urbancampersite

We have been experimenting with a few wild edibles from our yard and native plant garden recently.  We’ve sampled wild strawberries, wild blueberries, munched on violet flowers, nibbled nasturtiums and picked dandelions for dandelion fritters.

Since gaining some confidence after taking a couple of workshops during the Wild Deer 1 Course with the Pine Project, I have wanted to make a meal with the vegetables and wild plants found in our yard and garden.  I envisioned a field to table event where we would gather, harvest, clean, process, prepare, cook and eat a meal in one afternoon and all from our garden and yard.  I invited a few of my fellow Wild Deer 1 participants over on a Saturday afternoon in late September to see if we could pull it off.

When the first few guests arrived we sat down and created a possible menu based on what was available in the garden and yard.  The vegetable garden was busting with kale, onions, carrots, beans, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, beets, squash, ground cherries, nasturtiums, marigolds and a variety of herbs.  In season natives included chickweed, plantain, burdock, mint, nettle, sumac and goldenrod.

We considered an extensive list of possible dishes finally thinning the options down based on the number of guests and preparation time.  The menu included goldenrod cornmeal, baby brassica and chickweed garden salad, roasted wild and garden root vegetables, green beans supplemented with veggie burgers, bison burgers, duck, grass fed beef hot dogs, my own fermented dill pickles and bannock dough.  For beverages we made sun infused sumac lemonade and peppermint tea freshened with frozen organic strawberries, bubbly mineral water and maple syrup to taste.

We jumped right into harvesting the ingredients starting with digging a row of potatoes.  The kids had fun digging through the dirt I turned with my pitchfork to grab the delicious spuds.

Then we moved on to picking the rest of the ingredients fresh from the ground.

Next came the cleaning and preparing.

We played around with some friction fire starting …

… then on to cooking!

We set the table …

… then sat down to enjoy the gifts of the earth and fruits of our labours.

It was a glorious day and delicious meal with wonderful friends for which we were all very thankful.  It was made all the more special by Emily singing a verse or two of Canned Goods by Greg Brown for grace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0rmS1hbPoU

Looking to more “field to table” feasts next year.  You’re all invited, just come on by …

 

A common theme throughout my Natural Shelter Build Project was my reaction to being inside a small, dark, enclosed space.  An unstoppable flow of thoughts, feelings, awareness and images of my own mortality would flood my mind and body moments after I bedded down.  And I’m not talking about suddenly being aware that I will die one day or mid-life crisis; intellectually I get that.  I am talking about my entire being overwhelmed with an all sensory experience of my demise, my end, my death.  It was all encompassing and despite my best efforts to ground myself, manage the feelings and distract myself I was overcome with panic and a compulsion to just get out, get away and get to safety.

This feeling was most extreme during my stays in the snow shelters.  I was not able to complete even one full night in any of the snow shelters, even though I have camped for most of my life and slept in snow shelters in the past.

I have speculated that my reaction could be related to a natural claustrophobic reaction or a good ol’ panic attack related to anxiety.  I do suffer from PTSD from a childhood trauma and have wondered if my reaction is related to that.  There was no light or sound in the snow caves so I have postulated that due to the lack of sensory stimulation my subconscious thoughts, feelings and fears poured into the empty space in my brain. I even tried bringing a book and my phone to distract myself but these only had a mild temporary effect.

Considering the death theme, I felt strongly that my reaction might be connected to the fact that I actually have died.  About 8 years ago, I suffered a Sudden Cardiac Arrest due to a super high ventricular tachycardia or possibly ventricular fibrillation.  The details are not important beyond the fact that I was basically dead, turning blue, with no heart beat (or my heart beating or vibrating so quickly it was not detectable).  If not for the quick reaction of some of my fellow Ultimate Frisbee players, their experience with First Aid/CPR and the proximity of an Automated External Defibrillator I would be dead or extremely brain damaged.  My fellow players revived me just in time to see the paramedics walking across the playing field.

After that event, I was kept in the hospital until I could be given an Internal Cardiac Defibrillator.  Before I passed out I had this empty feeling in my chest, some dizziness, then everything went black.  Since that operation and prescription for beta blockers, I have experienced a few occurrences of v-tach or v-fib that were dealt with by my device or stopped on their own.  It’s pretty weird having this empty feeling where you can’t feel your pulse and wondering if you were gonna die. I have been event free for a number of years now, but for a while post event, any little flutter, flub or weird feeling prompted me to wonder if I was dying again.  I even had some realistic dreams/nightmares that I was dying resulting in me waking up in a sweat, my heart racing and wondering if I was still alive.

This is a rather long winded way of trying to connect my “death” flashbacks in the shelters to my actual death experience.  I often wonder if I was reliving the act of dying on a cellular level.

