Beat the Heat. Sleep Outside.

Thousands of years ago, sleeping outside was a way of life, not an option. As the human race has become domesticated, we have moved back outside for entertainment. Perhaps people wouldn’t feel the draw of sleeping under the stars if it wasn’t for our ancestors. Camping didn’t become popular until the early 20^th century. This is, perhaps, because of the rising affluence of Americans, or because of the institutionalization of the national parks and recreation programs. These days, camping is usually associated with Boy Scouts, retirees, the homeless and people at music festivals. Not people that you would normally lump together.

When I was growing up, my family didn’t take too many vacations. A family of six was expensive to move, house, feed and entertain. I do remember going on several camping trips, though. The first one that comes to mind was not with my family, but with Boy Scouts. While I wasn’t a Scout, my friend, Jacob was. On that night, I didn’t stay in a tent with my friend, but another boy. I didn’t know him, but that wasn’t an issue for me. In the middle of the night I was awakened by the boy as he convulsed and twitched. I grabbed him by the shoulders and started to shake him.

“Hey, wake up!” I demanded. “Hey kid! Wake up!” I kept forgetting his name. After what seemed like an extraordinary amount of time not waking up, I went to the tent that Jacob was sleeping in. I looked in his tent and told him what was happening. He lifted his head up and rubbed his eyes.

“He’s fine,” he told me. “He does that sometimes. That’s why nobody else wanted to sleep in his tent.” As it turned out, the boy had epilepsy. After a night of seizures, he woke up unaffected. When I told him what happened, he first looked confused.

“Really?” he asked in slight disbelief. Then he just shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the tent.

When I decided to sleep outside for a week, I wanted to make it a two-part event. First, I would sleep outside for a week during the hottest month of the year, July. Second, I would sleep outside for a week during the coldest month of the year, January. Between the two, I actually anticipated the heat of the summer to be the more difficult of the two, despite the fact that during the heat of the summer was when people normally go camping. My thought was that, in the heat, you can only take off so many layers of clothes whereas in the cold, you can always add more layers.

My in-laws were kind enough to let me use their tent for a week. Actually, it was the first time that the tent had ever been used. They had found it cheap at Goodwill and probably saw the allure of camping, even though it wasn’t really in their nature. Thus it was unused. I was more than happy to assemble it and test it out.

There are several reasons that people camp. Some people use the camping experience as a way to improve their survival skills. Generally, camping is done in conjunction with other activities such as hiking, biking, swimming, fishing or building a fire. I was doing none of these. I wasn’t like a caveman living outside due to necessity. I was spending my days at work or in my house and sleeping outside. I wasn’t really in danger of being attacked, stranded or losing my food source.

As I was setting up the tent, I realized that assembling a tent is like riding a bike. You might start out slow and not remember where all of the pieces go or what they do, but once you get going, it doesn’t take too long before you’re moving quickly. When I got the tent up, I noticed that there was a hole at one of the apexes. It didn’t seem too big, and I covered it with some gorilla tape. I thought about the various times that I had camped in my yard. All of them came after my parents got divorced and I was the only kid living with my dad. Vacation went from rare to never in those days. I would set up the tent and sleep outside; but never for an entire week.

On the first night, I had a few revelations. Firstly was that while to the naked eye, my backyard it flat, it actually has quite a few bumps. Secondly, I assumed that it was much more comfortable in a sleeping bag than lying on top of blankets. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a sleeping bag. Nor did I bring out a thin sheet to cover myself. It seems weird, but I still wanted to cover myself despite being hot. Finally, I realized that all of those noises that you hear out the window become amplified when you are sleeping ear-to-eye with a cricket. Not withstanding all these, once I fell asleep, I was undisturbed. When I woke up, my clothes were soaked with sweat; an inefficient way to lose weight or an easy to become dehydrated.

Day two was when my mettle was tested. I had only been sleeping for a couple of hours when I was awakened by a loud clap of thunder. Although it was the sound that woke me up, the strobe effect of lightning bothered me more. Several years ago, I found out that I don’t completely close my eyes when I sleep. This causes me to be photosensitive and dries out my eyes. That is why I often sleep with a pillow over my face. Apparently it’s genetic because my brother, Arik lays a sock over his eyes for the same thing. My face was buried in my pillow when I felt the first drop of water.

I stood up and closed the windows of the tent, so as not to let any more rain enter. I was only lying down for a moment when I felt a drip of water on my neck. Then I remembered the hole that was in the apex of the tent. The piece of tape that I had used was still there. It was stopping the water from pouring in, but it certainly didn’t work as a complete water barrier. Instead, the water slid along the roof of the tent until it reached a point that drooped. The water collected there until there was enough liquid to form a drop. Then it dropped on my head. It didn’t take too long of this water torture before I considered going inside. As I lay there, I tried to ignore the dripping water and go back to sleep, but my mind started to wander. I thought about water boarding and realized its effectiveness. It was adverse weather conditions like these that forced man to move inside in the first place. But I couldn’t do it. I had to stay outside. I had to do it for the blog.

I got up and rotated my bedding ninety degrees as well as flipping it over. The thickest blankets were now on top of the pile. I felt like the meat of a giant sandwich. While the bumps on the ground were more pronounced, I figured that it was better to have a thicker blanket between me and the water that was entering the tent. I lay curled up in the fetal position, repeating to myself that the worse that it got, the more interesting of a story it would make. I glanced at my watch and saw that it had been raining for two hours.

In the morning, I was awakened by my son, Tate, trying to unzip the door to the tent. Apparently, when I zipped the inner layer shut during the night, I had left the zipper at the top of the tent. Tate was unsuccessfully jumping up, trying to reach the zipper and rubbing against the tent material. In my sleep deprived state, it sounded like he was taking one hand and rubbing a balloon and running his fingernails down a chalkboard with the other. I stood up and opened the door for him. When I turned back around I saw that the only dry spot on the floor was where I had been. This is another reason to have a sleeping bag; they are weatherproof. I grabbed the wet blankets and first ringed them out in the grass then took them inside to wash them. Then I took a long, hot shower.

Luckily, it didn’t rain for the rest of the week; it also seemed to have broken the heat. For the rest of the week, it was quite pleasant sleeping outside. I didn’t wake up wet with neither sweat nor water. I had even grown accustomed to the sound of the bugs at night. Occasionally, I heard soft mooing from cows that were at one of the farms outside of town.

I looked up at the stars, admiring the clarity of the sky and tried to create my own constellations. The grouping that looked like a smile reminded me of Leigha. I could see why people are drawn by nature. There is a comfort that can be found in the natural humming that replaces the sounds of a refrigerator kicking on or sputtering to a stop. Or the ticking of a clock. Or the house as it settles. But as I lay there, I realized that I was homesick. Or maybe, bedsick. I missed having Leigha next to me as I slept. And perhaps those mechanical whirs are just artificial crickets to tide us over until we hear the real ones again.

Has camping become a romanticized part of middle class life? How many people have camping supplies/tents that they have seldom, if ever, use? What is the social commentary on that?