A Failed Thermal Grade

By Diana Hooley

Summer’s a great time to sleep outdoors, to bed down on the front porch, or in a tent, or to cowboy camp in the open air. Idaho nights are often cool, and the soft sound of a breeze in the trees, owls hooting, and crickets chirping can be pleasantly lulling.

People generally sleep better outside. Going to bed and waking with natural light fine-tunes our circadian rhythms. Also, sleeping in bedrooms night after night, we miss the star show in the sky. The Perseid meteor shower makes its yearly appearance this month in August. 

Yes, there’s a lot to commend sleeping outside—but I have no intention of doing it this summer.

I think for people of a certain age, like me, sleeping outside has a “use by” stamp. In my younger years, the activity felt like a midsummer night’s dream but now it feels more like a nightmare.

I’ve camped in recent years, but on one trip in particular, to Baker Creek near Ketchum, I found all the reasons I needed to stop sleeping outside. I was celebrating my retirement from being a university professor and wanted to camp and fish with my husband.

The scenery at Baker’s Creek was stunning: the jagged peaks of the Boulder Mountains loomed over our campground. We got to the campsite a little late, so we immediately set up our tent. It was new and had a little screen on the roof that allowed us to watch the night sky.

I thought of all the times we had camped with our kids in our backyard. Back then, the six of us slept together in a big, canvas, army-surplus tent. We covered up with quilts and blankets, because the only sleeping bag we owned was my husband’s from his college days.

The night at Baker Creek was idyllic, clear as a bell and so, so quiet. Did I mention it was late September? That’s still summer where we live down on the Snake River. Before the trip, I didn’t consider the time of year, or the fact that Baker Creek’s elevation is well above six thousand feet. 

We made a campfire and baked a tinfoil supper of hamburger, potatoes, and onions in the hot coals. Before going to bed we doused the flames with several pans of icy creek water—which should have been my first clue. I put on my pajamas and snuggled into my sleeping bag.

Its thermal grade was listed at ten degrees, but I’ve since learned that sleeping bags have grade inflation problems worse than schools. They claim to keep you warm down to the lowest temperature possible, which may or may not be true.   

An hour later, when the tent was dark as pitch and my husband snored next to me, I had a rude awakening. I couldn’t move my hip. It was frozen to the ground. Not only that, but my shoulder was cramping mercilessly.

These bones of mine were no longer willing to accommodate the hardpan like they used to. I didn’t have enough padding in the right places to sleep comfortably on the ground. The next several minutes I churned in my sleeping bag, trying to find the least painful position.   

“Are you done circling your bed like a dog?” Dale grumbled.

“I can’t help it,” I said. “My hip hurts and I’m freezing!”

“It can’t be that cold,” he said, as he foraged in our dark tent and grabbed our picnic table cloth to throw over me.

But he was wrong. In the wee hours of the morning I left the tent to use the camp outhouse. Ice crunched under my bare feet and the car thermostat told the tale: it was eighteen degrees. I looked up at the beautiful full moon and decided, then and there, it would be just as pretty—from my bedroom window.