We explore how to incorporate ancestral health principles into our sleep routine to achieve maximum benefits from our sleep cycles. We look into all the ways ancestral cultures used grounding, metabolism, light, temperature, sun exposure and circadian rhythm synchronization to enjoy a kind of sleep we have been dreaming of.
Does wool keep you warm when wet? In my experience, yes—and the reason has a name: the heat of adsorption. Two questions land in my inbox every week: does wool absorb water, and is wool absorbent at all if rain beads up on a wool coat? The answer to both is that wool takes water
How Wool Stays Warm When Wet: Heat of Adsorption Explained Read More »
People ask me all the time whether a wool sleeping pad is worth it against a closed-cell foam pad or an inflatable. My honest answer is that I use both: a wool sleeping mat at home, in the tipi and at any fixed camp, and a foam pad when everything rides on my back. This
Wool Sleeping Pad vs Foam and Inflatable Pads Read More »
Ask me why wool is better than synthetic or down for sleeping and I could give you the textbook answer—warm when wet—but that is the least of it. In my experience wool is the only common insulating fiber that works with the moisture your body makes every night instead of trapping it against you, and
Why Wool Is Better Than Synthetic and Down for Sleep Read More »
A camping pillow is the piece of the sleep system most people leave at home and then spend the night wishing they had not. On a firm pad the neck needs real support, and the three usual answers—an inflatable, a wool-filled camp pillow, or a stuff sack of clothes—behave very differently at 2 a.m. Here
Camping Pillow: Wool vs Inflatable vs a Sack of Clothes Read More »
Why does damp weather feel colder? Forty degrees and raining will chill you faster than twenty degrees and clear—anyone who has spent a November night in the Southern Appalachians knows it in their bones. The plain answer is that damp air and damp clothing take more of your body’s heat to warm than dry air
Why Damp Weather Feels Colder (and Why Wool Still Insulates Wet) Read More »
Down bags are light and pack really small. I have said that in print and I will say it again here: a 20°F down quilt weighs one to two pounds, and my Rewilder wool sleeping bag weighs four. If weight were the whole wool vs down sleeping bag question, this would be a very short
Wool vs Down Sleeping Bags: Weight, Wet, Loft and Cost Read More »
Good outdoor sleep is a skill, not a piece of gear. These are the ten things I actually do, at home and on the trail, so that when I sleep outside I wake up refreshed instead of depleted. I wrote them in 2019 after two years of living in a tipi; they still hold, and
10 Tips for Blissful Outdoor Sleeping Read More »
A “20°F” bag is not a promise that you will be comfortable at 20°F. Depending on who printed it, that number may be a lab figure for a standard woman lying relaxed, a lab figure for a standard man curled up and coping, or a number the maker picked. This is sleeping bag temperature ratings
Sleeping Bag Temperature Ratings Explained (ISO 23537 and Wool) Read More »
Sleeping on a hard surface is the part of my outdoor system people are most afraid to try, and the part that has done the most for my sleep. For most of my adult life I have slept on a firm surface: a wood floor, a slatted platform, a wool pad on the ground of
Sleeping on a Hard Surface: Ground, Floor and Trail Guide Read More »
