begin my search.  Actually they are many, many small places, but they're all bundled up in the same area.  On the coat hooks near the back door here hang vests.  Fishing and hunting vests abound, with a couple more street-wise (read: clean, not full of fish goo and partridge feathers) fleece items for staying in town.  Those two have red W's on them instead of camouflage patterns and duck blood.

There were so many vests cluttering up the joint, I handed this classic down to Spanky.

I don't know how all these vests took over, but there they are, no room left for coats or hats.  They have become permanent residents on the landing, and show no signs of leaving.  I suppose that makes it a vest rack, not a coat rack then.  I do try to clean them out after a trip, but some relics are always left behind in the many tiny pockets it seems.

So, when a headlamp or gaiter comes up missing, for example, I make like a Leakey, and commence with the digging.  There are as many pockets per cubic foot of space hanging from those coat hooks as anywhere else on the planet, and some interesting finds can sometimes be made.  Often, I find the odd bits of detritus that fit together to weave the story of the last hunt or wade.  Food crumbs and wrappers.  One of those cheapo multi-tools you sometimes get for signing up with another outdoor magazine or organization.  A wader repair kit, years past usefulness. An exploded tube of sunscreen.  A discarded fly, stuck mysteriously to the inside of the collar.  I once found a perfectly preserved little mushroom in the chest pocket of a fishing vest where I normally keep my camera.  As far as I know, it grew there.  I have no recollection of how it might have gotten there otherwise.

Another time I found a scrap of folded paper containing a two-word note in my own jerky scrawl.  It said, "Cat library," and to this very moment I have no idea on earth what I was writing about.

 This vest is a testament to organization.  It also proved that a granola bar is still edible after a year inside it.

It's always an enjoyable time going through Pandora's Pockets, almost like looking at an old journal.  There's more than a couple dessicated planks of forgotten jerky in there.  The vests are filled with memories.  As I walked by them the other day, I saw the tag end of a wadded-up leader hanging out of one of the pockets.  I'd jammed it in there weeks ago after it snapped off on a big fish, retying a new one mid-current in a huff.  It seems silly now, to get enraged on a perfectly good stream because a nice fish broke you off, and that wad of balled up monofilament reminded me in passing, once again, that fishing is supposed to be fun. 

This all started for me with a vintage Eddie Bauer down vest.

Actually, it wasn't vintage then, it was just a vest.  Come to think of it, even if it had been, we didn't call things "vintage" then, we called them "old" or "hand-me-downs," and didn't really think about them much after that.  My dad gave it to me after years of faithful service from his own closet, rusty ocher over burnt clay.  Or I bet that's what the blurb under the heavily bearded model in the catalog said.  It was the chromatic equivalent of walking around as a giant cat turd, and I loved every minute I ever spent in it.  I dare say, I might have felt sexy as hell for the first time in my life, peacocking around the woodlot in that vest as a teen, no audience other than my velcro Vizsla, Happy.  We didn't call them "rescue dogs" back then either, but that's what Happy was, and seldom has there been a more fitting name for a canine companion.

We outdoorsy folk don't do much down and nylon in the vest realm anymore.  Some city people do, but they call them vintage or retro now, and that's not my gig, really.  When you've shredded the front off the original number hauling firewood with your brother, wearing its clone over a $90 flannel to the bars as a token of style just seems disrespectful.  I don't know to what or whom (lumberjacks, hipsters, Mr. Bauer?), but I know it ain't right.

I am still, however, a practicing vest aficionado to this day.  What can I say?  They make me happy.

I also transfer the little sticker off every apple I eat onto the last one in the group, until the final survivor is sporting a full, apple-y chest of badges in memory of his fallen brethren.  Sometimes I whistle "Taps" as I peel them off to eat that one.  I love truly awful sci-fi movies.  Stuck at a stoplight, I'll close one eye, line up a bug splat on the windshield with random objects and people, and make pew! pew! pew! laser gun sounds as I fire away in a valiant effort to save the galaxy.   What we're driving at here, is that vest love rests among the least concerning of my idiosyncrasies, I believe.

