>>299222With twighlight fading, I had one option, my hunch and shot in the dark. A copse of trees surrounded by a near impenetrable wall of thorns and rubble. I had hoped to scout it and move into it if the ground proved level in two weeks, and for all I knew then it could have been twisted rebar and swamp. But I had a good feeling about it, and now it was my only real choice other than spending a cold night in the nearest alternative site, which really sucked.
So I lifted my long legs and assaulted the thicket with my boots, timing my crunching stomps with the idiotic roars and barking below. After 20 feet, I was getting disheartened. It was all giant holes and 6 foot blackberries with no end in sight. Then after another few feet, I suddenly broke through.
Relatively level, well drained, clay and chalk lightly dusted with topsoil and moss greeted me under the protective canopy of skeletal trees. I could not have hoped for better. Instant endorphine flood of relief.
lacking my entrenching tool, I used my folding saw to cut a length of downed tree (spread mud on the cut to make it look old; cover your tracks, anons.) and fashioned a crude hoe with my knife.
Noting the amount of brown stalks I realised it was mostly a stinging nettle bed (a litteral pain in the ass in spring when they would come up), so I selected the piece of ground most free of them and set about leveling an area for my camp with my rudementary hoe. After half an hour of sweating, hacking and pulling roots and stones, I smoothed it out and layed down the ground sheet. The knackers were leaving. I forced through my rough trail in the thorns, climbed the embankment and watched them go.
Sure that I could now work in peace, I hurried back. Next came the camo tarp. I shoelaced the paracord through it and tied it off over the main support line. I then stomped my way back into the main quarry. The ground was beginning to freeze.
