Yes, it is brutal.
The more important thing than insulation against the wind is a shield against the wind. I member being outside of Mt.McKinley/Mount Danali (actually, the nameless mountain next to ot) guarding ammo (from who?) at Fort Greeley, and all I had was a poncho. Each day, the snow was moving farther and farther down the mountain, and blowing very hard. It ripped through my body like nothing else, felt like icecicles.
The trees all around me we’re very tiny, more like branches, and the wind was knocking some down. You could see the trunks swaying, and the roots lifting the ground up. I took my poncho out of my cargo pocket, and put it on, leaned a few crates of ammo against a tree, and tied my belt around me and a tree. They completely forgot about me at shift change (or didn’t and enjoyed their sleeping bags) and I was out there forever. The poncho kept the heat inside, wind outside. Only the actual temperature (not the wind temperature) of the air was a factor.
Another time, I dramatically underdressed in the middle of the winter, for timing a race (I can’t remember exactly my job, recording times or something) and had on only thin polypro under cortex, and nearly froze to death. I was stationary, no wind, my ass heat sucked out of me.
Many time, in far colder weather, I would be in shorts, tee shirt, tennis shoes running through Alaskan creeks. Even if not in a creek, Id be out for hours in the snow, with it melting in my shoes, feeling like it was freezing my toes off. I would piss and it would freeze on contact.
But in the same weather, a small tent with ventilation and miniscule heat, snow piled around it would make us sweat.
When you go indoors, take as much clothing off, don’t keep it all on. Tee shirt, even if arms are numb from just comming in from outside. When outside, layer your clothing, keep as much open as you can tolerate. Never take clothing off in below freezing temperature outside if that part of your body has been sweating, especially your head. Its the hardest thing to beat into a cold weather soldiers head when running in cold weather and they start sweating and overheating… first thing you want to go for, is take your head covering off. Never… the temperature change and sweaty skin can fuck you up real quick. Its either on or off at the beginning, or when your dry and calm.
Foot insulation is very important in extreme winter temperatures, normal shoes won’t cut it. Say you used El Dorado county’s pass for whatever crazy fucking reason during the winter… heading to Nevada. You’ll lose your feet long before you would ever make it to where the Dahmer Party massacred themselves on that trail. There is a reason they stayed instead if treking out like a few tried… ground too damn cold, traditional shoes don’t work. Wood with nails for tracktion, tied to your shoes, double layered socks. I doubt you’ll find the big white Mickey Mouse shoes the army uses (rubber, brutal on the feet, you gotta depressurize them on the plane before jumping or they will fuck your feet up bad, they have nozzles for this purpose).
I already brought up the issue of sleeping in the cold, marching can be a bitch. You can’t plan distances easily, because what matters more is wind direction and wind chill, not temperature and distance. Wind direction, with snow in your face will fuck your eagerness to get anywhere up. Weather reports a wind direction, but wind shifts radically in opposite directions a few hundred feet up, and the slightest provacation can get the wind blowing in your face.
Its for this reason waking with a poncho is preferred. It keeps the wind off you, layer of insulating air inside, and you can shift your body’s angle to the wind easily.
Long term encampments for wintering as homeless, from what I’ve seen in homeless camps in Alaska, are standard tents placed on a wooden platform, such as wooden shipping crates, and these crates are elevated one foot above the ground, no less. Thats right… the wooden crates are not on the ground themselves, but elevated with space. This demands sturdy supports. The tent itself has between six to one feet on insulating material on it’s floor inside of it where they sleep. Usually a windblock. I can’t recall the thread, but I remember yelling at Joker for putting a tent on a concrete slab next to railroad tracks in Minnesota as winter approached a few years back. That can kill you quick no matter how good your sleeping bag is. He solved his situation apparently by busting into a abandoned cabin, but we nearly had ourselves a Nihilist Popcicle there.
If you find you absolutely have to push through a wintery area, for whatever pressing sudden reason, and can’t sleep in the rough under these conditions, you’ll have to pull your own ahkio behind you. I did so for four years in the Army, even bought my own military issue one. Its a massive sled for dogs, cept your the dog. You can keep your tent and supplies inside, hike through the sierra Nevada or Rocky Mountains if need be.
What qualifies as a Ahkio? Any big ass sled you can pull behind you. Something, like a tarp to cover up your stuff inside.
