How to make a basic woodland shelter

Shelter beds are scarce, and shelters are shitty. So a lot of people choose to camp out instead. It sucks to go into the bush and learn all the lessons that everybody else has had to learn, so here's some tips to get you started.

First, here's your procedure:

1. Choose your site carefully. You'll need it to be convenient to get in and out of, but also private. Don't put your site along a popular path. It turns the path into part of your site, and makes people uncomfortable as they come through. Don't pretend that you're claiming space: you have no right to deny anybody else their use of the space. You have no right to block off existing paths in order to make your site work better for you. You have to work within the bounds of what's socially reasonable. So what you're looking for is a patch of forest that is big enough for a site, and in order to find that, you'll need to figure out how far one path is from another. To make this easier, hang up a bright piece of garbage or something in a spot you're considering as a potential site. Then you can evaluate how visible it is from the adjoining paths. Evaluate and reposition your marker until you've got something with sightlines you can work with. You'll know how visible your site is, and you'll know which areas you may need to "bush up" as you're creating your site.
2. Plan your paths carefully. You'll need one or two paths that connect your site to the nearest access paths. If you create a path that connects two other paths, and put your site along it, then you've wrecked your own privacy by providing a new route through the forest. So it's best to make a dead-end path. Don't put your site at the end of the path (that's too obvious)... put your parking spot there. That's where you leave your bike, bags and other stuff you don't need at the site. You'll want to keep a camouflage tarp or something to cover your stuff. For your site, create another small trail somewhere along the way. Then your site will be at the end of a trail that's off a dead-end trail with some junk at the end of it, that's off a trail that people actually use. And at each trail juncture, you can install some easy-to-move obstacle, like a big dead branch or something, that hides the trail.
3. Create your bathroom. You don't really need a shovel, just a spade. Just some gardening stuff. Or a stick. And you just need a spot for two holes. You dig a hole, cover up your shit whenever you use that hole, and then when it's full, you dig another hole next to it and do the same thing. By the time it's done, the first hole will be fully composted and you can dig it up again. If that sounds gross, study biology. Your bathroom will also need some privacy and wind blockage. So build a tiny nest around your hole spot. A nest is like... a fence made of dead branches, stuffed with dead grasses. Might as well get some practice with a little one before you build your big one.
4. Before putting up a tent or anything, build your nest. Your main one. It needs to be large enough to enclose a small tent, a fire, and some working space. So it should be the size of a bedroom, and tall enough that you can just barely peek over the top. Once you've made a fence out of dead branches and trees, you can fill it in with weeds like stinging nettle or knotweed (the stuff that looks like bamboo). It should be thick enough that you have the privacy and wind protection you need to do basic tasks.
5. To make your main shelter, either build a teepee inside your nest, or turn your nest into a yurt. To build a teepee, grab a bunch of long, straight poles, like dead trees or two-by-fours or something, and lay them out on the ground. Fasten them together at one end with rope or a belt or something, and stand them up with the tied-up end in the air. Then, one by one, move the bottom ends of the poles outward into a circle. The top ends of the poles will cross each-other, so don't fasten them right at the top. Once you've got a nice cone shape, tighten the top if necessary. Then you wrap it with tarp. If you have bright tarps, this is where to use them: do two layers of tarping, one on the inside, and one on the outside... the inside one can be bright, as long as the outside one isn't. Two layers instead of one, especially if there's some space between them, adds a ton of thermal insulation to the shelter. You can even put in a layer of old messed-up sleeping bags or blankets between the two layers of tarp. One way or another, you've got to leave a hole at the top, for smoke from your fire to escape. It should be the same size as the fire itself... so, the smallest fire you can imagine. You can always cover the fire hole with an umbrella or a parasol or something, just make sure there's enough room for smoke to escape. Keep in mind, you'll need room for both your fire and your small tent, so your fire may not be right in the middle of the shelter. It's easy to build an off-center cone... you'll probably have some poles that are longer than others anyway, and having one side that's less slanted than the others just makes it easier to put a door there. For the door, you'll want to have extra tarp overlapping on both the inside and the outside, and you'll want the space between the inner and outer layers to be a lot wider at this point: wide enough that you actually have a kind of airlock, so you can go through the outer tarp, close it behind you, take off your outer clothes, and then go through the inner tarp. This will help reduce dust, cold and moisture in your shelter. If you're going to turn your nest into a yurt, instead of building a teepee, then you'll need to create a slanted ceiling on top, and put a tarp on top of that. You can easily wrap the fence you've made with a tarp on the inside, so you'll have a wall around you. You'll still need a smoke hole above wherever your fire is going to go.