I go fleece over down now, in a layering vest, mostly because down sucks when it gets wet and I'm not stuck in a John Hughes movie.  And because Windstopper fleece is one of the greatest inventions of man, as far as I can tell.  The Donner Party would've been gorging on San Francisco sourdough come spring, had they been armed with vestments of the breeze killing polyester pile.  And some more food, I guess.

It's important to know what makes good vest food.  While I love my step-mother's secret recipe for deviled eggs (it's all in the horseradish and shallots, I think), I would never carry them around in a vest.  Disaster waiting to happen.  You need something firm and compact, something that will stand up to a little battering.  I stow jerky and mini candy bars in my vest for much needed bursts of energy.  I've probably devoted hundreds of hours to perfecting vest sandwich construction.  Not so much ingredients as architecture.  Things have to be assembled in such a way that the tomato doesn't get the bread mushy and the home smoked chicken thigh meat doesn't squirt out the side into the baggie.

The choice of the bread itself is integral in the construction of a solid pocket sangwich.  Too crusty and it will quickly be rendered dust around roast beef in the gyrating machinations of scrambling through blackberry brush after a fast flushing dog.  Soft white bread will often be mashed back into a doughy consistency through the same action.  Toasting can also make a difference to structure of the vest hoagie.  It may help keep the bread free of the effects of a gloopy aioli, but it can also make things too tough to chew on the wrong loaf.

As far as the perfect pocket sandwich goes, I prefer foccacia or ciabatta for the foundation.  They're already flat and bring flavor to the game, so I don't have to spread too much more on.  Fillings vary, but I always like some roasted red pepper in there, maybe some pesto if I have basil or have recently gathered sorrel.  And any good melty cheese.  I don't own a panini press, but if I have time, I do like to toast and smush between a couple cast iron grill pans before I toss my lunch in the vest.  You're almost guaranteed an indestructibly delicious slab of game pouch grinder at that point.

Superstitiously speaking, I do not like to have the meat of the fish or game I'm chasing in there.  That just seems like asking for karmic kick to the jewels.

Aside from the world of outdoor Dagwoods, I have two go-to vest lunches in my arsenal.  These are the ones that get used most often.  Firstly, the simple combination of an apple and a slab of cheese.  The apples because I do the majority of my vest wearing in the fall when the apples are plentiful, fresh, and snappy delicious.  The cheese because, well... it's cheese.  I don't care if it's ear-curling 18 year cheddar or my old pal, creamy mellow muenster, if I can hack it up with a pocket knife and pop it in with a slab of Honeycrisp, I'm in.

Next, a less universal choice.  For me, kipper snacks are the ideal vest food.  I love smoked fish, and they're already in a tin perfectly sized for vest carry.  It's a match made in heaven.  Although, I have discovered you can break a tin open with your ribs of you fall hard enough while crossing a creek, and nobody wants to smell like smoked herring the rest of the day, so be careful out there.

Lunch in bird season: lamb stew and reloads of kippered herring tins for the vest.

Of course, it also depends on what you can fit in your vest of choice.  Like fish and people, vests come in all shapes and sizes.  

As a fly fisherman, I'm often guilty of serious over-gearing on the stream.  I don't know if it's the product of the huge vest I often wear, or if I bought that vest because I knew I'd be carrying the kitchen sink.  Either way, in the age of demure little chest packs and tech savvy lumbar bags, I still slip into a hoss of a flyfishng vest, and I like it that way.  I fish what are considered huge ugly (in the good way) flies for fat fish, and I want to have a lot of them at my disposal.  The Camelback with room yet remaining for rain gear and lunch may be extraneous, but I can barely stand the thought of separating from them now.

I am able to pare things down to a chest pack when using a spinning rod for some reason.

They vary in size and carrying capacity, all these gear carriers.  The turkey hunting vest with the cushy stadium seat, is the most spacious of all.  Festooned with pockets on every possible surface and a game pouch seemingly large enough to carry a small antelope, this is the big mama of the local vest population.  I even used it to hunt turkeys once.  Most of the time it does double duty squirrel and coyote hunting.  That wonderful seat may have lent itself to a few too many woods naps, but I hold no ill will toward it.  Sometimes a man has to fall asleep under a tree for a while or life stops making sense.  

