Field notes on natural materials, outdoor sleep, human performance and the art of living outdoors — learned on the trail first and written down afterward.
New here? Start with how to sleep outside or how wool stays warm when wet. The ideas behind all of it are in A Rewilder’s Guide to Outdoor Adventure.
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 »
For three winters, on and off, I lived in a canvas tipi in the mountains of Western North Carolina with the first wool sleeping bag I ever sewed and nothing synthetic in the bedding. I had spent a few years testing the ideas on short trips. I wanted to know what happened when the experiment
Field Notes: Three Winters in a Canvas Tipi With the First Wool Bag Read More »
Years before there was a Lucky Sheep®, I hiked up Mount LeConte in the Smokies in winter with the best synthetic gear I could afford and came down hitchhiking. Nothing tore. Nothing leaked. My gear simply did what sealed synthetic gear does once you are wet, and that one cold night is where everything I
Field Notes: The Night My Synthetic Gear Failed on Mount LeConte Read More »
Four days in Linville Gorge in late November was the first time I carried my own gear into a group using the latest synthetic equipment: a wool sleeping bag I had sewn myself, waxed cotton shells, a two-pound open tarp. It rained. This is the field note, scored the way I scored it at the
Field Notes: Four Days in Linville Gorge in the Rain 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 »
How much does a wool sleeping bag weigh? Ours run from 4 lb to 15 lb depending on the bag, the size and the loft. The one you would carry — the Rewilder in Standard 2″ loft, field rated 20°F — is 4 lb / 1.8 kg, which is about three times the weight of
How Much Does a Wool Sleeping Bag Weigh? (And Why It’s Worth It) Read More »
Waxed canvas is the one piece of outdoor gear you can bring back to new at your kitchen table. When rain stops beading on a jacket, pack, tarp or tent, the fix is a bar of wax, an iron or a hair dryer and half an hour. This is how to rewax waxed canvas the
Waxed Canvas Care: How to Re-Wax a Jacket, Pack or Tarp Read More »
Canvas tent care comes down to air and patience: let the canvas dry every time it gets wet, keep it off damp ground, and give it wax when the rain stops beading. Beeswax organic canvas has no coating to peel and no membrane to fail, so a Lucky Sheep® canvas tipi that is dried, aired
Canvas Tent Care: Seasoning, Mildew, Re-Waxing and Winter Storage Read More »
Sleeping outside without a tent is how I have spent most of my nights in the woods, and it is how I would tell almost anyone to start. A tarp open at both ends keeps the rain off and lets the night air move through, so you wake up in fresh air instead of your
Tarp vs Tent: Sleeping Outside Without a Tent Read More »
The funny thing about my search for non-toxic camping gear is that it started at home. After a decade of living with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities I had gone organic with my clothing, bedding and cleaners — and my outdoor gear, which was supposed to get me closer to nature, was still the most toxic, unnatural
Non-Toxic Camping Gear Guide: PFAS, Flame Retardants, Foam Read More »
