How Cowboys Slept Bug-Free Outdoors With No Tent and No Bug Spray

They slept on open ground four months a year with no tent, no screen, and no bug spray, and they weren't lying there swatting all night. The reason isn't toughness. It's that a barrier is the last line of defense and the weakest one you've got, and the old hands out here worked the problem in the opposite order. In this one I walk through all four layers the way they actually mattered: how they read the ground before they ever unrolled a bed, where a smudge fire goes and why most men put it in the wrong place, the wild plant every one of them knew by sight that almost nobody can name today, and the campsite mistake that undoes every other thing on the list. It feels good when you make it. That's exactly why men keep making it.