Man Down Option A: Build a Shelter
Welcome back! The first part of the adventure, you crashed a plane into the jungle and decided to build a shelter for the night.
Let’s see what happens.
Man Down Option A: Build a Shelter
With your inexperience making a fire, you don’t want to chance being caught in the dark without something to protect you. You start searching the immediate area for a good spot to get off the ground.
Not far from the wreck you find two large trees that might work. They have parallel branches bigger than your legs that, if you can find a few small logs to lay across them, will work as supports for a platform.
Your knife’s not big enough to chop down a tree so you start looking for already downed trees. The thick foliage snags on everything you find and you use up the remaining daylight hauling four logs over to the trees, hacking at vines along the way.
Photo courtesy of Arthur Rousseau with Hope for Haiti.
As if you’re not already winded, you find getting the logs up over the shoulder height branches an even more difficult task but finally, heaving air into your lungs, you have the logs lined up side by side. You lash them to the support trees using vines and then climb your way onto the small platform to see if it’s steady. It’s barely wide enough for your shoulders but it works.
Not thirty seconds after laying on the your back, the wind kicks up and starts to chill the sweat you built up while making the platform. This galvanizes you to keep moving before the gray of dusk totally disappears.
Now your knife comes in very handy. You chop as many branches off the trees near your platform as time allows. Then, exhausted, you create a tiny ‘cave’ by lashing them to a branch slightly higher than your platform to create an A-frame. It’s not great but, considering it’s completely black out, it’ll have to do.
You settle into your tiny shelter with a sigh and drink from your water bottle. The liquid hits your empty stomach, which reminds you dinner passed while you were working. Maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t notice until now. Your stomach rumbles, so you drink a little more and roll over to sleep.
***
The wind howling through the makeshift roof wakes you. Darkness obscures everything, even the branches only a few inches above you. A flash of light highlights the branches and then it all goes black again.
Moments later thunder rumbles like you’re inside a drum. You peek out just as another flash highlights the night. The string of light jumps across the sky like it’s chasing something. And then the rain comes.
You withdraw into your shelter and curl up tight. The rain’s relentless. It seeps through the shelter and denies you sleep for the rest of the night.
***
Morning drives the storm away. Stiff and cold, you crawl into a small patch of sun that sneaks through the trees. After maybe thirty minutes of warming and drying, you decide you’ve got to move, to do something. First step’s to thatch your shelter better to keep out wind and rain but then…
Do you…
Aa. attempt a fire?
Or
Ab. Look for food?
Blessings,
Jennifer
(Please post a comment with your vote. Voting will end on Monday at 8pm Pacific Time and then, Tuesday morning, we’ll see what happens next in the adventure!)
