Primitive Survival at Sam Houston (Rachel B)

 

Our group spent 2 nights camping in Sam Houston National Forest. We left on Tuesday the 26th and returned on Thursday. 

I had an awesome time at sam houston. We each had our own projects we got to focus on. My biggest one, and probably also the most challenging, was building a shelter with Sabrina. It was much more labor intensive than we thought it would be and we spent hours just collecting materials for building, like the palm fronds for walls and pine needles for insulation. 

For the rest of the time I focused a lot on building fires and attempting to cook with them. It was very difficult to get anything going in the first few hours of the day because the dew completely soaked all the possible wood and kindling. Even once the wood had dried some, it was pretty difficult to get a bigger log to hold a flame. It required a lot more attention than i thought it would to keep adding kindling in the right places and clearing out the ash to prevent it from blocking the airflow. I was able to start one fire with a magnesium rod, but it took a lot of time and energy so we all opted for using lighters the rest of the time. 

On the second day my afternnoon project was digging a new large firepit so we could make use of some of the larger logs we chopped that wouldnt fit into the small fire area. I was very pleased with how it came out but unfortunately once sunset came and we lit it up for smores we could not get the entire thing lit. It was a lot bigger than the original fire for a bit though and it was pretty warm.

I learned a lot, both about survival and how to work in a group,and i think this was a really valuable experience that i would love to repeat. If I had any recommendations for how to change this term, I would say going for at least three nights would enhance the experience and let people get more use out of the shelters and tools they built.

The first fire I built. It took a while to collect enough dry wood and keep it alive until it got hot enough for cooking.
Cooking one of the chickens we processed over my fire. 

Me and Sabrina found an old snare trap while exploring the area around our campsite. You can see the logs at the bottom and the paracord loop hanging from a sapling at the top

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