{"id":5226,"date":"2022-01-07T13:18:41","date_gmt":"2022-01-07T18:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=5226"},"modified":"2022-01-09T07:36:30","modified_gmt":"2022-01-09T12:36:30","slug":"uphill-both-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2022\/01\/07\/uphill-both-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"Uphill, Both Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is the next in the \u201cSunday Story\u201d series.  No politics here \u2013 just a story about  snow, and cold!!!!!!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are in the age of global warming \u2013 right?  Doesn\u2019t that mean the weather should be warmer in the winter?  Isn\u2019t the theory that someday Ohio will be like Tennessee or Georgia, and that Upper Ontario will have the \u201ctypical Ohio\u201d winter weather? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s 13 degrees outside right now (with windchill \u2013 0) so you can\u2019t convince me were living in Chattanooga yet.\u00a0\u00a0But it does seem that our weather was so much worse \u201cback in the day, when we walked to school in the blinding snow, uphill, both ways!!!” \u00a0And here\u2019s a story about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winter Camp<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I was in a \u201chard core\u201d Boy Scout Troop in Kettering, Ohio, in the late 1960\u2019s, Troop 229.\u00a0\u00a0It was the height of Boy Scouting, with over six million Scouts nationwide.\u00a0\u00a0We Boy Scouts were not scared away by a little cold, or snow, or freezing weather.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, we took great pride in our \u201cwinter campout\u201d, an annual January event.\u00a0\u00a0We went out in February too, that was the annual \u201cKlondike Derby\u201d with the younger Scouts acting as the sled dogs.\u00a0\u00a0(Maybe that\u2019s where I got my later attitude about track and cross country meets. Except for lightning we always ran!!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was in sixth grade when we went out on what turned out to be the coldest day (and night) of the year.\u00a0\u00a0I was still a \u201cnovice\u201d camper, and didn\u2019t have the down sleeping bag that would protect me in the mountains later on.\u00a0\u00a0My equipment was what every Tenderfoot Scout had at the time:\u00a0\u00a0a Sears and Roebuck<\/em> sleeping bag and high topped boots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the daytime on Saturday it wasn\u2019t too bad.  The temperature hovered in the single digits above zero, and we Tenderfoots spent a lot of time gathering as much firewood as possible in preparation for the night. We also learned how to erect canvas wall tents, looking much like they did in a Civil War Camp.  The canvas was stiff, from age, and even more from the cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We put four kids in a tent, lined up parallel to the entryway.\u00a0\u00a0If you were the kid \u201cin the back\u201d, you wanted to make sure you did your nightly \u201cduty\u201d in the woods \u2013 before everyone got settled in.\u00a0\u00a0Otherwise, you had to try to walk out over everyone in the dark.\u00a0\u00a0If you did that, you learned another important lesson of Scouting, the appropriate use of profanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Fire<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So there we were, huddling around the fire, as the sun went down early and the temperatures began to drop. The \u201cDinty-Moore\u201d Beef stew was tasty, but froze to the side of the aluminum pot before it was cleaned. We had to boil more water to melt it off.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How cold was it?\u00a0\u00a0You could stand a couple of feet from the fire, so close that the tips of your Sears boots were starting to smoke, and still feel the icy cold on your backside.\u00a0\u00a0Turn around to warm that up, and now your whole front was shivering.\u00a0\u00a0We dressed in layers, thermal underwear, blue jeans and sweatshirts.\u00a0\u00a0I added my Uncle Buddy\u2019s Navy Arctic jacket, good for wear on a World War II destroyer\u2019s bridge in the North Atlantic, but it was still really cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Experiment<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We Tenderfeet had a mission. Mr. Fella, our Scoutmaster, brought a thermometer, and it already had dropped below minus ten.\u00a0\u00a0We heard a rumor, that once it got past fifteen degrees below, your pee would freeze before it hit the ground.\u00a0\u00a0This fascinated us \u2013 a story for the ages!\u00a0\u00a0(By the way, we weren\u2019t the only ones interested in the topic \u2013 Google it, something we couldn\u2019t do back in 1969.\u00a0\u00a0There are lots of answers, with temperature gradients and values for volume and angle of release).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we shivered and shifted around the fire and drank a lot of hot chocolate.  One kid melted the toe of his boot, another lost a glove (that was serious, one of the older kids had backup gloves).  But in the dark, under the amazing stars that made it feel like we were in outer space itself, we waited for the mercury (do thermometers still use mercury?) to shrink past the 15 below mark.  And finally, it was there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientific Method<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So it was really cold, and there were several layers to get through, but a gaggle of eleven and twelve year-olds lined up with flashlights to proceed with this advanced scientific investigation.  We were all primed to find out the answer \u2013 hot chocolate will do that to you.  The first discovery we made was that whether or not our urine would freeze before it hit the ground, other parts were freezing from the moment of contact with outside air.  The mercury wasn’t the only thing shrinking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the experiment was a quick one.\u00a0\u00a0What we hoped would be a \u201cfrozen rope\u201d really didn\u2019t work out.\u00a0\u00a0Later academic investigation when I was in my twenties (involving beer at a bar on a very cold and snowy night) showed it would have to be much colder, even more than 25 below, for that to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we discovered that, on contact with the snow, the pee froze solid.\u00a0\u00a0So while it wasn\u2019t \u201cclinking\u201d as it hit the ground, it froze soon enough.\u00a0\u00a0And soon enough satisfied us, as we realized how cold our exposed parts were getting.\u00a0\u00a0We closed up, and headed back to the fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cocooned<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

That night I slept in my clothes, hat, and gloves. I used my Arctic Jacket to close up the top of my sleeping bag, and huddled in a hopeful cocoon of Sear\u2019s<\/em> “Satisfaction Guaranteed” warmth. Any leak brought frigid air pouring in, so sealing up the top was critical. But even sealed, there still was the zipper that ran the length and bottom of the bag, and that was icy no matter what I did. It was a long, shivering night, talking to my brother Tenderfeet about whether we should re-evaluate our experimental results, or our choice to be in Troop 229.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The early light raised another question for us.  Sure, we were freezing in our sleeping bags.  But to get up, pull on frozen boots, and go outside required even more exposure to the cold.  The only answer was to build a fire (Jack London wrote a short story on the subject), and our theory was that the Scoutmasters should do that for us.  After all, they needed coffee more than we wanted to face more cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we huddled, sharing the little warmth in our cocoons wadded next to each other.\u00a0 Shivering, we talked in jerks and starts, staying quiet less someone in authority might \u201corder\u201d us to move.\u00a0\u00a0And soon we heard axes of the wood being chopped, and smelled smoke and coffee, the aura of every good Scouting adult I ever knew.\u00a0 We finally staggered out of our frozen solid canvas tent, drawn to the fire like moths, hoping for a little heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Little Numb<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

That day my toes went numb as we marched a five mile winter hike.  Two of them remain numb to this day, some fifty-three years later.  But I learned so much from our experience, and not just about peeing in the cold.  The next time we went winter camping, there was a down sleeping bag, and double socks in my boots, and even more layers on the rest of me.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I bet they don\u2019t do those kind of winter campouts anymore.\u00a0\u00a0Parents would be “helicoptering” in to keep their child from such brutal exposure.\u00a0\u00a0And maybe they\u2019d be right.\u00a0\u00a0But those kids will never have the stories to tell, of huddling in the cold, staring directly into space, overcoming adversity \u2013 and of course \u2013 watching pee freeze on the snow.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You don\u2019t need to feel all your toes anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n