cold

Home sweet home

A. Pile of twigs hopefully placed to prevent sleeper rolling into abyss.

B. Wolf dissuasion system

C.Thin end of fallen tree, other tree not shown

D. Tree feature, prevents sleeper rolling into abyss, suggest using in conjunction with twigs

E. Rock feature / seat. Based on an original design by Easy Jet

It snowed the night before last, not on me but higher up, last night was cold but there were no signs of snow. Having no work to do permitted me to stay in bed until midday, this was only partly to do with being tired and more to do with it being too cold to get up, I think I'm going to have to get used to this getting up in the cold thing.

The main issue at the moment is getting enough sleep. I have found that filling one of the gaps in the floor with twigs makes me more comfortable and also helps me avoid rolling off the very narrow area of flat ground and onto the 45 degree slope covered in rocks. Of course I still have to jam by knees into the tree to stop me rolling down the hill but I'm not quite so reliant on this now. It has been suggested that I level the ground with a shovel, a fine theory but one that sadly does not account for the outcrop from the rock that shelters me and stands clear of the ground by a good five feet. I suppose the rock could be chiseled through and the roots, some of which are as thick as my arm could be sawed through but not only would chopping through roots kind of defeat the purpose of the exercise it would, more importantly, weaken the tree small tree it is attached too to the extent that it would probably fall, on me. The level of top soil here is so thin that the forest is littered with fallen trees, there roots having been spread across the rocky ground rather than going deep offer little protection. Today I followed a trail of five fallen trees, one having been toppled by being hit by another and so on. So the rock that I live by not only protects me from the wind on one side and provides me with an amusingly bumpy bed it also offers some protection from falling trees. The fact that there are already two trees that have fallen on it gives me some comfort in as much as there can't be that many more to hit it. Then again, as the saying goes "whoever said lightening never strikes the same place twice doesn't know very much about lightening.

So the order of the day today was to construct some form of flat sleeping surface, I had a design in mind and even a name, a bed. This "bed" would be made by hacking some bits of wood into various lengths with an axe, hammering a few sharpened bit of wood into the ground to hold it in place and covering the lot with soft looking things from the surrounding area. Simple. Once I had got up, forrgotten about spending the night shivering and had a couple of cups of tea I decided it would be more sensible to build a roof instead. The roof is going to have to hold the weight of a lot of snow that will become compacted and turn to ice as more snow falls on top, that's going to be a lot of weight so it's best to get that built properly I think.

In other news, a wolf or wolves killed 22 sheep in Chablais which is not very far from here. However, further research on the wolf question has revealed that there are only eight, possibly nine, wolves in the country and although most of them live around here I think I am unlikely to be lucky enough to see one.