Shadowing Practice: 3 Days in Arctic with Bushcraft Hot Tent & No Sleeping Bag - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Luke here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel
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and I'm here in the frozen tundra of Alaska and for the next three days I'm building bushcraft shelters,
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sleeping under animal hides, dealing with broken equipment, and I'm bringing you guys along for the ride.
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Welcome to the taiga forests of Alaska.
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I think it's time to do some camping.
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So this is the taiga forests of Alaska.
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The word taiga comes from Russian.
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It means little sticks.
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In English, we call these trees black spruce, and they grow in the tundra and swamps of Alaska.
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While these swamps are very difficult to cross in the summertime, once they freeze over, we can explore them.
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But first things first, I need to find a place to camp.
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I actually like this spot quite a bit.
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Most of these spruce trees you see are dead.
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An invasive beetle called a spruce bark beetle came in here and wiped these things out.
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That means lots of building material, lots of firewood.
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The air temperature is about 13 degrees Fahrenheit and this ground is still not frozen.
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In the wintertime, the ground temperature is usually a lot warmer than the air temperature
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and the snow acts as a blanket that traps that heat in the ground.
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If you can strip away the ice and snow and build your shelter on thawed ground, it's going to be a whole lot warmer.
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And there's a bit of mud right there.
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This ground might be a little bit more swampy than I first thought.
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We'll just have to deal with it.
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All right I think it's time to start cutting some trees. so I
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bought this hatchet in Hiroshima, Japan last spring.
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I used it to take the limbs off these trees.
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It's 3 .50pm.
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It's starting to get dark.
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It's this close to the Arctic we don't get a lot of sunlight.
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Ah well I better bust out my lights. so
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This wood is so wet, everything's covered in ice.
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I'm going to use one of these fire starters here.
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There we go.
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Yeah, that's working.
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You can tell everything's wet when dead pine doesn't want to burn.
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The fingers are getting a little numb.
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I get all the snow out of my hair.
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Oh, that feels amazing.
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I've got a shelter, I've got fire.
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I think it's time to start working on dinner.
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Gloves are a bit wet.
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I'm going to go dry them by the fire.
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I got a sweet potato and a little bit of tin foil here.
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We're going to wrap that up.
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There you go.
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Got a nice pile of coals here.
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Bury that sweet potato in the coals for about 45 minutes.
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Most foods cook at around 375 degrees Fahrenheit high hold your hand over the fire
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and count one two three and
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when you can get to three without it hurting that's about 375 degrees Fahrenheit so right about here
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as the fire kind of changes you need to adjust your meat
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like a little bread with my steak
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so I brought along some bread dough I made this up like a week ago didn't use it
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so I threw it in the fridge and it's still good yeah just got a little bit more of that sourdough goodness
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Oh pretty little piece of bread right there.
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We're gonna have some herbal tea.
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oh that's done put that there
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let's take a peek oh that's looking pretty good
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some honey and butter i'm gonna put on there sweet potato is
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so mushy that's exactly how it should be gonna put a little cinnamon on my sweet potato and on my bread
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We got sweet potato and cinnamon, honey butter and bread, and two massive chunks of seasoned steak.
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There you go.
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This is my cow horn mug.
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I made this.
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I also made this griddle.
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I got a video explaining how I made these things.
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It's pretty easy.
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I'll put a link in the video description below.
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Mmm.
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That is good.
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oh
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that was good still got quite a bit of this steak left you just go sit it in the snowbank
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and it'll be good tomorrow there we go
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ah oh that warms me up peach herbal tea with loads of sugar in it it tastes pretty good
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and it's just more fun drinking it out of a cow horn that is good
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I really love this fork and plate.
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Both of them are antiques.
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The fork is about 150 years old.
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It's from the Civil War era.
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Handles made out of cow bone.
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This is my fancy camping wear.
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Well, now that we've had a fire in here for several hours,
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we're starting to figure out what the ground situation is over here it is really soft like look at this
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that is just a big swampy spot right there so i think we're gonna end up sleeping on this side
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Well it's pretty clear that I need to make a bed.
