My setup was as follows:
I have my tomahawk, belt knife, seax, possibles pouch, and modern amenities (cell phone, car key, wallet) pouch on my belt, my cloak (Just a wool blanket at the moment) in a horseshoe configuration and my haversack on my left shoulder, and my bedroll and waterskin on my right shoulder. I keep a braided sling on my right wrist. I'm wearing all linen except for wool socks and a light wool mantle. As would be a necessity in period, I kept what my character would have as wealth (outside of my armor and other weapons, which were outside the purpose of the exercise) on me, which included my torc and arm ring.
Here's the gear laid out as I was carrying it. Except the cloak. I didn't try out the horseshoe configuration until just after I took this picture. Top left to bottom right, it's:
Cloak with cloak pin
Waterskin
Bedroll-heavy wool blanket with extra clothes rolled inside around a rope, tied to snugly fit around my body and braided to distribute the weight better. The ties to hold the roll shut pass through the coils of my rope, and my frying pan hangs from the top tie and is pressed against the roll by the rope.
Belt knife and tomahawk
Haversack with food sack and journal
Belt with modern pouch and possibles pouch
Spear
This is everything laid out to be visible. I wish the picture was bigger, but here goes:
Ties for the bedroll
Extra pants
Two extra pairs of socks
Pair of light moccassins
Haversack
Tomahawk
Belt knife
Belt with modern pouch
Extra shirt (wool)
Empty possibles pouch with contents next to it
Coil of light cord
Small pouch with hard coin (fake)
Waxed linen thread with a variety of needles
Hunk of beeswax and sewing kit pouch
Candle
Fire kit--steel striker (I apparently lost my flint on a recent outing), bundle of twine for tinder, both in an altoids tin with a hole punched in the top so I can use it to make char cloth, which is kept in the smaller altoids tin below it.
Sharpening stone
Mirror
Cloak
50 feet of rope
Frying pan and wooden spoon
Journal with pouch of charcoal and knife for sharpening charcoal (going to forgo the extra knife in the future and just use belt knife. The charcoal is less messy to sharpen than I thought)
Food sack--Trail mix of nuts with dried apples on top, flat bread, summer sausage, venison jerky, hard cheese, and apples inside, all food (except apples) wrapped in cloth napkins
Waterskin
My seax isn't in any of these pictures because the decision to go to the village instead of a public park came the night before the trip, so I was still thinking through what I was going to take when I took the pictures. The seax has been at my side while I've slept since the day I got it, so I realized I couldn't leave it behind after I packed everything else.
So, there's my kit breakdown. I thought about taking my oilskin tarp shelter, but I had no way of carrying it myself, and no one else had room. It was way more interesting to make the shelter without the tarp anyway.
With me were my friends Urdok, Tycho, Gwaith, and Raucous (taking the picture)
The property where Gwaith works is pretty extensive, and it's right next to French Creek. Not the campground where we were initially going, but the actual creek. It was a short walk down to the creek, and then we walked along it, for about a journey of a whopping half hour total. Along the way, we did a little trail maintenance, but we weren't there just to hike, we were there to set up a camp. The idea behind the exercise was that our group was a border patrol for Barenheim, our Dagorhir realm. This was one of many camps, each spaced a day's journey apart, that we could use when we make our regular patrols. Since it would not be in use most of the time, it doesn't need to be a strong, permanent structure, but it does need to be sturdy and ready for use any time. So, with that in mind, we started the shelter.
First we found two trees that were a bit further apart than two of us laying head to toe, and we drew a rectangle with two corners against them, wide enough to fit two of us laying side by side, so four of us would be able to stay in it (Urdok knew beforehand that he would need to head home before dark, so we only needed to build the shelter for four of us.
We'd stopped at Gwaith's garden on the way to the creek and picked up some hand tools--two shovels, a hoe, and a small pickaxe. Boy, did we wish we'd grabbed the full size pickaxe, cause there were roots and rock galore. We allowed ourselves the hand tools under the idea that this was the first time we'd be setting out to these camps, so we knew we would need to do some serious work. All of us had our tomahawks, so we would have been able to make a decent shelter with just them, but to make a more permanent shelter we needed the hand tools.
We had all day, so we took frequent breaks for food and water. Since we knew we had the creek and Gwaith packed a big pot, we didn't pack a ton of water, and we built a fire early on (I tried my flint and steel for the first time, but we've had a lot of rain recently, so I couldn't manage. We ended up having to use a modern fire starter everything was so damp) so we could boil the creek water. Gwaith picked a bunch of herbs from his garden and he made the creek water into tea with them.
As we dug, we piled all of the dirt we got up around three edges of the rectangle. The digging was part for leveling the ground, part for insulation year round, and the pile around the outside of the shelter would help with that as well as rain (which we thankfully didn't get).
It started really shaping up as we got lower down. All of the rocks we dug up we saved for a fire reflector, and there was a nice pile of flat rocks in what looked to be a dry secondary channel for the creek from when there's been flooding.
We rotated digging duty and pole searching duty. Once the foundation was deep enough, Urdok used a rock to hammer a sharpened, forked pole into the entrance edge. The entrance was going to be long, and we thought it would be safer to have some extra support in the middle.
Once I lashed the horizontal support to the two trees and the center pole, we started lashing the angled roof supports to it.
We found a fallen tree nearby and managed to pry some bark off of it which made the foundation for the protection on the roof.
We needed leafy branches to make up the bulk of the roof, and we saw this freshly fallen tree just around the bend in the path. Tycho thought the tree was a perfect lookout post, and we plan on turning it into an even better one the next time we head out there.
The tree didn't have as much foliage as we wanted, but Gwaith identified an invasive species--Autumn Olive trees--that needed to be cut back, so we had an ample supply of leafy branches. Once we got them back to camp, the shelter really came together. Once we put the dual fire reflectors at the entrance, we had our home away from home! It could use some more leaves for the top, but we knew it wouldn't rain that night, and that we would have to add more the next time we were there anyway, so we left it with just a decent blanket of leaves.
After dinner and some hanging out around the campfire, we grabbed some coals from the main fire (in an established ring just off the trail) and put them in the reflectors so we could turn in for the night. Tycho says he stayed plenty warm enough during the night, but Gwaith and Raucous both said they were too cold. I was somewhere in between. I slept with my lighter blanket doubled up underneath me and my heavier one on top of me, with my hood pulled low over my face. I wasn't exactly warm, but I was comfortable enough to sleep for a few hours at a time. That's saying a lot, because the biggest rock in the shelter was underneath my spot. If I laid on my side, with my back against the back of the shelter, curled around the rock, I was relatively comfortable, but you can only lay in one position on the ground for so long. Shortly after the sun came up, though, the temperature plummeted which, coupled with the light, meant I couldn't sleep anymore.
After breakfast, we lashed Tycho's camera to a tree and put the timer on so we could take this picture and we headed out.
This was a very fun and informative experience. Personally, I was very happy with my gear. It was comfortable to hike in, and I didn't feel like I was lacking anything. As a group, everyone had fun, and we're all really proud of the shelter, which we're looking forward to getting back to and improving on. The shelter is pretty sturdy and relatively comfortable. It isn't exactly hidden, but it isn't supposed to be. This was all possible because we got to do it on private property. We could practice conservation rather than leave no trace, and we could leave the shelter standing. People besides us can even use the shelter when we're not there. I may not have gotten much sleep, but I, for one, can't wait to get back out on the trail!
