A Minimalist Life – by Little Big

Guardian Yearlong Blog post originally posted on March 3, 2014

For the sake of easier travelling with our Packframes, we decided to send all our gear that we don’t need right now back to the school’s support center. This means we only have our Sleeping bags, a little bit of Clothing and some miscellaneous things like Tomahawk, First aid kit and sewing stuff out here anymore. Besides extra Clothing, Wool blankets and our Bowls, we turned in our Tarps. We don’t need them. Since it is constantly below freezing, all the precipitation is dry anyway. We learned how to build a quick Lean-to shelter and all we need for building such can be easily found in the Woods around us. We slide a long Pole under the lowest branches of a dense Conifer tree (preferably with southern exposure and protected from north west winds), lift up the branches with the pole and hold the pole up with a couple of forked sticks – that’s our roof and snow protection. Then we put a good layer of conifer branches on the ground – that keeps us warm from underneath. And that’s it. Our quick cozy home for the night!

Sometimes we still get a little bit oversnowed. In that case we just shake our sleeping bags in the morning and are ready to go again. Aho!

Little Big introducing the quickie Lean-To to a school group

Little Big introducing the quickie Lean-To to a school group