Until recently, I concluded that it was one of the reasons I have stated or a combination of them.  That was before I started having these same experiences every time I have gone camping the last couple years even in a tent and whether I was alone or not. Now this could just be an escalation of the feelings that are coming through no matter what the circumstance rising up once I am away from the city and my busy, distracted, disconnected urban life.

Or, it could be something else.  Now this is when the Twilight Zone music starts playing. It occurred to me that since it was only happening when I was camping and not when I was in the city , that I might be connecting to the earth, or nature or the life pulse or spirit something and that the earth was telling me or I was connecting to the fact that our planet and life and humans, were in grave danger.  Perhaps sleeping on the ground, with the sights, sounds, smells and rhythm of nature all around me I was more connected to the earth.  Intellectually, I do believe we are in the midst of a mass extinction caused by humans and concerned that there could be a major ecosystem collapse in the relatively near future so this could be my subconsciousness bubbling up creating this experience or ……………………………………………

Not sure where this fits in to what I have been experiencing or whether it belongs in an episode of the Twilight Zone but it is something to consider.  And not sure how I am going to deal with it as the experiences are so troubling that I have found myself very apprehensive before every camping trip recently.  So far I am persevering  using all my tricks and grounding tools to manage but end up with little or no sleep.  At this point not sure where to turn; therapy, continued use of feelings management tools or maybe get all mystic and try a sweat lodge.

I’ll keep you posted.

 

I’m a porcupine; thick skinned and prickly on the outside and wet and soft on the inside so it is with great difficulty and reservation that I share this last experience in my self-made natural shelter project.  I am reticent to acknowledge the “magic moment”, “spiritual awakening” or “lightning bolt of self-realization” but I feel compelled to expose my mushy middle in the interests of full disclosure and sharing.

My final natural shelter build occurred on the second day of our last Wild Deer 1 Course with the Pine Project.  Earlier in the day we attended a couple workshops on tool making and natural camouflage with the intent that later in the afternoon we would work on shelters for a solo night camping out in the forest.

Well the workshops went late so it was not until late afternoon that we started our shelters.  We still had to have dinner and walk back to the main camp to get any gear we needed, which was a 20 minute walk. Our instructors suggested not taking our gear or food down earlier so we would not be encumbered during the afternoon workshops.

I had come to the weekend planning to make a debris hut with poles and leaves and sleep in it without a sleeping bag or pad.

I couldn’t understand “why the fuck” the instructors gave us so little time to complete our shelters and seemed to make things more difficult by making us leave our gear back at the main camp. As I looked around for a suitable location to build, it became clear there were not enough leaves to complete my planned shelter.  I was pissed.

But then I saw a big ol’ dead pine that was partially clad in thick dark bark.  I paused for a second in my mounting frustration and thought, maybe I can use bark to make shingles for my shelter.  Not to be too romantic about it, but I kind of fancy white pine trees as my spirit tree so I allowed myself to get a little “mystical” and use this as a “sign” to follow this path. Not sure if there was enough bark, I approached the tree and saw numerous pieces of bark on the ground and that the bark on the tree was loose and easily came away from the trunk. “Okay”, I said, “let’s see how much I can get.  I mean, what else am I dong”.  This is not the last time I would use this motivation.

I peeled off as much as I could reach in as large sheets as I could and piled them on the ground.  There was more bark higher up the tree and I wondered how I would get at it.  I needed a ladder or something and lo and behold, just a few meters away, was a big ol’ dead branch with branches extending from a main limb.  “What the hell”, I said, “what else am I doing”, and proceeded to go all nature boy using the natural materials at hand to achieve my goal.  I leaned the limb against the pine, climbed up and was able to reach more bark.  I reached even higher by grabbing a stick, sliding it under the bark and catching the pieces as they fell.  I managed to get quite a nice pile of bark and was starting to feel somewhat pleased with myself although aware that I was not near completing any kind of shelter.

I carried the bark over to my shelter location.  I planned to use a fallen tree as the ridge pole of my shelter.  I gathered some long poles from dead fall trees and started placing the “ribs” on the ridge pole.  I quickly did a mock up of the shelter to see how it might work and whether I had enough bark.  Of course, I did not and I was having trouble keeping the bark on the ribs due to the extreme slant.  I had considered where on the ridge pole to build the shelter and for some reason chose the higher end.  I think I was hoping for an easy build and picturing a grand shelter with a nice flat floor, that I could sit up in, have a nice fire adjacent to and still be protected from the weather. Not!

I was getting pissed off again and the merry go round of blaming the instructors, blaming nature for not leaving enough leaves and criticizing myself for being so stupid and inept started going round and round again.

