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.