Solo in the Woods.

Yesterday I decided to walk out into the woods and go on my first solo survival trip. To be safe and enjoy my first trip by myself I brought a knife, a sleeping bag, 2L of water, a bowdrill kit, and a pot. It was a fair overcast day, which was about 29 *F and a slight breeze from the northwest. Walking from my house to the cemetery I came across a paper birch tree and took a small handful figuring it would be useful for later, then as I came across all the cedars in the cemetery I couldn't but help myself to scrape some outer bark with my knife for tinder and fill my pocket full of cedar needles to make tea later. I then continued on beyond the cemetery and crossed some train tracks. As I was entering the thicket of woods I was thinking about how loud my boots were and that there was no way I could possibly stalk quietly through the woods without scaring off every animal. American robins were chirping at me and right as I got to the edge of the thicket, where the dense stand of cattails grew, 3 deer ran off and went way out of site. One of them was a huge buck, didn't get a good look at the amount of points but his tracks were almost twice as big as the other deer.

After I crossed the cattail thicket into the new dense woods composed to primarily buckthorn i found a small opening where kids put together some sort of fort made up of old furniture. From the significant amount of rust and wear on the furniture I would predict it was from the children from last generation. I put down my backpack and started exploring/looking for a good place to make camp. I started south and found an interesting setup. Someone had tied up some tarps in a box formation. Before stalking into the camp I searched the light snow covered ground for tracks. No traces of any activity were a good sign, then I noticed 3 axes in a stump. One of the axes had a fungus growing around it, which gave me further confidence that no one was there. So I stalked up and around the structure and found an entire camp where someone had been living. And living for quite some time too. There were many empty water jugs laid on the ground and other assorted things like a lighter, soap, pots n pans, etc. There was a tent raised for showering and even a corner structure made for a toilet facility. Finally there was the tent which had a mattress and its own assorted things. I found a bank note and a money gram. It was all oh so very sketchy because clearly this person wasn't in the woods for the enjoyment, I was just very glad it was deserted. But I immediately left the place walked back to my backpack and found a nice spot more north, out of site of the sketch camp and near a dense stand of cattails. I created my lean-to and started collecting massive amounts of cattails to pile up for insulation. I found the most efficient way for collecting was to use my knife as a machete and slice the base of the stalks. Pile them up and carry them in loads. This ended up taking all day right up until sunset and right as sunset was hitting I harvested sticks, twigs, and whispies to create a fire. I took out my bowdrill kit, gave my thanks, and got a coal. For those of you reading this and do not know what a bowdrill is it is a wooden baseboard with a notch carved in it with a wooden spindle that is spun from a bow and pressed down from a rock I had made. And with enough friction dust is collected and then eventually lights into a small coal. After I got a coal I put it in my cedar tinder bundle and lit the fire. I spent a good amount of time by the fire and made cedar tea to enjoy. I noticed sitting by my small fire that I only felt cold when I was thinking to myself whereas when I would stare of into the woods or into the fire; I would be in some sort of meditation state of mind which made me feel comfortable. But to stay in that state of mind is difficult and often I would be awoken by thought and cold. My mind was constantly going back and forth between enjoying the moment and going back home. There was no doubt in my mind that I would spend the night, but loneliness was creeping up on me. Interestingly enough hunger never really set in.

That night I slept pretty comfortably, it was long though because I'm guessing I went to bed at like 8pm. Waking up every hour because of cold feet, the sleeping bag definitely helped a lot for a more comfortable night. I'm grateful for such amenities. Perhaps next time I'll build an even thicker shelter and make sure of no airholes, that way I can spend a night without the sleeping bag. During the night there were two instances where songs of howling  coyotes filled the air, it was magnificent. There was another small fox bark that I heard, it couldn't have been more than 50 feet away from my shelter.

Morning came and I scurried out the debris shelter to find light flurries had whitened the woods. To get my blood moving again I went to go harvest more cattails and fix the holes in the shelter that tormented me all night. With shelter, fire, & water taken care of there was not much to do, but practice skills, have fun, and hunt food. I went to go look for the coyote tracks from last night and venture around. I walked west and found my self at the foot of flint creek, to get across a walked down stream and found some rocks to jump across. Beyond the small set of woods I could see a large open field. It was an open prairie field with paths on the border seemingly for horses which is very probable since I was in the backyards of barrington hills. There were so many coyote tracks darting across everywhere. I continued to explore the surroundings but my limits were met by houses and roads because I wanted to trespass as little as possible, without disturbing anyone's comfort. I started back to my camp and followed a coyotes track through the woods but as they went out into another opening full of other coyote and dog tracks and lost them. When I got back to camp site I settled down with not much to do so I decided to make cordage from cattail and try my bowdrill with that instead of the synthetic string. I used to strands of cattail which worked fine at first and made a nice strong cordage string but when I had to spice it and make it longer that is where I failed to create a durable enough cordage to use for my bowdrill. If anyone has good tips for splicing cattails fibers please lemme know.

Loneliness and cold settled in again and I decided to go back home. Surely I could have waited the day and night and made it back home the next day but I decided I'd much rather practice the skills that I was going to practice back home than failing out in the woods. It seems to be much better if the skills are perfected outside of the woods and then applied on trips like these. This was a big step for me, going out into the woods by yourself is no easy task and I hope to go back to my debris shelter one more time before I go back to school. I'm every grateful for the experience and recommend it to those who have similar interests. Someday i hope to balance my life with nature and comforts of home, family, and friends. Perhaps a homestead built of natural material is in the future (thanks to my yestermorrow experience). Enjoying the beauty of nature is a true passion of mine and I hope to spread it to as many peoples as possible. Because in reality we depend on the resources mother nature gives us and our society is in dire need of figuring out the balance between living comfortably with all the amenities and living along side the coyotes and foxes out there.

Hope you enjoyed another small adventure of mine. Can't wait for you to tell me yours.