Alright, so I kept hearing about this Scott Canterbury guy. See his name pop up here and there, mostly about woods stuff, survival things, you know. Watched a video or two. He makes setting up tarps look dead simple, like something anyone could do in a few minutes. Figured, why not? I’ve got an old blue tarp folded up somewhere in the shed, collecting dust.
So, one Saturday, decided to actually try it. First, had to find the damn tarp. Took me a good twenty minutes rummaging through junk in the shed. Finally found it, smelled a bit musty. Grabbed some old rope I had hanging on a nail, probably not the fancy paracord stuff they always show, but it looked strong enough. Threw my old pocket knife in my jeans.
Heading Out and Getting Started
Didn’t go deep into the wilderness or anything crazy. Just walked down to the patch of woods behind the park. Found two trees that looked about the right distance apart. Okay, step one, the ridge line. Remembered him stringing a rope tight between two trees. Tied one end off. Walked to the other tree, pulled the rope as tight as I could manage, and tied it again. My knots are probably terrible, nothing fancy like he does, just a couple of loops and pulls that seemed like they’d hold. Good enough for now.
Next, throwing the tarp over. This was trickier than it looked on video. A bit of wind caught it, turned into a sail for a second. Had to wrestle it down. Finally got it draped over the rope, more or less even on both sides. Looked kind of like a floppy roof.
Staking it Down – Making Do
Now for staking the corners down. Didn’t bring stakes. Didn’t even think about it. Just figured I’d find some sticks. Scrounged around on the ground, found four reasonably pointy ones. Used a fist-sized rock I found nearby to hammer them into the ground through the tarp’s grommets. Crude, yeah, but seemed to work. Had to adjust the tension a bit here and there.
- Pulled one corner tight, hammered in a stick.
- Went to the opposite corner, did the same.
- Did the other two corners.
- Stepped back to look.
It wasn’t pretty. Definitely not Canterbury-level neatness. One side sagged a bit more than the other. The knots were chunky. The sticks were uneven. But you know what? It stood up. It made a little shelter space underneath. I crawled under it, sat down on the dry leaves. It actually blocked the wind quite well from the back.
Felt pretty good, honestly. Didn’t follow any instructions perfectly, just went off memory and used what I had. But the basic idea, his simple approach to making a quick, functional shelter? Yeah, I could see it. It worked. Spent maybe half an hour out there, just sitting under my slightly lopsided blue tarp roof. Simple stuff, but doing it yourself, even imperfectly, feels different. Made me think I should maybe actually learn those proper knots sometime. It’s practical knowledge, that’s for sure.
