HOW TO BE SHELTERED FROM STORM

Rex Burress

In late March I was driving from Oroville to Marysville in a rare rain, and I thought about my car roof being a shelter from the storm. The fuel-burning machine is indeed an ingenious invention, not only rolling you smoothly to your destination, but adding air-conditioning to your comfort—and windshield wipers!

I thought about the Lewis and Clark 1803-1806 Expedition having very little cover from storm in their long journey westward. Although they 'holed-up' the first winter in a fort they built near the lodges of the Mandan tribe in North Dakota, and stayed at Fort Clapsop on the coast during the winter of 1805, for the most part of the 7000-mile journey, they were in the open exposed to the treacherous weather of the Northwest.

Pioneers in the mid-1800 surge westward had some comfort from covered wagons...if you can call iron-rimmed wagons with a canvas covering comfortable. Canvas shelter does divert some of the storm but it's pretty airy, just as log cabins, and sod shanties on the plains with dirt floors offered crude comfort.

Before our family advanced from canvas pup-tents, canvas umbrella tents, to a motorized, steel-roofed, van-camper, we experienced some challenging wind/rain weather trying to keep dry. There was a windy time at Calico on the Mojave Desert that kept us busy carrying rocks to hold the tent down! We hadn't arrived at the durable John Muir stage of wilderness travel and soon reverted to hiding in a Dodge Chinook!

When you think of the nomadic American Indians prowling the plains following the herds during the seasons, camping in hide-tents and bark huts, depending on the bounty of the land, you wonder how so many separate tribes flourished.

Almost as self-sufficient were the Mountain Men. The likes of Kit Carson, Joesph Walker, Davy Crockett, John Colter, Jedidiah Smith, all were survivalists confronting the unknown wilderness in a quest for fur, fortunes, and discovery. Their shelters were crude and temporary at best.

In this day and age, unless you want to hike from Mexico to Canada in back-packer style, you can use the facilities of an established camp such as Oakland Feather River Camp and range widely around the surrounding country or just relax and watch the woodland. In addition to car-camping, in past years I have settled in at the delightful Feather River Camp and explored the flora and fauna along those streams. In fact, I am camped permanently on the Feather River at Oroville, CA.!It's just a walk from my house down to the wonders of water although the mountain camp has its wilder wonders to savor.

At Oakland Camp, 'tent-cabins” are offered, as well as wooden cabins. Although a shingled roof seems more secure, the luminous canvas top is airier with a brightness more akin to the outdoors, not unlike a covered wagon.

Creatures of the wild are for the most part exposed to the forces of nature. They have, however, built-in coverings to repel rainy times, such as waterfowl that have water-proof feathers. Most birds have that renewable canopy as a way to survive weather, just as mammals shed the storms with various hair and fur adaptations. Nature doth provide for her children. Even the snail carries a shelter around on its back!

“And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle,

wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree

to shelter all the children of one mother and one father!”

--Black Elk