Telegraph Your Intentions

signalmirror
Originally uploaded by cecil_x_nixxon.

Probably the most effective visual signal for wilderness-goers in distress is the heliograph, or mirror. On a sunny day a makeup sized pocket mirror can be seen for well over ten miles.

The concept is simple: Flash a beam of sunlight on the horizon, an airplane or other vehicle. The signature is unmistakeable and will be recognized as a distress signal. Even better so if you use S-O-S, or the universal distress signal, "three of anything."

Putting that beam of light exactly where you want it is another matter. You can always go out and buy yourself a $10 signal mirror containing a nifty sighting mechanism, but you might not have it with you.

So, here's what you do. Hold one arm fully outstretched, and make a "vee" with your fingers like a peace sign. Put the target you want to flash right in the middle of that vee. Then, using the mirror, line up the beam of sunlight so you can see it on your fingers. You've just aimed the beam where you meant to. The picture shows you how it's done.

Don't use this technique as a prank. You may have to incur a huge rescue cost or even be thrown in jail. If you need it, use it. Otherwise, don't.

Perhaps you'd like to try your hand at the genuine old-school Morse code? The translation follows.

MORSE CODE

A: • -

B: - •••

C: - • - •

D: - ••

E: •

F: •• - •

G: - - •

H: ••••

I: ••

J: • - - -

K: - • -

L: • - ••

M: - -

N: - •

O: - - -

P: • - - •

Q:- - • -

R: • - •

S: •••

T: -

U: •• -

V: ••• -

W: • - -

X: - •• -

Y: - • - -

Z: - - ••

1: • - - - -

2: •• - - -

3: ••• - -

4: •••• -

5: •••••

6: - ••••

7: - - •••

8: - - - ••

9: - - - - •

0: - - - - -

The STP Family

I remember the STP Family well! And it truly seems like only yesterday.

In the summer of 1970 in Boulder, Colorado this pack of ebullient, edgy, in-your-face hippies perfected the art of living on the outskirts of society. They were a hard-doping, hard-drinking, dumpster-diving, wheeling-and-dealing street theatre circus unto themselves. Talk about living close to the ground: The STP family brought the ground up to meet us.

Foolish to some, courageous to many, The STP Family lives in counterculture infamy. I was proud to have met many of them, particularly Deputy Dawg, RIP.

But don't take my word for it. Do your own research. The STP Family lives!

Humanity: A Source of Light

Sigh. It's always a disappointment returning to civilization after a few days in the deep woods. But there are chores to do, home repairs to make, cars to fix, clothes to wash.

Fresh from the forest with a serene afterglow, I said farewell to my afternoon slack and headed for the hardware store to buy kitchen cabinet parts. As I stood in line behind a rather large, sullen female customer I couldn't help but overhear the transaction, made even more obvious by the customer's boisterous and blunt delivery:

[CLERK] "...and what else?"

[CUSTOMER] "I also have a door back in lumber."

[CLERK] "I'll have to get someone back there to help you bring it up to the counter."

[CUSTOMER] "YOU bring it up here. If you can't make it easy and
convenient for me, then YOU DON'T DESERVE MY MONEY...."

Now, I'm for legendary customer service as much as the next person, but I'm certainly not for asking the solitary service person to inconvenience a line of waiting people for the sake of one fat lazy toad. Yep. At first glance this was an old, slovenly battle-ax; legs like stumps, skin tone like dirty leather, two hundred pounds overweight, puffy pre-diabetic slob with an attitude. I thought, "God, that's not going to happen to me when I get THAT old." Then I took another look. She was probably ten years younger than me.

The clerk profusely apologized while the customer continued to piss and moan under her breath about the kind of service she deserved. She didn't buy the door. I completed my transaction after she left and made it to my car at the end of the parking lot before she waddled her fat ass half-way across the lot to her aging BMW sedan.

