PEOPLE IN THE MIST 1.2
In the meantime, I'd peeled some small roots, and now had about 20 feet of small cordage. It has been soaking and is pliable. It will be useful for fastening together my pieces of birch bark.
(Warning: a boring, detailed description of o couple of chunks of bark follows
Working with those two pieces of bark, I scribed a circle onto each - a 24" diameter circle centered on one, a 22" diameter circle centered onto the other. Then, I drew a 6" circle centered on each piece. Using my knife, I trimmed around the larger, outside circle of each piece. Carefully, I made three radial slices in each piece. These ran from the inner circle, clear out to the outer circle on the edge, and were evenly spaced at 12, 4, and 8 o'clock. I now had two circles, cut into three, floppy sectors that were still attached at the 6" inner circle.
Later, I used a small, pointy stick to punch holes along one edge of these slices, about 1/4" in. On the opposite side of each slice, the line of holes was offset at an angle. Near the center, the first hole was 1/4" in away from the edge. At the outer circumference the hole was 1 1/4" in away from the edge of the slice. All six radial slices had rows of holes arranged like this.
Now, I overlapped the edges of one of these slices, and laced it up with a piece of root. Then the other two slices on that piece. I now had a shallow cone of birch bark. In a few minutes, I had sewn up the three, overlapped edges in the other piece and now had two, similar cones. Sitting the larger cone 24" diameter) in my lap, I punched in six more holes.these were in pairs, two holes in each of the three sections. I spaced them in about 2" from the outside edge of the cone, and 3" apart side to side. And, matching holes in the smaller cone. Then I took a nap.
I woke up hungry, and had lunch! I finally laced those two cones together so that they resembled a flying saucer, 24" across and 6" high in the center. The 24" cone overlapped the 22" cone, providing a 1" eave all the way around. I intend to use this positioned over the smoke hole in the top of the wickiup.
I tied the flying saucer atop the smoke hole, with 2-3" of clearance. Here's how it works. First, because it covers the hole, rain doesn't come in. Second, the bottom cone has that curved profile, immediately above the hole. When wind blows across the roof of the wickiup, and passes through the gap between my bottom cone and the roof, it has to speed up as it goes over the hole. BINGO! Bernoulli's principle tells us that when air speeds up going forward, it puts out less pressure sideways. "Less pressure" is a partial vacuum. It sucks out the smoke! The top cone, with its overhanging eave protects the bottom cone from collecting rain - it serves as a roof. IE: it sucks out smoke, and keeps out rain. I spent the next week or so making more of them for other folks in camp.
While I was busy doing these things, Eric was improving his archery. I showed him about making arrows for short range hunting of, say, birds or squirrels. We used blunt points and wrapped feathers in a spiral instead of a streamline configuration. These flu-flu arrows can be fashioned for various ranges, and fall to the ground slowly, so they don't slide along and bury themselves under grass an leaves. And, he did bring in some birds and a squirrel. He was working his way along, catching up with those who had played with and hunted with bows since being kids.
He was working his way along other paths too. He and a young lady were having long conversations together from time to time. She was helping him to learn their language. And, some of the communication between them was of a more universal language. Hmm.
But, neither of us had spotted any aircraft overhead, nor any contrails. Nor were there any other campers paddling by. Another hmm.!
