A love for building and creating has 20-year-old Jaxon Sackett taking his joy of building Lego and cardboard crafts as a kid to the next level.

Using his wits and resourcefulness, Sackett is able to use mother nature to his advantage as he creates elaborate structures out of simple materials like dirt, rocks, and old fence boards. Sackett already has two YouTube videos up of the structures he has built and is hoping to post more.

“If I can show my love for the outdoors and spread that to people and maybe encourage some people to get off the phone and go outside and enjoy nature, I'd consider that a success.”

Sackett's father an Outdoor Ed teacher in Strathmore instilled a love of the outdoors in both Jaxon and his brother, "My family's a got a love for the outdoors and just that idea of growing up in the country, there's so much to do if you can enjoy the outdoors there's a lot more opportunity to get outside and have fun."

Sackett also explains how he enjoys his time alone with his thoughts and audiobooks while he builds his structures.

“I've always been a little more introverted and just that ability to be on my own is something that I can take advantage of, most people wouldn’t be willing to spend six days stacking rocks all alone, but I don't mind that so much.”

Building the structures is only half the battle, as Sackett explained he also creates and edits his own Youtube videos, which is a lengthy process that also includes getting critiques from his friends.

Sometimes, what Sackett thinks will just be a random shot could end up being stunning. He once set up his GoPro to capture the sunset for a time-lapse video and when he came back to get the camera there was still a lot of battery life left so he left it out overnight, and what he saw the next day was breathtaking.

“I just randomly caught some beautiful Northern Lights and some deer walking around my shelter and it was a really awesome shot that I accidentally got it's always a good feeling when you nail a shot, but it's even better when you weren't expecting it.”

One of Sackett’s structures is still standing in good condition even after four months and the snowfall. He is also hoping to be filming another video in the next three weeks, but it is all weather dependent.

“I was ready to do another one, but it required more snow than we ended up having because of this warm weather so I'm hoping for a little bit of snow in the next week.”

Part of the creative part of the process for Jaxon also includes the style of videos that he makes with his first video "Building a Cozy Cabin to Survive the Winter" he said there was a lot of music behind the production whereas with his second video "Building a Survival Shelter in a Thunderstorm" it was more about letting the sounds of Mother Nature shine through.

"I got a lot of feedback about that between those two styles of videos, a lot of people like less music and just the more nature sounding ones."

Sackett chuckled when he explained he built his first structure on his family's land, or so he thought, turns out it was on the neighbours property but he said they get along really well so they didn't mind at all and it still stands there today.  As for his second structure the survival shelter that was shot in Kananaskis country. 

While Sackett is not out building these structures, he is doing sports videos for Mount Royal, and he is hoping to go back to school in the fall to take something with a journalistic background.

To watch Sackett build these and other upcoming outdoor structures visit his YouTube channel Jaxson Sackett.

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