I would lay down in it before purchasing/salvaging it, make sure you fit. Put a tarp inside, centered, with flaps outside. Insulation/bedding, then your sleeping bag. Place your stove and axe on your bag, any water or liquid fuel inside, inside a tied plastic bag, if not two. You really don’t want that shit spilling. Put the tarp flaps over, tie it off if needed.
A military ahkio can take care of 9 men, carrying a 10 man tent (squads are 9, even if the tent says 10). You don’t want to sleep in a tent, you want your portable ahkio to sleep in. A rope around four waist, and pull. Not over the shoulder. If you have a pack, put it in/secured on your ahkio. Keep yourself light, well ventilated. You’ll burn heat like crazy, so decide cap/no cap in advanced.
Don’t ever touch metal in winter without gloves. Leather contact gloves better. Gloves with fingers aren’t gonna cut it alone, you’ll need large, fingerless mittens, or a sweater or small blanket you can plunge your bare hands into. Fingered gloves are for temperatures just vrlie freezing, but not long exposure. Reason why, even when insulated, each solitary finger can’t feel it’s neighbor’s heat, and the body cuts off circulation to that finger. It can still get frostbite. But named, together, they stay warm. So build a caccoon for them. Don’t expect finger gloves to do Jack for long.
When sleeping, be it winter or not, always take your boots and socks off. I keep my socks in the bag, if the sleeping bag is multi layered, between layers. Shoes outside, upside down propped up on a stick so rain/mud don’t get inside. Rain hits soles of shoes.
Heat and sweat builds up on the back when carrying a ruck. When it’s cold, windy, a backpack snug against your back can make the difference between feeling cold and not cold. Open your front, or take a layer off before you start sweating. Sweating in minus temperatures is your enemy.
Sun blindness is a bitch. Glasses are easily available. Plastic freezes to the skin, I know a lot of guys with facial frostbite from wearing glasses in high winds during the winter. If you really can’t take the sunlight, get some cardboard, cut a slit across it, tie some string or rubber bands knotted together to hold it in place on your head. Reduced sunlight, you can still see. Looks stupid, but effective.
If you buy a soda can, keep it. You can make a alchohol burner, and buy cheap rubbing alcohol to fuel it.
I would recommend putting this in a larger can, such as a coffee can, with holes in it. Pour your fuel in your soda can, light it up. Place a pot on the larger coffee can. Air will pass through the holes, allowing your fuel in the smaller can to continue to burn.
If you want to go fancy, you can buy a Swedish army issue version cheap, they work well:
It has the benefit of being dirt cheap, not resembling a Sodacan crackpipe if the police search you, and is brand named to remove all doubts. Always have one on you, cold Orr warm weather, if you can. A very pleasant luxury for the man who otherwise has nothing. Rubbing alcohol can be bought almost anywhere. It doesn’t freeze save in ungodly low temperatures.
Drink lots of water. Don’t be afraid to take your dick out to piss, or shit. Your body expends more energy keeping your piss war in you than you lose in letting it go.
Don’t be afraid of cold weather. Acclimitize. Expose yourself to the elements as much as possible. But be prepared. If you can’t do the above, get out of winterland. If you need to cross over a state, especially mountainous one in winter, undertake these precautions. In a emergency, I once took a manufacturers fitted blanket off of a industrial size push lawnmower and went into the fetal position in it. Kept me warm, replaced it before dawn, no lost to the owner, I stayed alive.
Even though you took a Monistic Approach to your theological leanings, your still practicing Cynic philosophy, believe it or not, same with Joker, even though he was a Anarchist and a Nihilist. Anarcho-Primitivism and Monism, especially the Islamic Sufi system (which you most closely echoed in your poems above) have deep roots originating in Cynicism. Its not my scholarship pointing this out, it’s been well researched by others. I recommend studying up on them occasionally… before I adopted Stoicism I was a Cynic. Sometimes Cynics would attach themselves to armies. When the infantry, marching at night started freaking out because it was too cold, they would dive into the snow and kick around tirelessly, laughing half naked, throwing snow at the far better dressed troops. We exist in many settings as a obvious counter check to people’s presumptions about reality and trails they undertake. Yes, life is hard, but not overly burdensome. Look at me, if I survive, so can you. Hardship or poverty isn’t a obstacle to pursuing a better life. History’s best philosophers have often taken this lifestyle as their initial step into philosophy. Consider this, when projecting fears or unweariness in regards to the cold, or heat. It shouldn’t scare you, you should be wise in accepting for it, and think of ways to prepare for that eventuality. Always ask yourself “How do I survive under these conditions, under this stress, if I had to?”
