If you think you may have to spend the night in the woods, you may wish to fashion some form of temporary shelter. For one night, a tree with good thick foliage will serve the purpose. Thick foliage will help keep the rain off, and reduces the chance of falling out of the tree.
After a day or two, it is probably a good idea to build a more permanent shelter, such as a lean-to. A very nice lean-to can be made out of large slabs of bark, pried from a dead cedar, pine or tamarack, and leaned against the truck of an upright tree. If you have a tendency to walk in your sleep, the lean-to should not be more than fifteen feet from the ground. After a couple of weeks, it might be a good idea to add some simple furnishings and pictures.
Each day you are lost should be recorded by carving a notch on some handy surface. (This procedure should be skipped by anyone lost at sea in a rubber life raft.) I’ve known people lost only a few hours and already they had carved half a notch. The reason for the notches is that you may write a book on your experience and sell it to the movies. As is well known, a film about being lost is absolute zilch without an ever-increasing string of notches. The best film treatment of notches that I’ve seen was in a TV movie about a couple whose plane had crashed in the Yukon. They painted the notches on the plane’s fuselage with a set of oil paints. It was a great touch and added a lot of color to the drama. I for one never go out into the woods anymore without a set of oil paints, just in case I’m lucky enough to be lost long enough to interest a film producer.
More witty cautionary tales of outdoor life, by everybody's favorite expert on the subject, Patrick F. McManus.
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