Making A Shelter

There had been a thunderstorm during the night. I was happy that my tent had stayed completely dry even though my feet were touching the walls of my tent. 

It was still raining when I woke up and it was cold out too, so I stayed in my tent in my nice warm sleeping bag until it stopped raining which was at about 10:30.

When I did finally decide to get out of the tent, Carsten had already been up an hour before me. 

Everything was cold and wet and there was mist on the lake and coming off of the tree tops. Nothing was around and the whole area was unusually quiet compared to yesterday. There were no birds singing, no squirrels, no loons, and no King Fishers. I didn't even hear the chewing sounds of the Pine Sawyer beetles. Everything was doing what I had been doing; staying inside to keep dry and warm. 

The wood we had stashed away under the fallen tree and in a bag were perfectly dry.  However, we decided to save that wood for suppertime in the evening. Instead, we opted to get some hot water for breakfast and coffee using our portable camp stove. 

It started to drizzle a bit again. We talked it over and decided that it was too wet and slippery to be climbing bear mountain today so, we would just stick around the campsite.  That led to the next question of "What are we going to do all day?" 

​We didn't want to sit around in the rain and the cold doing nothing all day, so we decided to build a shelter just for the fun of it. We would be moving around which would keep us warm and we would be focused on our project which would keep us from being bored.  It was the shelter we had seen at the first campsite of our trip that gave us the idea. 

We found a live cedar tree which was already growing on a diagonal and had 4 trees around it that we could use as a frame. We had the old twine that someone had left behind as a clothes line that we could use to lash things together. With a bit of a plan in mind, but mostly making it up as we went along, we set about building our shelter in the rain. 

We began to roam the area looking for long thin logs that wouldn't be too heavy or too difficult to move that we could use for our frame.  

As we explored, Carsten came across a surprising discovery. There was a marker for a trail to the bathroom! 
Say what?!?  How did we miss that yesterday? 

The funny thing too was that it was on a tree beside the fallen tree. The same fallen tree that we stored our wood under to keep dry. The same fallen tree that Carsten had pitched his tent up beside. It was right there the whole time. 

We felt a bit foolish but not too much. The fallen tree was actually right across the path to the bathroom. In order to get there you literally had to go all the way around the tree. If the fallen tree wasn't there the trail would have been more evident. 

So, we followed the new found path and lo and behold, there it was. 

Yay! Now we don't have to use the fallen log anymore!. No more sitting on pine needles, sap, and pieces of bark. We were very happy with this find.

After our find, we got back to the project at hand. We found a huge area with a ton of dead fall and we gathered up some smaller pieces to make a roof with. We began to weave the dead branches together like you would on a loom to make a roof.  The twine we were using had seen better days and would fray and break on us sometimes, but we managed to make it work.

We would go back and forth gathering some dead branches then weaving them in and then going out to find more branches. While looking for the perfect branches we would find some beautiful mushrooms growing in the rain. 

There was orange Jelly Spot fungi growing in the moss at the base of one tree. 
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And there were Painted Suillus mushrooms with red mottled tops. 

We worked on our shelter for a couple hours until we decided that it was lunch time and we stopped for a break. 

At about this time we finally saw our first creature of the day. It was a little red squirrel who was having his own lunch of fresh green pine cones. 

A little Enargia moth also decided to join us. 

After lunch we went back to building our shelter. We worked for a few more hours but then eventually began to get bored.  

We stepped back and took a look at it. It was nothing special but we liked it.  Now of course it is far from finished and probably never will get finished.  In order to finish it, we would need to get a whole lot of leaves, branches, and moss to cover it all and make a good ceiling and walls for it. However, we didn't want to damage any of the trees by cutting them apart for an unnecessary shelter. It was only for fun and we were not in any emergency situation where we needed a shelter built. If we were to build one in an emergency it probably wouldn't be this big either. 

Eventually the twine will give way and it will start to fall apart. Or someone will take the dead branches and use our frame as firewood.  Either way, we knew it wouldn't last for too long. Of course if someone else came along later and threw a tarp over the frame it would probably keep them fairly dry or shaded if need be. We didn't have a tarp with us so it was just a frame. But it had kept us busy for about 5 hours. 

It was about 4 o'clock now and it was getting colder and the wind was up.  I took this opportunity to hang up my wet clothes from yesterday in hopes that the wind would dry them out, even if there was no sun. 

While I was doing that, we heard an extremely loud and resounding cracking noise that echoed from across the lake. I spun around and said to Carsten who was down by the lake, "What in the world was that? A moose?" 

He said he wasn't sure but he pointed to a tree and said "That tree over there just started shaking".  But by the time I got down to where Carsten was, the tree wasn't shaking anymore. 

We stood there looking and listening to see if we heard or saw anything more.  The big leafy tree that he had pointed to began to look like it was a giant smiling cat face as I stared at it. It was like finding shapes in the clouds, only I was finding them in the trees.  Eventually we came to the conclusion that it was probably not a moose. Most likely it had probably been a tree that had fallen down in the wind and crashed into the other one which made it sway. With all the deadfall we had seen around here, it was the explanation that made the most sense. 

We sat for a bit but it was so cold that I needed to sit with a blanket wrapped around me.  Eventually we decided that it was a good time to start a fire. It was close to supper time and it would keep us warm at the same time. 

But once again, I had to rescue a toad from the fire pit. We hadn't started the fire yet this time, so he was in less danger than yesterday, but if we hadn't seen him, he would have been toast.  Crazy toad! Probably the same one. Probably trying to keep warm.   I picked him up and moved him over to the shelter of some trees. 

Later in the evening the wind died down and the temperature started to warm up. There was only one mosquito tonight. Probably still too cold for them. 

We kept the fire going until about 9:30 before heading for bed.  Just before heading into the tents we could hear wolves howling way off in the distance. It was pretty faint. It sounded like it was coming from another lake entirely. Perhaps Upper Brush Lake that  we were on a few nights ago maybe? Who knows. 

I got woken up in the middle of the night by the call of a Barred Owl that was very close by. 
I tried to go back to sleep but now that I was awake I had to go pee.  Thanks for that, owl.

I grabbed my flashlight and made my way to the Thunder Box. Three or four moths were sitting on the box and danced around as the light of my flashlight greeted them. I had to shoo them away because they just didn't want to move. 

Afterwards, I got back into my tent and my warm sleeping bag and snuggled in to go back to sleep.  Once again I heard the call of the Barred Owl very close by.  And then, from another direction, I heard a return call of a second Barred Owl answering the first one.  They called back and forth for about 15 minutes or so. I listened to both and noted how one call was ever so slightly different than the other. I guess they each have their own unique take on their call so that you can tell them apart; just like humans have different voices.  I smiled at this as I eventually fell back to sleep.