It was at this point that two of my fellow students happened by on their way back to camp for dinner.  They stopped by to see how I was getting on and it was obvious I was not.  One of them kindly suggested building the shelter farther down the ridge pole where it was lower and I would need less material.  “Thanks, Einstein”, I thought to myself, “but I don’t really feel like sleeping in a hole and having to clear away a bunch of debris and crap down there”.  Instead I said thanks and that I realized my shelter was too big and would figure out something.  I must have looked a mess and in dire straights as the other guy told me later that he was on the verge of staying and helping me but thought that doing so would violate the spirit of the solo camp out challenge.

When they left, I knocked down the shelter and had another look at the lower end of the ridge pole.  It was not as bad as I had thought but not the “perfect” spot I had pictured in my mind.  I slung a few rib sticks on the ridge pole that at this point was about two feet from the ground.  I did another mock up and it seemed that I might be able to make it work.  It was clear though, that I still did not have enough bark.  I found another dead pine nearby and repeated my gathering techniques but I was still short.

“Fuck this.  I’m going up to the camp and if I have to fuckin’ sit out all night in my clothes  then I’ll fucking do it.”  I then headed back to camp.

I will share two things about our exercise at this point: 1. We could build any kind of shelter including using a tarp and could use our sleeping bags and pads. 2. The forecast was for rain that night.

On my way back to base camp I passed another fallen tree with loose bark.  I paused, looked at it, thought “low hanging fruit”.  With another, “Well, what the fuck else am I doing?” I peeled of all the bark and piled it beside the trail, thinking, “What the fuck, maybe I’ll carry it back to my shelter on the return trip”.  I continued towards camp and came across two more similar fallen bark clad trees, stripped them and piled the bark along the path.  On the way back, perhaps as a way to rationalize my situation and justify continuing with the project, I decided to create a scenario that I was a day hiker that had gotten lost and had to spend a night out with minimal equipment and food.  I considered what a day hiker might have with him and decided that I would continue the project with only a back pack, bottle of water, my rain gear, a pack of matches and two Cliff Bars.  That’s right; no tarp, no sleeping bad, no sleeping pad, no flashlight, no knife,no nothing.  I was still pissed and disappointed and either inadvertently or subconsciously put myself into a “nothing to lose” situation.  At this point I was fully prepared to sit under a tree all night in the rain if necessary.  I mean, I wasn’t gonna die and “what the fuck else was I doing”.

Needless to say I got back to camp and most people were finishing up dinner and getting ready to head to a group circle then to their shelters.  I prepared some food and informed the instructors of my plan and that I would not make the circle as I still had to eat and prepare for my solo night out lost back packer scenario.

Still in my “At this point I don’t give a fuck”, mood, I started marching back to my shelter site.  One of the instructors who was checking in on people’s shelters joined me en route and helped me carry some of the bark back.  He had a look at my partially build bark shingled hut and concluded that it looked pretty good and that with a little work it might do nicely as a shelter.  He gave me a couple suggestions then left me to it.  I have to admit, although I would not have accepted it, I was a bit surprised and disappointed he did not offer to help me and wandered off to check the next site.

It started getting dark and I still had a long way to go to complete my shelter.  As dusk began to turn to night, I was still moving poles and bark from my original build at the high end of the fallen tree to the lower end.  It was awkward moving through the dense undergrowth with a lot of tripping, stumbling and swearing.

Then a funny thing happened.  Night fell and surprisingly things started going more quickly and smoothly.  My eyes adjusted to the dark  but more significantly I had to slow down and be more careful about where I walked and where I stepped.  It seemed counter intuitive but slowing down, taking more care and being methodical and precise actually sped up the process, reduced trips and stumbles and resulted in a better construction.

I actually found myself walking through the trees smoothly, efficiently and without incident.  For a little while I felt in some kind of “zone”.  I finished the build by constructing a side wall with logs to prevent rain from coming into the high open side.

Now the next hurdle; crawling into this thing.  I’m used to walking into my bedroom and flopping onto my bed or at worst, when camping, crawling through a large opening into a fairly spacious tent with a floor and a comfy Thermarest and sleeping bag; not crawling on my hands and knees in the dirt and leaves and bugs and squirming into a bark shelter and lying on the bare ground.

Again, what the hell else was I doing and I had spent the last few hours building the bloody thing and it was supposed to rain, so I crawled in.

So there I was, lying on the bare ground with no insulation under me or around me, staring up at the rib poles and bark wondering if it would keep the rain out.  I used my backpack as a pillow and my clothes and rain gear to keep my body warm.  I knew of course, theoretically, I would lose a lot of heat into the ground but I did not realize how much having always used a Thermarest for camping.  It was truly striking how cold my back against the ground became in contrast to my front.  I endured the heat loss for a while as I tried to get some sleep.  My recent psychological struggles with thoughts of my own mortality and the origin and ending of the universe while camping returned as I lay in the dark with no fire or other distractions.  I tried to focus on the moon and the few stars that peaked through the spaces between the clouds to distract myself.

