“The cooking stove is not for warmth! Back away from it!”
I, the other adult leaders, and the scouts of Troop 137 disagreed with our camp interpreter Ashley C. We were freezing and the small gas stove sitting upon our makeshift outdoor snow kitchen in the back territory of Northern Tier Adventure Camp near Ely, Minnesota was the only source of heat in that frozen wasteland and, at 4:45 in the afternoon, the only source of light. We were preparing a meal of freeze-dried beef stroganoff in preparation for our spending the night outside in shelters we had constructed over the past two days. The boys would be sleeping in caves they carved out of packed snow while the adults would be sleeping out under the open sky.
Yeah, I’m lucky that way.
We scarfed down our half-cooked stroganoff then placed our second and third courses of frozen cheese sticks and fruit bars in our armpits to thaw them out enough to eat. Ashley made us walk around in circles, play kickball, then repeat her dance moves – all by the faint glow of our headlamps – in order to keep us warm. After all, Northern Tier’s mantra is, “Always keep moving!”
By 9 o’clock we could take no more of Ashley’s kind of fun and prepared for the night. The thermometer showed that inside the boys’ shelters, called quinzees, was a good 20° warmer than the outside temperature of 4°. Outside the adult shelters, which were a horseshoe shaped wall of snow piled about a foot high called a windbreak, it was… 4°. Ashley assured us that the adults wouldn’t freeze to death if we followed the camp’s prescribed sleeping system.
This method involved placing a tarp on the ground followed by two foam pads. On top of that was placed a zero-degree rated sleeping bag shoved inside another zero-degree rated sleeping bag. “Sleep in your long underwear,” Ashley instructed. “Place your jacket and clothing inside the bottom and along the sides of your sleeping bag.” I did as I was instructed, burrowed into my now completely stuffed sleeping bag, and pulled the tarp over me at which point I’m sure I resembled a six-foot long frozen burrito-styled wolf snack.
Wait, was that a wolf I just heard?
It was hard to tell when buried beneath enough material to insulate a small home. It was also impossible to move. But it was, as Northern Tier staff referred to it, “comfortably cool” rather than death educing cold. I gave into my claustrophobia and drifted off into dreams of being caught in a vise, stuck in a crack, and being unwrapped by a pack of reintroduced wolves hungry for something from Texas.
Morning came quickly and with it the sounds of boys laughing at me and the other two adults for having slept outside and for having had more than a half-inch of snow fall on us. “Was it warm in there,” one of the boys asked. “Cuz it was super warm in our quinzee. And there was a ton of room. We all spread out!”
I ignored the boy’s cheerful remarks, brushed the snow off my bag, and asked two older boys for help in pulling me free from my womb of compacted, frozen despair. I shivered into my clothing and made my way to the snow kitchen to find the boys preparing powdered eggs, instant oatmeal, and throwing rock solid frozen bagels at one another. Ashley asked how I’d slept then quickly turned her attention back to the boys to scream, “The cooking stove is not for warmth! Back away from it!”
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