Survival Essentials - Shelter Solutions - Section Three - Creation

In this episode of Conversations with a Shaman. 
We get into episode thirty-five of Survival Essentials. 
Shelter Solutions - Always stay protected from the harsh elements. 
Section three - Creation

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Thanks again for listening, and much love and God Bless. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to Inside the Raven's Eye. I'm your host, Alan Mitchell. My medicine name is Raven's Spirit. This podcast is partnered with Earth and Spirit Medicine, owned and operated by Winfield Ivers. His medicine name is Coyote Thunderhawk. He's a shaman here in the state of Utah. So make sure to visit Earth and Spirit Medicine.com. In this episode of Conversations with a Shaman, we get into episode thirty-five of survival essentials. Shelter Solutions. Always stay protected from the harsh elements. Section three, creation. This and so much more in this episode of Inside the Raven's Eye. Thanks for listening and enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Now that we are sure about our location for shelter, we want to go about the creation. So again, creation of shelter in a primitive sense or in a wilderness survival sense. In other words, using only the foliage or debris that is around you in order to create a sound shelter. So first thing I do is I find a place where it looks like I would want to lay down and sleep when I'm getting ready to create. Now, yeah, when you're going to be staying long term and you want to add on and build and make more spacious room and have the ability to heat your shelter and be able to bring about a better temperament, that's great. But in that immediate, I've got to survive, keep myself out of the harsh elements. We want to keep it small so that we don't have to heat so much empty space around us. So I lay down and I figure out about my body size, about how much room I'm going to need to work with. And then I start to gather the materials for my skeleton. So how am I going to go about framing up this particular shelter? So I look at the skeletal aspects of it. Okay, how am I going to set up the skeletal system that'll hold upon this firm foundation that I'm placing my shelter on? So I'm not in a wash area, I'm not in a windy area. I'm out of the main elements and I'm building my shelter. And let's say that it is in a uh somewhat of a canyon, and let's say that it's like a desert plateau-ish area, so you've got some, you know, the reddish, brownish kind of Navajo sandstone canyon walls, and you've got a wash running through, but you're up on a little higher bench, and you've got cottonwood trees that are down through there, so there's a lot of leaves. Leaves are wonderful insulation. So after I figured out where I'm going to lay down and figured out the size of my shelter, I mark that out. I just kind of draw around me when I'm laying there, about the space of my body plus. And then I build the framework. But before I make that framework dense, I want to lay a foundation of insulation on the ground for me to lay on. So I will put at least a foot of leaves in there inside the shelter where I'm going to be laying. I'll get in there, I'll lay down, smash them down, I'll get some more leaves, I'll put them in there, smash them down, so that I have reduced the amount of airflow and a sense through those leaves so that it is very well insulated from the cold ground. So then I begin to put the roof on my skeletal system. So I put the insulation in, I keep laying on it, patting it down, making it comfy, comfy, comfy, comfy, and then I've got that brief or a uh beginning skeletal system for the shelter, and then I begin to fill in the skeletal structure. I don't want any of that debris that I'm going to be putting on my roof to be falling through. So I want to make sure that there's no room for all of that to come through. So then I make that skeletal system really good. Then I begin putting on the foliage from the ground level and then up a little higher as I go up to the peak of the shelter. That way it's kind of like shingles, and the water will overflow kind of like on your roofs at home. And so you begin putting the insulation on the ground level around your skeletal system of your shelter. So then you can imagine if you were looking around, you'd have your skeletal system, you'd have your your uh insulation on the inside. In this example, we're talking about using the uh leaves of cottonwoods, etc. And then putting, as you view, you'll see that you have a layer of leaves and foliage around the ground on the outside. Then you just grab big piles and you just start throwing it on. After I get the first big thick roof on, as thick as I can get it without it all sliding off, then I lay another skeletal system. This is my second skeletal system. This one is not as heavy. I don't use as big of logs to create that first main structure. These are smaller, these are just to hold down that first layer of insulation so that I can add another layer. And I'll do about three layers like that. So I'll have skeletal system, leaves, and then another skeletal system, and leaves, and another skeletal system like that. And the reason I put the last skeletal system on there with the sticks is to hold in the wind all of that that I put on there, those leaves. So you want to be smart about how you go about it, and usually I can put together in that kind of a terrain a shelter of that, it's called a debris hut. And usually within