In regards to the rain… fuck, it rains everywhere. Even in Death Valley. The weather pattern for California is decided on the Golden Gate Bridge. Half the year, the sea fog sits south of it, other half north of it. Northern California and Southern California is dictated by this pattern.
Rain drives you eventually to insanity. I can’t ever say I completely got over it. It will cause your mind to snap after a few months straight each night.
Honestly, fuck rain, I’m no dolphin. But it’s quite easy to adapt.
There is a big debate in the homeless community, tent or tarp. I used to be pro-tent, but switched over to tarp. Why? Well, unless your lucky enough to have a camoflauge tent, you’ll need to throw a military poncho over it, stack some ferns and branches from every direction against it to hide it. If you value security and not every fiend passing by taking it if you plan on sticking to that spot for more than just a night. Stores don’t sell camp tents cheap. They sell bright orange and blue ones cheap.
Send only, bugs get inside, flying all about. Dozens fast. Any good inside, mice chew through, and water gets in.
A tarp is by default flat. They can come in many colors, but dirt brown is best. Why? Cops and Forest Rangers. They see you, they are on you. Arrested, molested, ticketed and generally dicked.
Tarps should be as long as you, plus enough room to lie your backpack flat above you, inside it. So two feet plus your height, to be safe. They should be three times the width of you in your sleeping bag. Measurements on the bag when you buy them, if you just don’t find one somewhere.
In wet weather, sleep with your feet down, head up if ground is not flat, rucksack above your head. Have the backpack completely in the tarp, in the far top corner. Lay your sleeping bag (if you have one) out below it, again, in the tarp. Fold the tarp over, tuck top flap under the bottom flap of tarp. This keeps water streaming in. You can keep shoes outside, inside as pillow, or on top of Ruck to push tarp up higher, so it doesn’t press against face. Opening can be by preference, but I usually leave it open on the sloping side down… water goes downhill, so it won’t easily enter. If you can fit whole body under tarp plus your rucksack, sacrifice your feet. Your rucksack should be always treated with respect, better than you! You don’t want it wet. My day pack has a waterproof shell that can be placed over it, and I still usually kept it in my tarp, so the straps wouldn’t mildrew or soak.
You can keep your burner in some rocks nextbto your tarp so they don’t cast a shadow if near civilization but you worry cops might get called in. Cops can break and tear up your shit, destroying it, fucking you over. No realistic recourse. Your in many ways a subcitizen. They can do stuff prohibited to do to prisoners under the Geneva Treatises, including denying you sleep. Many homeless feel immune to these effects, including fines/tickets, but police chiefs and rogue cops can switch tactics overnight, getting “tough on crime”, and instead of policing people breaking entries or gang violence, they’ll take the tantric route to political reelection and appeasing the mayor by targeting the weakest members of the community, least able to resist their predations. You can’t pay that ticket ever… it keeps you from getting a job, but it’s hypothetical money in their coffers, and make scared feminists hiding behind their curtainsbfeel safe knowing you just had your life ruined for the umpteenth time.
Your Pain = Feminist Satisfaction.
If women didn’t exist, guys wouldn’t bother policing the homeless, they aren’t really threatening. They gotta feel macho to look good and protective in their eyes, women are insecure and easily self-delusional. Those eyes peeking out at windows as you walk by… that’s Pandora (a forum user) or Liz. Cops just got notified, so I recommend shadowy stealth encampments, in woodlines, expecting cops to make shallow penetrations for show to appease the ‘taxpayers’. A little farther back, secluded, in a illogical place, hard to see. I’m obviously not a advocate of sidewalk sleeping in a storefront. I know cops, their mentality, being ex infantry. If no one is looking, they will turn rabid.
I recommend a three piece army woodland camouflage sleeping bag as your first big purchase. I’ve owned a few over the years. Like a tarp, it has a very low profile, is theoretically waterproof. If you buy them "used"they are not that waterproof, go to Walmart and by a can of fabric/camping waterproof spray. Washing it (do wash it on occasion) washes it out over time, so respray it.
One idiot in Hawaii had one permanently strapped to a wheeled cart, attached to a bicycle. Was much longer than a van, no roif, no storage space on cart. No fucking clue what he was thinking. I would of gotten some plastic, flexible pipe and a tarp, and built a roof, with a storage space, and taken it deep into the woods, his it, and rode the bike mius the cart around. Fucking idiot.