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If I sleep straight on the ground I'm going to get soaking wet and frozen.
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I'm refilling my water jug just a cup or two at a time.
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Gotta melt a lot of snow to get two liters of water.
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these logs are all wet and covered in ice
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so i'm going to try to dry them out and warm them up before I sleep on them.
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I got all my firewood for the night and I got it propped up around the fire trying to dry it out.
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I didn't bring any sleeping bags or sleeping pads but I brought my caribou hide.
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Caribou have these thick hollow hairs.
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They're really warm.
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You double a caribou hide over on itself.
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It's pretty thick.
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It actually gives you some cushion and lots of insulation.
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Let's see how lumpy this is gonna be.
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Wow, I'm tired.
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It's almost 10 o 'clock.
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I'm pretty tired.
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Well, instead of a sleeping bag, I'm gonna be sleeping underneath a bison hide tonight.
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I use the bison because it's one of the few animals big enough to cover me.
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I'm kind of a big boy.
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The nice thing about using animal hides when you're sleeping next to a fire is that these won't burn up.
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Sparks can land on them, the fire can get real hot, doesn't matter.
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You'll wake up long before these things catch on fire.
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It's gonna be very cold tonight and my water bottles will freeze solid if I don't keep them near the fire.
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So I'm gonna put them just right down here.
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I had to put some hot coals underneath my bed
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Get it nice and toasty
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it is late and i am tired i will see you guys in the morning
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oh good morning stayed pretty warm but the bed is so hard
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oh my feet are cold though my feet stick out from underneath the hide a little bit
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Oh that feels good.
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Get my toes warmed up.
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Ah, frozen boots.
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How many times have I put on frozen boots?
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Gonna warm up the honey butter.
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oh that's beautiful got melted honey and butter I'm going to shake that up
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Fresh warm bread and honey butter.
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Alright, time to get up and do some stuff.
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It is definitely colder today.
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If I'm going to stay warm, I'm going to need to make this shelter a whole lot better.
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Let me show you something weird about snow.
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You can see this right here is the path I made with my snowshoes yesterday.
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You can see where yesterday I walked on it without snowshoes and I sunk in, but today it's rock hard.
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If you stomp a trail down with snowshoes and let it sit overnight, it'll freeze up and turn really hard.
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Snowshoes are great for building paths in the snow like this. so I
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want to push this snow berm back a little bit
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and make a little bit more room so I've been throwing my tree limbs and logs in here.
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It takes a long time for the fire to melt the snow but it's a lot better than shoveling.
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There we go.
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oh
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well now that i got lunch in me i think it's time to start building again
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Oh, my God.
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I'm going to go. so so
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there we go got my stove installed hopefully this will keep me nice
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and warm well i got my shelter set up just in the nick of time
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it's already starting to get dark luckily
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i already have a lot of firewood laying around i'm not going to need as much as i did last night
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I am almost completely out of water, so we're going to go melt some snow.
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Been getting a lot of pine needles and pine cones in my drinking water.
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So I'm gonna go find a spot a little further away from the trees.
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There we go.
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Got my leftovers.
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Whoo, it is frozen in i'll just put it over here hopefully it'll thaw out well now
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that i've got a wood floor instead of all that mud i can change into my little slippers nice
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i can put my boots up here on the wall to keep them from freezing in the night
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oh it's nice to get my slippers on
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all my wood is cold and wet
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so i'm putting it on top of the stove to dry out
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and warm up then it'll burn really well when it comes time to feed the fire
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well it's about five o 'clock and i'm in for the night
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so i think i'm going to start making some dinner all right i got some black beans here
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oh these onions are frozen
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so that when the drummed column arrived the british would be rotten
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and give way oh we got a little smoke going on
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the logs over on that side were starting to smolder you can tell the logs are getting hot
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There's pine sap bubbling out of them.
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Have to watch it carefully.
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You don't want anything starting on fire.
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Oh, yeah.
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That's thawed out nicely.
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It's warming up well.
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All right, just added some rice.
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Smell, and this smells so good.
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All right.
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Put a little hot sauce on there.
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I'm so hungry.
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This smells amazing.
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And I tell you what, beans and rice are an amazing camping food.
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Not only are they delicious, it's non -perishable and takes up hardly any room in your backpack.
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Oh, that's so good.
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I want to check something here.
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Two degrees Fahrenheit.
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Let's compare that to what's inside the shelter.
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Put it right there and give it a few minutes to warm up.
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All right, it's been a few minutes
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and you can see it's just a little over 50 degrees Fahrenheit here at the bed.
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I mean, it's not exactly warm, but that's a lot better than outside.
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But watch this.
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I'm going to put the thermometer on the ground.
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There on the floor, it's about 22 degrees.
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When you're sleeping in a heated shelter, the higher you can make your bed, the better.
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You want your bed to be at least as tall as your heat source, ideally a little bit taller.
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i've been in the shelter five hours
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and i've already gone through two -thirds of my firewood
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so i had to go out and cut some more oh gotta split that too
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i think it's time to go to bed see you guys in the morning
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tell you what i slept a lot better last night it was a lot warmer and more comfortable
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but i did have to wake up a bunch to stoke the fire
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i woke up about 2 a .m the first time and then at 3, 4 .30.
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And then 6 and then 6 .30ish or so.
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I was pretty much up.
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So for breakfast, I've got an omelet.
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I made this at home.
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It's got sausage, vegetables, cheese, eggs.
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Went and threw it in a vacuum -sealed bag and then froze it.
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Now all I got to do is just warm it up.
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All right, I got my honey butter sitting over here melting.
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it's getting hot in here yesterday it was cold even with my jacket on
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and the stove going full blast i got the stove turned down to halfway
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and it's still hot in here
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and it has to do with all this mass inside the tent
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there's 400 pounds of wood in here there's all my gear there's the ground the tent itself all
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that stuff needs to be heated up and it takes a long time
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but once it all gets warm it stays really hot in here it gets really nice
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and even when the stove goes down it stays warmer in here for a longer time doesn't
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that look good this is so much better than dehydrated eggs
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all right well i think it's starting to get up
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and face the day oh i gotta tell you it is
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so nice to have a floor in this tent it's
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so much warmer and it's
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so nice not to have my feet down in the mud
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it's an absolute luxury oh look at this my pants are all dry my mittens are all dry
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I always bring backup food for a lot of reasons
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and I had this bit of pork here
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that I didn't get to use and I was keeping it underneath my bed to keep it cold.
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A mouse got into it, ate up all that pork.
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See that?
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It's probably a vole or a lemming.
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I just cut off that part.
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It's still good.
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I have more trouble with mice than any other animal hands down
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and the longer you camp in one spot the worse the problem becomes it's like more
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and more mice find you
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when the mice get really bad they'll start coming in at night
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and grabbing your hair and pulling out bits of your hair to make their nest it's it's not great all right
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oh it's 10 a .m and we're just in time for the sunrise
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uh oh that's not good a car doesn't want to start
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and it sounds like it's the battery it's zero degrees fahrenheit right now
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so i wouldn't be surprised if the battery's so cold that it just doesn't want to start start.
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Make sure it doesn't overheat.
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I just need to raise the temperature of the battery like 20, 30 degrees.
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I don't need to boil it.
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All right, that's feeling warm.
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All right.
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I'm going to try to warm up the engine block and see if that helps.
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Fortunately, the engine block is way back there.
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I got to be careful.
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This K truck is sitting on top of 18 inches of snow.
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If the snow gives way and it settles,
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it's going to squish me all right we're gonna give that 30 minutes or so and see if that doesn't help
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well there she is once i got
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it all dialed in it was really nice this would have made a really good long -term shelter you
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It's warm but it's not hot.
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Obviously this is a little bit sketchy.
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Gotta make sure you don't catch anything on fire or melt any wires or anything.
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Whoa.
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Well it's like a Cheech and Chong video in here.
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There's smoke coming out.
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Aha!
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Woohoo!
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This is living in Alaska in a nutshell.
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Stuff goes wrong, things break, and you just gotta deal with it.
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You know, it's not like I could call a tow truck.
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Engine's warmed up.
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Let's see if we can get out of here.
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I'm going to go.
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well that was a good time hopefully you guys enjoyed this video
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and if you want to see more videos from the outdoor boys youtube channel make sure to click subscribe activate
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that notification button and i will see you guys in two weeks
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if you like this video don't forget to check out the
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outdoor boys youtube channel where we have hundreds of videos just like this
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and don't forget to click subscribe
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so you can see other great videos every saturday morning and hit that bell button and you'll get notifications.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “3 Days in Arctic with Bushcraft Hot Tent & No Sleeping Bag”. This video has 266 sentences and 2699 words to shadow. The speech runs for 32:08. The speaker talks slowly, about 84 words per minute, so there is time to copy every sound. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| freeze verb | /ˈfɹiːz/ | Especially of a liquid, to become solid due to low temperature. |
| shelter noun | /ˈʃɛltə/ | A place where a person or animal may find protection from the elements (especially rain, storms, or cold) sometimes as a place to sleep (such as a cave). |
| butter noun | /ˈbʌtɚ/ | A soft, fatty foodstuff made by churning the cream of milk (generally cow's milk). |
| honey noun | /ˈhʌni/ | A sweet, viscous, gold-colored fluid produced from plant nectar by bees, and often consumed by humans. |
| melt verb | /mɛlt/ | To change (or to be changed) from a solid state to a liquid state, usually by a gradual heat. |
| potato noun | /pəˈteɪ.təʊ/ | The edible starchy tuber of the plant species Solanum tuberosum. |
| stove noun | /stoʊv/ | A heater, a closed apparatus to burn fuel for the warming of a room. |
| log noun | /lɔɡ/ | The trunk of a dead tree, cleared of branches. |
| mouse noun | /maʊs/ | Any mammal of the many rodent families (especially Muridae) that have a small body and a long tail. |
| pine noun | /paɪn/ | Any coniferous tree of the genus Pinus. |
| underneath adverb | /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/ | Below; in a place beneath. |
| outdoor adjective | /aʊtˈdɔː/ | Situated in, designed to be used in, or carried on in the open air. |
| boot noun | /but/ | A heavy shoe that covers part of the leg. |
| tent noun | /tɛnt/ | A pavilion or portable lodge consisting of skins, canvas, or some strong cloth, stretched and sustained by poles, used for sheltering people from the weather. |
| steak noun | /steɪk/ | Beefsteak: a slice of beef, broiled or cut for broiling. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| warm up verb | /ˌwɔː(ɹ)m ˈʌp/ | To become warmer. |
| get up verb | To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb. | |
| wake up verb | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | To stop sleeping; to awake. |
| bring along verb | To escort or carry an item or person to a destination. | |
| burn up verb | To catch fire and burn until destroyed. | |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| cut off verb | /ˌkʌt ˈɔf/ [ˌkɐɾ ˈɔf] | To remove by cutting. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I think it's time to do some camping.
- We'll just have to deal with it.
- I've got a shelter, I've got fire.
- I think it's time to start working on dinner.
- How many times have I put on frozen boots?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | we've had · it's been · i've been |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is still not frozen · is frozen · are frozen |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 90 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, gonna, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, thick /θɪk/, thaw /θɔː/, thermometer /θɚˈmɑ.mɪ.tɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shelter /ˈʃɛltə/, notification /ˌnoʊtɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, luxury /ˈlʌk.ʃə.ɹi/, delicious /dɪˈlɪ.ʃəs/, shake /ˈʃeɪk/
- Long words — get the stress right: notification /ˌnoʊtɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, fortunately /ˈfɔɹ.t͡ʃə.nɪt.li/, ideally /aɪˈdi.ə.li/, insulation /ˌɪnsəˈleɪʃən/, perishable /ˈpɛ.ɹɪ.ʃə.bəl/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like freeze, shelter, butter.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.