It’s handy information to know when you are suddenly caught in extreme winter weather.
The secret is multiple layers in your forest habitat, which block out the wind and snow, then insulating your whole body when sleeping.
by Richard L. Thornton, Architect and Planner
You can thank the Boy Scouts of America and the United States Navy for being here today, Twelve years ago, some very evil folks in Pickens County, Georgia set me up for what they thought would be a human sacrifice to amuse the blue collar families and show what happens to people, who are uppity enough to not cooperate with organized crime. They expected me to freeze to death or commit suicide . . . or at least try to steal food, so I could be arrested.
The main event was preceded by nine years of local and state cops calling up women I dated to scare them away. That included Susan Karlson, my long term relationship with a federal agent, who I first met in June 1991. She just suddenly disappeared in June 2006 . . . but I now know that she is alive and now looking after me from afar.
So, there was no girlfriend for me to at least temporarily move in with, after being evicted. This was truly a exercise by many people in power there, in satanic sadism. You can get the details in the video below.
The scheme didn’t go as planned. After the initial shock of being given three days notice to be illegally evicted from my home on Christmas Eve, all those lessons taught me by the Boy Scouts and the U.S. Navy for survival in the wild and fighting Neo-Nazis in the night, came back. Exactly three years later to the day from my eviction notice, I was a key cast member on the premier of “America Unearthed” – based on my discovery of the Track Rock Terrace Complex, while was homeless. It is now, supposedly, the most watched one hour documentary ever broadcast by the History Channel.
Actually, the most important lesson came ahead of time. I was taught by the Navy to keep all equipment, needed for survival, in waterproof containers, that could be loaded on a vehicle or helicopter on short notice. A Marine Colonel and a Navy Lieutenant, who both had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, taught me that lesson, before I went to Mexico on the fellowship. I had literally, “extra-curricular assignments” in Michoacan, Quintana Roo, Chiapas and the Guatemalan Highlands, which I could not talk about for the next 20 years.
At any rate, a friend emailed me the question above last night, while we were chatting about the imminent arrival of a Polar Vortex in the South. Here is how I did it. I don’t have photos of the winter campsites, because the battery in my camera went dead in the extreme cold. Now I have solar charged battery packs to prevent that happening again. Back then, Amazon didn’t deliver to tents in the Nantahala National Forest and it took me awhile to find an auto-based camera battery charger.
This is the same arrangement during mild weather on Wolf Creek in Union County, GA – June 2010. My square outdoor kitchen had windproof side panels. During the winter, the panels were attached. The door of my tent opened directly into the “National Forest kitchen.” A tarp provided a wind-proof, waterproof barrier over the tent and sealed off the opening to the kitchen.
Shelter
I had a spacious tent that was designed to be well ventilated. That’s not good in a blizzard or the long periods of cold rain that typically fall on the Southern Highlands during late fall and in the winter. So, I constructed an outer tent out of a large plastic tarpaulin over and around the conventional tent to block the wind, rain and snow. It did not touch the conventional tent in any location. So, high winds did not blow through the thin walls of the main tent and water vapor froze on the underside of the tarp, not above me in the main tent.
My three, big, fluffy, Scottish Herd Dogs provided stress-free companionship in the daytime and snuggled beside me on winter nights. Two slept on either side of me and the third slept at my feet.
Daytime comfort and sleeping survival
When the human body is awake and moving, heat is generated. If one is wearing multiple levels of winter clothing . . . including an insulated cap, plus windproof, waterproof outer garment, severe cold can be tolerated.
Night time is when it is particularly dangerous in extreme cold weather. You can actually freeze to death, while sleeping. I brought along an inflatable mattress to insulate from from the cold ground and a sleeping bag, which was supposed to keep one warm down to – 10 ° F. . It didn’t.
I went back to my rental storage bin and brought back six of my grandmother’s handmade patchwork quilts to pile on top of the sleeping bag. That helped a lot. However, when the temperatures dived down into the teens, like what we are expecting this week. I had trouble sleeping because my face and head were so cold.
After thinking through what I had been taught so long ago, before heading to an assignment in Lapland in northern Scandinavia, I returned to the rental storage bin. I returned to the campsite with a stack of couch and seat cushions. I built a mini-cave around and over my head with the cushions to hold in the heat radiating from my head and face. That did the trick.
I have to confess, though. On those mornings, when it was down in the teens or lower, it was awfully hard to wiggle out of the mini-cave and sleeping burrow. However, my three wonder-dogs would pester me to get up and let them out to answer the call of nature each morning. A family man has to take care of his chill’n!
And now you know.
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