The Number One Skill of a Good Woodsman

by Todd Walker

Every item in your kit should ultimately help you develop this top skill.

“The quality of a survival kit is determined by how much it can help you when you need to sleep.  If you can sleep well at night, you have it made.” ~ Mors Kochanski

I’ve shared coffee over campfires with some tough guys in the past. It’s easy to spot who is experienced in the art of smoothing it in the woods by a simple question uttered after that first sip of joe…

“How’d ya sleep?“

Ah yes, the moment of truth. On the second morning it becomes very apparent who’s sleeping well and who’s ready to pack up and head home to their pillow-top mattress and warm flannel sheets.

We all have our bad nights sleeping in the woods. But an experienced woodsman has developed hacks to obtain what novice campers only dream of… restorative sleep.

Owls screech, coyotes howl, and curious critters come to visit. What did we expect? We’re sleeping on makeshift beds in their “living room.”

The larger woodland animals are often deemed sleep saboteurs. Proper camp hygiene will keep most of the big guys away. Not giving attention to little details invites malicious mischief all night.

Sleep Saboteur #1: Mosquitos

There’s nothing more annoying than the distinctive, tormenting buzz around your face in the dark. Left un-swatted, one tiny mosquito in a shelter will ruin any chance of sleep.

Get the picture…

You lay motionless, radar on, to detect its airborne location before the nighttime bombing raid commences. The constant hum gets closer and stops when the bloodsucker lands. You swat – and miss – and swear. The dive bombing continues till dawn. Itchy welts on your forehead, the only exposed human tissue in your shelter, resemble a measles outbreak by morning.

Here are few modern and primitive ways to get a good night’s rest in bug season.

Bug Netting

Defensive maneuvers can be deployed to defend your skin. Modern mosquito netting adds little weight to your pack and provides protection from even smaller no-see-ums (biting midges).

ENO Guardian Bug Net

Dirt Road Girl bought me a ENO Guardian Bug Net to use on our trip to Eagle Rock Loop this summer. I only used it the first night. The net stopped the bugs. But it also stopped some of the breeze. I hate sleeping hot.

Bug Dope

The industry standard to keep bugs off is DEET. The problem I have with this chemical is ~ if will melt plastic, I don’t want it on my skin. I opt for natural bug-off protectants.

BugShot even works on ticks

One all-natural repellent I’ve been using this summer is called All Natural BugShot. I love this stuff! Here’s a quick video of my thoughts on BugShot…

The plant world provides a natural defense against biting insects. Here are a few that I’ve used and found effective in my area. Simply crush the leaves to release the oils and smear the material on your skin and clothing.

• Wax Mertle (Myrica cerifera) – abundant on our middle Georgia family land and used often
• American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) 
• Paw Paw (Asimini triloba) 
• Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) – found along open fields and hedgerows before you hit the deep woods

American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)

Smudge Fire

Even if you can’t find these natural bug repelling plants, you have woody plants in various stages of decay no matter where you are. Look for a dead limb or stump containing punk wood; decaying wood that is spongy but not rotted to the point of crumbling to dust.

You knew I’d highlight the importance of fire craft in wilderness self-reliance, right?

Once you have fire, light a chunk of punk wood and let it begin to smolder. If you have a metal container, add a layer of burning coals to the bottom of the container. Then add the punk wood on top. Now you have a smudge pot that can be moved to take advantage of wind direction in your shelter area.

A few holes in the bottom of the container will add just enough oxygen to keep the smudge smoldering for hours. However, you don’t want to ruin a perfectly good metal container with holes. Use an old tin can or other container using your possum mentality.

A shallow hole in the ground with smoldering material will serve the same purpose – only it’s not mobile. Animal dung, composted plant material, pine needles, and other weeds on top of coals will create long-lasting smoke. Let’s not forget about the usefulness of smoke to rid natural bedding material of my arch enemies in Georgia… chiggers and ticks!

Sleep Saboteur #2: Bedding

Staring at my mid 50’s, the need to impress others has departed like the hair on my head. I’ll take smoothing it over roughing it any night in the woods!

Personal preference dictates whether you hang in a hammock, sleep on the ground, use a sleeping bag, or a wool blanket. I’ve used all of the above. Given the option of ground or hammock, I choose to hang around camp!

Tarps and hammocks on Eagle Rock Loop

Go Light

Weight isn’t an issue when car camping or RV’ing. Even canoe camping will trim your load considerably. Bushwhacking on foot takes a bit more thought on your sleeping arrangements. Long before today’s modern camping gear and gadgets, our ancestral woodsmen slept in the wilderness comfortably.

