Chapter 30

Camping - How to Build a Bough Bed

Cut two logs seven feet long and six or eight inches in diameter. Place the two seven-foot logs parallel to each other and nail the two shorter logs to their ends, making a rough pen to hold boughs. If you haven’t nails in your kit cut some pegs or stakes about eight or ten inches long and drive a peg into the ground on each end of each log close to the outer edge. So that the log can’t roll outwards when pressure is exerted from within.

Cut some good-sized fir or spruce boughs with your axe. Load the bunk with them. Point all the butts downward into the earth. Then cut a bushel or more of very small fir or balsam boughs. Your sheath knife will do the trick.

Lay the small boughs very carefully on the bunk, starting at the head of the bed. Lay them almost on end, with the under side up.

You will probably run out of boughs by the time you are two-thirds down the bunk, but if the bed is soft and springy under your shoulders and hips, you will sleep okay. If you have plenty of time, cut enough small boughs to finish the bed.

BILL GORMAN > Few people ventured into the wilderness in L.L.’s day, so there was no harm in directing hunters to make a bough bed, which kept sleeping bags dry and provided added insulation. Today, of course, recreational camping is a highly popular activity, and campers are encouraged to minimize their impact on the environment. Fortunately, modern sleeping bags and sleeping pad materials make bough beds unnecessary.