I lost a coyote call for over year in one of the million pockets on that turkey vest, then it floated back to the surface like a buoy lost in a sea of camo as I sat down to watch for squirrels one day.  It felt even better than finding cash in last season's coat pocket.

At the other end of the vest demographic, we have my favorite.  It's the classic, minimalist strap vest from Filson.  Two pockets in the front, one game pouch in the back.  That's all she wrote, folks.  It's light enough to wear all weekend through the thickets without a second thought, and spacious enough to carry all the shells I need, along with an apple or some fortifying smoked fish.  And it does double duty for me.  I intentionally bought the one without orange so I can wear it when I just want to amble down the bank of a creek, and collect a quick wood duck dinner.

It's the barely there vest.

Someday I will be organized enough that as each trip afield winds down, I'll take the time to clean out my vest when I hang it on it's designated hook.  I don't know in which universe this miracle is going to take place, but until then, I will continue to enjoy the treasure hunt and archeological dig that is trying to find the damn range finder in all those acres of pockets hanging on the wall.

Garbage Bag Kid Assaulted By Savage Duck

My fly tying vice broke last week, and right in the height of the tying season for me.  I was laying a hook in, and when I went to tighten down, the jaw tensioner screw snapped in half, and doinked off my chin before being temporarily lost in the the bits of fur and feather on the bench.

I, being minimally mechanically inclined, if not downright confused about such things most of the time, was compelled to ask advice of friends concerning how to get the rest of the broken screw out and replaced.  Even with my paltry skills, after some coaching I was able to remove the remainder of the busted screw, and find a temporary replacement without too much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Much more importantly, I was able to get back to tying!

 A screwdriver had to be used to set the jaws with the temporary fix, but at least we were back in business.

As far as outdoor-related calamities go, that little inconvenience was somewhere on par with a pesky hangnail.  No real problem, just a sudden and annoying tiny setback.

Most gear failures are just such a case.  Somewhat annoying, often cuss inducing, but almost never a singular moment of anguish or danger.  I bought an exploding baitcaster once.  It was a pretty sweet reel and a great deal.  Ron Popeil would've loved this thing.  It was all shiny and cool looking, with trendy little cut-outs and holes drilled all over, supposedly to cut down on weight.  It is rather torturous, after all, to heft those extra grams around all day, but we fishermen somehow manage to muster on.  This thing had all the magnets and spool brakes a gear nerd could ever hope for.  About the third time I threw it, one side of the case and the handle plopped off in the water.  Never have I been more impressed with a fishing product.  The rest of it went in the water shortly thereafter, and I learned, once again, to stick to more established brands and believable price points.

I've owned a set of rain gear that I'm fairly certain was constructed of sponges and dish rags.  It may have even created water on it's own, I'm not sure about the science on that.  I practiced for hours and hours with my first cheap fly rod, frustrated with the impossibility of creating a decent cast, before it was tossed unceremoniously in the bushes by a more experienced caster after having tried it only once.  My first ice auger, handed down to me I now think with a smirk and a wink, simply refused to cut ice no matter what.  Blades were sharpened, shimmed, replaced, and shimmed again.  If you had one guy apply all the downward force he could muster while another man somehow managed to turn it, and if you'd sacrificed a wombat to the Aztec god Amimitl, and if it was 80 degrees out, you might have been able to get one hole drilled in a half hour.  That lovely piece of equipment (you ice fishermen can surmise the brand, the light blue one that isn't Nils) was also cast tumbling through space like a 3-iron after a bad shank out of the long rough, and I never even saw where it landed.  Kept right on walking.

Equipment failures, as exasperating and annoying as they can be, generally populate the shallow end of the pool when it comes to true outdoor kerfuffles.  Far more interesting, scary, and amusing are the instances in which we the hunter, forager, or fisherman fail.  And fail hard.

I was almost murdered by a duck once.

Fishing off the Country Club pier in Fontana was a favorite boyhood pastime.  My best buddy Steve and I would pass the sunny hours catching rock bass and sunfish from the gin-clear waters of Lake Geneva, interrupted only by randomly shoving each other into the water and the very beginnings of girl watching.  We didn't catch very many fish, and never ever spoke to a girl.  Gross!

