Morning simply isn't morning without a cup of coffee, but not just any cup will do. I want mine freshly brewed with clean cold water and served in a ceramic mug of substance--not a plastic cup and, please, not one of styrofoam--and I want it black and strong enough to kick-start me into wakefulness.

It's no accident, I think, that a cup of coffee is approximately the size and temperature of a human heart. It does not beat with life, but it steams and radiates and arouses the senses with its rich aroma, taste, and heat. We hunch over it seeking company and comfort and affirmation, both hands clasping it to absorb its warmth. Sure, it makes a poor substitute for love, grace, talent, and good looks, but it's a satisfying thing to hold onto early in the morning, while the chill of night remains in your bones and you're not yet ready to face the responsibilities of daytime.

There are as many ways to make camp coffee as there are camp cooks, and it's wise to be open minded. Years ago I learned one technique for brewing from an ancient, shrunken man who had spent most of his life working as a timber cutter in the Upper Peninsula. One morning I stopped by to visit and watched him fill a fire-blackened pot with water and set it on a grill over an open fire in the yard. The moment the water reached the boiling point he scooped a handful of coffee from a can and threw it in the pot and slammed the lid over it. In a few moments the pot trembled, the lid blew off, and coffee and grounds spilled over the sides into the fire, giving off steaming clouds of aroma. He lifted the pot off the fire with his hat for a pot holder and dropped a single egg shell inside to settle the grounds. I accepted a cup with doubts. Grounds settled in it like siltation in the bottom of a pond. I took a tentative sip, expecting bitterness. But it was good. Delicious, in fact.

The experts say bitter flavor is usually the result of too much boiling, which releases tannin and makes the coffee acidic. To avoid bitterness in a percolator, remove it from the fire a minute or two after it starts to boil, then pour a tablespoon of cold water down the spout to "clear" the grounds. Better yet, use the below-boiling method: bring the water to boiling, remove it from the fire to cool for a few moments, then pour it over fresh grounds in a filtered drip-pot.

But don't be too fussy. Outdoors, on a cold morning, even a pretty bad cup of coffee tastes good. Tom Carney and I once spent two days riding horses through the North Dakota Badlands in the company of a pair of cowboys. At night we slept on the ground beneath the stars, and in the morning woke to the scent of frying bacon and eggs. We got up, groaning with aching muscles, and went looking for coffee. One of the cowboys handed us styrofoam cups, plastic spoons, and a jar of instant Maxwell House, then pointed at a pot of water simmering on the camp stove. When we hesitated, the cowboy took a noisy slurp from his own styrofoam cup, squinted at us through the steam, and said in a voice that sounded like it had been dragged all night behind a horse, "Now that, mister, is a good cup of coffee." I tried a sip. Not bad. Not bad at all.