JMB Spring Term Day 6

Date: April 25, 2009
Location: JMB, Masardis, Maine, USA

Summary:
I spent last night in the quad-pod. The experience was valuable and it taught me a lot about open shelter building. The primary lessons revolved around the distance between the shelter and the fire and the size/type of fire wood. The fire had to be managed every hour or two so little sleep was had. At 6am I moved to my normal shelter that had my sleeping bag in it. The rest of the day was an "off" day.

Accomplishments and Observations:
1) Slept in 1st quad-pod
2) Read "Craftsmen of Necessity"
3) Explored the importance of a good nights sleep

Initial Reflections:
My body was in need of a day off. My hands are in pretty rough shape and I was really tired from staying in the quad-pod. All things considered, the shelter kept me alive and let me get some legitimate sleep, a success.

Current Reflections:
My quad-pod experience was definitely of the "learning from your mistakes" variety. Three years later I have a much clearer memory of the things I did wrong than the things I did right. I think the actual shelter part of the set up was pretty good, though it wasn't tested against rain. I couldn't feel much air movement and I didn't feel like I was losing a lot of heat through my bed. The space between my bed and the fire was too large. I wasn't getting enough heat from the fire and that caused me to get cold around every hour or so (as soon as the fire died significantly). I also made the, very silly, mistake of putting a very large (still wet) log on the fire thinking that it would dry out over night and eventually burn up... this is not what happened. Instead the big log just sucked heat out of my fire all night long, it was "not great". Its amazing how many little lessons there are in a task like shelter building.