North of Muscatine, Iowa – October 18, 2012
The rain soaked my tent as soon as I pulled it out of the hatch. I set it up with fingers too numb to feel anything, then dove inside, pulling out my sleeping bag and curling into a ball underneath it. In a moment, the bag felt wet too, the down damp and heavy, the air humid and full of water.
I couldn’t stop shivering underneath it. I shoved anything I had into my mouth. I broke open every nice package of food that Suzie and Harlan had made for me–banana bread, cookies, a cheese bake–and swallowed them as quickly as I could, barely tasting anything, just trying to throw fuel into my stomach, something to burn, something to generate heat.
Then I lay there, curled in a wet bag, shivering, barely able to think, waiting for the warmth to come, waiting for my body heat to dry away a bit of loft in the down, waiting to feel my hands and feet again.
I drifted in and out of sleep. After an hour, maybe two, I stopped shivering. Sometime in the night, my hands felt warm after hours spent shoved into my armpits, the numbness gone except for a sliver on the tip of each finger. Then my feet came back around midnight and I felt whole again. Wet, cold, but whole.
I didn’t move from underneath my bag for sixteen hours. I couldn’t will it, couldn’t force myself up and back into the cold until the sun rose high, until I could feel the heat on my skin.
But that sliver of numbness on my fingers, it never went away.
My goodness, You are having a rough time. I hope you warm up soon!
Some days are definitely rough! I’m hoping it warms up soon too!
The numbing on the finger tips, back in my day we called it “Frost Nip”. Trust me, been there, suffered that. If the stove works, heat up some water, fill a Nalgene bottle full and sleep with it (in a sock if it’s too hot). Just a thought…