The temptation is to buy this or that indispensable camp kit has been too strong and we have gone to the woods handicapped with a load fit for a pack mule. This is not how to do it. Go light, and the lighter the better so that you have the simplest of material for health comfort and enjoyment.  ~ Nessmuk

When your body comes in contact with cold or wet ground, heat transfers (conducts) away from your 98.6ºF body. Sleeping cool is one thing, sleeping cold can kill.

I use a cheap closed-cell foam sleeping pad in both my hammock and on the ground when temperatures drop. This insulates my backside from the effects of convection in the hammock and conduction when sleeping on the ground.

Other primitive insulators are available in the forest if you ever find yourself in a situation without modern gear. A six-inch layer of compacted leaves, pine bows, or other fluffy stuff can serve as a barrier between you and the cold ground.

“It is one of the blessings of wilderness life that it shows us how few things we need in order to be perfectly happy.”  ~ Horace Kephart

Sleep Saboteur #3: Heat Loss

I sleep best in cold weather. To do this, I take steps to control heat loss.

Here are key terms to know for core temperature control:

• Conduction – The transfer of heat when ‘hot’ molecules collide with neighboring cold molecules. Heat travels from hot to cold via touching.
• Convection – Air or water moving over skin removes heat from your body.
• Radiation – The process where energy (body heat) is transferred in space from our body and absorbed by a colder environment. Heat, light, and sound travel by waves, particles, or rays.
• Insulator – Materials that are poor conductors of heat. Air, cloth, and wood are poor conductors but make great insulators.
• Heat transfer – Thermal energy (heat) can be transferred via conduction, convection, and radiation.

To sleep cozy in the woods, pay particular attention to the following…

Shelter  

Your most important layer of shelter is the clothes you wear. Without feather or fur, humans wear clothing to trap a warm pocket of insulating air being radiated from the body. Our head and neck are responsible for radiating about 75% of our body heat into the environment. That’s why wearing a hat keeps your feet warm.

Outside the clothes you’re wearing, another layer of shelter can be made from tarp, tent, or natural material. It’s worth noting here that attention to the 4 W’s of campsite selection (Wind, Water, Wood, and Widow Makers) increases your chances of peaceful sleep. I’m fond of tarps due to their flexibility in configurations. Other advantages of tarps include:

• Lighter than tents
• Quick to set up if caught in a rain storm
• Can be set up to passively collect said rain water
• Perfect companion for hammocks
• Cheaper to buy than tents
• Easy to configure to block wind, rain, or snow – or open up to take advantage of wind in hotter climates
• You can make your own
• A radiant fire out front adds warmth and offers wilderness TV entertainment as you nod off to sleep

A few modern shelter/cover options in my sleep system are…

• USGI Poncho – this versatile piece of kit can provide cover on the move and shelter when sleeping
• DiY Oilskin Bed Sheet Tarp – waterproof, fire-resistant (unlike silnylon), and durable – no worries about burning a small fire under this tarp – plus you made it with your own hands!

Flying the bed sheet tarp in the backyard

• ENO ProFly – lightweight (1.4 pounds), compact, and easy to set up
• SOL Emergency Space Blanket a 5 x 7 space blanket used in the Kochanski Super Shelter design for extreme cold and little gear
• Trash Bags – two contractor grade trash bags stay in my kit and could be used for emergency shelter or stuffed with fluffy debris for bedding
• US Military Modular Sleep System (MSS) – this system consist of two sleeping bags, GoreTex bivy bag, and compression stuff sack – I only take the components I think I’ll need, never the whole system

Other Sleep Aids

The first thing I do when making camp is to build a fire. I’ve made it a habit to wash my body before going to sleep. After bathing I stand by the campfire to dry off. This one act helps me sleep the sleep of babies. A little nightcap never hurt either.

A poncho liner (A.K.A. – woobie) has saved me a time or two in what I expected to be warm camping weather which turned cool unexpectedly. My nephew, a veteran of the Afghanistan war, always carried a woobie. Leaving this piece of gear behind, he was told, would ensure that you “woobie” cold.

Dedicated wool socks for sleeping accompany me on overnight trips. These clean socks are only worn in bed.

“One of the hallmarks of the veteran woodsman is the way he contrives to make himself comfortable in camp”. ~ Warren H. Miller

Experience in the finer aspects of woods lore can only be learned by Doing the Stuff in the wildness. Fall temperatures haven’t arrived in Georgia yet, but I know they’re coming. I for one can’t wait to get out and sleep in the woods!

What’s your best tips for sleeping soundly in the woods?