Being the inattentive youngster that I was, at some point, I left my Zebco combo laying on the pier to attend to a pressing matter like chucking rocks at seagulls or cannonballing my younger brother, the bare Aberdeen hook dangling mere inches above the water.  A hen mallard happened by with her fluffy little chicks paddling along behind.  I looked back just in time to witness the last little duckling take a curious nip at my sparkly gold hook, and impale itself.  Cue the Benny Hill music.

I swam over to reel in my catch, and attempt to release it.  I got a hold of the spaztic fluff ball, and was trying to set it free, when I was quickly taught about the protective nature of a mother duck.  As I struggled to free the duckling, I was suddenly enveloped in a hurricane of pissed off duck.  Mom blustered and bit, squawked and dive bombed.  She kicked and nipped and flapped all over me, making it nearly impossible to free my inadvertent catch.  By the time the melee had concluded, the baby was released with only a pin hole in the top of it's bill, and I was left shaking, covered in half-moon duck bite welts.  She then hung around for a while to taunt and berate me while Steve and my brother tried and failed to stop laughing uproariously.  It's no wonder I want to hunt ducks now.


Steve and I were hiking along the river behind the Abbey Resort in Fontana a winter or two after the Psycho Duck Incident.  We had sleds in tow, having just hit the runs over at the golf course, but that never held our attention very long.  We were much more interested in stomping around down by the river.  Building snow forts, poking around in the mud, daring each other to walk on the ice... boy stuff.  On one such adventure, Steve fell through the shore ice in only a few feet of water.  Using my cat-like wits and dexterity honed through years of  stumbling around outside, I quickly rendered aid to my friend in the form of cracking him in the face with my handy dandy walking stick.  I'd attempted a rescue, and managed only to bloody his nose to go along with his soaking feet.  That's what friends are for.

The stories are deep and many.  I can't even begin to recall all the instances in which I or my outdoor compatriots have blundered into comical situations.  However, as I was paddling Selma Kayak around Cherokee Marsh the other day, simply enjoying the sun and keeping an eye out for ill-tempered looking ducks, I thought of the Tale of the Garbage Bag Kid, a family favorite still shared almost without fail during long holiday gatherings.

The Kickapoo river is the longest tributary of the Wisconsin river, and a very popular canoeing and fishing destination.  You would be hard pressed to find a more beautiful river as it glides and meanders it's way through the bluffs of the Driftless Regoin.  And twist it does.  From headwaters to mouth it is only 60 miles long, but that run includes nearly 130 river miles as it bends back on itself over and over and over again.

It's also a bit a of a bugaboo for me, personally.  We paddled it often when I was young, frequently returning to it more than once a year.  I've also floated it fairly often as an adult.  It is a placid little gem, gorgeous and inviting to seasoned paddler and rookie alike.  None the less, that river has bucked me from my boat more often than any other.  I can think of only a few other instances of unplanned swims in my paddling life, but there have been almost a dozen on the comely, diminutive Kickapoo.

It was a cool, gray spring morning in the Kickapoo Valley.  Fog settled in the bottoms, and light rain misted down, giving the whole thing a cast like something out of Faust.  But we would not be deterred.  My family and I were there to paddle the Kickapoo, and it was going to happen.

My brother and I were still too young then to be trusted in a canoe of our own together, so he rode with Dad, and I manned (boyed?) the bow for my step mom Carolyn.  Carolyn and I were not great paddling partners then, nor are we to this day.  It started off as a joke that we seemed to complete a full circle directly after or right before launching or landing, but it soon became a self-fulfilling prophecy.  So we'd get our spin out of the way, and continue down the river.

Dad and Josh were even worse.  A long wet day in the canoe with a young son get can try a father's patience, I gather, and we can all recall the sound of my normally gentle, doting father's voice bellowing down the walls of the bluffs nearing the end of a particularly trying trip.  Josh!  Just keep your God damn paddle out of the water!

Being regulars on this section of popular river, we'd come to be friendly with the other families that frequented it.  Smiles and happy greetings were often exchanged as our caravan made it's way to the take-out.  On this trip, I'd somehow forgotten to pack my rain gear, after having been repeatedly reminded to do so.  Dad grumbled a little as he fashioned a makeshift poncho for me from a garbage bag.

