The Body Hollow

Every since reading Practical Primitive's article about the body hollow shelter, I've wanted to build one. Sitting in the backyard one day not long ago I gazed upon the large pile of tree branches given to us by our neighbor. Then I glanced at the yard composed of sand. The words "build a shelter" popped into my head.

In the desert of the southwest there are few trees. Those that are around don't have leaves suitable to build a shelter like the debris hut. So one way to make a shelter is to dig and make it underground. The body hollow is basically half underground and half above ground.

For excellent instructions on how to build one, go to the link in the first paragraph. It has a great series of pictures. I won't try to recreate that here, but I'll tell you my experience.

I used a shovel to dig out the trench. My neighbor thought I was digging a grave until I explained what I was doing. Since the soil was pretty soft and I didn't have to dig very deep, this didn't take too long. The trench is the length of my body.



I filled the trench about half full with debris (leaves, needles and other detritus), then laid sticks across the trench. After that I started adding more debris on top. I made a little A-frame at the entrance to make it easier to crawl into.



I scrounged around every corner of the property to find debris. I even crossed the street to a vacant property and stole a binful of leaves. I laid sticks on top to keep them from blowing away. In front of the entrance is a ball of pine needles to plug up the doorway after crawling in.



The shelter should really have another foot of debris on top of it but I just didn't have the resources for that without opening a leaf raking business. If I could have I would also have filled the inside up so that I'd have to burrow in. I tried to sleep in it two nights. Both nights I made it through about 3 hours before bailing. The first night it was 47 degrees when I crawled out. Inside the shelter I was a little cold, but I could have toughed it out if I had to. It was definitely warmer than 47. At least the bedding was comfortable to sleep on.

Since I don't plan to gather more debris, I'm going to wait till the weather gets warmer before I try again. I think I could do mid-50s. If I were to do it again I'd probably try to lower the roof over my legs to make less air space for my body to have to heat up.

Volunteering at Camp Delafield

Last Wednesday I volunteered at Camp Delafield. It is a camp conducted by the Dyslexia Institute of Indiana. The children have academic tutoring and participate in recreational activities. I spent the afternoon there as a "mystery guest". In the past they've had fireman and police officers. I was there to teach a little about wilderness survival. It was pretty cool because I got to teach whatever I wanted. I came up with a pretty cool lesson plan.

I had the kids list the things they would need in a survival situation. I expected to hear some crazy stuff, but berries, a cell phone, and a grown up were about the craziest. They were pretty smart and listed all the important ones without my help. I wrote all their ideas on a dry erase board and then ranked each one for importance.



This allowed me to cover the Sacred Order of Shelter, Water, Fire and Food. I focused on shelter since it is the most important. After covering the importance of shelter location, I described the debris hut and how to build one. I asked, "So, are you ready to go build one?" The kids got really excited and immediately got to there feet.



I led them out to a site in the woods where I had already gathered the materials for a shelter. Then we all built the shelter together. It was cool to be able to actually illustrate the points I was describing in the lecture. The kids had a really good time. I heard a lot of them refer to it as a fort which is probably why they were so interested. Unfortunately there weren't really enough leaves around to even come close to finishing the shelter, but I think they got the basic idea.





On August 3rd I plan to go back to the camp for their campfire night. My plan is to light their campfire using my bow drill. Hopefully I can also teach them a little bit about fire.

The Shelter Challenge

At the beginning of last week I had to miss work because I had severe back pain. The weekend before I went climbing, did some moving and played basketball. All this was after not exercising for more than a month. So it was with nervous excitement that I drove south Saturday morning to test my survival skills.

I met up with five other guys on some property northeast of Bloomington. Our challenge was to each build a shelter without tools out of things found in the forest. The type of shelter we all built was a debris hut. It is one type of shelter that you can make that can keep you warm with just your own body heat. Think of it as a giant sleeping bag.

A shelter like this takes a little wood and a TON of debris like leaves and other ground litter. Before we started, we discussed whether we should build our huts apart or close together. The benefit of being apart is that you don't have to compete over resources. The benefit of being together is that you can more easily socialize, communicate, share a fire, and help each other out. In the end we decided it would be cool to all be together especially since the resources were plentiful. They were so plentiful, in fact, that I never had to go more than 30 yds. to find materials.

We next walked around a ridge looking for a good shelter location. Because there was a 5-10 mph wind, we chose a spot a bit downhill from the top. It was a lot less windy there which ended up being a big benefit throughout the experience.

My hut is at center in the picture below. As you can see, the frame was one long ridgepole supported by some "Y" sticks. Over the ridgepole, other sticks called ribs were laid. On top of that, smaller twig-like sticks were laid for the purpose of holding the debris up. At this point my frame was basically complete which meant I was about 15% done.


The bulk of the time was spend gathering leaves. This was the part I was worried about for my back. There is basically no way to gather leaves without using your back a lot. To minimize this, my technique was to use my feet like a rake. It really helped to have size 14 shoes! After foot raking four huge piles of leaves onto my shelter, it looked pretty much like this.



As you can see it takes a lot of leaves to insulate your hut. My debris pile was about 2 1/2 feet deep. Besides the leaves on the outside, I also stuffed a bunch of leaves inside. The whole process took about 4 hours. To make the challenge more realistic, we decided that we wouldn't eat any food until our shelters were finished. In a survival situation, the sacred order of survival needs is shelter, water, fire, food. We weren't completely hardcore because we did keep ourselves hydrated.

Here's the gang. From left to right is Darin, Dewey, Rob, Kevin, me and Michael. My debris hut is the one on the right. It is nearly finished in this picture.


As the day continued the temperature kept dropping. We all had a laugh when we looked up and saw four geese flying directly south. It was as if they decided they migrated north too soon and were getting the hell out town for the night. Before sunset we got a fire made and started eating. Around 10:30 I crawled into my hut and had someone plug up my entrance tightly with a couple armloads of leaves.

I had high hopes for my shelter as I started the night with just normal clothes on. I wore an undershirt and a long sleeved cotton shirt with pants and socks. It didn't take long before I put my hat on and moved the fleece that was my pillow down to become my blanket. This allowed me to go in and out of sleep till about 3:30am when I emerged from my den.

It was interesting because Kevin also emerged at the same time and we both spent 20 minutes gathering more leaves with head lamps on. I stuffed about four more armloads of leaves into my hut to plug up gaps and to generally fill up the inside. Then I crawled back in with my fleece and hat on.

Despite patching up more holes I still felt cold air on my face. I covered my face with my scarf but after awhile longer, I emerged again. I finally got in my sleeping bag and wiggled into my hut. I was able to sleep the rest of the night although I was still a little cold.

In the morning our water was frozen. The low temperature was 17 degrees not counting the effect of the wind. Although I wasn't comfortable and warm inside my shelter, it was WAY better than 17 degrees and windy. It was probably around 45 degrees inside. I made it through the night with the shelter I built and without a shelter and fire I could have possibly died in 17 degree weather.

We talked about our experience and the lessons we learned which were many. Before packing up and leaving we went on a walk exploring the area. It was still in the 30s but after living through the night it felt warm. If I had slept at home in my bed and then gone outside I would have thought it was a cold day and worn a coat.

The number of things I learned this weekend are too numerous to list. I am still on a natural high from the whole experience. It is hard to not think about it. Starting work Monday I felt like I just came back from a week's vacation.