Winter camping and longing for your own bed.
The past few days have been downright frigid. Single digits, windy, snowy, blustery—all of it.
I was bundled up far more than usual in bed last night, which made me laugh because I'm not someone who likes to overheat when I sleep. In fact, I generally like to be as cold as possible. This drives Isobel nuts because she likes to be as warm as possible.
The chills and fever I've had for a few days brought fits of rather violent shaking.
How fun.
I started thinking of times in my life when I've been the coldest, and was suddenly very grateful to be indoors. Specifically, I thought of a winter camping trip I'd once been on in 2013. We were backcountry skiing in Wyoming's Absaroka mountains, dragging sleds of camping gear behind us from hip harnesses. We'd brought tents with us, but they were megamids—a special kind of tent with no floor. Those we'd mostly packed as backups, anyway. We'd primarily planned to build snowshelters to sleep in.
Snow's actually a great insulator. The thing is, it didn't get above 0°F for the entirety of our almost three-week adventure.
It snowed almost non-stop, but the wind? That whipped throughout. And I learned the hard way that I'd brought the wrong sleeping bag... one meant for much warmer weather.
I remember getting up in the middle of the night, shaking with chills, and trying to will myself back to sleep. More than once I'd rolled over, like you do when pretending you don't have to get up to pee. I'd been wearing almost every piece of dry clothing I had, plus a buff and a beanie. Eventually, I clicked on my headlamp and begrudgingly pulled on my shells and jacket.
After forcing my feet into frozen boots, I'd crawled out of the snow ramp of our quigloo and shimmied on my stomach to the frozen snowbank above. I was shocked to find it wasn't snowing. In the middle of the night, still shaking, I did jumping-jacks under the wind-whipped stars to warm up. My breath instantly froze against my eyelashes in the negative temperatures.
Somehow, I still like to sleep cold. Love it. Wouldn't have it any other way. Except when fever chills refuse to listen to the thermostat.
Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
128/365
When's the last time you reminded yourself of a time you had it worse to get through something shitty?
onward.
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