I’m back and all is well. I made it throught the night, even in the torrential downpour that lasted an hour or so, and the steady drizzle the rest of the night. I was glad that I had put up my tarp ahead of time. In fact, I spent most of the night being too warm, as I had set up the tarp in such a way that I couldn’t get far enough away from the fire. But when it comes to being wet, I would sure rather be too warm than too cold.

My goals for this overnight were simply to actually do it, instead of chickening out. I wanted to make it 24 hours with no food and no sleep, just to prove to myself that I could. I forgot to mention in the previous post that I have tried fasting before too. Even if I allow myself things like juice and broth, so really I’m getting plenty of calories, I crave BREAD! JUST GIVE ME THE BREAD AND NO ONE GETS HURT. THAT’S RIGHT JUST TOSS OVER THE WHOLE LOAF. I’ve done 24 hours before, but it was miserable.

So I would consider the last 24 hours to be a moderate success. I didn’t have much of a problem with hunger at all. It came up a few times, and I just practiced acknowledging it and letting it go. (I say this to myself in the same tone as the martial arts guy in Napoleon Dynamite…”Just break the wrist and walk away. Break the wrist and walk away.” “Acknowledge the hunger and let it go. Acknowledge the hunger and let it go.”) Worked great, and it wasn’t really a struggle at all.

I did doze off a little towards the end of the night. Geez, who knew that nights lasted so long? But I woke up in plenty of time to keep the fire going all night. At one point, as I was not quite asleep, but not quite awake either, but still aware of the sound of raindrops on the tarp above me and the crackling of the fire, I sort of half-dreamt an interesting scene.

There is a small pure white animal, either a dog or a horse, and there are very small drops of blood coming from its neck or front shoulder. Four drops of bright red blood land on its pure white fur, making a square. A small black ant scurries from the top of the picture to the bottom, stopping at the lower right spot of blood to take a sip and then exiting the scene. Interesting, but I’m not sure that it counts as anything prophetic. But I’m happy with the kindergarten version of a vision on my kindergarten version of a vision quest. It wasn’t my intention to have any kind of vision at all, so I’ll consider it a neat bonus.

On a note unrelated to visions, I’ve confirmed that a tarp and a good sleeping bag are all I need for camping. I’m happy to give up my joint custody of a tent I’ve been sharing with an ex-camping partner. The tarp setup I used last night wasn’t ideal, but it still worked better than a tent. Plus the tarp was clear, so I could see the sky and not get rained on. The only thing that could have been a problem was if it was really windy, I might have been more rained on. But if I was in a tent, I probably would have got wet anyway, and I wouldn’t have been able to sleep next to the fire and dry out so quickly. Of course, there are drawbacks to any setup, and sleeping next to the fire last night means that I am patching my Thermarest this morning. Ya, it’s a rough life.

I also had an interesting dream, when I was pretty much fully asleep someteime early this morning before the sun came up. It’s a bit long for the front page, so click to read Read more…