Keep Doing the Stuff of Self-Reliance,

Todd

P.S. – You can also keep up with the Stuff we’re Doing on Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook… and over at the Doing the Stuff Network.

P.P.S – If you find value in our blog, Dirt Road Girl and I would appreciate your vote on Top Prepper Sites! You can vote daily by clicking here or on the image below. Check out all the other value-adding sites while you’re there… 

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The Prepper’s Exhaustive Guide to Sleep Saboteurs

by Todd Walker

Catching enough zzzz’s can be difficult. A hungry infant, tomorrow’s big presentation at work, blogging, paying bills, TV, a novel you can’t put down, catching up with visiting relatives, or little Johnny’s science project – good or bad – all serve as sleep saboteurs.

Image source: Mommasgonecity.com

These all happen in ‘normal’ times and leave us feeling half-baked! I still remember being a sleepless zombie for a year after our first daughter was born. Will she ever sleep through the night!?!?

Now imagine the nightmarish effect a wide-scale disaster scenario will have on our physiological need for quality sleep. Being sleepless in Seattle or anywhere else for an extended period of time will only increase your chances of not making it out alive.

Not getting enough sleep makes us sloppy. We can cope with some sloppiness when times are good. Our modern medical systems are in place to cover our mistakes.

However, you need to be functioning on all cylinders in the crunch. No matter how much stuff, skills, and knowledge you’ve acquired, fatigue makes cowards of us all.

Have you thought about how you plan to get enough sleep WTSHTF?

Your natural circadian rhythm can be ignored, but not for long – and not without consequences. When all hell is breaking loose around you and your family, your body and mind need sleep to survive. Not the one-eye-wide-open variety. But the deep, dead-to-the-world type that restores the body, mind, and soul.

When the crunch arrives, sleep as we know it will change – suddenly.

The Sandman cometh

Off the top of my well-rested head, here’s the science on how insufficient sleep will sabotage your health and survival:

• Accelerates aging and may increase age-related pathologies like cancer. Have you ever heard this line before. I used to say it myself. “I can sleep when I’m dead.” Insufficient sleep will oblige and speed up your journey.
• Associated with chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and depression.
• Heading over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house for Thanksgiving? Just realize that 1 in 10 of your fellow travelers have fallen asleep at the wheel in the past year. Drowsy driving is responsible for 16.5 percent of deadly crashes.
• You want to consolidate and use all those new survival skills you’ve been learning, right? A group of researchers in Switzerland found that sufficient sleep was the key to good memory and increases our ability to perform new skills.
• Group cohesion is likely to come unglued if your tribe doesn’t have enough people to pull graveyard guard shifts for those who are sleeping. The stressors in survival situations take a toll on our bodies, minds, emotions, and overall health. Add sleep deprivation to the mix and the attitude of your group will likely take on a more negative tint.
• Poor sleep disrupts metabolic function. That’s right, sleepless nights are linked to obesity and diabetes. This study shows data supporting the role of sleep in the regulation of glucose homeostasis and the hormones involved in the regulation of appetite. For preppers wanting to lose weight and build lean muscle mass, get quality sleep before the reset.
• Reaction time slows. Instead of responding alertly to a threat, sleep deprived individuals are slower to react than those who are well rested. This could be costly when seconds count.

The main occupational hazard of survivalists is dying. When our sleep equilibrium is out of whack, nature finds a way to balance the equation. Our body stops functioning at peak capacity in an effort to restore and rebuild. That’s not something you can afford in the coming collapse. You need to be strong to be useful.

Sleepless nights will abound in an extended SHTF scenario. Food, water, shelter, security, and personal hygiene are top priorities in the preparedness community. If you’ve got these basics taken care of, congrats! However, you’ll be reeling in regret if you neglect sleep hygiene.

Sleep hygiene simply means getting proper amounts of quality sleep.

In case it hasn’t dawned on you yet, a scheduled sleep plan is one of the most important, yet most neglected, parts of long-term survival with the added bonus of chronic good health!

To turn your dream of quality pillow time into reality, here’s my Sherpa tips for creating a Survival Sleep Hygiene Plan.

Tips for a Survival Sleep Hygiene Plan

A.) Listen to your biological clock

It becomes more important to follow our natural sleep cycle as we age. Over the last four years my sleep patterns have changed. It may have something to do with following a Primal/Paleo lifestyle. I get sleepy and go to bed around 8 to 9 PM and get up between 4 to 5 AM – without an alarm clock. I stare in silence at my lunch table buddies when the conversation turns to who won American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. They know not to include me since I’m in dreamland at that hour. I’m sure I didn’t miss any significant stuff.

