When you are planning an off-grid shelter, it is easy to get caught up in the big builds. We spend hours researching solar panels, charge controllers, and waterless toilets. But when the rain starts lashing against the cabin window and the Atlantic fog rolls in thick off the sound, you realize that the most valuable gear in your pocket is often the simplest.

For me, that gear is a single pack of playing cards.

A deck of cards doesn’t require batteries, it doesn’t care about solar buffer, and it takes up next to no space in a backpack. Yet, it holds hundreds of hours of entertainment.

Back when I worked in Gander, with friends at thier cabin, and also growing up at home too, we used to clear off the table, light the Coleman lantern, and deal a hand of 500s. If you grew up in an outport, you know that 500s is more than just a card game—it is practically a lifestyle. I wrote an account years ago about how playing the left bower at the wrong time can spark strategic arguments that last for weeks, especially when partners keep lifetime tallies of their wins. There is nothing quite like sitting around the table with a glass of rum, a moose roast in the oven, and the wind howling through the spruce trees outside.

Other nights, we play a game of Friday night poker. We don’t play modern Texas Hold’em out here; we keep it to traditional dealer’s choice, mostly five-card draw. It brings back fond memories of the old poker nights where we’d shout to fill in a seat around the table, playing for loonies and passing around the “gizmo” – a film canister ante that made the pots grow progressively wilder as the night wore on.

And God knows the number of games of cards we used to play when at Lindy’s back in the day. We’d laugh and grumble for hours on end.

But a deck of cards is just as valuable when you are alone on the land.

During long, quiet winter evenings, when it is just me and the woodstove, I have sat and played hundreds of hands of solitaire. There is a quiet rhythm to it. Laying out the red and black suits on the table, listening to the wood crackle, and trying to beat the deck is the simplest way to settle the mind.

A smart phone might have a thousand games on it, but when the battery dies, it is just a piece of glass. A deck of cards is forever.

What is your go-to card game when you are tucked away in a cabin or sitting around a camp table? Do you play 500s, or do you have your own house rules for a Friday night game? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.