During my first year on the Island, we had a typical shelter building class that taught us to use natural materials to make a lean-to and other types of emergency shelters. It was somewhat in depth and included how to make heat reflectors and other extras to make our shelters more effective.

After the class, we were sent into the woods west of the compound to make a shelter. It was hot out in the compound, and it was only slightly better under the trees. There was an occasional breeze, but the heat and humidity was almost suffocating. Of course, we were just glad it wasn't raining on us for a change.

At first, I intended to make a lean-to of pine boughs and sticks like they taught us in class. I looked at the notes and pictures I had drawn in my little notebook. I noticed that I had little spots and lines in my vision where the bright sunlight had burned my retinas. I closed my eyes for a moment to help them clear, but then my exhausted body began to sway as sleep began to take me. I quickly shook my head and opened my eyes. Blinking and then opening my eyes as wide as I could, I looked for an appropriate tree and the other materials I would need.

I soon realized that the stuff I needed wasn't anywhere near me. Over the last week we had burned anything on the ground. I was going to have to hike a ways out before I found branches that would work. In fact, I now realized that I would have to put in a lot of effort, energy and time to make the shelter they had told us about. As I hadn't slept or ate much in three days, this didn't sound appealing at all. As I stood there, I felt the tunnel vision coming back. While my cohorts struggled around me, I sat down and started to think.

As I sat there in the undergrowth hoping that no staff member would see me goofing off, I watched my teammates. Some guys were stringing up ponchos, but my parents couldn't afford to get me everything on the packing list so that wasn't an option for me. One of the guys was digging a deep hole near a tree. He said he was building some kind of "defensive position". I don't know what he was thinking, but it did give me an idea.

I found a pine tree that still had branches near the ground. I climbed underneath and started breaking off the dead branches that were poking me in the face. When I was done, I had this little room surrounded by nice green pine branches.

I stacked up the dead branches in piles, arranged by size. I now had firewood and kindling for a small fire. I scraped the pine needles from the ground and tossed them out of my shelter. I was afraid they might catch fire. I then dug a small, shallow hole for a cooking fire.

I was feeling pretty good about my little palace until I thought about sleeping. The roots of the tree would be poking me all night. I had just begun to hack at one of the more intruding roots when a staff member came by. He must have been intrigued at seeing my butt and boots sticking out between the pine branches. The tree shook each time I hit it with my E-tool on the up swing. It probably looked like I was being eaten by the tree.

I felt the toe of a boot nudge me in the rear, so I pulled myself out of my little shelter and stood up. A cadet officer was looking at me like he thought I was an idiot.

"Hannibal, what do you think you are doing?"

"Trying to get a root out of my bed, sir."

"Your...bed..." He then got on his knees and crawled into my hole. After about 15 seconds he backed out, brushed off his knees and turned to me.

"Interesting shelter, Hannibal. Why aren't you using the training we provided you?"

I was scared. The last thing I wanted to say was that I thought I had a better way. The survival training they had provided me was almost as useless as the training I had received years earlier as a Young Marine. I certainly wasn't going to tell him that. I kind of stood there like a bug under glass for a while.

"Well?"

Then it all spilled out of me. "Sir, you said we were training for a survival situation. I was trying to find a way of getting an effective shelter with the least amount of work. This tree will protect me from the sun, rain and wind. Because it is relatively short, I don't think lightning will be a problem. If I didn't have this tree, I would have tried the stuff in the class, but with what we have around us, that didn't make any sense." That isn't an exact quote, and I was probably a lot less coherent and eloquent. If I remember it right, I think it was all one long sentence, but he got the idea.

I just stood there waiting to get ripped into for not sticking to the exercise. The lieutenant just looked at me and let me squirm. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally spoke.

"Good thinking. Conserve your energy. But don't kill my tree by cutting the roots." Then he walked away without a change in expression. He was like that.

I was on cloud nine. As an airman first class, that was the closest I had ever come to talking back to an officer. I felt I was right, and I had stood up to the obviously implied threat that a wrong answer would have bad consequences. I decided to use pine boughs from another tree to make a bed. I had learned that in Young Marines. Another staff member stopped me as I was cutting them off, but by then the exercise was over anyway.

I was lucky. I had cadet leaders who understood that thin difference between a cadet making an honest attempt to do the right thing and one who was just finding a way around the system. Other cadet officers might have just yelled at me for not doing it "The Right Way". My leaders on the Island were more interested in having rangers who used their heads. That was lesson I took to heart.