B.) Schedule your sleep

As much as possible, stick to a regular bedtime and wakeup schedule. If you have children, you already know the importance a sleep schedule.

If you can’t sleep with the thought of missing your favorite TV show, record it and watch it later. Better yet, unplug it during the work week. Your body will thank you the morning after! In a crisis, mindless entertainment won’t be on your immediate list of priorities anyway.

C.) Find your balance

The average person needs 7-9 hours of shut-eye each night. Too little or too much sleep adds oxidative stress.

D.) Light discipline

This one may be easy to come by if our fragile power grid goes bye-bye. Until the lights go out, sleep is best had in total darkness. Even the glow of LED lights on an alarm clock can interrupt sleep. Cover your alarm clock or just ditch it. Your rooster will let you know when it’s morning time.

Outdoor security lights can be blocked with blackout window shades – useful to keep light inside your house when the need arises.

E.) Avoid the blue glow after dark

Bright light is linked to a decrease in melatonin, the hormone that helps control your natural sleep-wake cycle. Filling your eyes with bright lights before bedtime will have you counting too many sheep.

A word of caution: Melatonin supplements are sold as a natural, safe sleep aid. It’s a hormone – not a vitamin – and can cause damage if miss used!

Blue light emitted from your computer and TV mimics sunlight. Consider installing Flux to make your screen match the light in your room.

For night-time TV viewing, try wearing a pair of orange tinted safety goggles to filter out the blue light. Since I don’t watch much TV, I haven’t tried this geeky trick.

F.) Get more natural blue light

Our primitive ancestors spent lots of time outdoors in the sunlight. Natural light can help regulate your circadian rhythm. Escape your artificially lit cubical and step into the sunlight on work breaks for a natural shot blue light and fresh air.

G.) Room temperature

Dirt Road Girl and I sleep best when it’s cold in the bedroom. We open a window for cold air flow in the winter. Of course, make sure you have security measures in place for open windows.

My best sleep happens at our off-grid cabin in cold weather. No lights and cold sheets. Snuggling under wool blankets is a valid heat source! In the spring/summer/fall, I like to take a deep dive into the spring-fed portion of the lake to cool down before jumping in bed.

H.) Physical exertion before bed

Regular exercise is great for optimal health. But working out just before hitting the sack without giving your body time to cool down can hamstring quality sleep. A few minutes of light stretching before bed should be okay.

I.) No big meals before bedtime

J.) Burn a candle

Lighting candles not only adds a romantic mood while eating Meals Ready to Eat in your survival lair, fire light doesn’t emit artificial blue light. Plus, you might get lucky with this added sleep aid.

K.) Read a book before bed

Nothing new here.

L.) De-gadget your bedroom

Get rid of TV’s, phones, electronic devices, and any other potential sleep saboteurs in the bedroom. That includes pets.

M.) Take a short nap

A 20 to 30 minute power nap has been shown to increase productivity. Maybe your boss will catch on.

N.) Does your city ever sleep?

Mr. Rawles of SurvivalBlog.com may be right about the American Redoubt.

Map of Sleep Insufficiency:

The map below depicts age-adjusted* percentage of adults who reported 30 days of insufficient rest or sleep† during the preceding 30 days. Data is from the 2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, United States.‡

* Age adjusted to 2000 projected U.S. population.
† Determined by response to the question, “During the past 30 days, for about how many days have you felt you did not get enough rest or sleep?”
‡ Includes the 50 states, District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands.

Map Source

Sleep has been viewed as a passive event and a waste of time by some. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sleep is vital to your survival! Find a way to let melatonin do its night-time job of restoring and repairing your body tissue and cells. 

Are you sick and tired of being exhausted? Get ahead of the herd by starting your Survival Sleep Hygiene Plan before the next crisis erupts.

Stop yawning and let us know your thoughts in the comments. Life is short – sleep hard!

Keep Doing the Stuff!

Todd

P.S. – You can also keep up with the Stuff we’re Doing on Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, and our Facebook page… and over at the Doing the Stuff Network on Pinterest, Google +, and Facebook.

P.P.S – If you find value in our blog, Dirt Road Girl and I would appreciate your vote on Top Prepper Sites! You can vote daily by clicking here or on the image below. Check out all the other value-adding sites while you’re there…

Thanks for Sharing the Stuff!

Copyright: Content on this site (unless the work of a third-party) may be shared freely in digital form, in part or whole, for non-commercial use with a link back to this site crediting the author. All links in articles must remain intact as originally posted in order to be republished. If you are interested a third-party article, please contact the author directly for republishing information.