"What started as a whimsical self-challenge... is now a nightly routine.... [He] even insisted on sleeping outside after he broke his left wrist in an accident at home this month. 'We came home from the emergency room, and I went back outside like I always do,' Isaac said. 'It’s like the time we saw a bear walk up to our patio door. Thirty minutes later, I was brushing my teeth and getting ready to go to sleep outside.'.... His dad [said] 'He found a waterproof hammock to string up in the yard, and he has a couple of sleeping bags, under-quilts and over-quilts that he can add depending on how cold it is.'... Isaac said [he has] an insulated hood.... 'It goes over my entire face and cinches up so just my nostrils are out.... Even in the cold, I sleep just fine....' ... [H]e prefers snow, rain and wind to the heat and humidity of the summer.
'Unless it’s below zero, I like to stick one of my legs out at night, so I don’t get too hot,' he said. 'If you’re cold, you can always put on layers. But in the summer, there’s only so much you can take off. You get all sweaty, plus there are mosquitoes'...."
Lots of themes here, but there are 2 that I personally identify with:
1. Finding something you like and doing it repeatedly — a positive ritual. I blog every day and also have a ritual — though not every single day — of going out to the same place every day at sunrise. I find this immensely satisfying.
2. The weather will sometimes challenge us, but I agree that the challenge at the cold end of the scale is better than the challenge at the hot end. Sure, the cold has more power to kill you, but there are outward things you can do! Bundle up.
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I wonder what his percentage of brown fat is.
Minnesotans!
Do you have a Winter's Tale link? Beverly Penn was also very young, slept on the roof all winter.
Now is the time for the Green Bay to host a Super Bowl. No problem.
When I was in about seventh grade, I read a biography of the female athlete Babe Didrikson. (I had checked the biography out of my school's library.)
One factoid about her that I have remembered to the present is that she always slept outside on her porch, because she thought that breathing fresh air was a healthy practice.
(In my memory, the weather often was cold when she slept outside, but I see now from the Wikipedia article about her that she grew up in Port Arthur, Texas -- where it's a lot warmer than Duluth, Minnesota.)
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I see also in the Wikipedia article that her husband, George Zaharias, lived long enough to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2021 by President Donald Trump.
"Most of the time
I’m clear focused all around
Most of the time
I can keep both feet on the ground
I can follow the path, I can read the signs
Stay right with it when the road unwinds
I can handle whatever I stumble upon"
Correction to my own comment at 9:35 AM
... her husband, George Zaharias, lived long enough to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2021 by President Donald Trump.
Babe Didrikson (not her husband) received that medal posthumously in 2021.
I actually tried to do the same thing as a teenager, goal was to sleep outside for a week. I had a pup tent though. I quit after 3 days. It make me appreciate my comfy bed and not being wet.
There are also 'outward' things you can do about the heat. Wear less clothing. Some sort of hat, always. SHORTS, a must. Do your most important outdoor things earlier in the day. By afternoon, in the summer, you want to be indoors, or at the very least, at an outdoor covered bar, oceanside if possible. The breeze is steady here on the coast.
A/C is a must down here. Not sure how Florida was livable before A/C.
"Not sure how Florida was livable before A/C."
People acclimated. They slowed down in the summer. They got in the water. These are pleasures that are gone now. Every time you go in the air conditioning, you deprive your nervous system of a chance to acclimate.
Same think with heating in winter, of course.
WI v. FL: I can always get warmer, but can't always get cooler.
Be Prepared, or what was a coming of age.
"If I owned two properties, one in Hell, and one in Miami, I would rent out the property in Miami and live in Hell." - Mark Twain
My brother was a ceramic tile installer in new home construction in sunny Florida. No A/C in the homes as they were unfinished. In the summer he worked 4AM until noon. Then to his pool.
I knew a guy in Florida who refused to have air conditioning, anywhere. He always wore overalls, he said he was born in the wrong century. He didn't live near the water, either; there are apartments in Palm Beach with no air conditioning, and they are perfectly comfortable. No, he lived well inland, in orange grove and sugar cane country.
When I was in college the fraternity house had a "cold dorm, "which is where I and few others slept. Windows always open, even in -10 deg Iowa winters. This was before electric blankets. It was wonderful - perfectly warm bundled up in heavy blankets and quilts, breathing that cool/cold air, and deep satisfying sleep. For sleeping only, we all had our own rooms for dressing, studying, etc.
To this day I sleep with windows wide open year-round (though it only hits 32deg on a really cold NorCal night). I find closed, heated rooms and electric blankets suffocating.
@Ann - I grew up in FL and LA during the pre-A/C era. We didn't slow down, we sought shade. Read a book in the top of the afternoon, play baseball in the morning. Chase moths and lightning bugs at night, ride our bikes behind the mosquito control van (yikes!).
Sleeping porches were great, but you were lucky to have screens, honestly, if you were working class poor like we were.
