The Art of Shelter
The first business upon reaching your camping ground is to establish shelter. Even in fair weather, the experienced woodsman makes shelter his first priority, because weather in the wilderness changes without warning. The man who makes camp at leisure, with time to select his site, build his shelter properly, and gather firewood before dark, sleeps comfortably. The man who delays until the rain begins or darkness falls sleeps wet and miserable — if he sleeps at all.
Choosing the Campsite
The selection of a campsite is an art that improves with experience. A good site makes camping comfortable; a poor site makes it wretched. Here are the principles:
Water: Camp near water, but not in the flood plain. A stream, spring, or lake within two hundred yards is ideal. Do not camp in dry creek beds or low areas near streams — a sudden rain upstream can send a wall of water through your camp in the night.
Drainage: Choose ground that slopes gently, so rainwater runs away from your shelter rather than pooling beneath you. The top of a small rise is better than the bottom of a hollow. If you must camp on flat ground, scrape a shallow trench around your shelter to divert water.
Wind Protection: Look for natural windbreaks — a thick stand of evergreens, a rock outcropping, a hillside. The ideal camp is sheltered from prevailing winds but not in a dead calm where smoke from your fire has nowhere to go.
Sun Exposure: In warm weather, the shade of large trees is a blessing. In cold weather, a south-facing exposure that catches the morning sun will warm your camp early and dry the dew from your gear.
Firewood: Make camp where dead wood is plentiful. There is nothing more tiresome than carrying firewood a great distance. A camp in a stand of mixed hardwoods with plenty of standing dead timber will keep you in fuel with minimal effort.
Level Ground: Your sleeping area should be as level as possible. Even a slight slope will have you sliding off your bed by midnight. If no level ground is available, sleep with your head uphill.
Hazards to Avoid:
- Dead standing trees (widow-makers) that could fall on your camp in wind
- Ant hills, wasp nests, and beehives
- Game trails — animals travel these paths at night and may walk through your camp
- Exposed ridgetops where wind and lightning are dangerous
- Rocky ground where tent stakes cannot be driven and sleeping is uncomfortable
Dead Trees Kill Campers Every Year
Widow-makers — dead standing trees or large dead branches lodged in the canopy — are one of the most underestimated dangers in the woods. They fall without warning, especially in wind and rain when the ground softens around their roots. Always look up when choosing a campsite. If you see any dead trees or hanging branches within falling distance of your sleeping area, move your camp. No convenience of location is worth the risk.
The Shanty-Tent
My preferred shelter is the open-front shanty-tent described in the outfitting chapter. It combines the protection of a tent with the advantages of an open camp, and it can be pitched in five minutes by a man working alone.
Pitching the Shanty-Tent:
- Select two trees approximately eight feet apart, or drive two forked stakes into the ground
- Cut a ridge pole from a straight sapling — about nine feet long and two inches thick at the butt
- Lash or rest the ridge pole in the tree forks or stake forks, about four feet above the ground
- Drape the tent cloth over the ridge pole, with the front edge at the top of the pole
- Stake the back edge to the ground, pulling it taut
- Stake the sides to the ground
The result is a sloping roof that sheds rain perfectly, with an open front facing your fire. The slope of the roof reflects fire heat downward onto the sleeper — a man lying inside with a good fire burning four feet from the opening will be warm on the coldest night.
Orient the open front away from the prevailing wind. If wind is variable, orient it to face the most sheltered direction available.
The Lean-To: Nature's Shelter
When traveling without a tent, the lean-to is the simplest and most effective shelter that can be built from natural materials. A good lean-to can be constructed in an hour and will shed rain and reflect fire heat as well as any tent.
Building a Lean-To:
Find or create a ridge pole: a straight, sturdy pole about ten feet long. Lash it between two trees at about four feet high, or rest it in the forks of two driven stakes.
Lean rafters against the ridge pole at roughly 45 degrees. These should be straight sticks about eight feet long, placed every twelve to eighteen inches along the ridge pole. The steeper the angle, the better the shelter sheds rain, but the less interior space you have.
Weave smaller branches horizontally through the rafters to create a lattice. This gives the roofing material something to grip.
Thatch the lattice with whatever material is available, working from the bottom up (like shingles on a roof, so water runs over each layer rather than under it):
- Evergreen boughs (pine, spruce, fir, cedar) are the best natural roofing material. Lay them thick, with the tips pointing downward. A properly thatched layer of boughs six inches deep will shed all but the heaviest rain.
- Bark stripped from dead trees (birch bark, cedar bark) makes excellent roofing
- Broad leaves layered thickly will shed light rain
- Grass and ferns work in emergencies but must be very thick (twelve inches or more)
Build your fire four to six feet in front of the opening. The lean-to's sloping back wall reflects heat down onto the sleeper.
Start With the Lean-To
If you learn only one shelter-building skill, make it the lean-to. It is the foundation of all bushcraft shelter construction, and the principles behind it — ridge pole, angled rafters, overlapping thatch, fire reflection — apply to every wilderness shelter design. Practice building lean-tos in fair weather until you can construct a solid, rainproof shelter in under an hour. That confidence will serve you when the weather turns ugly and you need shelter fast.
