It's coldest before the dawn

Maybe I am wiser, or maybe more cautious and a little softer. But whatever it was that led me to struggling to sleep on a terrace roof top in late January temperatures that tickled and shivered the minus degrees, I think it was actually for the best.

Ask me for my thoughts a few hours ago, as I was held in that mildly torturous state of shivering half sleep that is no sleep, where you don't know if you have just resurfaced from a fleeting dozing attempt or whether you have been awake all along. Ask me then, and I may not have seen the positive side.

With an overnighter planned, up in the mountains that run across the other side of the valley , clearly visible from the terrace, but whose looming hulks are now buried in the unifying darkness. I knew that purely armchair plotting can be foolish, and I was needing to stick a toe in the water so to speak, to check that whatever kit I had available would be suited to 1000m wintertime out-sleeping

With a mat, a three season bag, and a bivvy sac, and on stand-by, but not wanting to throw all my cards in at once; a puff-jacket stuffed inside the sleep-bag as back-up. As I lay down for the night under clear starry skies with the mercury reading around five, I was feeling confident of the setup and not unpleasant conditions. I had expectations of the initial period as I settled down to be a little cool, but honestly I was perfectly comfortably. I imagine I was still carrying some residual heat from the previous hours having been spent all sensible and indoors, as well as the belly still full from the hearty winter table. A drowsy flicker of thoughts and I foolishly imagine myself to be in a fixed state inside the snug of the cocoon; the sleep bag insulating whilst the bivvy-sac trappied in those precious calories and blocking out the phantom breeze that could be felt at times up there.

Just a cinched closed small circle of face open to the fresh breath of air, a porthole to flatback admire the stars.

Surely to follow would be that after a profound slumber I come to around the break of dawn, with the calm of a man well rested, to admire the skies washed out dawn hue bleaching out the night to conquer anew, the shiftchanging sounds of nature and man marking the transition and that general innate sense of change that comes with impending day.

That however was not the case last night.

As the degrees slowly fell, around one for one as the hours passed it was around zero when I woke, middle night middle of nowhere, bitter gusts adding an extra wind-chill. I hurriedly loosen fasteners and unzipped like a shivering Houdini, quickly pulled on the jacket, hood up, and rapidly returned to my bag within a bag of sufferance, all zipped up, drawstrings pulled, closed in completely. No star gazing, head buried down, the crown of the beanie blocking of any possible remaining gap and breathing down into the bag to keep all the heat in. Once awake, I was never really able to return to sleep again; zoning out before restlessly coming to again, constantly. Shifting to try find a new position; that helping briefly only for the chill to creep back in. Clenched tense and uneasy, suspended (of my own choosing!) in a dastardly, seemingly endless shiver limbo in the midst of that interminable timeless night. ---

And all the while knowing that the other side of the door lay warmth love and cotton sheets on a high bed.

But no, it was test. Of kit, but also of endurance, ones mettle. Such is the disconnect of armchair dreaming- of which there had been too much of lately- the realities become abstract. The notion of it potentially being awfully miserably cold, what with the kit being a season short of truly sufficient, however remains an abstract notion, undeveloped into its cold reality. It is human nature to avoid such discomforts in the everyday, but I would argue there is a is value to feeling them, remembering them again from time to time.

And not only to to carry as a memory but for ones safety as that armchair planning can prove dangerous at times if it leads one to venture into the mountains ill equipped and ill prepared due to it seeming 'not too bad' when from that comfortable vantage point you stuck a limb outside the window to gauge conditions.

'I am cold. I am uncomfortable'

And so there I laid, a fool on a rooftop?

But I was able to remain. Finding my breath. Finding acceptance and seeing the value of this sufferance

Breathing to connect, breathing to calm the gentle shivers and tense hunched shoulders. Breathing to quieten the mind.

'I was cold. I was uncomfortable'.

And so I lay an ascetic on the rooftop. Just a turn of the handle away from all comfort and 'normality' of everyday . But I had chosen to test my kit. And as my kit proved to be inadequate; to test myself.

And when the dawn finally came in the blink of an eye after the interminable timeless night, I finally allowed myself to rise.

I have always said that the greatest pleasure comes from relief and as I sat in the armchair once again, looking out across the valley and suppin' on a good ol'cuppa mud. I felt that warm relief wash though me.