I recently had the good pleasure to go camping with my 10 year-old son. It was a Boy Scout campt, and accomodations were minimal -- not what I am used to when I travel. Upon arrival and unpacking our provisions, I realized that I forgot my damn sleeping bag. This is normally not a big deal in the middle of summer... but this was northern Wisconsin, and a very clear night. Shit! There is a well known effect, black-body radiation, which saps the warmth from everything when there is no cloud cover. The deep blackness of the night sky absorbs the heat emitted from the Earth.... resulting in, you guessed it, really fucking cold.
We had a nice camp fire until about 10:30 pm, but then it gave way to the stifling cold and the boys and dads retreated to our humble tent-like shelters.
Fuck!!! By 11:00 pm, my body temperature was telling me to look for a source of heat. As 1:00 am rolled around, panic set in that I wouldn't get any sleep at all. By 3:30 am, the mucus in my nose was frozen into corn-flaked sized projectiles. It was a looooong night. I did manage to sleep from about 4:15 am til 5:00 am, when I think the temperature reached a minimum.... 45 degrees F. I was covered with a thin beach towel, with about as much warmth as the Wicked Witch of the West. Fuck!!! I was cold. At that point, I stumbled out of the "shelter" and made my way to the car -- a brilliant move, I wish I had thought of it hours ago! -- to retrieve the chemically activated hand warmers nestled in my first-aid kit in the back of my car. I stuffed those in my pocket and headed back for shelter, it was about a quarter-mile trek back from the car to the campsite.
With my modest warmth in hand, I managed another 45 minutes of sleep... until we awoke to do the polar plunge at 6:00 am. Shit! Does anyone sleep on these campouts?!
I had a wonderful, but somnilent, time at camp with my son. I wouldn't trade it for anything... except maybe a sleeping bag.
At the crack of dawn, I started a fire and managed to raise my body temperature by a few degrees.
