Interpreting the title itself shows how wide is the palette of these refuges – be it completely natural, or developed by human intervention.
I could list here the hollows, cavities, caves, and refuges of all kinds of substance used by the natural folk, be it mud, snow, cane, comma, but even cow turd.
This article is about two types of refuges, that we can use in our climate, and can be built easy and fast. You don’t have to be an expert, and practically you need no other tools or equipment. The pictures have been taken in autumn, and that means leaf mould being avaible, but of course, we can use leafy branches too.
Sometimes the opportunity is right ahead of us, but to notice these, it is necessary to entail an open eye. We know when we want to pitch a camp, so to utilize these optimal opportunities, it’s advisable to look for these before it. We should look for cracked up branches or trees, even ground, a place where’s not too much vegetation, or a place, where our refuge has at least a windless side. It can be really useful too, if there’s a lot of dry wood around us.
We must check and clean the ground. It’s not very funny to lay down on an ant hill, or to be waken up because of that uncomfortable, uneven ground.
We break or cut the lasting poles to size. These meant to hold the roof stable.
Our goal is not to build a refuge that is strong and long-lasting, but to build a temporary one, that will be used for only a couple days, so it’s pointless to cover it with strong branches.
I think a 180cm tall man with the backpack needs about 2.5m lying area.
A refuge this long would require a lot of branches and time. It’s unnecessary.
We lay the smaller branching branches onto the bars, so that it will form a grid character. The thicker, the better.
In case we are working with leafy branches, our work will be faster and more spectacular.
I have used leaf mould to cover the refuge seen on the pictures. You can make it very thick real fast in this type of environment.
To stop the wind from blowing away our roof, I put branches between and top of the leaf mould.
The 15-20cm thick leaf mould layer has good insulating properties, and if we combine it with a heat reflection wall, we’ll have an ideal shelter.
With a little work we can have a surprisingly strong shelter using the method described below.
We’ll now cut two evenly long branches. These two joined branches will be our refuge’s entrance.
It’s advisable to be cautious while pruning, because we can have a hanger by leaving a short stump at the end of the branches.
We will also need at least a 2.5m long pruned pole. That will be the „spine” of our shelter.
(The size of the shelter can be changed as long as we have enough timber.)
The next thing is to cut the branches to fit the spine’s tilt angle.
After we covered the whole refuge with branches, the only thing we have to do is to cover it with something, so that it’s insulating properites will be great.
On the picture below Satu had covered the shelter with leaf mould, but it can also be done with dirt, snow, or foliage.
This type of refuge’s more serious variant is the „shanty”. It’s living space is sinked to the dirt, and the dug out dirt is used to cover it’s roof.
Authors: Papica, Satu
Translation: Kba
