Sleeping and Walking — finding intrinsic motivation for two biological imperatives

This article was written May 15/21

I spent the last three nights on my patio in a tent. I have a nest of grackles in my yard, and I’ve enjoyed watching the birds select their nesting site, build their nest (dunking materials in my birdbath first), and now taking turns feeding their young. Then one dawn a raccoon climbed up the tree and killed two of the nestlings. I was alerted to this fact by the shrieking parents, and then a whole neighbourhood of grackles showed up to help, but they were no match for the masked marauder. I was amazed at this show of solidarity and strength and saddened by the loss. So I determined to stand guard for the birds when the raccoons were most likely to strike again, and my tent sleeping journey began.

One of my colleagues teased me that it took the rescue of baby birds to be the catalyst to my sleeping outdoors. This is funny as we’ve spoken often about the benefits of sleeping outside as a nature practice, and many of my colleagues do so when we get together to train (and do so regularly at home too). Suffice to say that I’ve never felt safe and secure sleeping outdoors in the city, and never felt the need to cross that barrier before now (and of course there’s the weather — it’s still cold out there and it’s mid-May!).

Another colleague brought up the “let nature take its course” argument and for the most part I agree, I mean it’s natural that raccoons eat baby birds, but we’ve altered the landscape and the habitat to an unrecognisable degree, birds have decreased in population due to habitat removal, outdoor cats, and raccoons who thrive in urban environments. So I’m team grackle all the way!

Now that you know why I’m sleeping in my yard, let me tell you about some of the things I’ve discovered by doing this.

• you can survive without a furnace
• I like sleeping on the ground
• I like waking up to the birds at 5:00am
• When there’s no electricity, I go to sleep earlier
• people are the loudest thing at night in the city
• grackles don’t feed their young through the night, they get up and make breakfast for the kids around 6
• waking up outdoors is the best (check out this podcast for why you need natural light in your eyes as soon as possible after you wake up
• expensive sleeping bags are worth it (I have a cheap one)
• I love sleeping outdoors

Along with sleeping, walking is another of those biologically imperative behaviours that we don’t do enough. For most of us, the catalyst for walking (or moving in general) is weight related. Either weight-loss or maintenance.

Because of this, most of our walking is done fast. That’s pretty much the only variable that we value, apart from distance. If you can go long and quick, you’re golden.

But walking is a category — meaning that there are many ways to do it and none of them are wrong. Most of them are context driven (are you walking with small children, alone, in a group, in the heat, in the cold, in the rain, on rocks, in mud, on ice, in snow, in flip-flops, winter boots, hiking books, riding boots, are you carrying a child, a dog, firewood, groceries, going uphill, downhill, through a dense forest, along a shoreline, on a sidewalk, are you young, old, walking a block or a marathon, are you healthy or ill, injured or fit — all of these and more will alter your gait and cause you to walk using different parts of your anatomy).

My motivation to sleep outdoors was bird guarding — I didn’t decide to sleep outside for the health benefits; I discovered them after the fact. How you are motivated to walk will affect your outcome too. Try to find intrinsic reasons to walk instead of drive (even some of the time).