It's not an age thing, even if I sound a bit age discriminatory. I know women in their 50's and 60's who are radiant. Their skin tone may be fading, their hair greying, their bodies not as lithe and supple as a younger gal. But the spark of humanity and the glow of concern for those around them make them sexy and beautiful beyond description. But I digress.

In a solo survival situation there would be no one to gather her materials for her, no one to build her a fire, no one to feed her. Actually she's got the advantage on me with the food situation as she could probably winter over on her stored fat without leaving her shelter. But she would shit herself to death after drinking unpurified water before I resorted to eating acorns.

Solo survival is a tough path. As a species we have learned to work together in groups to optimize our survival. We all bring special skills. But it takes a selfless attitude, not a "me first" approach. Some time in her life this endomorphic bag of flatulence was probably a sweet young girl looking at the world with hope and anticipation. But something derailed that path, probably relatives and role models with the same sour-mouthed selfish attitude. Poor little girl. I imagine it would take months at the Esalen Institute, dozens of 500 microgram hits of L.S.D. and a few years of community service projects before that little girl could awaken. But of course, this will never happen.

Mrs. Battle-ax would still be a source of light to our survival community. After the tribe banished her to freeze in the snow, her body could be retrieved and the fat rendered. Oil to light our shelter.

Humanity: Even the worst of us are potentially a source of light.

Squirrels Do It, Why Can't We?

Drey: a 12 inch domed ball of twigs and leaves, built on a twig platform in the fork of a tree branch. The dome is packed with leaves, moss, and bark and limed with feathers, thistledown, or dried grasses. A drey is a squirrel's nest.

I spent the evening in a drey. Well, sort of a drey. Actually a debris hut. But the materials were similar: leaves, grasses, twigs, sticks. Except my hut was built on the ground and not in a tree. I hear a lot of talk about getting "close to the earth" these days, but this was the closest I've been in a long time.

Alone, in the Missouri climax forest, I built my overnight shelter with only downed tree and leaf materials. Unlike a squirrel warren high in the trees, I soon found I was no longer alone. My habitat "woke up" the community under/above/around me. A combination of two feet of leaf insulation and my body heat changed the November woods into a summer oasis.

As I snuggled into my nest I could hear the faint clicks of boring beetles gnawing away in some of the old limbs, and feel the occasional bit of sawdust in the face as they spewed out their bore material overhead. Every hour or so I heard and felt small bodies crawling underneath my leaf bed. Mice. Voles. The spiders showed up to the party as well. Hundreds of pea-sized delicate tan spiders graced me with their spindly-legged soft abdomen presence.

Then the real gang showed up. They're the reason squirrels build their dreys high in the trees. There must have been twenty or more coyotes from the sound of their cries. I had intruded on their grounds. Coyotes are pretty curious even though they rarely get too close. Here was a smelly human in a big den, on the ground, at an unlikely location in their forest. Solitary, smelly, quiet, suspicious. At first they were three groups of coyotes about a half mile away. Then they moved in as far as their caution would allow. At about a hundred yards, the packs converged and started to sing. I understood their song. They were singing:

"You got mice in there,
And beetles in your hair,
Spiders in your underwear,
You aren't supposed to be there."

I was not about to call back and drive them away. This was just too interesting. After the calls subsided it took about an hour before they sent a scout to check me out. He made one pass around the den, rather quickly, about ten feet away. He stopped and sniffed at my breath coming out of the door-hole, turned and trotted back to the gang. Then, sounds of quiet little growls and whines, patter of paws, and away they went. Too smelly. Too scary. The mice in there are just not worth the risk, I'm sure I heard one of them say.

By dawn, my warren had dried out from body heat. What started the evening before as a musty, earthy pile of 35 degree rotten debris became a sweet-smelling, crisp and cozy room-temperature home. I'm certain if I could live in that shelter for a week the smell would grow even more complex. But then, my coyote buddies would never come back for a visit.

Next time: Survivalist romantic getaway - a drey built for two! Yep, just like they do on the Discovery Channel.