Then more “magic”!  The forest suddenly filled with tiny blinking lights.  They floated through the air between the trees and on the forest floor.  Not sure if I was dreaming, the thought suddenly struck me; fireflies!  I had seen them at camp on Lake Simcoe as a child but had not seen them since.  I had also read that they were in steep decline due to habitat loss. I was truly in shock and awe and I sat there mesmerized.  I crawled out of my shelter to get a better look and the forest was full of them.  Again, I felt I was in a dream.

Now that I was out of my shelter, I realized that with no insulation under me I would have to build a fire or risk hypothermia.  It was dark night now with little light from the moon or stars due to cloud cover.  My eyes were now fully adjusted to the dark. I found I still moved easily through the woods despite the darkness and quickly was able to gather enough wood for a fire to last the night.  Everything seemed to happen naturally and with ease.  I started a fire and proceeded to build a body length fire about 6 feet long.  I did not bother to cut or break the long poles I found as I planned to feed the overhanging parts into the fire as the other end burned down.  I had several over-length poles in the fire and stack of kindling that was all reachable from inside my shelter.

I crawled back into the fire and was greeted by a firefly that ended up spending the night on the ground by my head. With my new companion and welcome heat from the fire I felt warm and comfortable.  In fact, I had to let the fire die down as the amount of heat trapped in the shelter was incredible and at times unbearable.  I knew the long fire in theory having read about others using it but did not realize how effective it could be in practice.

I spent the rest of the night taking in all the experiences of sight, sound, feel, thought and dream as I moved through various states of sleep, wakedness and consciousness. I rose with the dawn, crawled out of my shelter, somewhat disappointed that my shelter had not been tested by the predicted rain, but appreciative of my experience nevertheless.  Whether it was the choices I made with out knowing where it would lead or the steps I took in the dark building my shelter and looking for firewood, I had felt more grounded, efficient, productive and present for a few hours than I ever had before.

I still carry the memory of these lessons with me but sadly, have not integrated them into my daily urban life as I much as I would want.  I still struggle with living the camping lifestyle, approach and philosophy once back in my urban environment.  Perhaps I just need to ask myself the simple question that motivated me during my solo night adventure; what the fuck else am I doing?

I decided that the fourth in the series of 6 natural outdoor shelter builds for my Wild Deer One project would be a lean to.  I really needed a win after my three snow shelter failures.  I figured that with a lean to being open on one side that I might avoid any claustrophobic feelings or overwhelming thoughts of my own mortality resonating in the sensory void of a snow cave.  I was only partially right.

As before, the build was fairly innocuous and routine, for the most part. I started with collecting materials in our backyard.  Rather than dig post holes I used two old wooden chairs to support the main ridge pole of the structure.  I then laid the remaining long poles, evenly spaced, from the ridge pole to the ground.  I used shorter pieces to create side walls

I had recently pruned our two apple trees and scattered the trimmed runner shoot branches on the structural poles to stop the debris I would be throwing on from falling through.

I used straw, leaves, garden debris and twigs for insulation and weather protection.  I made the roof about 1 foot thick.

I added sticks and branches on top of the insulation to prevent it from blowing away.  It was then that I noticed a significant bow in the ridge pole from the weight of the poles and debris.  The roof pole ends were precariously close to slipping off the ridge pole and the ridge pole itself was in jeopardy of coming off the chairs.

At this point I endeavored to adjust the roof poles by pulling them up when …

… the whole thing collapsed!  My first reaction was “Fuck it, I’m not takin’ this apart and starting all over with this mess,” and heading for the house.  But then I thought about it and convinced myself that if I was in the wild I would have to rebuild it so I pushed myself to take a deep breath and dismantle the doomed structure and sort the materials into piles.  I say doomed because, as you may have noticed, I had made 3 critical errors: 1. I had laid the roof poles with the thin ends on the ridge poles and the thick ends on the ground. 2. I had laid the ridge pole towards the front of the chair backs . 3. I had not supported the ridge pole in the middle.

Originally, I thought by putting the thin ends of the roof poles on the top it would put less weight on the ridge pole.  It seems that the weight of the debris had more of an effect on the thin ends of the roof poles (especially the old xmas tree stems) causing them to bend and start sliding off the ridge pole. The ridge pole itself was not thick enough to bear the weight of the roof poles and debris and needed a middle support, the lack of which exacerbated the roof pole sag. Lastly, to complete the perfect storm, by placing the ridge pole at the front of chair backs, the chairs started tilting forward finally culminating in the roof poles sliding off the ridge pole and the structure collapsing.  Damn!

