Re: Self-made/Brower Drift

Almost nothing in Brower's how-to books was bad advice except I can't comment on livestock material....

Brower's influence Harvey Manning's how-two writing seems noticable. Brower's influence in Jardine's case may be less direct.

The 1952 "Going Light with Pack and Burro" was still available from REI catalog in early seventies. It should be reprinted as historic curiosity. A very late edition of Brower's "Manuel" was current in early 1970s, though I think the author/editor may have changed completely by then and it merely had a forewword by Brower.

(For historic modernist curiosity, see also online via simple Google search, 1950 abortive "how-to" manuscript on Sierra backpacking by Kenneth Rexroth, who inadvertantly launched "Beat" literatue in San Francisco some years later, much to his alleged subsequent regret.)

Regarding old-style tents, I fully agree with above views and note also Horace Kephart's 1911 comments in "Camping & Woodcraft" regarding British pedestrian kits, including exact prices and also weights that were extremely close to today's lightest camping equipment.

Silk tents, down sleeping bags and alcohol stoves (soda-can pattern). The excellent Kephart dismisses these, but elsewhere he has some very light patterns for tarp shelter sewing.

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