Directly following one of our requisite spins, in a narrow section of the river, Carolyn and I were forced by the current into one of the many downed trees on an outside bend.  The canoe came to a sudden and complete halt.  I did not.  I tumbled into a deep pool of frigid spring runoff.  Suddenly finding myself in a bewildering low oxygen environment, I surfaced and immediately attempted to clamp onto Brian's passing canoe.  Being the wise river man that he is, he instinctively paddled away from my flailing attempts at self-rescue, knowing he'd be the next one in the drink if I managed to grab onto his boat. I eventually got my wits about me, and swam up onto the bank.  We caused a quite a backup, the other paddlers waiting patiently for me to get out of the water, and Dad to rescue Carolyn and the hung up canoe.

As I stood there, stripped down to my pre-teen briefs in the chilly rain, the other families paraded by.  Voices called out up and down the river wanting to know who'd gone in.  I was quickly linked to my most identifiable trait that morning -- my garbage bag poncho.  The garbage bag kid went in the water!  The garbage bag kid went in!  I finished the last hours of the trip looking like a half-drowned hobo in my dad's long underwear and my signature garbage bag poncho.  It simply cannot get much more demoralizing than that.  The moniker stuck with me on that river and in the campground we stayed at for seasons to come.

I've flipped boats on that river before and since.  Alone and with a crying girlfriend.  With my brother laughing like a demented hyena. With Steve glaring at me like I did it on purpose.  I came pretty close to real trouble once, my shirt sleeve caught on a strainer until Frisbee arrived to hoist me out of the water, but the precipitous fall from grace of the Garbage Bag Kid remains at the top of the list in re-tellings around campfires and dinner tables to this day.

Old School

Blogger's note:  Please excuse all the blatant product placement found below.  It's integral to my thoughts today.  I have no affiliation with any company mentioned, nor will I receive any compensation for mentioning them.  I just like their stuff.

I'm at home this weekend because of some family obligations, which is rare for me.  You're much more likely to find me up north at camp, down south at Brian's place, or somewhere in between every Friday evening through Sunday evening.  There are so many gorgeous and fulfilling opportunities outside, I've been known to go months without a quiet weekend at home.  The laundry piles up and the lawn slowly begins to resemble a Central American jungle, but there is no glory in folding underwear and nobody has ever looked cool carrying a weed whacker.  Ever.  Even the name is ridiculous.

As a Madisonian food lover and cook with little to do on a Saturday morning, sleep in my eyes and flannel trout pants twisted in an unruly monkey knot around my feet, it was both my right and obligation to stumble up out of bed to sentience, and get my heiney to the farmers market.  I'm told the Dane County Farmer's Market, held in the shadow of the capitol dome, is the largest producer-only farmers market in the country.  It is a wonderful place to take in as a cook.  The bounty literally overflows.  It's one of those places that makes me wish I were a competent photographer, able to freeze all those vibrant colors and resplendent heaps of harvest forever.  From the sprawling, verdant capitol lawn down to the tiny first spring onion of the year, it's a place that makes a person excited to know the difference between spanakopita and spelt.

It was cold yesterday morning.  Not twenty-below midwinter cold, but it sometimes feels like that early in the fall before your uncovered bits adjust to the nip.  With all the root vegetables showing up, and the mercury plummeting, there was only one thing to do.  Comfort food.  I could have gone with modern, updated comfort food -- squid ink new potato gnocchi or some faux hawk, ear gauge, neck tat stuff like that, but I was cooking for me.  I listen to Elgar and get flipped off for for driving too slow, not exactly punk rock.  With no need to twist exotic ingredients into a Kubrick orgy scene, the decision was made.  Chicken soup, with all the down home charm that implies, it would be.

Chicken soup is the poster child for homemade simplicity.  How can such an easy combination of common ingredients transform into such a mythic, satisfying dish?  I have no idea.  Even in it's most simple, old fashioned preparation, it manages to comfort and sooth, not to mention taste downright amazing.  There's always an element of surprise for me, in that I can chuck a bird, some stock, a few veggies, and a handful of herbs and spices in a pot, only to be greeted later by a classic, elegant ambrosia.  Personally, I'm not a fan of noodles mucking up my liquid gold, but you may be.  That's fine.  As with many things from folk art to fishing lures, the draw is often a product of what the individual grew up with.  To me, that means keep your floppy noodles outta my broth, and don't cook the veggies to structureless mush, thank you.