So I removed all the materials and sorted them before continuing with the build.  I placed the ridge pole at the back side of the chair backs, reversed the roof poles so the thick ends were on the ridge pole and placed a middle support under the ridge pole.

I even tied the middle support to the ridge pole for extra security.

 

I was ready to add the finishing touches with a wood chip bed, fire pit and firewood.

With moonrise I was ready to hunker down in the new and improved shelter.

 

During my snow cave adventures I experienced overwhelming feelings of my own mortality.  I believe this was in part due to the sensory deprivation inside the shelter insulating me from distractions and allowing my subconscious thoughts to rise to the surface.  I was curious to see if things would be different in a lean to exposed to the outdoors with a fire and it was.  As I drifted off to sleep, I felt a rapid rise in a general anxiety; nothing I could identify as the source but the overwhelming swell was familiar.  I woke myself up and stared at the fire and the anxiety subsided.

I spent the next while alternately drifting into semi-consciousness and forced wakefulness as I tried to manage the anxious feelings that arose as I drifted off to sleep.  Staring at the fire immediately melted away any uncomfortable feelings during the wakeful periods.  I repeated this combination 15 – 20 times moving from the twilight between wakefulness and sleep to wakefulness until finally, while in the twilight phase, I was suddenly conscious of being transported forward in time in my mind.  Pictures raced through my mind of my kid and his kids and their kids’s kids and the planet with all its life speeding through our galaxy and through the universe as far as I could imagine, but not as far as its end, then just as suddenly being pulled back beyond the present  into the past where I was aware that my parents, grandparents and great grandparents were part of me and seemingly alive within me as were the long line of ancestors before them and for a moment had some sense of eternity or immortality or continuum or connection to the future, present and past.  Then I fell asleep.

I awoke the next morning more refreshed than I had been for a long time to a small flame still burning in the fire pit.

As an epilogue I am including this picture from the morning of the next day after a moderate rain during the night.  You can see that the back half of the shelter is still dry.  I am not sure if the wet chips were soaked by rain coming into the open side of  the shelter or from dripping through the roof. I used straw from bales for the bottom half of the roof and these may have been more shielding from the rain than the leaves and grass debris but I am not sure.  In any case, having a thick dense roof and positioning the open side of the lean to away from incoming weather are two factors I would pay attention to on the next build.

 

I reached this point by retrofitting my original quinze twice in a final attempt to sleep outside in my backyard during the winter.  The original quinze build was too small and the lack of space, rainy warm conditions and a bad cold drove me from the shelter after a couple hours.

 

The first renovation of the quinze and second sleepover attempt resulted in an emotionally fraught  experience where I was confronted by visions of my own mortality and forced to seek shelter in the house and its distractions to stop the torment.

 

Undeterred, I embarked on a third attempt, further remodeling the original build into what is known in survival circles as the COFFIN.

Intermittent warm weather between builds forced me reduce the length of the shelter but it was still adequate to sleep in and would have sufficed in an emergency survival situation.  My feet were just touching my knapsack that I had positioned as a door.  Again, I had the sweet smell of a balsam bough bed and the xmas tree I included in the door construction.

Anticipating potential emotional distress from the sensory deprivation experienced in the Cave of Dagobah, I armed myself with a headlamp, my phone, a book and some rope to practice knots to distract myself if necessary.  I also reviewed some of my grounding skills to counter a repeat of confronting an unfiltered realization of my eventual death and all its implications.

This time I had trouble falling asleep so I grabbed my book and started reading.  I brought one of my go to comfort books, The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien.  So far so good.  The length was tight but otherwise, the height and width were fine.  Physically, I was comfortable in my doubled sleeping bag, Thermarest and balsam boughs.

The reading kept my mind busy but I was not feeling sleepy at all.  After a while I ditched the book as it was difficult to read with a fading headlamp and my dollar store reading glasses fogging up.  Normally, I fall asleep to mindless radio broadcasts to distract my busy mind and in hind sight could have brought my portable emergency radio with me.  As soon as I put the book down I could feel my anxiety rising so I grabbed my phone and tried watching my go to distraction on You Tube, Game Show Bloopers.  This had been a no fail distraction for dealing with overwhelming feelings in the past, but not that night.  Almost immediately, thoughts, feelings, sensations and visions of the reality of my mortality and all that I would miss or experience and the fear that my child would be left without me to look after him flooded in.  I tried to sit with the feelings as best I could and initiated my grounding routine: deep breathing, counting breathing, positive thoughts, local sensory awareness but to no avail.  I went back to Bob Eubanks and the Newlywed Game bloopers but nothing could keep the wave from swamping me.  After 3 hours of doing my best to quell my fears, I again retreated to the house and regained my composure with a movie on the VCR, some food then a computer chess game.  I retired to my bed with my book and radio and managed to get a few hours sleep.

