12 Months Sleeping Outside

Suck Creek Canyon and the Tennessee River Gorge

Sleeping outside is good for you. Evidence? Oh, so you’re Mr. Science Guy now. Here’s a sentence from the Journal of Environment and Behavior that’ll make you absolutely want to scrape your eyeballs out: 

“Analysis revealed a positive, linear association between the density of trees and self-reported stress recovery, adjusted R² = .05, F(1, 149) = 8.53, p < .01.” 

STEM ruins beauty. Compare that to this poem by Wendell Berry:

"I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." 

I spent the year trying to regularly, once a month, rest in the peace of wild things and it was liberating. This dumb little goal helped me feel a lot more like myself but I have no evidence to prove it and also I'm no poet. So here's some beauty-ruining data and crappy iPhone photos from a year of sleeping outside once a month. 

Figure 1

I did not sleep outside in February or August. Mid-February, Rebecca and I took our first trip away since the pandemic started. Ultimately, because of COVID restrictions, we really just did the same thing we do in Chattanooga, except in a cabin in the woods. We went for hikes, watched T.V., got dinner out, brought it back to the house, and ate. R.V. people call that "camping" so it's on the list but is not included in the subsequent data. August is just terrible and I didn't even try to sleep outside. Who cares? Not me. 

I wrote trip reports for a few of these, which you can read HERE. 

Russ vintage mountain bike-packing through north Florida pine forests

Figure 2

Ten out of 11 trips were with friends. I think that speaks for itself. I also appreciate the variety of folks I was able to share these spaces with; ranging from my life-long best friend, Russ to Reid and Leah and their one-year-old daughter. Max and Brooks take the cake for most trips (Max was part of the King Family Campout). 

Max riding out of the fog in Prentice Cooper State Forest

Figures 3.a and 3.b

Getting outside doesn’t have to be complicated. “Aim small, miss small.”80% of these monthly adventures were overnighters within an hour or two of home. This is pretty easy in a town like Chattanooga and I'm thankful for that. But I think that a lot of us can find these small adventures near our respective towns. 

adventure from the front door somewhere on Lookout Mountain

Figure 4

83% of nights slept outside were on public land. Public land conjures images of dense forests and spacious deserts managed by the US Forest Service or  Bureau of Land Management but let's not forget about our state parks! State parks get a bad rap, I think, because, well honestly, they can be bougie and touristy and feature things like zip lines and golf courses. But some of our iconic outdoor spaces are our state parks: Eldorado Canyon in Colorado or Cloudland Canyon in Georgia. What incredible resources we should protect. 

Becca overlooking Savage Gulf at the South Cumberland State Park

Figure 5

2021 was the year of bikepacking. This was by design as part of the reason I set this goal was to bikepack more. A note on the "other:" this includes car-camping with Rebecca's family and sleeping in my parent's backyard. 

all that bikpacking and only one flat...

Figure 6

I slept outside for years, months at a time even, without owning a tent. Cowboy or cowgirl or cowperson camping is the purest form of sleeping outside and it’s in my blood. I finally bought my first nice tent back in 2018 and I got some good use out of it this year but I still prefer no separation between me and the open air. Again, I want to emphasize the point that camping doesn't have to be complicated. Camping tentless is lighter, simpler, and in my opinion, better. 

Brooks cowperson camping in Suck Creek Canyon

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Not My Words: And God Said, Let There Be Marshes

Palmetto Island, Florida

I grew up in Florida surrounded by swamps, marshes, and estuaries. However much time I spend in the mountains, these grey areas between land and sea are home to me. Maybe it is because of this that I was so struck by Austen Hartke's reflection on the biblical creation poem in Genesis. The following words are his, discovered in a recent book club read. I leave them here, without comment, for you to ponder in your heart.  

"For a kid who liked order and organization, the story of creation in Genesis 1 was just about perfect. There was a place for everything, and everything was in its place. This kind of structure was something that I appreciated up until my teen years, when I began to get a better sense of the way life sometimes fell outside black-and-white boundaries. Biologically, I learned that the world isn't separated distinctly into land or sea; there are also marshes, estuaries, and coral reefs...These binaries are not meant to speak to all of reality -- they invite us into thinking about everything between and beyond... 

Instead of asking the text to define and label all that is, we can ask God to speak into the space between the words, between the biblical times and our time, and between categories we see as opposite." -- Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians (2018)

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This is a nanoadventure.

I zipped up my sleeping bag and took a long look at the blanket of distant stars stretching across the dark velvet sky. The panoply of the cosmos bounded by a frame of loblolly pines that gently swayed in the wind. The vast otherness of the universe, surrounded by a deep sense of rootedness. An irony emphasized by the fact that I was cowboy camping in my parents’ garden some twenty yards from their unlocked living room. 

My 2021 goal was to go camping once a month. I was mostly successful and felt good about being back in the rhythm of regularly sleeping outside, even if just a little bit. I did miss August and maybe February on a technicality because, well, those months suck. When my November bikepacking plans fell through, I was determined to not lose another month. Even if it meant sleeping in my parents’ backyard while on holiday. Which is what happened.

So that evening, I kissed my wife and dog goodnight and strode forth into the backyard alone, arms akimbo, with a sleeping bag under one arm and a sleeping pad under the other.

You may have heard of Alastair Humphreys' popularized "microadventure." He describes them as the espresso shots of outdoor adventure: concentrated bursts of being outside when you cannot climb Kilimanjaro. This, however, was more of a nanoadventure. 

A nanoadventure is a night in the backyard star-gazing, story-telling, or experimenting with a new sleep system. It requires no planning, logistics, or travel. It merely gets you outside. Which, on its own terms, is pretty cool. 

A nanoadventure is closely related to the microadventure. A nanometer is 1,000 times smaller than a micrometer, so this is not a to-scale metaphor. A microadventure is an S24O bikepacking or overnight backpacking trip. There are some maps and logistics involved, but not much. Just a lot of fun. 

Microadventures rule but trips are what we look forward to. Spring break at the Red River Gorge, a cross country road trip to go skiing, backpacking the Appalachian Trail -- these are all trips. They require varying degrees of planning: plane tickets, resupplies, and lots of maps. We love trips. The nanoadventure is a dry run for the microadventure, which is practice for your upcoming big trip. 

Expeditions are the trips we read about. Kathy Karlo big-wall climbing the Pico Cão Grande in the jungles of São Tomé. Matthieu Tordeur solo skiing across the Antarctic unsupported. Kim McNett and Bjørn Olson circumnavigating the Lost Coast of Alaska on fat bikes and packrafts. These are big-time, big-budget endeavors. You and I will likely never go on an expedition. That's why Humphreys brought microadventures into vogue. 

Trips, big or small, and microadventures are more achievable than expeditions and more preferable to nanoadventures. But guess what? The stars above my parents' garden are the same stars above the last least explored corners of the earth. And the familiar song of coyotes I heard from their backyard is the same serenade I heard years ago in the high desert mountains of northern New Mexico. The range and abundance of coyotes in the United States make it as exotic as the common squirrel. Yet I challenge anyone to hear its howl and not instantly feel like Edward Abbey — alone in the world and at home in the wilderness even if that "wilderness" is twenty yards from your childhood bedroom.  

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