Merit Badges for Grown-Ups
It takes more than cookies to make a Girl Scout—a lot more
I was hunkered inside a thirty-degree sleeping bag on nine-degree night, trapped in a poorly pitched tent at ten thousand feet in the Sierra Nevada. I woke up shivering around two a.m., violent tremors kicking up flurries that settled along my eyelashes and melted into my balaclava. It was like being stuck inside a flimsy nylon snow globe.
Yanking the mummy bag tighter around my face, I tried to breathe, but my nostril hairs stuck together with frost at each strained inhalation. I glanced over at my tent partner, entombed in a creampuff of down, and cursed her blissful slumber before cozying up to steal some warmth. Resigned to several more hours of mouth-breathing in the darkness, I descended into a progressively dire inner monologue: I left Wisconsin to get away from the cold—why the hell am I camping in the mountains in the dead of winter? How long until I develop hypothermia? Who will take care of my cat if I die tonight?
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