tramping
tramping
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DRYING AFTER RAIN
WET weather is not the tramp’s worst enemy, but it leaves him with the problem of drying his clothes. It may not damp his spirits, but will probably damp his attire. The walk in the rain, or worse than that, the walk through rain-laden thickets after the rain has ceased, the night slept in the rain when it begins to drizzle at eleven and you think naught of it, and to rain steadily at twelve and there is no refuge, and to pour gently at one and in torrents at two, and it is all the same because you are already as wet as canbe—these are modifications of Nature’s blessings, pleasant or unpleasant in themselves according to taste and breeding, but having, as a natural sequence, the common duty of drying.
The wet dawn peers through the trees; pale morning looks faintly upon a washed-out camp, and two Rip Van Winkles, feeling a hundred years older, lift up heavy and rusty limbs, and reflect that it has been a wet night. The problem is to get dry.
The first means is a fire. Grant the matches have kept dry; or if they have not been kept in a canister, that one of the tramps happens to have abriquet! With a petrol lighter one is independent of wet matches. Then the fire must be carefully begun, nursed and nourished. Perhaps one can find an old ruined and red-rusty bucket on the waste—a gift of Providence. The fire may be well started in that. If you feel cold you may bring fuel to the fire spot on the run—dead fuel of branch and withered weed, heaps of it. One needs to get a good fire going, a big fire, a drier. “It can be done,” as a millionaire self-mademan used to say. “Can’t must be overcome.”
You know at sight when your fire has got the upper hand of the surrounding damp. That is your moment for executing a war dance around it. The longer you dance the quicker you dry. But do not forget reserves of fuel. You need a fire on which you could roast a sheep. For you have to dry, not only your clothes, but the blanket, the knapsack, and your spare linen. You find a corner for your pot. It will boil and provide coffee while you are engaged with drying.
Somehow or other the blanket has to be hoisted up on to a line. You need string, which I hope you have brought. If there is a tree or a telegraph post or any other post, or preferably two convenient trees, two convenient posts, you can tie up the blanket and let it dry in the heat of the fire. If these are absent there may be a corner of a wired enclosure. You must shift your fire to the place where you can rig up the blanket. It is seldom that absence of uprights of any kind reduces you to holding the blanket inyour own hands in front of the fire and drying it so.
Indeed, if no convenience offers, you may simply dry off your clothes and then tramp on till you find a spot better equipped for blanket drying. You will not, as a rule, have to tramp far.
Clothes, however, do not dry as quickly as expected. Especially the tweed jacket and its shoulders take an unconscionable time a-drying. It is not good for one’s health to tramp with a heavy knapsack on wet shoulders. The weight drives the damp inward, and as the back warms and perspires it takes potential rheumatism from the steam of the jacket. A night out in the rain will not give you rheumatism; many nights in the wet will not give you rheumatism. It is not getting wet which gives you these pains, it is the way you dry. You are, in fact, safer scampering naked in the wet than drying slowly in a heap of wet clothes. Perhaps it is not amiss to remark here that a waterproof worn over wet clothes is a sure way to cultivate rheumatism. Thedamp cannot escape outwards—and so goes inward to your very bones.
Your shirt will dry quickest and easiest. Wearing that, you can dry the rest of your clothes at the fire, the lightest first. If your boots are soaked it is better not to try and dry them by a fire. Leather liketh not fire. There is little harm in wearing wet boots and trusting them to dry themselves as best they can.
It is a happy occasion, this of drying off. One’s spirits are naturally exalted by it. It is victory of a kind. The tramp sings as he circles the fire. There is a music which belongs to the mood, and it is a pity no great musician has composed “While waiting for my clothes to dry by an early morning fire.” The musicians have not tramped enough.
However, in this light-hearted frolic, let us not allow our linen to be ruined. Beware of the long flames which try to lick your trousers as they hang there in the wind; beware of the scorching heat which browns and ruins a shirt; beware of the showers of sparks which rise when you throw a new log on the fire. For some good reason, sparks are more plentifulafter rain than in the dry. Your fire may be sending up sparks all the while, big, substantial living sparks, which, settling on your drying blanket, may fret it with holes. I have had a blanket made holey by this before now. The spark settles on the wool, ignites it gently, and starts a hole which may be as big as a cigar end before you notice it. As the blanket gets nearer being perfectly dry you need to retire it from the intimate ardors of the fire. Your fire, in any case, has been getting hotter and hotter. You have not noticed that it is beginning to scorch your clothes and your wraps.
That is the way of drying off. It suits all weathers. But if, while you are engaged upon it, the sun breaks forth, promising natural heat, you may relax your energies from the fireside and place your hopes on the morning warmth. Nothing is more delightful than the sun bath after rain. You enjoy it, your clothes enjoy it, blanket enjoys it, knapsack enjoys it, coffee enjoys it. As you are all spread out on the hillside the butterflies settle on your bare chest trying to take honey from you, andflit thence to the knapsack which, perchance moistened with sugar, gives an even pleasanter reaction to the proboscis of a Vanessa.
A third dry-off is in a farmhouse at the kindly hands of a farm wife, who hangs your blanket and jacket in her kitchen, while her husband regales you in the parlor with homebrew and a hunk of fruit pie.
There are other less satisfactory ways of drying; using newspapers as blotting paper and stuffing the legs of your trousers with them. But first find your dry newspapers. Another method is to get up into a tree and sit there till you are dry. The last I have tried, but shivered so steadily that I gave it up, resumed my way, and walked myself dry. It is part of a genuine tramping outing to get once thoroughly wet—and dry off.