I'm seventy-five, and I still camp in every season. The gear, the shelter, sleeping warm, safe water, fire, food, and staying safe, all told plain, the way I'd tell a neighbor. It runs 553 pages, with the chapter and page for every answer.
Twenty-eight chapters in seven sections, and six appendices at the back. This is the real table of contents, so you know what you're getting before you pay a cent.
Up front: A Letter from Ivan, page 5 · How to Use This Book, page 9
The kit that matters, buying it without getting fooled, where to camp, and the plan that keeps a trip from surprising you.
Tents, tarps, cots, and the truck bed, and the one thing most campers get wrong: sleeping warm.
Safe water, a fire you can build and put out, stoves that won't hurt you, and cooking the old way.
Weather, cold and heat, bears and bugs, first aid, and what to do when you're turned around.
Knees, backs, cold nights, and the comfortable camp. Getting older changes how you camp, not whether you do.
Knots and tarps, the cheap tricks that work, keeping gear alive, and using camp gear when the power goes out.
Taking the grandkids, camp manners, and what the old campers knew.
The pages you'll print and carry. Put them in a zip bag in the camping bin.
553 pages in seven sections, with six appendices at the back: the checklists, the charts you'll use most, camp recipes, a glossary, a gear care schedule, and a Trouble Index. Every chapter ends with my Camp Notes, the handful of things to remember if you forget the rest. Since it's a digital book, you can search it too. Type a plain word like ticks and it takes you to every page I talked about them.
Fifty Years of Sleeping Out, Written Down · Ivan the Veteran, Volume I
Shelter, sleep, water, fire, food, and safety for the regular camper, told plain, with a whole section on camping after sixty.
Taken from the book you'd get, not mocked up. Two charts and two STOP boxes. A STOP box marks a mistake that can hurt or kill somebody.
Tap or click any page to see it full size.
Page 85 · Chapter 5
Reading a Tent Label
Page 121 · Chapter 7
Bag Ratings and Pad R-Values
Page 159 · Chapter 9
A Frozen Filter Is a Broken Filter
Page 239 · Chapter 14
A Tent Is Not Shelter from Lightning
I'm seventy-five, and I've been camping since I was a boy. When I started talking about it on the channel, I figured I'd show some gear and tell a few stories. What I got was questions. Hundreds of them.
Why am I cold when my bag says it's good to twenty? Is my water filter safe after a freeze? How do I get up off the ground with bad knees? What do I do when a storm rolls in at night? The same ones come in every week, from folks just starting out and from folks who've camped longer than their kids have been alive.
So I sat down and answered all of them, in order, with the page numbers. That's what this book is. If you've got a question about sleeping out, odds are somebody asked me first.
Ivan
Check out, and the book is in your email within a minute. It's a digital book you read on any phone, tablet, or computer, and you can print any page at home. Nothing ships, and there's nothing to cancel later. If it doesn't earn its keep in a week, email me and every penny comes back, and you keep the book.
Fifty Years of Sleeping Out, Written Down · Ivan the Veteran, Volume I
You shouldn't, yet. Read the sample pages on this page. If they sound like a man who's slept out a few thousand nights, the book is 553 more of them.
Most of it is for exactly that reader: the cold nights, the knees, the gear that fails at two in the morning, and the why behind the how. If you truly know it all, the refund is right there.
No. It's fifty years of sleeping out, told plain, including the parts the internet gets wrong.
Tent, cot, truck bed, car, a canvas tent at a campground, a backpacking overnight, cold-weather trips, and using your camp gear at home when the power goes out. I made it for the regular camper, not the mountaineer.
It's a digital book you read on a phone, tablet, or computer, and you can print any page you like at home. You get it the minute you check out.
If you can open an email, you can read this. One link, one click, and you can print the checklists and put them in your camping bin.
Email within 7 days and you get every penny back, and you keep the book. No forms, no questions.
It's all set down plain, with the chapter and page for every answer. It's $27 today, in your email within a minute, and you've got a week to decide with the whole book in your hands.
Get the book · $27