Hey, kid, get off my lawn.
_XC
PS - My oldest did 200+ nights "under the stars" on his way to Eagle Scout and that was really a lot compared to the other scouts. This kid is on a different journey.
"People acclimated."
True that. We have a big drafty house. To heat it would be beyond our means. We've fixed up the basement as our den refuge but even there we kept the temp about 58-60. In November when we start the Winter regime it's a little bit teeth-chattering. But by Christmas we will have acclimated and don't think it's so bad.
The difference between an ordinary 32°F freezing night and -38°F is greater than the difference between a 32°F freezing night and a 100°F summer day.
Besides going to the gym every (weekday) morning, my pleasant morning ritual is to go to my local SBux every morning around the same time. It's just nice to see my favorite baristas, I think they like seeing me, I stop on the way back and pick up the mail. . . .I'm thinking about getting a Nespresso machine since I only get two shots there, but, as I say, it's something I enjoy doing.
Not gonna bivouac outdoors year round though. Winter'd be okay, not Summer, especially not here in AZ. . . . .
This is pretty impressive without a tent.
In about 2008 or so, there was a blizzard. Our Philadelphia suburb got about 3 feet of snow before drifts.
The kids and I built an igloo in the yard - the snow wasn't ideal for a REAL igloo (as I understood their construction - cutting and stacking blocks), but we were able to make a pile of snow about 4 feet high or so and then hollow it out, giving us a ceiling maybe 2 ft above the floor. Our oldest and I slept in it for part of that night, until 1:00 in the morning if I recall - but I chickened out, because in my desire to keep my kid from freezing, I made him sleep all the way inside the thing, basically at my feet (I had my head sticking out due to space constraints), and I was worried that CO2 was building up in there faster than it could get around me to the outside. As I said, it wasn't a properly built igloo with a smoke hole!
We decided that we probably wouldn't have frozen to death, but it was not a comfortable way to sleep either!
By the next day, the natural compaction of the snow had lowered the ceiling even further and I don't think I could even have wriggled in all the way.
"My brother was a ceramic tile installer in new home construction in sunny Florida. No A/C in the homes as they were unfinished. In the summer he worked 4AM until noon. Then to his pool."
Yes, the early start. That is a very important trick. I use it here in the summer. I get out and doing active, outdoor things very early — beginning before sunrise (which is, of course, very early in the summer).
There's the tradition of the "siesta." You're entitled to stop early, because it's hot. You can go back out in the evening.
Despite what I wrote in the post, there really are a lot of things you can do about the heat (and I mean other than hide in air conditionings). One thing I do (especially because I sunburn easily) is find the shade. I walk in the woods (and I mountain bike in the woods). It makes a huge difference.
My 10-year-old son does a lot of dumb stuff that I don't fight him on, because I figure in a couple of years he'll give it up to please some girl. Minnesota dad is probably thinking something similar.
Florida was livable for a lot fewer people before air conditioning.
Grew up in Deep South without AC. No one complained. Ceiling fans. We bullshit ourselves.
"These are pleasures that are gone now."
Not all of them. We still have the water. Beautiful beaches, though it takes driving through town to get to them. Most of our neighbors and friends have pools. We don't. But we have open access to a few of our neighbors'.
A thing I've learned late in life: Great neighbors are a blessing.
In Minnesota, where I live, it is not unusual to see men in shorts in the stores on extremely cold days, like minus 10 or lower days.
We call it Minnesota macho. A few weeks ago, hundred of ice fishers were out on Gull Lake near Brainerd, Minnesota for the annual fishing contest in extremely low temperatures. It was literally a village on ice complete with biffy’s and food vendors, and Ford F150’s for prizes. People came from all over the globe, many with hyper expensive fishing equipment. Ironically, the largest fish was caught by a 13 year old boy fishing in 50 feet of water, a 9.5 pound walleye. He won a new F150. The next largest fish came in at 6.5 pounds.
That’s all from Lake Woebegone.
This would get the parents arrested for child abuse in many parts of our country.
"We call it Minnesota macho."
When I was a little boy in the sixties in Upstate New York, the girls wore skirts to school, above the knee, in any and all weather. I recall being impressed.
I've slept out in lower temperatures than that. As you say, bundle up. Property bundled, you'll be quite comfortable. I keep one pair of poofy wool socks, ones that are never worn in shoes, but only in the sleeping bag.
I always feel just a little bit sorry for people who get themselves trapped in the "unbroken chain" dilemma. "397 days without a cookie!" kind of stuff. You might really want a cookie, finally, but you just can't, else you'll break your chain.
Great accomplishment, but you're a prisoner of your own meme.
Keep the kid away from cliffs.
Virtuous streaks don't create a prisoner. They enhance motivation.
I was looking for a "homelessness" tag on this post.
I think there was a short story similar to this, “on sleeping in a cold country “, I think
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