Braced against the wind and rain by my hearty soup, family obligations out of the way, I fell back on my standard weekend distractions that evening.  The home version of which can include a bottle or four of local microbrew, college football humming in the background, and care of outdoor gear.  As I took to seeing after my tools, it occurred to me that perhaps the draw of unpretentious, traditional food can be linked, in some way, to equipment of the same ilk.  Some of my treasured possessions are old hunting and fishing equipment.  Maybe that fascination with the "they just don't make it like they used to" feeling applies to gear as much as it does to comfort food.

Let me be clear.  The vast majority of my gear is up to date, space age derived, polycarbonate and resin stuff.  I happily fish graphite rods, standing in Gore-Tex waders, wearing shatter-resistant polarized sunglasses with lenses that change their tint based on available light.  I once read something about the microscopic silver halide crystals impregnated in the glass lenses, and how they react to UV light... then promptly forgot most of it.  Not that I even know what silver halide is to begin with.  All I do know is that sometimes it's nearly dark out before I remember to take them off.   That's some cool shit, and I see and catch more fish in the stream because of it.  I know it's true because the advertisers told me so.

Amidst all the toys bristling with the latest and greatest, there are a handful of gems either truly old or based on old designs and technology, traditional tools made from traditional materials that just ring true in your hands or on your back.

As I paid vague attention to LSU stomping West Virginia in the background, I pulled out my hunting knives to sharpen them.  No motorized grinders or ceramic sharpening rods, I was armed only with natural whetstones and honing solution.  I've dallied with all sorts of modern sharpening tools in the past, had varying degrees of success and failure with them, and finally settled on a couple traditional stones and plenty of patience.  Fitting, as the first knife I went to is almost three times as old as I am.

Marble Safety Axe Company began as a one room manufacturing facility behind the home of founder Webster L. Marble, legendary timber cruiser of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, in 1898.  They went on to produce knives and a great many other things, under a few different names, for about a century.  My model is called a Marble's Ideal, handed down to me after my grandfather, "Boompa," passed away.  With a stacked leather handle and blood groove, it was forged somewhere around 1922 in Gladstone, Michigan.  More than that, it belonged to a man I loved and admired.  It's a little shorter and wider than I usually like, and the handle is too stumpy for even my moderately sized hands.  Still, as much a talisman as a tool, I was thrilled to use it for the first time on those crop damage deer we harvested last weekend.  Just thinking of all the things it has been through, with it's slight pits and pocks, makes using it a pure joy.  It was embarrassingly dull last weekend, but I'm proud to report it is blunt no longer.  After plenty of time on the stones, resisting the urge to press too hard or go too fast, concentrating hard on angle and cutting surface, I'd like to think it now possesses an edge close to that which it carried when it first came off the line.  Ready for the next challenge, Boompa.

Of course, such important undertakings as knife sharpening and gun cleaning cannot be undertaken out of uniform.  In order to achieve the proper mental state, you must be dressed accordingly.  I think Buddha said that.  So I donned a Stormy Kromer, and got to work.

Somewhere around the turn of the last century George "Stormy" Kromer came up with the idea for the hat that still bears his name.  With a decidedly northwoods fashion bent, the stormy is not exactly Madison Avenue material, but man, is it ever comfortable.  As their poster says, "For fishin', huntin', or just plain wearin'," the simple wool and canvas construction, true to the original, never fails to warm the noggin, and always stays on in a stiff breeze.  The peculiar looking flaps rest in place around the back of the hat until that breeze takes on winter's bite, at which point they easily slide down to cover the ears.   It was a great design back then, and it still is today.  And I think the ladies secretly really like the look of a Kromer man.  I've had my eye on a new one in a cool newer pattern for a while now, as matter of fact.  They're practically required up north in the winter months.

