There is something eye-catching about a tin cup. As a youngster who spent some wonderful days in the outdoors with my father, I couldn’t help but notice back in those days that most old woods camps held interesting things. Big rusty coffee pots. Pitcher pumps. Huge iron skillets. And those tin cups.

A tin cup full of ice cold, well-drawn springwater first touched my lips in the 1950s at a place called Martin’s Ridge, not far from Franklin. There was a small, weathered old camp there that overlooked an expansive blueberry barren. The camp belonged to my father’s Great Uncle Harvard. When I was a youngster, my Dad and I bunked there a few times.

We fished trout waters wih names like Spring River Lake and Donnell’s Pond. We ate trout, blueberry pie, and, once deer meat that I suspect was ill-gotten. For a 10-year-old boy, it was all a wondrous outdoor adventure that stirred my lifelong gravitation toward spending time out of doors.

And it’s odd how, for no apparent reason, certain small details of a memorable experience from our youth sticks with us. I remember that old tin cup from the camp at Martin’s Ridge like the face of an old friend. It was dark blue enamel with white specks, and there were small rust spots where the enamel had chipped from wear and tear. “This will be your cup,” Dad said. “Wash it and keep track of it while we’re here.” Wanting to please, I did as I was told, and hung it on a nail over the slate sink each night after supper. Dad also had an identical tin cup in which he sometimes, after supper, sipped a concoction he called his “bourbon and branch water.”

This fall, more than 50 years later, I tried to find the right tin cup for my backpacking elk hunt in Colorado. The cup of my choice would be used to heat tea water on my small mountain stove. Times change. Oh, there are plenty of backpackers cups available. The ones I found were high-priced titanium deals with special embossed leather pouches and other needless embellishments.

The closest thing I could find was a shiny silver cup at a local sporting goods store. I bought it. It flunked its first field test during an October bird hunt. Come to find out, the metal handle was insulated and so was the cup. There was an air space between the inside of the cup liner and the outside of the cup. Net result was that the outside of the cup heated hot enough to fry your lips, but the water inside the cup remained stubbornly tepid. That new cup is in stored in my garage with other outdoor equipment that just didn’t measure up,

In Colorado one especially frigid morning, with no tin cup, or anything metal to boil tea water in, I foolishly tried in desperation to boil water slowly in a hard plastic cup. Yep. It melted before the water would even warm up. (I later learned from outdoor writer Stu Bristol that it is possible to actually heat water in a wax-coated paper cup using a candle. Old Boy Scout trick.)

Returning to Denver in our rented tent camper, I discovered too late among the rent-a-dishes, an authentic blue enamel tin cup, white flecks and all. You guessed it. That was the cup of my childhood memories and I wanted it for my own. “If only I had had that cup with me that cold morning,” I thought. A hot cup of tea could have kept me on my elk stand for another hour or two.

No, as tempted as I was, I didn’t pocket that old tin cup that rightfully belonged to the good folks at Outdoor Travel Adventures in Denver. I have no patience with people who take towels from Motel 6.

After some shopping around, I found a pretty good silver cup at L.L. Bean. It has a wire handle that stays relatively cool heating tea water on my mountain stove, and it was fairly priced. I have used it many cool mornings this past November while on a deer stand.

But the L.L. Bean silver cup, I tell myself, is just a temporary solution. It is too shiny, too light in your hand, too darn “pretty” if you know what I mean. It should fill the bill, but it doesn’t. I’ll keep on looking for that old tin cup. The right one will be dark blue enamel, with chipped white specks and a few rust spots and a lip that curls over the edge.

It will be the cup full of memories.

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected].