So what I'm seeing is that there weren't any "tricks" to staying even slightly comfortable that didn't put you at risk, and if you were detected and that brought down horses, dogs, tracking technology, etc., all you could do was keep covered, keep moving, and pray. Is that about the size of it?
The only real way to be comfortable in a nasty situation like E&E, is to simply mentally prepare yourself that you are mortal and that death can come at any moment. Once you accept that, you can work from that understanding and begin to hone and develop an intimate awareness of your strengths and weaknesses (physical and psychological).
In an E&E scenario, comfort would be the last consideration, unless you are just insanely egotistical and vain. Otherwise, yeah, leisure camping comforts is all thrown out a$$ backwards and the REAL comforts will be in knowing you are doing a particular thing to prevent yourself from becoming D-E-D. You should be subconsciously comforted by that, get it? You can be warm to a small degree by not having a blazing fire. You can keep it very small and keep the coals hot and visibly well covered by solid objects. A cave would be the best advantage but if you can't find one (be careful not to get smoked out however), the best option would be to just do without. Use the earth as insulation if you are cold and it will also be a great camouflage and help mask the scent of sweaty balls (literally, that sounds funny but your balls give off a heck of a lot more pheromones than your armpits dude!).
If they are using horses, dogs and/or heat seeking infrared technology, yeah, prayers are your ultimate weapon (in all seriousness)... that and keep huffing it. I would say that prayer is more important too, which coming in a close 2nd is knowing which direction you need to go and having keen situational awareness. Supposedly, if you spray your feet real good with pepper spray, that will throw off the dogs a bit too... or so I've heard.
If you are trying to live in the woods and get by with stealth, you better have a plan similar to Eric Rudolph's LOL. Where he was, there is like 18 miles of virgin wilderness. I am sure that once you stay out for a bit, and pray for guidance (you literally have to develop seeing your environment as if you are one with it and pray for guidance and come from a place of... get this... love). Once you acquire this state of awareness, you can sense when someone is near or if you are being watched. You will begin to feel all sorts of different things, and they each have their own meaning that you will need to learn because each person feels vibrations differently depending on how they see the world. I am being serious.
When you begin to feel these things, and you respect and honor them by listening to them (at first sometimes you will get the interpretation wrong as you learn your particular vibration senses but that is ok... it takes time), they will serve you more and become stronger. You have to realize that we're living on a planet that is floating in space and there are many magical realities existing at the same time in the same place here on Earth. We have become so logical and right brain sided (check out a book called
The Bicameral Mind), that we have shut off our imaginative receptors. Finding it hard to believe there really are fairies and gnomes might be a handicap to develop the ability of literally disappearing into the woods, but the more you realize that you are actually one with it, the easier the transition will be for you (NOTE: when you start to really take this seriously, you will begin to sense and see all sorts of strange things!).
Taking a good tracking class will help you get in tune with this reality. It is the art of seeing the unseen. Any military style instruction will teach you the mechanics, but to get a better sense of the creature you are tracking, a mystical interpretation approach is much more
productive all around.
Ok
LOL kinda got sidetracked there for a bit. Hope this helped a little.