After the zen-like repetition of sharpening a bunch of knives, it was time to get messy, time to wax the bibs.  C.C. Filson founded his company in Seattle in 1897, catering to the hordes of Klondike Gold Rush fortune-seekers with a line of tough-as-nails outdoor clothing and gear.  Filson's trademark Tin Cloth, basically canvas impregnated with paraffin, remains the toughest waterproof cloth you can find today, at least in my opinion.  In order to maintain the waterproof qualities, wax must be applied occasionally.  You take a heat gun or hair dryer, and just get in there with your hands, smearing warm wax into all the high wear areas.  It's a fun job for a formerly obsessed mud pie builder.

If I had to pick a single piece of outdoor clothing for the rest of forever, my Filson Double Tin Bibs would be the obvious choice.  If only because they might last that long.  They are the best of all worlds, and have been for more than a hundred years.  A boon for the upland hunter, they withstand the thickest stands of Prickly Ash, briars, and Buckthorn with ease.  Where synthetic waterproofs would be shredded, where Cordura brush pants would be soaked, Tin Cloth outshines them all.  If you're looking for gentle comfort, look elsewhere.  These things practically stand up on their own out of the box, the closest you can come to wearing aluminum siding, they need some serious breaking in before you stop walking like the Tin Man.  But you can charge through the nastiest cover in them without becoming an involuntary blood donor or drowned rat, then plop down on any convenient stump for a water break without getting a soggy bottom.  Totally worth it.

The "Good Old Days" should not always be lovingly fawned over through rose colored glasses.  Times were often tough, with hardscrabble men and women barely squeezing out a meager existence.  Modern life definitely has it's advantages.  I like modern dentistry, anesthetics, and using the loo indoors when it's colder than hell outside.  That being said, occasionally men like Filson, Kromer, and Marble really hit the nail on the head.

Monkey Time

Versatile.  Proprietary.  Ultralightweight.  Aggressive.  It's a pair of boots, for the love of Dog.  I don't know about you, but the image of an aggressive pair of boots can conjure some slightly frightening mental images for me.  I have no wish to wear Ray Lewis on my feet.

They love to foist the gear on us.  Most of my hunting interests will be peaking very soon, and the dudes over at Guns-n-Rods-R-Us ain't dumb.  They know I'm sitting here all jacked up, waiting with bated breath for the chance to go, for the wind to swing around from the north and the leaves to start changing.  And they know I can do little about it, outside of sitting on my wallet while I read their articles and surf their websites.  So my inbox fills with their emails as fast as my mailbox fills with their catalogs.

If you were to believe them, you could leave the house an expert in the woods without ever having visited them.  Why worry about wind direction on a stalk?  Simply slither into this activated charcoal cocoon, and bumble out the door.  Can't navigate cross-country with a map and compass?  No problem!  Just purchase one of theses handy-dandy GPS units, guaranteed to save a brazillian waypoints and locate your butt anywhere on the planet.  Until the batteries die.  Want to catch a bigger fish than that knothead, Mike, down the hall in accounting?  This $20 crankbait should do the trick.  If you know where to throw it, not to mention when and how.

All that being said, gear is good.  Tools of the trade are necessary, and sometimes downright cool.  Some of them might even save your bacon one day, if you're dumb or unlucky enough to get in a pinch.  But the whole purchasing of them can easily spin out of control faster than a freshman farm kid on spring break in Cancun.

Picture the outdoor gear retailer's greatest dream.  It's easy --  I'm over there on the right in the beard and bomber hat, a self-admitted gear nerd.  As a patriotic American, I'm duty bound to genuflect at the feet of consumerism, to acquire the latest and greatest gear every year.  If I don't have those Gore-Tex bibs with the new, NASA-inspired shoulder strap system, the terrorists win, right?

It's not that bad for me now, but it nearly was once upon a time.  Thankfully, most of my friends and I have been in this game long enough that we no longer feel the need to run out, and blow our hard earned checks on this season's avalanche of camouflage crap.  Of course, the temptation lingers.

Fly tying is the worst.  There are literally thousands of products and materials out there, all so shiny and inviting.  My fly tying bench looks like a a bomb went off at an all chicken disco party.  Cluck Cluck Cluck Cluck... Stayin' alive!  There are any number of these tiny baubles and doodads that are integral to the flies that I tie.  There are also dozens of these little things that I've purchased, and never used.  Why did I need stainless tarpon hooks?  I have no idea, but I bet they were in the bottom of some bargain bin, just waiting for the next sucker to come along.

