Clearing our future sleeping area was easy enough. We removed all the branches and rocks we could find, making sure the surface was as smooth as can be. Then—mostly for fun—I twirled around in circles and broke any little branches that might have been uncomfortable, like a wild dog or cat before they lie down and get some sleep. I smiled at Killian while I did this, which got me a roll of his eyes. He would keep to a more serious tone about this.
As we worked, I kept trying to remember everything I knew about building a shelter in the wilderness. There were many ways to go about it. With the right kind of power tools and manpower, I’d happily have fashioned a nice log-cabin with separate rooms, maybe even an upper-floor. But since it was just the two of us with a limited assortment of metallic debris to use as knives, hammer and nails, we’d have to keep it simple but sturdy. That meant four walls and a roof that would have to somehow hold together. Our survival depended on keeping the fundamentals in mind and in heart.
I went camping a lot when I was a child. Our village was perched on the side of a mountain, so it didn’t take much of a hike to be in the wilderness. As soon as my parents deemed me old enough, they let me go with my cousins to the Vérines—a settlement higher up on the mountain.
With my brother and cousins, we used to follow the foot trails up for a thirty-minute walk, gorging ourselves on some unobstructed views of the entire length of the Rhone Valley—from Sion to Martigny. We’d hike upwards until we’d reach the Colline aux Oiseaux campsite—“the birds’ hill”. It was aptly named too, given its height and the large number of birds we’d see there every time we went. That reminded me of one thing that was sort of strange and eerie about this island: if there were birds, we hadn’t seen them yet. At all. Were we that far out from the continent?
It made me shudder to think that, so I got back to thinking of the Colline and its quaint little restaurant where the owners liked to play the accordion in the afternoon. At an altitude of over 800 metres, the camping and its restaurant sat next to an artificial circular basin, where the trout roaming the water were easy to catch. In the summer, that basin became the delight of many a tourist with zero fishing skills. For a small fee, they could even borrow the needed fishing equipment on site.
My cousins and I had a habit of camping in the forest between the village and the campsite, in a small clearing close to the footpath. Though we had tents and camping equipment, we often tried building our own shack. While we never really succeeded, it passed the time and fit in our narrative of kids facing the wilderness.
As I looked at the spot Killian and I had cleared, I wished we had some tarp and rope. It would be easy to make a shelter with those. But like so much else, we had none of that. The two things we had in spades were time and despair.
14. ARCHITECTURE 101
The best way to build something is from the ground up. That was a basic tenet of carpentry… wasn’t that what it was called? Regardless, we needed some kind of framework for our shelter. While wood was certainly something we had in abundance, we were a little short on chainsaws and axes. So we’d need to make our own cutting implements.
I remembered how the tail-end of the plane damaged some of the surrounding trees when it crashed. With gestures, I got through to Killian that we could try to gather some of those broken branches. Really, though, any sturdy stick we could find might prove useful.
As we left the mountain and beach behind us, heading back to the tail, I found myself feeling for the Earth. It was quite tragic, the way this artificial metal bird had scraped her flank and left a large tear in her belly. Not that it had stopped her natural glory but I’m sure she’d felt the wound. Too many people think of the Earth as an inanimate object. But she feels everything… every scar, every rupture, every release. Maybe it was a blessing to her that we were the first two humans to ever set foot on this spot.
Back at the crash site, we began sorting through the disembodied branches of two of the broken trees by size. The largest went into the left pile, mediums in the middle, with the smallest being stacked on the right. Well, I say that “we” had begun the sorting when it was actually just me. I found it a bit funny how little old me was the one doing all the heavy lifting while Killian busied himself with drawing up design plans. Come to think of it, I’d wager I was stronger than him, pound for pound. With that skinny frame and clumsy energy, he wouldn’t have managed more than a few minutes of this work. Not an insult to him, but it was likely true.
Besides, his self-appointed job suited him rather nicely. He scribbled away on his napkins with a passion, pausing at times to consider his next move before diving back in again. It looked as though we had both discovered our niches. I was the muscle, he was the brains. With a smile, I kept sorting out the mess our plane had made of the local forest.
Some of the branches I found were quite dead, not suitable at all for being part of a foundation of any kind. At best, they’d simply break under the pressure of a roof. At worst, they’d break as soon as we attempted to put them into the earth, so I stuck to others that were much sturdier and full of fresh sap.
I sorted them out until all that was left were the two bare tree trunks and the largest branches. All of them were much too heavy to carry by myself, which didn’t stop me from trying numerous times. Yet, even with all my might, I hadn’t been able to make those trunks move so much as an inch. But I had hopes that the branches could be moved, provided I had some help.
Returning to Killian’s drawing spot, I stopped to gulp down some water. Before I got his attention, I peeked over his shoulder to see what he was drawing. His architectural concepts sure were beautiful… and completely unfeasible. They included such extravagant bells and whistles like a skylight, which would only let the rain in worse than the hole in the tail had. It was one of many pointless ‘extras’ that would be more of a problem than a solution to my eyes. Poor Killian… I’m sure he lived in some fancy penthouse in a big city somewhere, but luxuries in the city were liabilities out here. Guess he didn’t know what that was like to come from a humbler background—or so his architectural fancies seemed to imply.
Tapping him gently on the shoulder, I motioned for him to give me the pen, which he reluctantly did. Reaching for a blank napkin, I quickly traced the outline of a much more realistic shelter. It used part of one of the large trunks I needed his assistance with as well several pieces of the plane I was fairly certain we could detach.
When he saw my design, I could tell that me correcting him had hurt his pride a little. His lip involuntarily curled downward, a sort of reflex in reaction to feeling the pain of inadequacy, which he bit into to stop. I shrugged my shoulders in a ‘sorry, but what else could I have done’ gesture. This was about survival, not a submission to Architecture Weekly. I returned him my new version of our proposed palace in the woods before motioning towards the branches I needed his help with.
Together, we brought our building materials to our spot on the beach. Hauling them over took all morning and half the afternoon. Once we were done, I was parched and famished, but we’d yet to hunt for our food. I gave Killian the gesture we had agreed upon for berries and then mimed that I was going to try to find us some fish.
The next morning was spent manufacturing the basic tools we’d need to cut and trim the assorted branches. We broke up medium-sized stones on larger boulders. The largest pieces would be used to carve out branches and large chunks of thick bark. The rest could be turned into a sort of pre-hardened concrete, which would help seal the support beams into the ground. I had to admit that this last had been one of Killian’s most brilliant ideas to date. That mesh of stone debris would keep the pillars wedged into the earth, able to stay strong through even the fiercest of windstorms.