6. The type of fire pit you're going to build is good for cooking on, and doesn't generate as much smoke as a typical fire. It's basically what we'd call a "dakota fire hole." Check out some pictures of them and these instructions will make sense. The classic design is great, but it's best to use a rock instead of earth between the two holes. Basically, you dig two holes that are right next to each-other, and then dig up the space between them, too. So you have one rectangular hole. It should be just big enough for a baby to sleep in. But you're not putting a baby in there. Like a foot by three feet, or smaller. In the middle, separate the hole into two holes with a channel connecting them, install yourself a nice rock. It's gotta be like a bridge across the hole. You need the air to be able to go down a hole, across into the other hole, and back out again, because that's what makes this type of fire hole work. You fill one hole with your firewood, and put the tinder down under the rock through the other hole, and light it. The fire burns under the rock, sucks in air through the wood, and the smoke and flame comes out the other hole. The rock gets warm enough to cook on. If you're not cooking anything, bake some rocks so you can sleep with them later on.
7. To prepare your tent area, put down your drop tarp... this is the one tarp you need that doesn't just make water run down the side, it has to actually block water. Most tarps will let water through if there's something touching the dry side. This one has to actually be even more than a tarp, so it's good to use something like an old broken air mattress or a rubber boat or something. The other thing you'll want is just some space underneath, so if you can find loading palettes or some kind of wooden frame to mount your tent on, that's great. An old door on some bricks is perfect. You'll want to choose a tent that's as small as you can handle, because you'll want to keep it just for sleeping. The only clothes you want to have inside the tent are you clean, indoor ones. Outerwear needs to be hung to dry instead, and is too dusty to be kept inside the tent. Combating dust is going to be one of your main missions. Since you're already indoors, you don't need a fly on your tent, but it does help to keep it warm. You'll want to choose a tent that you can easily bring outside to air out, because it will get damp. Humans sweat about a litre of water every night, so all your bedding is going to need to be removed from the tent and hung up to air out, fairly often. So even your sleeping bag, pillowcases, blankets and sheets should be in drab, woodland colours. Not the bright stuff that campers seem to prefer.
8. It's silly to keep your supplies in a site that you're not at most of the time. Your site is as visible as it is because it has to be large enough to house a human, but the stuff that you'll want to leave there doesn't have any living needs of its own, so it can be stashed in a storage spot nearby. Maybe somewhere along the path to the site, or between your parking lot and the site. A storage spot consists of a strong suitcase with a combination lock, a camouflage tarp to wrap it in, and a hole to stick it in. Doesn't have to be a deep hole, just deep enough to sink the suitcase into. If it's not a waterproof container, then don't sink it at all, just cover it up with brush and stuff.
9. You'll find there's a lot of things you want to camouflage, so it's good to craft up some of your own camo mats. All you need is long weeds or grasses, or flexible dead branches, and you just weave them together like cloth. Make your main mat and then weave in grasses and stuff, and have bushy things poking out so it doesn't look like what it is. Having convenient bits of matting to cover things up will save you having to scrounge for leaves and things whenever you use your storage spot or your parking spot, and a woven mat will stay in place better than anything else. It's also a lot better to use stuff like that instead of tarp, which is more visible and is technically just plastic garbage.
10. Now that your site's up, you'll have to check it regularly to see if you have any removal notices or business cards from outreach people. Housing workers routinely scout for campsites, and leave their contact information everywhere they go. If you can use their help, then go ahead and contact them: if you're in the process of getting housing help, then it's less likely that your site will be removed by police or the city. If you just leave the cards up, the likely outcome depends on how garbage-y your site is. Actually, your waste management situation and the overall visibility of your site is the biggest determining factor in whether or not it will be removed. If your site is targeted for removal, a notice will be posted there, giving you time to remove whatever you want before the city comes in and takes the rest. That's why you'll want to check the site, at least on a weekly basis, and preferably every three days... because those notices are meant for people who are living at their sites. Ultimately, the best course of action upon realizing that your site has been discovered is to move. If you've been found by housing outreach workers, then anybody can find you. Those little business cards are a good litmus test. If they show up at the other sites in the area, and not yours, then go ahead and pat yourself on the back: you're invisible. And as a poor person, invisibility is your absolute best security.
11. Make a greenhouse. Not for gardening... although, why not... but for drying clothes and stuff. You'll want to put it in a super sunny spot. You can use old mismatched tent poles for this project. You can also use this to build your main shelter, as an alternative to a cone or a yurt. It's easier to wrap, because the shape of the surface is rectangular instead of conical. All you do is, stick your tent poles in the ground and bend them over so they make a half-cylinder, like an airplane hangar shape. Then cover it with transparent plastic. Then you have two semicircular entrances, one on each side. Apart from being a good spot to dry clothes and grow food, a greenhouse can be a great hangout and cooking spot. Because it needs to be exposed to sunlight, it's probably going to be a lot more visible than your other structures, so it should be far away from the rest of your stuff. This is where you can bring your tent and bedding to, so it can air out and dry, even if it's cold and damp outside. As long as it's somewhat sunny, a greenhouse will either dry things out or just prevent them from getting wetter. The only other option you have for drying things out is to hang them above the fire, and some things you really don't want to smell like firewood, like your interview clothes!

