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If you're nearby and haven't been able to smell the wool yet this year, the one-day Wake up the Bears* hike in Northeast Pennsylvania will be Saturday, April 24. Through the graciousness of the 142nd PVI, the Indian Queen Mess and Tara Myzie there's now a website, with some photos I took recently of parts of the eight-mile hike route.
*http://www.142dpvi.org/news_events.htm
If you're interested, please send me an email. No registration or anything, but we have to spot some water on the route and it would be nice to have a rough idea how many folks are coming.
We were all-federal last year, but really, this is about conditioning, tactics, cooking in the field, smartening up the drill by chasing off some reenactorisms, etc. The uniform color doesn't matter, we'll proceed as one company (had about 24 last year as I recall) even if we have some Confederates. And everyone is encouraged to bring along a liter bottle of water in their haversack, plastic or not. This one-day deal is like late-week football practice: we've wearing pads and practicing skills, but don't have our game uniforms. We are, for purposes of the hike, the lead company in an advance guard preceding an assumed larger force coming up behind us. A mile of the hike will be cross-country with a skirmish line and reserve. Most of the hike is wilderness roads; the last two miles will be on an infrequently traveled dirt and asphalt road, and we will see some cars and houses. That's the price paid to make this a circular route and get us back to the starting point without a shuttle.
* "Wake up the Bears": In the interests of dodging an "overhype" bullet I must admit that so far as I know all the bears we might meet are already awake and eagerly ramming around looking for winterkilled deer to break their winter fast. Kinda mean and cranky. So we won't actually get to wake any of them up. Just a figure of speech.... :-)
*http://www.142dpvi.org/news_events.htm
If you're interested, please send me an email. No registration or anything, but we have to spot some water on the route and it would be nice to have a rough idea how many folks are coming.
We were all-federal last year, but really, this is about conditioning, tactics, cooking in the field, smartening up the drill by chasing off some reenactorisms, etc. The uniform color doesn't matter, we'll proceed as one company (had about 24 last year as I recall) even if we have some Confederates. And everyone is encouraged to bring along a liter bottle of water in their haversack, plastic or not. This one-day deal is like late-week football practice: we've wearing pads and practicing skills, but don't have our game uniforms. We are, for purposes of the hike, the lead company in an advance guard preceding an assumed larger force coming up behind us. A mile of the hike will be cross-country with a skirmish line and reserve. Most of the hike is wilderness roads; the last two miles will be on an infrequently traveled dirt and asphalt road, and we will see some cars and houses. That's the price paid to make this a circular route and get us back to the starting point without a shuttle.
* "Wake up the Bears": In the interests of dodging an "overhype" bullet I must admit that so far as I know all the bears we might meet are already awake and eagerly ramming around looking for winterkilled deer to break their winter fast. Kinda mean and cranky. So we won't actually get to wake any of them up. Just a figure of speech.... :-)