Men's Journal

An underrated camping essential, the headlamp offers its user the ability to use their hands without losing light.

By Heidi Julavits

I remember, as a little girl, camping in the dark ages, wedging a flashlight under my slickered armpit and attempting one-and-a-half-armed tent erection; gathering firewood in the dark with one and a half arms; pulling down my pants and peeing in the woods with one and a half arms. Yes, in those unenlightened days, I became quite gifted at the one-and-a-half-armed camping multitask. Then I went camping with a man of the future.

As night fell over our camp, he pulled from his fleecy pocket a tool I’d never seen before and affixed it to his head with jockstrap-like elastic bands. It was a headlamp. He swiftly set up our tent, he collected firewood, he peed, all with the full use of both hands. Its genius immediately offset its dorkiness.

And this is why I have felt no shame wearing, on a near daily noncamping basis, my (now vintage) Petzl model, in front of men whom I might fancy to date or even marry. What is sexier than a person who can troubleshoot the sickly well pump in the basement, change a flat on a rural stretch of unlit road, or grill steaks in the pitch black?

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This article originally appeared in the July/August 2009 issue of Men’s Journal.

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