Sep

29

Most of my survival techniques are self-taught on the spot. Once while hiking at 12k' in the Sierra Nevadas with winter coming on, I had to find a way to sleep at night without a sleeping pad. The frozen ground conducted my body heat into the earth and I couldn't fall asleep. After a few hours of trying various positions, I fell into a sleeping tripod in which the knees and right elbow were the only contact points, and of course the toes. Nearly all of the body weight was on the former three, and since the knees and elbow are calloused, little heat was lost and I slept comfortably for many nights before coming out to civilization. I later learned that tripod sleeping is standard among nomad Tibetans who also use the right elbow as one may turn the head away from the heart.

I remembered that today in the hot Amazon on a vast crisp-dried floodplain carpeted with one species of dark green leafed one foot plants that absorbs heat. I was sleepy from earlier drinking river water, and there was no shade. The ground was so hot it burnt my skin through the clothes. The solution was the tripod sleeping and I awoke an hour later able to continue to shade and the river.


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  1. david higgs on September 29, 2014 11:17 pm

    my understanding is that the tripod position is taken by those with COPD or who are in desperate need of breath…does this story count as ballyhoo?

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