Tom Garstang

Tom Garstang came to Labrador with a resume unlike anyone else's in the cast: a prescribed-fire practitioner and regenerative agriculturist, born in South Africa as a game ranger's son, someone whose working life is literally the management of fire and land. His ten items are the season's textbook set, axe and folding saw, bow plus fishing line plus trapping wire, ferro rod, paracord, pot, multitool, and sleeping bag, all recorded at category level without brands.

A professional fire background changes what a standard kit means in practice. The ferro rod and the wood processing tools sit at the center of every cold, wet boreal camp, and the gap between a competent fire program and an expert one, in fuel selection, in wood economy, in keeping flame through rain, compounds daily over a long stay. We read his conventional list as a professional's confidence: the categories are ordinary because his execution did not need the gear to be special.