I shot this video in early November of 2009 in a large Crown Land area in Southern Ontario. To get there, I paddled 8km from the road, and then portaged about 500 meters into a small lake where I stayed for two days. I planned to hunt duck for food, but did not manage to harvest anything, I also fished a bit but was unsuccessful there too. The only thing I ate was Wintergreen Berries, and I drank Wintergreen Tea, and chewed on the leaves. This was in part because it took quite a while to travel, build my shelter, and then cut enough fire wood to last all night. Fire and shelter are more important that food when it comes to survival, though I got unlucky and missed a good chance at a duck when my gun jammed. I did not see any Red Squirrels, or Grouse around on this occasion either. I chose to build an A-frame style shelter which I insulated with evergreen bows, and shingled with birchbark. The shelter trapped the fire’s heat well, and I was warm throughout the night, even though I did not have a sleeping bag, and was wet from working in the rain all day. The bark and bows did a decent job of blocking the rain too. It snowed heavily on my last day there, and I added some White Pine bark shingling over my fire. After leaving, the miserable weather I’d been having finally cleared into a beautiful Fall day as I paddled back across a big lake to my truck. Over all, it was a pretty fun experience, but I was definitely cold, wet and hungry. I think doing things like this teach you that being cold wet, and hungry is not a dangerous situation in the short term, as long as you can get a warm fire going, make shelter and find the way home. Realizing this, helps the discomforts subside.
Transcript:
so I find three or four pieces like this I'm going to be able to shingle my entire shelter with it with some birch bark with some drivers and look we got another great team coat over here too now this one's a little rotted out but that's okay you don't always need a big perfect piece I'm going to build an a-frame so this is going to be the ridge Pole the a-frame shelter right here and I'm just gonna you know collected some rock and I'm going to build a fire right up against this nice rock wall it overhangs a bit and it'll help keep some of the rain off and but also it's going to help reflect the heat which is really good so that rocks going to stay nice and hot and it's going to just radiate that heat back on me all night really want to make sure that all those pine needles are away go around the outside especially without a whole bunch of spruce boughs that I'm going to chop spruce logs at is I'm going to chop up and bow too and then I'm going to you know I'm going to basically use the bow that as a as roofing but also sleep off got to be careful that your apps isn't slip when the hand will go what like it is right now okay yeah well that's it so it looks like I'm going to need a substantial bit more wood if this isn't enough wood I think I'm just going to spread out while I hop if it could make 202 this one I'm just going to put a layer these evergreen valves over this I managed to gather a lot a good birch bark and with this rainy weather I mean nothing makes better shingles in this stuff so I'm just going to go ahead and start putting some of this on right now of course I'm putting the best pieces up to where my head is and my torso are going to be not as bad if your legs get wet all right well here we are got some fire some wood laid in I got it shingled and looks like it's going to work out oh yeah yeah this is actually this shelter is really holding the heat in better than I even thought I'm gonna have to figure out a better way to get in though without all burning my face off got that nice rock reflecting the heat back and then it reflects back into here and it really seems to hold the heat in here quite well actually and the Burt Rock is gonna keep me nice and dry definitely ready to get some sleep this is great it's actually a really beautiful morning here I woke up to a substantial amount of snow falling and it did it you know it might be a little disturbing to some people in my situation but because I was warm is actually really beautiful so you know I just wanted to make sure you know because I'm going to be off doing things and gathering some food that I have a nice fire going when I get back so I'm just going to do this is a little little precautionary method wintergreen makes a great tea and the berries are delicious let's see if this works
