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You already know how to take a bush bath, young solarpunk.
But Nature hath contradicted your plans for a warm day and warm water. Indeed, you’ve been given a surplus of mixed blessings, a snowstorm a la mode. It’s time to bathe with naught but snow.
Know thyself. This means your metabolism, how wont your body is to chill. Always underestimate your powers here. If you burn hot as a rule and have a bit of blubber, you are more likely to enjoy a scrubby in snow. If you are thin and chill easily, do not pass go.
How well do you know how chill affects you? Do you have a fairly good attention to your body’s endothermic juju? Do you know how to thermostat? Fine, you’re fat and fiery. But if you have little skill in bush chill, skip this bit of fun. No braggadocio, now. Be honest. Even 10° C can kill you. You’re not proving anything to the trees and squirrels.
Right. Now look around at ambient conditions. Is it cool, cold, or dashed cold? Is it windy? How windy? How much sunlight?
Temperature is an ambiguous metric for safety when enduring chill. Wind and lack of sunlight can make a cosy 0° feel like Siberia in January. The good news is that general guidelines are available. Take to heart what Uncle Sam tells the troops:
USA Army Survival Manual, p 146 (JPG)
USA Army Survival Manual, 2006 (Web - PDF)
For my part, and here the subarctic friend duly scoffs, it’s not warranted to snowbathe below freezing. Much lower than that, I prefer to boil a bath. That itself holds contrasting delight.
Don’t trust the “feels like foo temperature” handed out by tv news meterological quacks. That layer of abstraction tempts the mind toward alienation from immediate conditions. Better to combine an educated understanding of windchill’s biological consequences with a rigorous and conscious attention to the environmental situation.
Time to take a trudge through the snow, or elsewise some chore which will get you moving. Warm, but not too sweaty is the happy median. Convert some calories into a BTU or two, and you stand better to enjoy when you do hit the snow.
Make sure you have somewhere warm and dry to bundle up after your snow bath. If a fire is needful, get it going first. If you’ve a sauna primed, even better. Do you know where your towel is? If you do, you’re alright, says the maxim. Keep the warm clothes easily at hand; this be not the time to hunt through the linen cabinet for them.
The key here is: be prepared. Without ready warmth, snow’s dangers can turn swiftly acute.
Everyone knows the Inuit have a bagillion words for snow. (It’s not true, but bear with.) Into what kind of snow are you to jump? The best snow I’ve found is dry and granular from a few days of coalescing. This snow will well abrade old skin. If the snow is wet or fine powder, however, good to have a stiff loofa or scrubby to enhance the job. Some dry tree bark can work well for this task, too, but be wary of pines which may irritate.
I’ve not found a way to make soap work with snow without a regrettable mess. Which is just as well as it confounds a body when desirous to get warm …quickly. The virtue in snow as a bathing medium is its abrasive texture. Like sauna, it makes soap mostly superfluous.
Dive in! Roll about if it’s your pleasure. Make nude snow angels. If such frolic is beyond one’s dignity, or beyond one’s aches of age, then pull up a bench or stool and bathe au Japanois. Grab handfuls of the stuff and really grind it in! Remember behind your ears. Focus on your stinky bits. If one’s fingers become too chill, consider snow mittens, as skiers might wear. The key here is to be vigorous and punishing.
If you need to take a warming break, very well. Come back in an hour and likely the snow will still be waiting for you. This is after all one of the deep delights of sauna: the alternation between snow and sweat bestows a cleansing beyond the norm, a deep flush of health to the skin as one’s constitution improves in the exertion.
My hope is that these winking tips will encourage the trepidatious to enjoy snowbathing. A dose of good sense is critical to one’s trust in one’s abilities. And a dollop of prudence can indeed make delight of adventure.
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