Night Moves

Sleeping during my 2002 Appalachian Trail thru-hike was as much a matter of attitude as it was a reality. Maybe more so. I slept intermittently most nights, waking every few hours. Finding a comfortable position on my 48" sleeping pad and moving about in a sleeping bag usually required some conscious effort. Each time I moved I had to deliberately re-arrange my body to find a position that I could hold for my next hoped for stretch of unconsciousness. But holding any position was tricky. Only two positions, left side and right side, really worked for any amount of time but even those positions stressed my leg muscles after a while and I would have to move. Lying flat on my back avoided the stress but sooner or later I felt compelled to roll over to one side or the other, which then created to soreness that would force yet another move.

All this activity and semi-conscious calculation meant that I slept fitfully. Nonetheless, I was sufficiently rested to walk 10 to 20 miles most days. That’s where attitude came in. Rather than worry about lying awake and missing sleep, I redefined my night time experience as rest. If I wasn’t asleep, at least I was not walking, not carrying a load and able to recognize the time in my sleeping bag as a respite from the day’s hard work. “Going horizontal” I called it. After a few weeks on the trail I knew that simply relaxing my body totally would provide the rest and enough sleep to get me to the next camp.

Successfully adjusting my attitude required that I fill my mind with soothing thoughts to keep from worrying about not sleeping and the many other demons that waited to haunt me in weak moments–small injuries, business affairs, finances and the like. My favorite mantra, especially later in the hike, was to list all the shelters where I had stayed along the way. I remembered the bus routes of my childhood, my long list of Grand Canyon hikes, anything that would pleasantly occupy my mind until I drifted into unconsciousness. It worked.

I slept best in cool weather when I could bundle up in my sleeping bag. Hot weather was not at all conducive to sleeping, especially in the humidity from late May through August. Luckily, those months had the shortest nights. Darkness did not completely fall until 9:00 p.m. in the summer, dawn broke around 5:00 a.m. Even with the extra daylight, I would still be horizontal by 8:00 or so, especially if I had a sufficiently early camp. If the weather was dry I could roll up my tent fly so that I would have maximum ventilation but on wet humid nights, my tent could be stifling. Sleep was iffy those nights.

However sporadically I slept, I welcomed the relief from the day’s chores. I crawled into my tent every night glad that I would not be walking for the next eight or so hours, happy for the chance just to lie still (relatively speaking) for a while.

I slept much better in my tent than I did in shelters. The ground was always softer than the wood floor of the shelter. My tent was my room, a place where I was all by myself. The solitude relaxed me since I did not have to worry about disturbing other hikers during the night. I could get up to pee, make all the adjustments I needed to stay comfortable and spare shelter companions my abrupt spasms during sleep. Those spasms sometimes caused my feet to slam the shelter floor which resonated like a kettle drum. I never woke up screaming during my hikes but always worried that I might (I’ve unnerved a couple hiking partners that way over the years). If I snored (very likely if I fell asleep on my back), no one would be close enough to be bothered. Sleeping in a tent was always preferable to a shelter unless it was raining.

Hours sleeping–or at least, being horizontal–were rivaled only by the hours walking. I had not thought too much about sleep in preparing for my hike other than to make that time as comfortable as possible with an inflatable pad, good sleeping bag and tent. As the miles passed I soon recognized the delicate balance between the two activities. Walking carried me toward my goal. Sleep allowed me to rest up for each day’s effort. The sleeping gear that weighed down on me during the day gave me comfort during the night. And my ability to relax in varying states consciousness throughout the night gave me the energy to get up and walk again the following day.

It was all a matter of perspective.