You can place a waterproof sleeping bag or tarp on the side of a log, completely hiding it. The handful of places in Golden Gate Park I slept in we’re next to logs on very sleep slopes, with plenty of foliage growing above and below me. During the day, I would hike around like a tourist checking spots from a sidewalk looking for invisible locations from every direction that coincidentally was seemingly in plane site. A example, looking at a hill, trees blinded clear access half way up, top looking down foliage blocked the view two feet up from the surface, and plants on the sides blocked the sides.
If you projected a slant of this hillside as a grid, and visualized it from every direction possible, only a few spots, when you lay down, are invisible. If on a steep slope, impossible to see at night with a flashlight looking down or up. Shadows everywhere. As long as you press your body against a log, head up, your primate sleeping characteristic take over. Its easy as fuck, though the steepness suggest otherwise. Our primate ancestors been sleeping in odd angles on branches for 60 million plus years, trust me, it works. Police can do aggressive sweeps if they think more than a few homeless are in a area, but hate expending energy and twisting their ankles. A steep hill looks even steeper when it’s dark, cold, rainy. They got police cars and a episode of south park to watch in their cruisers, let them “search”, kidnap the dumber and lazier homeless, sleep sound once they are gone.
Which getsbme to my next point, it’s best to avoid other homeless. I only did this when I had no choice, was working late, had to work early morning, or had church, and needed to get to my storage place ASAP in the morning, change… gym to shower, work. If I could help it, believe me, I most certainly fucking did. Hobohaunts are full of tweakers and crackheads, if your well his like I am, they can’t find you, but their dogs can. I think once one leapted over me running from someone, couldn’t figure out what that was, but people on the hill wouldn’t shut up all night, cops showed up. I fell back asleep, and think Tyr Anasazi leaped over me howling, likely unaware I was even there. I was a good thirty feet down.
Oh… don’t keep food in your rucksack. Bagged, doublebagged in fact, outside, tied to your backpack. I recommend choosing a tree with raccoons in it. You’ll know where they are after a while if sleeping in a area. Toss them each some food when you hear them sniffing. You’ll get used to their sounds, coming out of trees. It gets easier after a while. Reason why you keep feeding them, they protect you by warning you. They know your not a threat, so will not worry about you. But someone else, they’ll scramble fast up the tree, sending off alarm bells to you. Human, Mountain Lion, Nancy Pelosi, you’ll have time to take the necessary precautions.
Don’t carry weapons. A Leatherman/Gerber suffices. On my daypack, on my right side I have a D Ring, the kind used by mountain climbers. Why? Most veterans do this. It s where we would attack a gun sling, so we could easily attack, unattached it. I’m a vet, and look the part easily without it, but it may keep some cops at bay, sympathetic being vets themselves. Its also doubles as the equivalent if brass knuckles, very fast. Not a obvious weapon, but functional for pugilism, if it comes to that.
I can go on and on. Basics on keeping clean, checking for infection, rashes, treating different kinds of foot ailments. Heat survival.
Whats important is learning to grow, develop yourself. Your not a college professor, your not some pop philosopher. Your developing a outlook on philosophy from a very trying direction. It sits at the very heart of the philosophical tradition, and the direction and emphasis is seemingly infinite. Your aware of some Cynic arguments… the hardship and exercise builds your body and health. Your sense of shame and therefore, aware of it’s pitfalls in others is coming into examination. You have a increased feeling of independence and strength.
Many Cynics stopped here. Some became theological. Others turned to Ethics, including Diogenes. They examined the world around them in earnest, asking questions, testing peoples assumptions, as well as their own. The possibilities are quite wide for what you can do, how closely you identify with it, being a Cynic, is another concern. Some of the best I’ve known didn’t know the name or movement, or just said they were anarcho-primitivists, or Christians (I was/am that), Sufi, or down right deranged. Many Cynics in antiquity made these same claims.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of … ilosophers
You will never find two who agree on the same subject, it’s impossible. Your probable disagreeing with some of the above, that’s fine too. But, your already more or less in the club now.
We only got two rules. Don’t eat the octopus (unless you wanna), and anyone demanding to know why we dare claim to be philosophers, point to your nuts (no unnatural, gaudy eunuchs, due to Favonius. In other wards, Trixie can’t joingaudy, look up Favonius and Demonax for that, Emperor Justinian for the Octopus rule. Both rules in jest of course, feel free to eat octopus and your own balls if you must).
