Inspired by gourmet ideas, nurturing the notion of culinary caste greatness… or, more honestly, after scrolling through Instagram of Poles living in Ireland, I bought myself a little knife to cook outdoors.

The older axe (who, by the way, is named Ira) has been joined by a smaller one. Still unnamed and without any mods for now, but I think we’ll sort that out come summer.

This particular purchase, on the other hand, was well thought out — it had been patiently sitting in my Amazon wishlist, waiting for a discount.

After swinging an axe all summer and realizing that cutting trees crosswise is not the most rewarding of tasks, I decided to splurge on a saw. Naturally, for camping I wanted something portable and foldable — though you could just as well throw a regular hand saw in the car, it wouldn’t be quite feng shui.

Sometimes there is simply nowhere to make a campfire, or no time for it — or you got your fill of woodsmoke yesterday and now all you want is to boil a kettle.

The next addition to the camping arsenal was a hand tool — an axe. After swinging someone else’s for a bit, I realized I needed one of my own. And on the advice of friends (not to compensate for anything) — I chose the longer model, the Fiskars X25.

Our first camping experience showed that sleeping on foam pads isn’t the most comfortable thing, so our little camper kit has now been joined by these inflatable sleeping pads.