You'll need the following supplies to do this:

• gardening gloves, a spade, a little shovel
• tarp in black, brown, dark green and/or camouflage... not blue, not bright green, not red
• a small tent, waterproof tarp and exercise mats to go underneath it, sleeping bag and pillow to go inside it, waterproof clothing bag
• a suitcase with a combination lock
• a big metal thing or some bike frames, to lock your bike to

Rules of thumb:

• Don't cut down or remove living plants. The only legit exceptions are invasive species that shouldn't be here anyway, like knotweed, or species that nobody wants around like stinging nettle. If you break this rule, you risk both official and vigilante justice.
• Don't bring brightly-coloured objects into the bush. Red and blue are especially visible.
• Any plastics you bring into the bush, you have to bring out again with you. And metals.
• Bury your organic waste. Don't throw it into the bush: you'll end up with continuous raccoon noise and you'll never be able to tell when somebody's coming. And the coons will move on to harass you for every scrap of food at your site too.
• Don't do food in your tent. Pests will totally chew through the tent to research the food situation. Any place you eat or prepare food is going to be invaded by animals, so make sure you eat in a spot that's ok for animals to invade.
• Don't interrupt other people's use of the space, or impact on their sense of security. Don't apologize for being there either.
• Sometimes it's easier to team up with some trusted friends and put together a communal site that anybody can use. Sometimes it's less of a hassle to just do it alone. That's a choice that everybody has to make themselves... just make sure you know which choice you've made.
• Your whole site and everything in it is technically an illegal dump site. You're either dumping illegally, or trespassing, or exercising your legal right to live in the forest. Some laws suggest that if you're in the flood plain of a river, you're legal to camp out, but in that case you're also at risk of being swept away in the flood. That risk will make the city want to take responsibility for your safety by arresting you and putting you in a dangerous shelter.
• In general, camping in a flood zone sucks. So beware of riverside spots. Look around for signs of flooding: if there's a bed of small bits of wood that seem perfectly placed together, or banks of sand and stuff like that, that's a good indication that you're in a flood plain. If you do decide to camp in a flood zone, you have to be prepared to evacuate at a moment's notice, and you have to pay attention to the weather reports from upstream. It doesn't have to be raining in Toronto for the Don river to flood. It just has to rain somewhere up the river.
• Late fall and winter are the best time to scout for spots, because it's the only time you can evaluate your year-round concealment options. A well-hidden shelter built during the summer can become totally exposed when fall comes and the leaves fall down, so if you've built in such a spot, expect to spend the entire fall working on your nest. And you'll still end up sticking out like a sore thumb. Pick a spot with lots of brush and bramble that sticks around throughout the winter, or a spot with coniferous trees that stay green year-round, and you'll have a lot less worries during the winter. As if you need anything more to worry about.
• You'll need to keep a stash of dry firewood. You can use your fire to dry off wet wood. Any stack of firewood, while it's drying out, is going to attract spiders. There'll be little insects fleeing the wood as its sitting there waiting to be burned, and the spiders are there to feast on those insects. Don't worry about any of that, that's why you have a tent in addition to your shelter, and they will get the heck out of your site to avoid being near the fire, but when you return to your shelter after not having a fire in there for awhile, there's gonna be bugs in there to evict. Go ahead and start a fire, go out and gather more wood, and by the time you get back, the insects will have evacuated the shelter. If you run out of dry firewood in the winter, you're absolutely fucked.
• You have to buffer your supplies of everything. Buffer your firewood, buffer your water. As in, have extra. Go out and get more when you get down to a few days' worth. Don't wait until you're out. Have lots of extra water and firewood waiting for you at your site, and check it each time you check the site.
• While you're walking around your site, it's easy to gradually destroy the surrounding plants, which not only offer you concealment, but are also an essential part of the area and not something you have a right to destroy. That's why it's important to stick to your own path and go elsewhere when you're looking for dead foliage to use as camouflage. It requires a little more work to venture further away for this material, but it's essential to maintaining a natural looking site that won't get found.
• You have to somehow do all this without disrupting the bush. We can't afford to have the local forests ruined because of our shelter needs. And there's nothing that you need to do in order to meet those needs that actually requires any kind of disruption anyway. Every little bit of patience and deference will pay dividends.