The practice of sleeping outside
Posted by Chris Corrigan - 04/10/08 at 10:10:49 am 
I am lucky where I live. I have a house with a sleeping porch on the front of it, looking out over the ocean, free for the most part of bugs and deep and covered. Every summer I have slept outside there, and this summer, most of the rest of the family has joined me there. ince June 28, I haven’t slept inside and as the weather turns to fall, I can’t yet find a good reason for doing so. The rains have come and the winds are picking up, meaning that my sleeping bag and Thai cotton mattress gets a little wet, but nothing that can’t be dried in front of the fire in a half hour or so.
Sleeping outside brings us into intimate connection with the world. My house faces southeast, so I know which planets are up, when the dawn is and what kinds of winds are buffeting the inlet below us. I hear barred owls calling most nights, making a huge racket on full moons, and the deer prowl the slopes around me. In the morning the autumn dawn chorus consists of chickadees and steller’s jays looking for seed, while ravens towhees and flickers go about their business. From the lagoon a half mile from my house, Canada gees and gulls chatter in the morning air.
My friend Tenneson Woolf sent along a great article - nay a manifesto - on sleeping outside:
As our lives become more and more hectic, more “modern,” we spend less and less time outdoors - in nature’s clearinghouse.
It’s almost impossible to find the time. But given that we must sleep, sleeping outside - or at least next to an open window - helps us get a much-needed dose of nature every day. No, what I’m talking about can’t be added to grocery-store milk, like the essential “sunshine” vitamin, D. For us multitasker types, it’s the perfect solution, taking in the outdoors while sleeping. The outdoors is a lifeline. Our evolutionary molecules crave it. Children, especially, need it, and problem-solving adults can certainly benefit from it. It’s a simple solution to some of what ails us.
Summers are meant for sleeping outdoors, but the best way to adjust to your secret outdoor life in the dead of winter is to think of your bedroom as a sleeping room only. That way you can shut the door and let the temperature drop while you’re getting oxygenated without cooling off the rest of your house. A designated sleeping porch or loft is ideal. Pile on the bedding and get yourself as close to your window as you can. Let the snow, the wind and the rain spray you with nature’s sweepstakes. You’ll wake up a winner.
Tonight, gather up your dreams and head out - to the wilds of your own backyard and beyond, where the vast expanse of the universe awaits you.
The truth, for sure.
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I concur on the idea of getting outside. I have found that using my bicycle for some transportation needs serves the same purpose. I enjoy getting out and riding immensely.
Comment by Dean — October 4, 2008 #
I normally spend a few nights outside too here on PEI in my hammock. I love seeing the night sky roll over my head. For warmth, I not only have my sleeping bag but by dear dog Jay. We cosy up as I think man and dog have for millenia.
Unfortunately this summer it has rained nearly every night and when it was not raining the f***ing bugs have been a nightmare.
I am with you Chris - I spent 9 months as a teenager in the Kalahari desert under canvas. It connected me irrevocably to the larger universe.
How much we have lost
Comment by Robert Paterson — October 4, 2008 #
How fantastic! I am grinning in recognition of reading this post. No one in my immediate association relates to my persistent desire to sleep out of doors. But, my experience is that while I may have a more interrupted sleep as I attune to the sounds and wonders of the night world, I awake to start the day with a more mischievous air about me – like I know a special secret that fuels me throughout the day. Last summer I met a woman in her late eighties who has been sleeping outdoors for fifty years, and swears by it (she advises more layers in winter). I met her only briefly, but she was full of such wisdom on many things in life, I can’t help but think this out-of-doors-sleeping may indeed just be a great way to allow this wisdom to arrive…
Comment by Christie Diamond — October 4, 2008 #
Ah ha! All of my friends come out of the closet!
Comment by Chris Corrigan — October 4, 2008 #
Hi Chris–I loved this post–it made me remember a journal entry I’d made last winter about sleeping in my backyard. Here’s the post I just made, linking to yours:
http://virtualteahouse.com/blogs/beth/archive/2008/10/05/the-joy-of-sleeping-outside.aspx
Thanks!
And…found your blog through your fan Dave Pollard.
Comment by Beth Patterson — October 5, 2008 #
Hello Chris,
Excellent!…I wish I can do this again in Ontario.
I grew up in India and slept outside for most of my life
in the open terrace of my parents house or my grandma’s house with huge open skylights. We don’t think twice about sleeping outside and its has helped me connect with nature and made me a spiritual person.
Picture of a house with similar architecture,
Comment by SR — October 7, 2008 #
ahh thank you chris and tennyson. you have brought to my heart and named something that i feel has gotten so conditioned out of it - the wild, the animal that we are, our primal and sacred connection to the earth and to the land. have we not spent millenia around the fire and knowing the cycles of the land around us? while i do not have a sleeping porch, i do spend time sleeping outside while backpacking or camping and it is never enough
i love the photo of your front porch and that over the years your family has joined you. how fabulous…there is a simplicity that comes from sleeping outside in the elements. we get down to the essentials, we can more easily leave behind our preoccupation with the non-essentials and breathe in the life force that wants to flow through us…cooking over a small stove in the little protected glade of a very old larch tree, while the rain dampens everything around me…where my hands get cold from stirring the soup and making the tea…oh blessings. and the best is getting up in the middle of the night to pee and having been safe and snug in your sleeping bag and tent, you venture out into the wild of the night, not into the protected bathroom, and you look above you and you see millions of stars, and millions of galaxies and you feel more awake than you ever have. now that’s what your sleeping porch is reminding me of 
Comment by sheri — October 8, 2008 #
ahhhh…that was a long tall drink of water sheri…thanks.
Comment by Chris Corrigan — October 8, 2008 #
Wonderful. I’d love to sleep in an open field of smooth grass. No bugs, no lightning, just rain, poring and poring, icy cold and refreshing on my skin.
Comment by Sam — June 11, 2009 #