Advocate III
Borderlands Camp:
FPG TS-11B Field Blankets clipped to my trailer's awning and flared out to provide shade for living/cooking area on hot desert afternoons.
These military grade Thermashields are the most amazing blankets I've ever used to reflect, or contain, heat and have become one of my most important bits of kit when camping. I use them in similar fashion when cold weather camping too, though more closed up, to contain heat from my propane fire ring under the awning.
Rolled up and bungeed for evenings and most of the next day until late afternoon heat starts beating in.
..
I treasured this base camp set up in the Chihuahuan Desert and stayed several weeks in this one spot, and seventeen in all within a hundred mile radius.
Exploring, shooting, and documenting the record desert bloom and animal tracks by day, and the fabulous dark skies by night.
Leatherstem blossoms. I nurtured these with waste water from cooking and washing, right in camp under the edge of my awning. Tiny and beautiful, they were one of the most exciting things to learn about:
Leatherstem (Jatropha dioica) , or Sangro de Drago (Dragon's Blood); traditionally used for a variety of dental problems by chewing the flexible stalks, or fraying the end of a cut stalk to brush one's teeth. Their red sap was used, too, for dying, hence the name Dragon's Blood. I wish I'd harvested some.
..
Morning lizard tracks.
Most every morning I would go on a long walkabout to see what mammals and reptiles had scurried about during the cool of the night; Javelina, Horned Rattlers (Sidewinders), a variety of Chihuahuan lizards, and the occasional errant human traveler.
I loved learning more about tracking. Some mornings I would follow tracks of one animal or another for hours, up over ridges and back down into washes through scat fields to the Rio Grande and back. There was one set of Javelina tracks I began to recognize as an individual because a part of one of its rear cloven hooves turned outward more than others.
I learned to judge an animal's speed of travel and when it was surprised or spooked, as well as to distinguish between different vehicle's tire tracks and how recent they'd been through. I knew which tires belonged to regular border or park patrols and which ones were one-time visitors. Tire and foot prints became distinctive. I could tell where they'd backtracked and driven or walked over their own paths, and who had stopped near my remote camp when I was away.
And the nights, the nights were glorious.
I would stay up all night learning how Earth turns through the heavens; sometimes with a star chart in hand, documenting what I could of our place in the Milky Way under some of the darkest skies on the planet.
...
FPG TS-11B Field Blankets clipped to my trailer's awning and flared out to provide shade for living/cooking area on hot desert afternoons.
These military grade Thermashields are the most amazing blankets I've ever used to reflect, or contain, heat and have become one of my most important bits of kit when camping. I use them in similar fashion when cold weather camping too, though more closed up, to contain heat from my propane fire ring under the awning.
Rolled up and bungeed for evenings and most of the next day until late afternoon heat starts beating in.
..
I treasured this base camp set up in the Chihuahuan Desert and stayed several weeks in this one spot, and seventeen in all within a hundred mile radius.
Exploring, shooting, and documenting the record desert bloom and animal tracks by day, and the fabulous dark skies by night.
Leatherstem blossoms. I nurtured these with waste water from cooking and washing, right in camp under the edge of my awning. Tiny and beautiful, they were one of the most exciting things to learn about:
Leatherstem (Jatropha dioica) , or Sangro de Drago (Dragon's Blood); traditionally used for a variety of dental problems by chewing the flexible stalks, or fraying the end of a cut stalk to brush one's teeth. Their red sap was used, too, for dying, hence the name Dragon's Blood. I wish I'd harvested some.
..
Morning lizard tracks.
Most every morning I would go on a long walkabout to see what mammals and reptiles had scurried about during the cool of the night; Javelina, Horned Rattlers (Sidewinders), a variety of Chihuahuan lizards, and the occasional errant human traveler.
I loved learning more about tracking. Some mornings I would follow tracks of one animal or another for hours, up over ridges and back down into washes through scat fields to the Rio Grande and back. There was one set of Javelina tracks I began to recognize as an individual because a part of one of its rear cloven hooves turned outward more than others.
I learned to judge an animal's speed of travel and when it was surprised or spooked, as well as to distinguish between different vehicle's tire tracks and how recent they'd been through. I knew which tires belonged to regular border or park patrols and which ones were one-time visitors. Tire and foot prints became distinctive. I could tell where they'd backtracked and driven or walked over their own paths, and who had stopped near my remote camp when I was away.
And the nights, the nights were glorious.
I would stay up all night learning how Earth turns through the heavens; sometimes with a star chart in hand, documenting what I could of our place in the Milky Way under some of the darkest skies on the planet.
...
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