For successful outdoor overnighting I need to get at least a couple hours of sleep, and this means somehow managing to keep dry and warm. And to accomplish this, I need to be off the ground, with something wooly wrapped around or over me.
While I know Tolkien’s heroes (the Three Hunters specifically) got by with a single blanket, my single blanket—a four-point HBC, even!—is still criminally thin (that’s the last time I buy a wool blanket without being able to check it out in person!). While I could always pair it up with my smaller-but-thicker handwoven wool blanket, that’s making for a big fat tumpline roll, and that method of carrying isn’t terribly compatible with my chosen knapsack.
Well, then. If I can’t rely solely on my blanket to keep me warm, I guess I’m going to need a lot of ground insulation. Unfortunately…I usually range in shady, moist woodlands, which tends to limit the amount of dry, fluffy, insulating leaves I can count on for bedding.
What this means is I had to think about bringing an alternate form of insulation to keep me off the ground, reserving most of my four-point for fending off the chill night airs. Coincidentally, at the time I was struggling with all of this, I met (at two different events, no less) two different people who had made sewn mats out of cattail leaves, which were used historically as weatherproof covers for native wigwams and such shelters.
Ah-ha!, I thought; that’s the ticket! Cattail leaves are full of squishy, foamy…plant-y stuff. Natural insulation! After inspecting these wigwam coverings and doing a bit of interweb research, I had at least a basic idea of what it would take to make an all-natural sleeping pad. And so, I cut, dried, trimmed, soaked, twisted, and tied, eventually managing to turn a huge bundle of leaves (and far more nettle cordage than I’d like to admit) into something resembling a fiveish-by-two-foot mat:
(Of course, the funny thing—for me, at least—is that this sleeping pad is the one part of my kit that I don’t think I can document in Tolkien’s writings! Hopefully someone with a better memory will prove me wrong!)
Anyway, to put it to the test, I slept out with the cat-mat the last two nights (lows in the 50s). The first night I covered up with just my cloak (half circle, army blanket wool lined with heavy linen), and was—as I had hoped—surprisingly warmer than I would have been simply sleeping on the ground with my blanket above and below me. Unfortunately, my little cloak doesn’t cover me up nearly as much as I would like (and the cold air still comes through the neck hole!), so the second night I covered up with my four-point. I think I have finally found the best configuration for making this blanket work in conjunction with the cat-mat:
This method leaves part of the blanket a single thickness to supplement the insulation of the cat-mat, but also gives a wider, double-thickness section to cover up with.
The cattail pad weighs far less than my blanket (~two pounds vs five+ pounds!), so it’s light enough that I can attach it to the bottom of my backpack’s shoulder straps (which means one less thing to put around my neck)!
This was accomplished with a pair of ancient Soviet rifle sling ‘dog collars’ I retooled to look handmade.
(I’ve been trying to use as little metal in this kit as possible, but the buckles on these straps are so simple, they look like something a skilful traveling dwarvish tinker could whip up in a few minutes’ time.) I scraped the finish (shellac?) off the leather, drilled out the rivets, made up some replacements (handmade rivets have infinitely more character), oiled the leather, and restitched the straps back together.
Each of these buckles around both the bottom of one of my pack’s shoulder straps, and the braided buckskin that secure my sleeping pad.
And this is where my traveling gear setup starts to feel complete.
*My ‘first-line’ necessities (zip bag and belt knife) are secure and never leave my person at any time.
*I have reliable ground insulation, and I can carry my blanket (which can be deployed as a matchcoat/cloak) horseshoe-style, which, while somewhat scratchy and not as neat or light as carrying my three pound wool cloak the same way, is far more comfortable than a leather tumpline cutting into the side of my neck!
*For a pillow, I roll up the tunic I wore during the day, and sleep in the spare, which has been kept dry in the pack.
*My brass kettle still rides neatly around the neck of my pack, secured in place by the top of the shoulder strap.
*If need be, I can still comfortably wear my hunting quiver under the blanket-horseshoe.
*And the whole thing is topped off with a wide-brimmed felt hat to keep the sun off my face and neck, which combined with a staff or spear and a cloak, makes me feel like the archetypal folk traveler of ancient Greece. (I plan on acquiring a thicker and more rustically-shaped hat this fall)
While the turtle-shell cup (hanging off my pack), and the rivercane straw (in my zip bag) allow me to keep hydrated opportunistically, drinking water as I find it, I still need to find or make a reliable water container.
