The COFFIN 3.0

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 Original Quinze

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.

The Snow Cave of Dagobah

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

The COFFIN 3.0

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.

The View From Inside the COFFIN

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.

From the inside, it is difficult not to be conscious of the experience of being in a real coffin.

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).