I speculated on a number of things that could be the source of these overwhelming feelings in the Cave of Dagobah blog but I am still at a loss.  I did experience these same feelings in my bed in my house recently and found myself confronting the vision with an angry profanity laced verbal outburst before fleeing downstairs to find some distractions to suppress the onslaught.  

I am not sure how to proceed, other than some heavy duty therapy, but I do plan to continue with my Outdoor Natural Sleepover Project.  Suffice it to say, my next attempt will be an open sided lean to with an accompanying fire.  I’ll let you know if I see any creepy visions in the fire, ghosts in the smoke or am assaulted by our local nocturnal neighbours (skunks, oppossums, racoons, rats, mice).

Every year we try and celebrate winter at some point with a Winterfest Party.  Sometimes it is at the winter solstice, sometimes during xmas break, sometimes on the Family Day weekend; it just depends on our schedule and the weather.  This year we did it on what might be the last possible wintry day before the big melt starts.  The recent snow and cold weather allowed us to build up our Chateau Frontenac replica toboggan run and even build a snowman.

The day broke with the sun shining and temperatures hovering around zero.  Perfect conditions for all our outdoor activities.

We started the festivities off by all heading to the basement to mix bannock dough.  Then it was time to head outside and cook it over the fire.

 

And I wondered how the day passed so quickly.  We had a blast setting up for the party and hosting our guests.  Everyone brought some food to share and we feasted merrily the coming end of winter.  Can’t wait until next year!

We set out early for one of our favourite family forest hikes.  Check out the pictures and try and figure out where we were or how far from home; 5 min., 1 hour, 2 hours, 5 hours?  Check the end of the blog for the correct answer.

We also found and followed these tracks:

We have a favourite sliding hill just off the main trail we call the Otterslide.  We go for a slide whenever their is snow.

 

Luke Skywalker: “What’s in there?”

Yoda: “Only what you take with you.”

Who knew that building and sleeping in a snow cave in the back yard would lead to “a metaphorical journey into the window of the inner self” such as those taken by the likes of Odysseus, Plato and Luke Skywalker.

Much like Luke, the padawan to Master Yoda, I am kamana to my mwaalimus Chris and Lee of the Pine Project’s Wild Deer 1 Wilderness Skills and Mentoring program.  Kamana means apprentice in the Akambe language of Kenya and mwaalimu means teacher.  The Kamana Manual, is a centerpiece to the wilderness skills program I am enrolled in.  I am currently training, much like Luke did with Yoda, to learn powerful ancient skills that have been in great part lost to our civilization.  In my case, it is tracking, fire building, native plant knowledge, shelter building, primitive tool making and connecting to nature.

It all started innocently enough.  After the recent failure of my recent quinzee build, I thought I would give staying out in the snow another try.  I decided to re-purpose the failed quinzee I had built in the backyard into an emergency snow shelter named the “coffin” by  guest instructor Cole Mwaalimu at our first weekend meetup.

The ominous name did not even register with me at the time, but it would not be long before it did.

I dove into the new project with enthusiasm, blowing off my quinzee failure, and endeavoring to learn from my mistakes.  I used a saw to cut out blocks from the centre of our sad, sagging quinzee, then piled the blocks on top of the original wall to raise the height inside the new emergency snow shelter.

One of the main problems with the quinzee build was that the ceiling was too low and did not allow for any movement, clothes changing or equipment adjustment and contributed to a feeling of claustrophobia.  This time I would do things differently.

So all in all I was quite pleased with myself.  I had learned from my earlier mistakes and created a cozy shelter to protect me from the -14 C outside temperature.  Plenty of room to change, breathe and move around yet compact enough to trap some heat and keep the wind off.  Like Luke Skywalker on Dagobah, I was progressing  in my apprenticeship and feeling pretty confident and comfortable in being a Wild Deer 1 kamana.

I was ready for sleep and climbed into the “coffin”, the naming of which I would soon come to understand all too well.  After crawling into my sleeping bag and adjusting the hood I just stared at the ceiling for a bit, aware how quiet it was in the shelter and then slowly dosed off.

It was not long when I woke with a start with overwhelming thoughts and feelings of my own mortality.  Thoughts and visions of dying, being dead, the acute conscious awareness of the coming end of me and the terror of one day leaving my young son on his own assaulted me much like the vision of Darth Vader attacking Luke in the Cave of Dagobah.  Unlike Luke though, I had no light saber, no defense and no escape other than fleeing the cave and seeking shelter in the comfort, familiarity and  distractions of our house and companionship of my family.

