How to sleep outside: the ground, the bag, the air, the night — and the sleep you actually get.
Sleeping outdoors is a skill before it is a gear list.
These are our guides to outdoor sleeping: choosing the ground, staying warm through the night, breathing inside the bag, and building a sleep system that works in a backyard, a canvas tipi or four days down the trail. Start with how to sleep outside, then go deeper on sleeping on a hard surface, the sleeping bag liner that adds about 10°F to any bag, and the camping pillow question.
Everything here comes from nights actually spent outside in wool and canvas — what kept us warm, what failed, and what we changed in the wool sleeping bags and wool sleeping pad because of it.
In 2019 I wrote a short guide called The Art of Sleeping Outdoors: For Vitality, Health and Freedom. It has lived on this site as a ten-page PDF ever since. This page is its home: the guide’s own sections, lightly updated, and what has changed at Lucky Sheep® since. Read or download the original 2019
The Art of Sleeping Outdoors: The 2019 Guide, Updated Read More »
Can you breathe inside a sleeping bag? With down or synthetic fill the honest answer is no—you will wake up humid and colder. With a wool sleeping bag the answer changes, and that change is one of the biggest wool sleeping bag benefits in cold weather: you can pull the bag over your head, breathe
Can You Breathe Inside a Sleeping Bag? The Rule Wool Lets You Break Read More »
A sleeping bag liner is a thin sleep sack you slip inside your bag — or sleep in on its own on a warm night. Made of merino wool it adds about 10°F to any bag, keeps sweat and skin oil out of the insulation, and is the one part of a sleep system that
Sleeping Bag Liner Guide: Add 10°F to Any Bag Read More »
A wool bedroll is the oldest sleep system there is: something that sheds weather on the outside, wool on the inside, rolled up and tied in the morning. The cowboys had it right, and so did the old-timers I learned from. The Lucky Sheep® wool felt bedroll is the updated version, 4 lb of dense
Wool Felt Bedroll: The Cowboy Sleep System, Updated Read More »
There is a revolution going on…many people are going outdoors to sleep. For some it is to get the primal benefits of grounding and negative ions, for others it is a necessity to find a place to rest away from off-gasing chemicals in modern homes and electrical wiring and WIFI. Whichever it is, the common
Backyard Sleep Sanctuary with Wool and Canvas Read More »
Wool bedding does one thing no other fibre does as well: it takes the moisture you give off every night into the fibre itself and hands back a little warmth, so the air next to your skin stays steady instead of swinging between clammy and cold. Merino sheets are the easiest place to start—merino wool
Wool Bedding: Why Merino Sheets Sleep Cooler, Drier and Quieter Read More »
People ask me how to sleep outside as if it were a technique. It is closer to a homecoming. The benefits of sleeping outdoors—deep sleep, clear mornings, a body that stops fighting the night—come from letting the natural environment in rather than sealing it out, and the same simple system works whether you are sleeping
How to Sleep Outside: The Natural Way to Sleep Outdoors 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 »
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 »
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 »
