Remember This If You Want to be Warm ©

 

Photograph taken October 12, 2020 in the Allegheny Highlands, this rock shelter and reflector faces east and is within 100 feet (approximately 30 meters) of the summit of a 1,700 foot (518 meter) high hill.  From the Author’s collection.

 This article can be used by experimental archaeologists, re-enactors or historical trekkers of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, and by anyone who is interested in wilderness survival – Author’s note.

 

You are overnighting in a rock shelter, or you are “misplaced”, and you need a survival shelter and a fire, but how do you make sure you sleep warm?

 

An illustration from “But If You Do Get Lost”, Outdoors USA: 1967, by Kenneth M. Cole, page 91.

With any survival shelter or windbreak, or if you are an experimental archaeologist, a re-enactor or a historical trekker, with a lean-to or open-faced tent, you should always sit between your fire and the back wall of your shelter or windbreak, and you should always build a reflector, and here is why.

 

An excerpt from Handbook For Boys, by the Boy Scouts of America, June 1953, page 157

 

If you want to be warm, sit between your fire and the back of your shelter or windbreak, so that the heat from your fire, reflects off the back of the shelter, and warms up your backside as well as your front.  If you put the fire between you and the back of your shelter, your backside will be cold. 

 

An excerpt from Winter Camping, page 89-90, in which the author recommends building a reflector.  The author, Warwick S. Carpenter was born in 1881and died in 1966 and was 32 years old when Winter Camping, was originally published in 1913.

 

Since an open fire radiates heat in all directions, you can catch and reflect some of the heat that would otherwise be wasted and lost, by building a short wall or reflector, made of rocks or logs, on the opposite side of the fire from you and your windbreak or shelter.  Your reflector will absorb the heat of the fire and re-radiate it back towards you, much like a cast iron fireback does in a fireplace.  In the same way, the shelter’s ceiling and walls will also reflect the fires heat back at you. 

 

Additionally, the reflector will also help to channel the smoke upwards and away from you, much like a chimney. 

 

An excerpt from Winter Camping, by Warwick S. Carpenter, page 127.

Also, always remember to keep your fire small and sit or sleep close to it.  A big hot bonfire wastes wood and you can’t get close to it.

 

An excerpt from Arctic Survival Guide, by Alan Innes-Taylor, page 62.

Interestingly, most survival experts and authors during the 20^th century recommended building a reflector in front of your fire.  The one glaring example of a survival expert during this time, who was anti-reflector, was Alan Innes-Taylor, who was the author of Arctic Survival Guide, and his greatest complaint about fire reflectors was that they block half of the space around a fire, a space that Mr. Innes-Taylors thought could be better used, to sit, to cook, or to dry wet clothes in.

 

An excerpt from the Boy Scouts of America, Camping: Merit Badge Series, 1963, page 38.

 

Reflectors can be made of green logs, either piled or propped up, from a convenient boulder, from piled up stones or even from dirt and turf.  They can even be made by finding a conveniently placed boulder and setting up your shelter and fire in front of it.  But what they should not be made from is the trunk of a live tree!  If you do this and you are lucky, you will ONLY severely damage the tree, likely causing its death.  If you aren’t lucky, you might set the tree on fire, and if you are truly unlucky, you might even start a forest fire. 

 

An excerpt from Games and Recreational Methods, Boy Scout Edition, by Charles F. Smith, page 294.  Note how the fire lay is between the tent and the reflector and that “Adirondack” reflector is made of piled rocks and the “Nessmuck” reflector is made of cut green logs.

I hope you are never “misplaced”, and have to overnight in a survival shelter, but if you are, I hope that you remember these tips and stay safe and warm.

 

Photograph taken November 12, 2017 in the Allegheny Highlands, this rock shelter and reflector faces west to southwest and is within 300 feet (approximately 90 meters) of the summit of a 2,100 foot (640 meter) high hill.  From the Author’s collection.

Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Nocake, Pinole, Even Rockahominy...It’s Still Parched Corn To Me!  ©”, where we will talk about how to make parched corn, the original Native American and early Euro-American iron ration.

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at Bandanaman Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

 

Sources

 

Boy Scouts of America, Camping: Merit Badge Series, [Boy Scouts of America, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1963], page 38

 

Boy Scouts of America, Handbook For Boys, [Boy Scouts of America, New York, New York, June 1953], page 157 and 300

 

Smith, Charles F.; Games and Recreational Methods, Boy Scout Edition, [Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1925], page 294

 

United States Department of Agriculture, Outdoors USA: 1967 Yearbook of Agriculture, [United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1967], p 87-89