I tie here in the computer room, more aptly titled, "the fly tying and fishing shit tornado room," where the fur and feathers glacially migrate across the desk, and calve onto the floor, until I finally beat them back to various drawers, bins, and peg hooks.  While not nearly artwork, and not even artisan's work, the flies do occasionally appeal the the eye of both fisherman and fish enough to make wading through drifts of deer hair and chicken feathers worth it.  The vicious strike of the smallmouth on a topwater I've spun and stacked is reward enough for sometimes finding trimmed deer hair in my dinner, on my sheets, and even in the shower. 

The fishing rods themselves also contribute mightily to the wallet suck that is outdoor purchases.  Non-fishers often gawk and comment when they spy the thicket of rods sprouting in the corner or sprawling across the bed of a pick up.  They don't understand that fishing rods are a lot like golf clubs -- there's a rod in the bag for every shot, so to speak.  You don't cast for little native brookies on a massive 9-weight thunderstick, nor to do you chase muskies with dainty little bamboo trout rods... and all the permutations in between.  That's not even considering all the conventional spinning and bait casting tackle of similar ratings and uses.  It can grow to quite a number.  And once you settle on a rod maker of choice (I'm smitten with a certain famous rod company from here in Wisconsin that shares it's name with a famous river) those rods seem to have the ability to reproduce in the dark secret places we store them.  I can't possibly have purchased that entire stack, they must spawn in the back of the truck after a few too many cocktails around the campfire.  It's been known to happen.

Clothes are bad too.  I'll admit I'm a bit of a clothes horse.  Fortunately, I'll never be mistaken as a dandy or metrosexual as most of my purchases hail from the Filson and Woolrich end of the spectrum.  That doesn't mean they don't pile up. Closets erupt with fleece and wool.  To open certain drawers, stuffed to their limit with Thinsulate and Polypro, coarse language and the strength of Thor must both be employed.

Honestly, part of the problem here seems to be that for a few years there after school, everything always shrank in the off season.  I must have been drying everything on high.  Or eating everything in sight.  One of the two.  Thankfully, I've managed to settle into a more comfortable zone now, roughly maintaining the mass of a red dwarf star, but there's still one pair of waders out in the garage that I no longer wear for fear of being mistaken as a giant, overstuffed camouflage bratwurst.  Yummy!

Of course, the subject would not be complete without addressing the random gimmicky crap we fall prey to on occasion.  Don't look at me like that.  You know what you've done as well as I do.  It was a plastic piece of crap purchased from Satan's colon (based in Bentonville, AR) that broke inexplicably when you looked at it sidelong the first time you took it out.  Or it was some completely useless trinket, purchased on a whim for no discernible reason.  We all have a box of them in the basement or garage that should go on E-bay or in the garbage.  I find one in a tackle box, backpack, or vest every once in a while.  Nothing to do but hang your head in amused shame at that point.  You got me with your fancy advertising.  What a rube.

I purchased a knife sharpening kit years ago.  I won't name the brand or the online retailer from which it was procured, but this thing may as well have been made from confetti and spit.  I'm pretty sure the knives actually sharpened the stones they were so soft, and the rickety little joke of an angle guide imploded faster than a game of drunken Jenga.  I could write for an hour on these little debit card catastrophes, but I won't.  You've been there at least once yourself.

Buying and using the gear is only half the fun.  A great deal of the joy comes from simply pawing it up at home, getting ready for the next excursion.  Hours, days, entire weekends have been frittered away painting and sharpening, sewing on buttons and tweaking baits.  Most of the time it's a perfectly harmless way to pass the time while you dream of the upcoming adventure.  You show me a man on his first trip of the season, I'll show you a guy who spent an hour playing with his toys like a monkey in the zoo the night before.

I'm going deer hunting this coming weekend.  As my departure approaches, long underwear will have to be located, outerwear will need to be packed, my rifle and ammo will need a good ogle, boots and knives and any number of things will have to be sharpened, re-waterproofed, and generally dinked around with.  Before I sat down to write this, I spent a good two minutes looking at faucet handles, across the house in the kitchen, through my binoculars.  Just like a monkey in a zoo.