by Marc Phillippe Babineau

Created on: February 25, 2009   Last Updated: March 02, 2009

Camping in the great outdoors is our best chance at living life sort of how our ancestors lived, with dinosaur for supper and caves for homes. Living under the stars, watching the sunset instead of the television, we simply love and yearn to get back to nature, back to where it all began. We want to live and prosper in the great outdoors, just with better gear and, hopefully, more intelligent conversation than our ancient ancestors had. Camping in a campsite where cars can be parked at, or near the tents, caring for our food becomes as simple as bringing a few coolers, lots of ice (or dry ice, which works much better and lasts much longer), and storing them in a closed trunk.

However, when we go camping in more secluded areas, where there are no roads, and barely any trails, and we are camping far from the cars or any amenities, guarding the food that is brought along inside the backpack is very important, as there may not be any more food to replace what Sydney the squirrel takes, or Buddy the Bear, unless someone backtracks to the vehicles, drives to the nearest store, then restarts the adventure with new supplies. Days can be wasted by losing your food to animals, so it is always best to protect the food from animals, and sometimes other hikers as well.

Enter the tarpaulin, some rope and re-sealable containers, preferably with twist tops, as they are harder to accidentally open while in transit inside your backpack. Re-sealable containers should be used to store any foods that could be ruined by moisture (like rice, flatbread, etc.), and any foods or spices that emit strong odours. Duct tape can be used to wrap any sealed foods up, in order to seal them tighter against odours escaping from them. The taped up food canisters can then be buried at least 2 feet under the ground. The duct tape, if covering the plastic encased food wholly, which is buried under 2 feet of dirt, will help to mask or totally hide the food's scent from most prying and curious animals, as well as keeping other bugs and insects out of the food.

The tarpaulin, God bless the inventor of it (and the inventor of duct tape, too!), can be set on the ground, all of the foodstuffs set in the middle. Tie pieces of rope to all of the eyelets on the tarpaulin, and then tie those pieces of rope to one piece of rope at least twice the length of the height of the tree branch that is selected to hold the foodstuffs. That one piece of rope is then flung over a branch of the tree, which should be at least

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