The Bark Shelter
In forests where birch or cedar is plentiful, the bark shelter is a quick and effective option. Large sheets of bark can be stripped from dead trees (never from living trees — this kills them) and used as roofing over a simple pole framework.
Birch bark is particularly excellent for this purpose. It is naturally waterproof due to its oil content, it peels in large sheets from dead birch trees, and it can be flattened and layered to create a roof that is virtually rainproof. Weight the bark with poles to keep the wind from lifting it.
Cedar bark, while not as waterproof as birch, can be shredded and layered to good effect. The fibrous inner bark of dead cedar also makes excellent bedding material.
The Bed
No matter how good your shelter, you will sleep poorly without a proper bed. The ground saps body heat relentlessly — a man lying on bare earth loses heat through conduction far faster than through exposure to cold air. Insulation from below is more important than insulation from above.
The Balsam Bed: The finest woodland bed is made from the tips of balsam fir branches. Gather armloads of balsam tips — the last eight to twelve inches of each branch, where the needles are soft and fragrant. Lay them in overlapping rows, tips pointing toward the head of your bed, building up a mattress six to eight inches thick. The result is soft, springy, fragrant, and warm. A man sleeping on a proper balsam bed with a single wool blanket is warmer than one on bare ground with three blankets.
If balsam is not available, use:
- Spruce tips (nearly as good, slightly stiffer)
- Pine needles gathered in thick mounds (they compress more than bough tips but provide good insulation)
- Dry leaves in deep piles (twelve inches or more, as they compress significantly under body weight)
- Dry grass gathered in thick bundles
- Bracken fern makes an excellent mattress
The key is thickness. Whatever material you use, use twice as much as you think you need. It will compress under your weight, and what seemed like a generous mattress at bedtime becomes a thin pad by midnight.
Ground Insulation Matters More Than Blankets
This is one of the most counterintuitive lessons in outdoor sleeping: you lose more heat downward into the ground than upward into the air. A thick bough bed or modern sleeping pad beneath you does more for warmth than an extra blanket on top. If you are cold at night, the fix is almost always more insulation below, not above. Nessmuk understood this in 1884, and modern thermodynamics confirms it — conductive heat loss to the ground far exceeds convective and radiative loss to the air.
Camp Comforts
The greenhorn's camp is a place of discomfort, where everything is difficult and nothing is within reach. The experienced woodsman's camp is a place of ease, where every convenience has been thought out and provided for with minimal equipment.
The Drying Rack: Drive two forked stakes into the ground on either side of the fire, about four feet high. Lay a pole across them. This gives you a rack to dry wet clothing, warm your blanket before bed, and hang your cooking pail.
The Reflector Wall: If you are camping without a tent, build a reflector wall behind your fire by stacking green logs two or three feet high, parallel to your sleeping area. This wall reflects heat back toward your bed, significantly increasing warmth. Angle the wall slightly — leaning toward you — for maximum heat reflection.
The Reflector Wall Doubles Your Fire's Heat
A reflector wall is one of the simplest and most effective camp improvements you can make. Without it, half your fire's heat radiates uselessly into the darkness behind it. With a wall of stacked green logs angled slightly toward your shelter, that wasted heat bounces back to warm you. Combined with a lean-to or shanty-tent behind you, you create a heat pocket that stays warm even on frigid nights. Spend twenty minutes building a reflector wall before bed — you will sleep far warmer than without one.
Seating: A log of comfortable height, rolled near the fire, serves better than any chair. If the ground is wet, lay a piece of bark on the log before sitting.
The Wood Supply: Before settling in for the evening, gather enough firewood to last the night plus the morning. Stack it within arm's reach of your sleeping position. Nothing is more miserable than waking in the dark, cold and stiff, and having to stumble through the woods for firewood.
Breaking Camp
The woodsman who loves the wilderness leaves his campsite better than he found it. Before departing:
- Extinguish your fire completely — drown it, stir the ashes, drown it again, feel with your hand
- Scatter your fire ring stones
- Spread your bough bed to decompose naturally
- Pack out everything you packed in — tin cans, foil, string, and all refuse
- Fill any holes or trenches you dug
- Scatter the poles of your shelter framework so the site returns to a natural appearance
The best camp is one that disappears within a season, leaving no trace that anyone was ever there. This is the woodsman's ethic, and it is as important as any skill with axe or fire. The wilderness is not ours to consume — it is ours to use lightly and pass on, undiminished, to those who come after us.
Leave No Trace — The Woodsman's Ethic
Nessmuk wrote these words in 1884, decades before the modern Leave No Trace movement. The principle is timeless: the wilderness belongs to everyone, and every camper has a responsibility to leave it as they found it. Scatter your fire ring, spread your bough bed, pack out all refuse, and leave no sign of your passing. The woods have given you shelter, warmth, and comfort — the least you can do is leave them undiminished for the next traveler.