We went camping this weekend with the Young Adventurer's Club, this trip was to Round Valley Reservoir, near Clinton NJ. These camp sites are accessed via a 1.5 mile over-water paddle, making it an exciting trip for the kids, and not too hard for the parents.

As usual, one of the dads made the fire with a bow drill, and now the 9 and 10 year olds are getting closer to actually producing fire by this method.

There were 17 of us at the campsite, and while I found it all to be very relaxing, there was a bit of a nagging thought in the back of my mind.

First of all, the lake (it's actually a man-made reservoir) is absolutely, perfectly clear. Out in 40 feet of water I could see the bottom perfectly, which is nice, but it also was perfectly clear in at the shore, for the most part, it was like a swimming pool. For all of you fishing enthusiasts out there, you know that a perfectly clear body of water is a dead body of water. Indeed this was the case - there were a few fish - mostly panfish - but as a few snorkeling excursions bore out, only a very, very few bass, and whatever trout there were had been stocked in the spring, and I didn't see a single one.

While there were most likely plenty of deer, we didn't see one. We also didn't see any raccoons, skunks, chipmunks, ducks or geese, and years of camping and waking quietly at dawn has made seeing these creatures a routine of my camping morning experiences. Not this time.

I pondered this thought alone at about 5:00 AM - that if we were going to have to live off this land, the 17 of us would have a very, very hard time of it.