Fire or Shelter?

Well, it happened.  You planned for this trip for two years and have been dreaming about it for many more.  You carefully put your gear together, purchased plane tickets, made reservations with the canoe rental and set out on a life time trip to make memories and take pictures, paddling and fishing along the Great Lake with your best friend for an entire week!  What you didn’t plan on was the gigantic storm, that the weather service didn’t predict, that swamped your canoe and dumped you and your buddy into the lake!

Fortunately, both of you are excellent swimmers and you were wisely wearing your PFD’s (Personal Flotation Device, life vest).  You also had your main knife strapped securely on your person and a waterproof match case in your pocket.  You both made it safely to shore and are now huddled next to the trunk of a great oak, soaked to the bone and shivering from the beginning stages of hypothermia.  The temperature this far north has dropped into the fifties and you know that if you don’t get warm and dry as soon as possible, you’re going to be in much worse trouble than you are right now.  Your canoe has been blown out farther into the lake, and even though all your gear was in dry bags and fastened to the canoe, the storm is going to make it impossible to recover your supplies.  You left your family a map of your course and have been checking in every day using a rented satellite phone, so you know that as soon as they don’t hear from you by midnight of the second day, that they will send out Search and Rescue.

But, your immediate problem is what to do first?  Do you build a shelter or try to get a fire started?  As the wind and rain continues to blow, you realize that getting a fire started is going to be difficult if not impossible and that according to the rule of three’s, you have about three hours before you die from exposure.  It’s only been about an hour and a half and already it’s getting hard to touch your thumb to your little finger.  So, you decide to build shelter.

Going a little farther from the shore, you find that the wind is moderated slightly by the trees, and then you find a downed pine, broken over but still attached to it’s stump. Using your knife, you chop the boughs off from the underside of the tree.  You and your partner gather additional boughs and limbs and lean them against the trunk of the pine forming a crude A-frame.  Then, you begin to heap as much forest litter and debris as you can find on top of the shelter.  It’s while you are doing this that your partner suddenly gives a whoop of joy and reaches into a pocket of his PFD!  He had stashed a tightly folded 3 mil. contractor grade garbage bag in there and just remembered it!  You smile as you use your knife to cut both sides of the bag and them place it lengthwise  over the top of your shelter.  Having this little bit of plastic is going to go a long way to making it waterproof and is going to save you a lot of time gathering debris.  While the wind continues to blow, you quickly lay long sticks against each side of your shelter to hold the plastic bag down, being careful to trim off any sharp areas that might puncture the bag.  Within another hour, your shelter is completed and you gather several armloads of pine branches and make a pallet of them inside the shelter to keep you up off the cold, wet ground.  Then, you and your best friend get in and  huddle together, sharing body heat, while the storm rages on outside.  You are still cold and wet, but your shivering is beginning to subside and you know that as soon as it quits raining you are going to get a blazing fire started.  Now, it’s time to enjoy the shelter and begin to make plans on how you are going to spend the next 48 to 72 hours until you are rescued.

Hopefully, this scenario never happens to you!  But, if it does, if you have some survival training and have some minimal supplies attached to your body, you can make do in the worst of conditions.  If the above situation happened and it had quit raining by the time  you made it to shore, or you were on a river and lost your kayak or canoe, then you should get the fire started first instead of building a shelter.  The lesson here is, let the situation dictate what your survival priorities should be.  Always take a few moments to STOP (Stop, Think, Observe, Plan) as soon as you realize that you’re in a survival situation and have gotten yourself out of immediate danger.  The best thing about mentally running through these scenarios and reading about them, is that it helps you to make up your mind more quickly if you do find yourself in a similar situation.

As a Christian, when something bad happens, we often panic instead of taking time to pray and plan.  God is always available, but for some reason, we first try to work things out on our own.  Spiritually, we just need to STOPP (Stop, Think, Observe, Pray and Plan).  We need the Lord’s help immediately, not after we try everything else.  How about you?  Are you facing a challenge today?  Why don’t you take some time to get quiet before Him and let His Power change either you or the situation?  The King of Heaven is waiting even now, at the Throne of Grace, to hear and answer your cry for help!

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PS.  Friend us at our Facebook Page – WayPoint Survival.  You can also check out my other websites where you can set up training for many of these skills at www.waypointsurvival.com and look at and order my custom knives at www.benderknifeworks.com.

James B