She built a shelter out of mud???

Here in the USA, if you were to ask most regular people how to build a house or even a permanent shelter, more than 90 percent of them would probably tell you to use wood, sheetrock, etc. However, in most of the world for most of history - including here in the USA - houses were built of of a variety of diverse materials. Such as mud.

I once read a book called Build Your Own Earth Oven which described how to build an outdoor oven out of mud. Here's a pretty good overview of the techniques: Online instructions. And here is a blog that describes one person's experience building their own mud oven.

So, after reading the book, I thought to myself: Why not use that technique to build an entire house? Sure enough, it's a tried and true - somewhat ancient - technique called cob.
Here are some links to peruse:
What is cob?
The Hand Sculpted Home
And then, of course, anything written by Rob Roy, my favorite being The Sauna :-)

I pictured Selena's shelter to be very basic, but given time, and a little bit of practice, she could give it some simple beauty such as:

or

or

or

Lastly, I've decided to include a link to a youtube video showing how really beautiful a Cob house can be. Keep in mind that using the very ground underneath your feet when standing on your own property to build a house can save you literally THOUSANDS on building materials AND future bills as such a house is way easier to keep warm in the winter and cool in the summer since Earth is the best insulation ever, lol! :-)

Personally, I want to make my future home out of strawbales and mud, but I have to admit that it would be fun to build a shed or a guest room out of cob! Now, I just need some land to practice this on :-D