Cold Shelter Comfort

by Jon
(Ohio, USA)

Keep living wild!

Hello my Survival Comrades, this past weekend my wife spoke words to me that I can only describe as heaven on a record: "Why don't you boys go out to the woods and camp tonight." "You've worked hard and deserve it!"

Now picture this: If you've ever pressed fast forward through a commercial on your DVR, thats what it would have looked like as my nephew and I loaded our "needed necessities" into our small backpacks and darted out the door at 2:30 pm on this December Saturday afternoon in Ohio.

The weather was fairly nice but the temperature was due to hit the low 20's and as we would find out at 5:30 Am the next morning, classic Ohio weather wanted rain in its' forecast as well. Well, we would've known it was raining if we weren't sleeping like babies under blankets in our well-made lean-to.

If we all practice what we constantly read about, survival can be comfortable. Were we in a true survival situation? No, but we acted like it. When we hit the deep woods at 3:15 PM, we knew that it was going to be cold and yucky. We knew that based on the suns' location, we only had about 2 hours of light left.

We wasted no time constructing the solid skeleton of what would be our "outdoor hotel room" for the night using paracord to secure the frame followed by 6 inches of ground pines, leaves and moss around the bottom to prevent cold air from leaking through the bottom. We then intertwined small spruce limbs like shingles the entire length of our "roof".

Lastly, a nice springy bed of spruce boughs layed out evenly under our newly constructed roof. Just as darkness hit, we had a nice warm fire going sparked by flint/steel and some hot tea to warm our Irish bones. Every time we go out, we learn something that could be done differently to make survival work in our favor. Stay safe friends.

Til next time.

J.T.


Make sure you have the basic wilderness skills to safely enjoy your trip.