My feelings were of being excruciatingly lonely, defenseless and terrified.  I am not sure where these fears arose from.  I have done alot of solo camping in all seasons and never before encountered such powerful thoughts and emotions.  I do have an active imagination and vivid dreams but these are often very abstract and not so literal.  I still struggle with PTSD symptoms including night terrors but it did not feel like that.  I also suffer from sleep apnea when I sleep on my back causing me to stop breathing numerous times during the night but that is an unconscious event.  I would say that small spaces are not my favourite places to be and would label myself as mildly claustrophobic but heading to sleep I was not feeling in any way closed in.  I have passed the middle age crisis stage and thought I was pretty comfortable with my view that all life ends and is recycled (and that there is no afterlife as promised by organized religion), and what we pass on is our genetic material if we have kids and the ripple of our interactions with others.  I suspect that it may actually have something to do with the fact that I have previously died from a ventricular tachychardia event (4 times) and was revived.  I am aware of the feeling when I am dying and often get false symptoms that cause me to wonder if I am about to die again.  I have also had dreams and waking moments from sleep wondering if I am dying.

Whatever it was, I cope with a lot of my issues by keeping busy, using distractions and disassociating.  In the snow cave it is almost silent.  The snow not only insulates from the cold but it almost completely insulates the interior from all sound.  I am used to sleeping with the radio on and some ambient light from the sky or streetlights, but in the coffin, there was no sound, no wind, no visual stimulation; it was quiet, still and dark.  Without the benefit of my usual distractions my mind must have wandered to a place many of us try to avoid.

I was confronted by my eventual death in the cave of snow, much like Luke was confronted with his own dead face under the mask of Darth Vader in the Cave of Dagobah, and I cringed and ran from the vision, unable for that moment to cope with the thoughts and feelings.

I will go back to the snow cave or Cave of Dagobah or coffin, but this time more prepared having shared my experience in writing, armed with my grounding tools and perhaps with something to distract myself  if things get dark again.

 

 

 

Our Finnish Canadian friend Lisa hosts a few bonfire parties per year at her farm in Uxbridge.  One of our favourites is the February one.  Lisa and her family light the laneway to the back 40 cedar forest with candle lanterns for hikers and cross country skiers then have a sausage roast on a small fire in the bush.  After that they have a big bonfire back up near the house and host a great party with ham, potatoes, carrots, chicken, chili, soup, cider and all kinds of desserts.  Real old school family farm kitchen party and bonfire.

The Finns are traditionally outdoorsy types even in the winter so this was a great way to spend an afternoon and evening on family day weekend outside in the forest, just 1 hour from Toronto.

As part of my Wild Deer 1 Program with the Pine Project, I have chosen to build 6 different outdoor shelters from natural materials and spend one night in each over the next five months.  For my first project I decided to build a quinzee in the backyard and sleep in it.  A quinzee is a primitive snow shelter.  You pile up some snow, let it sit for a while, dig it out, crawl in and you’re nice a cozy for the night.  What could go wrong?

Well, to start with, I was in a bit of a time crunch as I knew that warmer weather was coming.  I had planned to build the quinzee on Friday with well below freezing temperatures for the day and night.  Unfortunately, life intervened, requiring me to pick up my 93 year old aunt from the rehab hospital, care for my son who contracted a nasty virus and fever and run numerous errands.

So Saturday it was.  I woke up early and piled the snow up in about 90 minutes.  I knew we were in for above freezing temperatures on Sunday and Monday so I figured this might be my last chance this winter to build a quinzee in the back yard this year; I went for it.

Here’s a pictorial of the steps I took to build it.

Normally, a quinzee is 7’x 7′ x 7′ to comfortably accommodate 2 people.  The pile above is obviously not that; more like 5.5′ h x 5.5′ w x 8′ l.  Hey, but it was just for me to sleep in one night so what was the big deal.  This would work, right? Right! And anyways, I wanted some snow to build a toboggan run off the deck, like the one at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, too.

Above is the finished pile.  I left it for about 4 hours to sinter or crystallize into a solid mass before starting to dig it out and went off to build the toboggan run.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming after allowing the quinzee to sinter.

I grabbed some apple twig shoots from last year’s pruning for the wall thickness markers for the shelter.  My foot is about 12″ long so I made a template twig approximately 18″ long.  I used this stick to quickly break a bunch more.

It is recommended to break 25 – 40 twigs 1 foot to 2 feet long depending on the snow conditions.  Use  longer twigs for lighter snow for walls 18″ – 24″ thick and shorter twigs for heavier snow for 12″ thick walls.

