I’m a huge advocate for taking babies camping. Both of my babies were out in tents before they were 3 months old. Not alone, or in extreme weather, but out with the rest of the family, enjoying the fresh air. Both times I found the babes were soothed by nature and neither time was the baby a drag on the camping trip. Well, maybe a small drag if we’re being honest, but I was barely recovered from pregnancy and delivery, so no one was going to be hiking into primitive camp spots anyway.

How do you do it without killing the cute little things? I was a teensy bit worried the first time we went camping with Boy #1.  But, I figured the worst things that could happen, were the things I was already worried about at home. Can I keep him warm, dry and fed? Warmth was fine in the tent, we were camping in mild weather.  At night we had lots of blankets on the bed, and a couple sized just for holding with baby. Dry was easy enough, we went in the tent when it rained. We also went with disposable diapers for camping, which made diapering a breeze.  (Camping can be considered practice for bugging out, and while I would take cloth diapers for a bug out, pleasure camping requires that we switch to plastic. Otherwise camping would strongly resemble our every day life, with the washing and drying of diapers, and neither of those activities was high on the list of things we wanted to add to the camping-with-baby experience.)  Keeping baby fed was also a breeze because both were good nursers. For older babies who like finger foods, fruits are easy, as are crackers. If you feed formula, make sure you have a way to make hot water, even for the midnight feeding. (That’s a tall order right there, a rocket stove would probably do it best, you’d likely need two adults awake in order to successfully make a hot bottle in the dark, but I’ve never had to do it.)

Plan to have the baby in your arms, or wrapped to your body. Fire, bugs, rocks, snakes, bodies of water, all of these are dangers if you put your baby down while camping. While some tummy time in sunlit grass while surrounded by adults is great, that’s only 20 minutes of the day. Find a style of wrap or carrier that you like, and plan to have it on hand. Camping with a large group of family or friends can also be helpful, providing lots of eager arms for baby holding time.

Other essentials? The biggest winner with my eldest was a hammock. Hubby strung it up in some shade near our tent, and the baby loved rocking in it with the sounds of the river and the birds and the wind coming together as a fine lullaby. Baby friendly bug spray, you can usually find deet-free options if you look for them. Make sure your car emergency kit and camping first aids kits take baby into account.

Get those babies out into nature. It’s good for everyone involved.

- Calamity Jane

I know there’s lots of people out there who look at back packs and wonder what’s right for them.  If they have to bug-out what should they use as a pack?

In today’s video I talk about three different types of pack weights and durability.  And by weight I’m talking about how much the pack weighs empty and how well you can expect it to hold up.

Check it out and if you have questions or comments you know what to do right?

Sound off below!

-Jarhead Survivor

BTW:

Awhile back there was talk about  Selco’s blog, which I’ve read and found useful.  Right after that post I received notice that he’s set up a SHTF online class.  Click here if you’re interested.

First – open this song and in another browser window while you read today’s post.  It’s one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs and it has the lyrics in it.  (And the video is crazy.)

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This week Edward Snowden came out and said that the U.S. is basically spying on the world.  There’s a huge shocker for you.  His words:

“I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building,” Snowden told the Guardian.

Source

Through an initiative called PRISM the government has access to records of what you do on the internet.  Everything.  According to this article:

…Their subject was PRISM, a covert collaboration between the NSA, FBI, and nearly every tech company you rely on daily. PRISM has allowed the government unprecedented access to your personal information for at least the last six years. But what is it, exactly?

PRISM is a secret government program…

As much as PRISM might sound like a comic book antagonist of S.H.I.E.L.D., it’s the codename for a very real US government program. According to leaked documents, it went into effect in 2007, and has only gained momentum since. Its stated purpose is to monitor potentially valuable foreign communications that might pass through US servers, but it appears that in practice its scope was far greater.

So not only are you tracked from space, the air, and from cameras across the land you know have the government looking at everything you do online, which for many citizens of the advanced nation is practically everything.  Your whole life is laid out so for someone to sift through.

“But they only look at suspected terrorists, Jarhead!”

It seems impossible that the NSA, an agency which by law is only allowed to monitor foreign communications, has so much access to domestic information. And yet!

There are, as you might expect, filters in place to help handle the fire hose of data that comes through daily, the trillions of bits and bytes that make up our online identities and lives. Something to ensure that only the bad guys are being tracked and not honest, everyday citizens. Actually, there’s one filter, and it’s ridiculous: an NSA analyst has to have “51 percent” confidence that a subject is “foreign.” After that, it’s carte blanche.

That’s it. That’s the only filter. And it’s an ineffective one, at that; the PowerPoint slides published by the post acknowledge that domestic citizens get caught in the web, but that it’s “nothing to worry about.”

Source

Phew!  For a second there I though I might have to worry about MY privacy being compromised.

Wait a minute!  Aren’t those who have guns and store food for long term emergencies on some kind of list somewhere?  Hmmm….

 A Matter Of Privacy

I suppose in the grand scheme of things it’s unlikely the government would want to tear your background apart.  There are millions and millions of people and just so many worker bees to check it out.  But… your personal information is out there!  And business information… and everything!  Just think about anything that uses the web these days – which is pretty much everything - and it’s out there.  If that doesn’t scare you then I don’t know what will.

Sure, they’re not using it right now like they did in Orwell’s 1984, but the framework is being erected and we’re all meekly baaaahhhinng in the fields while they do it.

So there’s Jarhead’s daily dose of tinfoil.

What do you think?  Am I way off base or is there something to be concerned about here?

Questions?  Comments?

Sound off below!

-Jarhead Survivor