about an hour, depending, I can have a very secure shelter created and usually waterproof. So it's kind of nice that way. Now, once you're in there, even if you don't have a sleeping bag, even if you don't have, you know, a blanket, you know, and you've just got the clothes on your back when you have all that insulation inside, and you get yourself in there, and there's not that much space to heat, and you're in your the cold is not coming in and the heat is not escaping, you begin to warm that shelter. It's very secure. Now, shelter creation, it's a very thoughtful process, and yeah, sometimes you've got to hurry, but you don't want to hurry too much because when you do a quick rush job, what happens often is you end up not securing, or you end up missing steps, or you do not make certain of things as you go along, and that will compromise your uh functionality of your shelter. We don't want to compromise anything, we're already compromised, so we want to be putting together this shelter with the same thought process that we learned back in number three, with mental clarity and focus. And that is to use your thoughts, your words, your feelings, and your actions all aligned to the same thing to get the result. The result is I want to keep myself safe and protected from the harsh elements. So, with that being the result, then your thoughts are I'm going to build a killer shelter. Your words are, I'm going to build a killer shelter. Your feelings are, wow, this is going to be a killer shelter. This feels good. And your actions follow suit to that. And so when your thoughts and your words and your feelings and actions are all deliberately aligned with a conscious effort to a result, you can't go wrong. You just can't. And here's the reason why is because you're already living the result of your thoughts, your words, your feelings, and actions on an unregulated basis. Most people don't know anything about using their thoughts, their words, their feelings, and their actions, let alone knowing what they can do on their own and what kind of a result that leaves someone living and experiencing. So if you imagine in real life now, what is your shelter? How are you creating your sacred space around you? How are you creating? Are you comfy? Are you making sure that you're setting up a good framework of boundaries around you? Are you doing the necessary steps? Are you aligning your every thought, your word, your feeling, and action towards one thing? Now you can have many one things simultaneously going on. I'm going to make a fire no matter what. I'm going to live no matter what. I'm going to be happy no matter what. I'm going to get through this no matter what. I'm going to be able to find solutions no matter what. So all this no matter what. Okay, that's that's the thing right there, because I don't want to let myself get away with anything that would cheat myself or allow me to go into a decay, you know, a place where all of a sudden I start to go backwards and I start to lose traction, and then I don't feel good, and then I don't want to put in as much effort, and then I become somewhat depressed, and then I get caught in a negative cycle, and then it seems like I'm gonna die, and then it seems hopeless. And those are not the stepping stones of success. Those are not the stepping stones of survival, those are not the stepping stones of anything but giving up. And I'm telling you what, people, you have a lot more about you than giving up. You don't ever want to give up, you don't ever want to cave in, you don't want to give in to temptation, you don't want to give in to peer pressure, you don't want to give in to anything except for subjecting your body to your mind, subjecting your mind to your spirit, subjecting that spirit to God, to that gracious, omnipotent, divine. You've got to trust that unseen force, see. There's nothing powerful about stating that you're atheist. There's nothing powerful about stating that you're agnostic or anything of that way. Because if you're out in a survival situation and you do not believe that Mother Earth provides, she won't, because you believe that, see? So you won't get about understanding that you're going to locate or be able to put together or be able to create this shelter. And that's the same thing in life. So without going too deep on all this, just remember that no matter what kind of shelter you're creating, whether you're putting a uh 30-gallon heavy-duty trash bag over you to stay protected, or whether you're in an overhang, or whether you're creating a debris hut, or whether you're building a log cabin or building your dream home, think about the process and think about how you're living each day and how you're teaching your children to do the same and how to protect those sacred boundaries of self. Have a great day. Shelter creation. Talk to you next week.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

There we have episode 35 to survival essentials. Shelter solutions. Always stay protected from the harsh elements. Section three, creation. To me, I love the lessons of creating the shelter I want. The shelter may be in the raw wilderness, or the shelter slash home I create in the modern wilderness. Or to me, the most important that Hawk mentioned is the one within yourself. Make it beautiful and sacred. If you enjoy this podcast, please remember to share this with your loved ones, family, and friends. Give us a rating and follow us so you don't miss any upcoming episodes. Thanks again for listening, and much love.