The sticks are pushed into the snow pile at 1 – 2 feet apart from each other so they cover the whole area of the pile from top to bottom and all around.  These will serve as guides when digging the quinzee out from the inside to make sure your walls are an even and adequate thickness.  When you are digging the shelter out and you hit the end of a twig you know you are at your optimal wall thickness in that area.

I probably could have gotten away with 12″ thick walls but likely ended up with 15″ to 18″ thick walls. In the end, I could have used those inches later.  Note the raised bed of snow for insulation and adjacent trench to allow cold air to flow out.  Normally, a quinzee holds two people and the trench is built down the middle with a bed on either side. This is my adaptation for the circumstances.  Cozy but not too claustrophobic for one person; yet.

At this point, I was feeling pretty good about things.  I had built the quinzee, a toboggan run and prepped some of my gear.  A buddy messaged that he was having an early games night and I figured I was in pretty good shape so I headed out for a quick game of Catan figuring I’d come home, have a snack, slip into my little cave with my thermarest, my double bagged sleeping bag, a headlamp, campknife, water bottle, toque and Cliff Bar.

Wrong!

By the time I got home it was dark and a freezing drizzle had started.  Okay, no big deal I thought, I can throw the tarp over the shelter in case it rains a bit, to prevent the shelter soaking up too much moisture.  The temperature was still a couple degrees below zero so I figured I was still good with quinzee integrity.  I grabbed my gear into a pack and headed out.

Tarp on and secure!  Thermarest inflated and inserted on pine boughs!  Lay the sleeping bag on the bed; lay the sleeping bag on the bed; try and stuff the sleeping bag into the shelter; keep trying to stuff the bulky double winter sleeping bag into the shelter; start getting the sleeping bag wet from contact with the walls and the freezing drizzle; try and crawl in and arrange things; increased claustrophobic feelings; try again to squish in; difficulty breathing; more thoughts about warming weather and cave in risk; change the batteries in my headlamp; pull everything out; stuff it into the pack and start digging out the shelter again in the middle of the night to create more space.  Fun?  Wow!

Now if you do the math, 5.5′ snow pile – (1.5 thick wall + 1 foot thick snow bed + 0.5 sleeping bag, thermarest, pine bough thickness) = 2.5′ high maximum (at apex) sleeping space.  Not good.  No space to maneuver into the sleeping bag, hard to roll over, sleeping bag in contact with the snow, snow falling into sleeping bag and down my back, increasingly claustrophobic.

Add to this that I had a cold and had trouble breathing when lying prone due to a stuffy nose.  This intensified the claustrophobic feelings and it was time to evacuate and re-evaluate.  Obstinately, I tried re-orienting my sleeping position with my head at the entrance but the entrance was even narrower and I was aimed downhill so even more stuffiness in my nose occurred and movement of any kind was impossible.  Even with my head almost out of the shelter, claustrophobic feelings and thoughts of a shelter collapse got the better of me at this point and some time after midnight I retired to my bed in the house muttering something about “live to fight another day”.

Okay, truth be told, I really did not take this seriously enough.  There was no sense of urgency as the build was in my backyard.  I was overconfident having built 2 or 3 quinzees prior to this both at home and in the bush. I was not focused on the main task and got distracted by the toboggan run project and board games with friends.  I ended up with what really was a one person emergency shelter that you would stay in if you were lost with no gear in the winter woods overnight.  I would have been better off ditching the sleeping bags and Thermarest and just sleeping on the pine boughs in my coat and snow pants. Stubbornness and reluctance to give up my original plan in the face of the reality of the situation prevented consideration of a major plan change.

In reality, a quinzee is a great shelter for extremely cold conditions.  I would say -15 C or lower.  You can get the inside of a quinzee up to 0 C when it is -40 C outside, so it can be a lifesaver.  If you are well insulated below and have a sleeping bag rated to -10 C or -20 C you are golden.  I had conditions just a couple degrees below 0 C so a quinzee was overkill when a tent or lean to would have sufficed.

I have slept in quinzees before and had no trouble with claustrophobia or thoughts of wall collapse but they were big enough to sit up in and move around a bit.  I could have licked the snow without raising my head in this build.  As long as the temperature is well below zero, a properly constructed quinzee is unlikely to have a collapse.  In fact, you can usually walk on them without causing them to collapse (and I have done so on past constructions at home and in the bush).  If you are concerned about a collapse, keep the walls to 1′ thick, especially on top, to minimize the potential amount of snow falling on you, but again, properly constructed, they are unlikely to have a catastrophic failure.

Here is a final picture of my quinzee after 5 days of temperatures above zero, including 2 days with highs of 9 C and 11 C.  No catastrophic failure, just a gradual sad sag.

I did not accomplish my goal but I did get schooled by Mother Nature once again and will try and remember the lessons I learned for my next project.  Now let’s try the toboggan run!