• by Larry Dobrow , Featured Columnist, June 6, 2006

I spent about half the summers of my life at a camp in Pennsylvania, working my way up from camper to waiter to counselor. During those years, I did many, many things: swam, canoed, chucked balls around, sang "Kumbaya," inflicted lasting psychological damage, etc.

I never once, however, went backpacking or even got dirt under my fingernails (yeah, it was one of those camps). So after a beyond-ridiculous-double-backflip-awesome time at the camp's 60th anniversary reunion last weekend, I decided to go the celebrate-the-great-outdoors route for today's little exercise.

A decidedly non-flashy, you-get-what-you-pay-for title, Backpacker is a marvel of organization, solid journalism of the meat-and-potatoes (or, for the backpacking audience, jerky-and-trail-mix) variety. Pithy section headers like "Adventures," "Nature" and "Skills" shelter a host of almost religiously on-point items. The mag targets day trippers and weekenders alike, proposing "Perfect Day" scenarios and offering a "Life List" look at outdoor vacation destinations I'll never visit, unless they add Internet access.

Along the edge of three consecutive pages, Backpacker relays "Time 2 Go" tips for wildlife watching (you can either head to the non-nuclear Vieques Island off Puerto Rico's coast or to the Taco Bell in a college town on a weekend morning--it's all good). The "Trip Doctor" (who deserves more space) provides info about the financial implications of mountain rescues, while "See More..." presents a host of primo elk-viewing tips.

Most of these front-of-book items, however, can't seem to decide whether they want to appeal to hard-core backpackers, casualists or some unholy amalgam of the two. The small item on what to do when encountering a black bear doesn't push much further than "don't piss off Mama Bear"--a line which, if I'm not mistaken, was heard in "Superfly" and any other number of blaxploitation flicks. Similarly, the bit on "Hollywood Hikes" and its nod to "Nacho Libre" would seem to have no purpose beyond the purely commercial.

Backpacker also goes a bit astray when it attempts to spice up its prose and headlines. "Now is the time to kick it up a notch," begins one story; it goes without saying that nothing good can happen when you quote Emeril. Another item runs under the headline of "Best Damn Weekend Ever." Is that a hint of devil-may-care attitude? Ooh, I think it is! At least Backpacker shies away from using the street spelling of "skillz."

The June issue comes across as similarly spotty from a design perspective. Given the subject matter at hand, you'd think that more space would be afforded the intermittently striking photography. Instead, most stories feature a bright two-page spread at their outset, then merely fist-sized pix thereafter (note: I have small hands). A super-close-up of a tick's mouth provokes more of a visceral reaction than the issue's 3,645 scenic vistas combined--but then, I've never been one to gush over landscape/scenery porn.

As for the issue's five or six longer pieces, several of which are first-person accounts, I'm torn. On one hand, you don't expect every contribution to the genre to rival "Into Thin Air." On the other, how many I-fought-nature-and-nature-won tales can we be expected to stomach? The excerpt from a book about MIA ranger Randy Morgenson sustains a welcome air of menace, but the piece on a Mississippi River canoe expedition gets bogged down by its glut of quirky personal touches.

Then there's "bitten," the Lyme Disease primer that lost me with its overly alarmist lead: "That poppy seed you flicked off your pants a minute ago--what if it didn't just fall off your breakfast bagel? What if it had snagged your pantleg as you brushed against a stalk of trailside grass? And what if it wasn't a poppy seed at all, but a bloodsucking arachnid with eight legs, tiny curved teeth, and a spiral pathogen burning in its gut?" What if I stopped reading right then and there?

Rereading this little epistle, I think it comes across a bit too negative, as my first thought upon reading Backpacker was, "Hmm, a nice little hike sure strikes me as a most propitious endeavor about now." Of course, that impulse could have been spurred by the alcohol still seeping from my every pore; my former campers attempted to drink their geriatric counselor under the table and they succeeded, spectacularly. Anyway, once it figures out whether it wants to be a legit enthusiast title or one that targets novices, Backpacker could tantalize considerably more than it currently does.