If you ever draped a blanket over bushes or lawn chairs in the backyard and pretended to bunk down under it when you were a kid, you’ve made a bivouac — a temporary, makeshift camp with little or no cover.
Bivouac comes from the eighteenth-century German word biwacht, and originally meant a patrol of ordinary citizens who helped the town’s night watchmen. Nowadays, you’ll most often see it used as a noun, but it can be a verb too––and it's often associated with soldiers, though that’s not essential. You might not want to bivouac at the edge of that cliff when you sleepwalk every night. Make your bivouac in the meadow instead.
