body heat

saturday morning my friend barb came to visit at camp. she likes camping, but when she's short of time or energy, she likes to come visit at camp, which means she gets to hang out and play at camping and then go home to her own bed.

so saturday morning she came down the trail with an oh-so welcome cup of hot coffee, just the way i like it. i stoked up a good fire,  which in open air in cold weather is a PROJECT. you have to babysit that thing for a couple of hours before there are enough hot coals to make it heat anything.

but then i put the coffeepot on for hot water and i made us some bowls of hot glop.

i know, sounds delicious.

so then we made some plans to go to the river of light festival in waterbury. ordinarily i would not leave my campsite to return after dark because i get freaky about it.

but barb offered to walk me back down to camp after dark.

all of this sort of explains why, at two thirty in the afternoon, with the temperature dropping, i was still hanging out on the campsite and not in my tent.

because in about an hour i was going to go up the trail and get in barb's car.

but then i was too cold. my choices were to conserve body heat NOW while i still had some to conserve, or paddle out and go home.

i cancelled with barb, washed my face in warm water, and got in my tent to begin the warming.

by five o'clock i had to leave it to pee, and when i cam back in i was shivering.

shivering represents a bit of a setback.

so i lay there in my sleeping bags and blankets: two winter weight sleeping bags, two blankets (one over and one under) FOUR air mattresses (two wide and two thick), a yoga mat (keeps the mattresses in place and prevents thermal leakage in the middle), and underneath everything, one o' them silver space blankets.

i sealed myself right in there and proceeded to eat cookies.

because your body is an amazing furnace, but it needs fuel to run on.

i kept saying to myself "i am a bright sun. i am nearly a hundred degrees warm."

i kept checking my parts to see what was warm and what wasn't. belly, chest, crotch, head, all warm. legs, butt, and feet, not so much. good news / bad news.

it took six or seven hours, but at last i was toasty warm.

but then i woke in the morning to an even colder day and a forecast of a colder night and i decided that while my body had recharged quite well, it probably didn't have the reserves to pull that off a second time on short notice.

so i packed my stuff and left camp.

today it's snowing hard and i'm glad to be indoors.

i feel a little chilly even though my heat is up and i am wearing longjohns. and every part of me that CAN be sore is sore.

so i'm pumping fluids and NSAIDS. life would be nicer if i had felt up to unloading the boats from my car yesterday.