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Zero Shelter
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wfranck@mindspring.com
During the winter, I had
built a debris shelter in the woods behind our house. It was built well
and I had intended to sleep in it during the upcoming weekend. As the weekend
approached, the weather predictions spoke of the movement of an Arctic air
mass making its way deep into the South. The forecast was being revised
to warn of morning lows of close to zero.
I knew this would be an unusual chance to
really test out the effectiveness of the ancient debris hut structure. I
also knew that the shelter, as it stood, was not going to be sufficient
for this type of weather. So, I spent another hour before dark on Saturday
piling on more leaves on the outside, and stuffing more leaves into the
inside.
After supper, I watched the evening weather
report and began to feel nervous about trying to spend the night out in
such cold. I kept delaying going out to the shelter. Finally, reminding
myself that I could just walk on back to the house at any point during the
night, I decided to go ahead with it. Normally, such cold conditions would
be more safely encountered wearing wool clothing, but as a controlled test,
I changed into a very insufficient combination of tee shirt, sweat shirt,
blue jeans, cotton socks, and tennis shoes. I made sure I had a house key
in my pocket, and as an afterthought, I put on a stocking cap. I checked
the thermometer. It was 27 degrees.
I walked out into the woods, found my shelter,
laid on my stomach and inched back into it. I had prepared two big piles
of leaves on either side of the doorway. I pulled and stuffed these leaves
into the doorway after I got inside. Twice during the next 2 hours I woke
up shivering and decided to go out and stuff some more armfulls of leaves
into the shelter to act as a blanket. This worked well enough so that I
could sleep for the rest of the night.
The next morning I awoke and crawled out into
the dawn. It was cold outside. I could feel the inside of my nose trying
to freeze with each breath I took. My legs, without thermal underwear, were
the first to want me to go on back to the house. I knew that I would soon
have to go either to the house or back into the shelter. Since the house
was so near, I was able to think up enough excuses for that choice. On the
way in, I stopped by the thermometer to see that the temperature was now
2 degrees below zero. I knew that I had kept the option of returning to
my house. But, as I glanced back at that shelter, I knew also that its protection
had kept me alive to see the dawn.
(Will Franck - Greensboro, NC - 1994)
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