Shelter Building

On Sunday 10/26 we ushered in the return of the Eugene Traditional skills club and it was a great success. First, thank you to the grown-ups, little people, the weather, and the landscape for such a great time. I learned a lot and I think that everyone else did too.

We were able to explore an area that few people know of and we are really lucky to have access to. I guess it is like our semi-secret wilderness. First order of business was to eat some apples off a feral apple tree out there.

With that accomplished we started looking for a good place to locate our shelter. Location is the most important factor in shelter building. The way I learned it is: A good shelter in a bad location is a bad shelter. A couple of our party were kind enough to locate us a fallen log with enough space under it to lay down. This saved us a lot of energy building a sturdy framework. With this type of shelter smaller is better to retain body heat so the natural size of this under-log space was perfect.

After that it was pretty simple: create walls out of sticks and logs and then pile up as much debris as possible. One of the reasons that we chose the spot that we did was for the meadow nearby that provided us with armloads of dry grasses to pile on for warmth. Grasses were ideal for our purposes but anything that we could pile on for thickness and insulation would work great.

Our finished thickness of debris was about a foot. That is definitely not enough to keep a person warm on these cool fall nights but it would have seen us through one night safely until we could add to it. At that point in a hypothetical "real survival situation we would probably be starting to think about starting a fire and then getting some food and water.

The little people sure had a blast. This is a great backyard activity for kids because they have a natural passion for building "forts". By far this was our best skills club meeting yet and we are really looking forward to the last Sunday of next month!