Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

30 CAMPING AND WOODCRAFTlong sticks, as big as you can handle, and plenty ofthem. Perhaps there are some old pine stumps thatyou can uproot. Don't fool with soggy, decayedstuff. Probably the top of your fallen tree willfurnish a lot of broken limbs that sprangle enoughto have been kept mostly off the ground and haveseasoned hard.When you have plenty of night-wood piled up,take a pair of sticks and rake the embers of yourbrush fireforward to a place five or six feet In frontof your bed. Build there your night fire. Trampdown all embers left by the first fire, and carefullyextinguish any smoking spots on the tree. If thelog does not quite meet the ground, chink the openingswith dirt.If there are evergreen bushes at hand, they makethe best bedding (balsam, hemlock, spruce, in thatorder—even pine or cedar will do In a pinch). Youwon't have time to make a real browse bed (describedIn Chapter XIII of this book), but rememberthat the smaller the sticks under you, the betteryou will rest. If there are no evergreens, then usemoss, ferns, grass, or whatever other soft stuff youmay find. Dead leaves and pine needles are the lastchoice, as they are inflammable. If you have time,make that bed two feet deep.dryThe ground that you are going to sleep on Isand hot, and will stay so a long time, being Insulatedby the bedding stuff. The log behind you Is warm,and it will shield you from the wind. You haveeffected a double economy, because a small fire infront will suffice until the cold hours on the far sideof midnight, for which time the bulk of your fuel Isto be saved.Don't fire any distress signals until shortly beforedark ; earlier ones would be attributed to some wanderinghunter. But when the shadows begin to fall,and 5'^ou have not shown up, your comrades will beginto grow uneasy and will listen for signals.Thebest signal with a gun is g shot, a pause of teiv