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Alright, first things first. Yes, I'm going to be trying to spend the night naked in the woods. Well, not quite naked. I'm going to wear a loincloth because I don't think YouTube would want me on here naked and you might not want me on here naked either. So a long time ago a friend of mine said to me, he said, like he was bragging about me way above my abilities. He said, oh yeah, Ketten could be thrown out into a blizzard naked and you know, he'd be just totally fine the next morning. And I thought you are totally overestimating my abilities.
But that's what I want to try to do here, except it's not a blizzard. I'm actually going to be a little bit easier on myself than a blizzard. It's a pretty warm winter day. And so for those of you that get concerned about me, I know that there's a lot of you that write in and are concerned that I'm being safe. And I really am going to be safe through this adventure. My clothing is going to be not far from my camp and it's about a half hour walk back to civilization. So I'm not going to be risking frostbite.
If I take things too far, if I take things too close to too far, I will get dressed and I will make the walk home. So just to let people know that that's the case. I know that's not the way to go in a survival video because we all want to hear that there's rabid bears that are around the next corner and cougars tracks that I saw right over there and all these other things that are going to kill and eat me. But I find that nature is not a harsh, terrible thing that's out to get us. And that if we can blend and flow with nature that nature will take care of us.
So that's why I'm trying this. I want to try to spend the night and just see what my skills can do. I'm not going to be using any super extravagant skills. Obviously I'm going to need to get fire or I'm not going to make it through the night. And I haven't given this a whole lot of forethought. I'm not quite sure if or how I'm going to manage fire without any tools. All I have on me is the loin cloth that I have underneath my clothes. And that does have a leather belt around it which I'm not allowed to use for bow drill or anything else.
And I'll have my little necklace on which I just kind of wear to be a mental help. And that is, it does have little claws on it again which I am not allowed to use as a tool. So I'm just going to see what I can do with the natural surroundings. I've also been starting to explore tummo and other methods of physiologically raising our body temperature so that we can withstand cold. I'm not going to be playing around with any of that tonight. I'm just going to be using my normal cold conditioning that I do, try not to wear a lot of excessive clothes in the winter, cold showers and such, and my skills.
We'll see what happens. I'm glad that you're coming along with me on this adventure. I hope that it's a learning experience for both of us. I suppose most of all this is a sort of a rite of passage for me and just seeing what I'm capable of. And I think you've probably heard me talk in other videos of the value that I find in that sort of experience. It's not something that we usually get in our culture.
And it's something that I like to try to do something at least once a year that takes me to the edge of my skills to see how much I can mentally and physically be resilient in a situation. Oh yes, there's one other thing I'll be bringing. That's my pack here. That is my battery pack and my, obviously I'll be bringing my equipment. This is my equipment pack for that. I do have a plastic bag in here that I bring along in case there's precipitation because my camera is not waterproof. That I can't use either. So you'll see me walking around with that. I think that's it.
So without further ado, let's see if this can happen. Yeah, it's a loin cloth. I never thought I would be doing a video in a loin cloth. Make sure nothing's showing. Alright, I'm off. The first thing I'm going to try to do here is get fire, but my feet aren't going to last long. So I'm going to get myself a little platform off the ground and then start gathering some materials to try to make a hand drill and get a tinder bundle and see if we can get flames. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Okay. I'm giving my feet their first break here.
They're pretty cold already. And just recovering their warmth by tucking them up against a really warm area of the body. This will give me a little bit more time. I'm off the ground at this point, so I'm going to warm them up and try to make my fire. Okay. A couple materials I'm going to need in order to. . . I've got to watch myself here because there's some barbed wire on the ground. That will go through my bare feet in a bad way. I'm going to head over here and see what I can find for fire making materials.
There's a white pine forest and the field should be lots of good stuff. Okay. Mullen. Really nice hand spindle. And all through here there is turkey tracks. All through here there's a bunch of good tinder materials. I'm going to be gathering as much as I can. This is goldenrod and these fluffs are really nice. And already I wasn't thinking what I actually should be doing is picking the entire goldenrod because it's also going to give me some good fire starting material. Okay. I'm looking for some good pine sticks.
Fortunately, the advantage of a slightly warmer day also means that the sun has melted some of the snow on these and they're not as dry as I would like. So I'm going to be keeping this for firewood. Okay. Still really wet. Not good. Not good. This one's already broken. See, I didn't break it with that moss on there, but it feels really nice and light. Okay. And see if I can get one more. And I've got to go back and get my mullen that I dropped a little ways back. Okay.
I'm going to warm these feet up again because that's really my weak link is these feet is they could only take so much before their frost bit. So I have to keep them warm. The biggest thing in the cold for a lot of people, including me, is remembering to think. It's easy to start rushing because you for instance hear my feet are losing heat very quickly and I know I don't have much time. So then I start to rush. My wife, Rebecca, has a saying. She says, never rush that which must be done quickly. And it makes a lot of sense in a situation like this.
If I move fast, that's great. I do want to move fast. But if I rush, I mess things up and forget things. Okay. I'm going to try to build an upside down fire. And it means I'm going to use some of the suboptimal pieces of wood that I found. And instead of using my hands to clear out the snow, I'm going to use my feet because I'm going to need the dexterity of my hands. Even though my feet have a lot less left in them, I really need this dexterity when I try to do the hand drill. Trying to make a careful pile over here of smaller stuff. Okay.
I'm getting cold. There's enough wind, but it's definitely seeping my heat pretty quickly. And now I have a nice collection of wood that I'm going to set aside. Not wood, but really small stuff that will burn well. And this I can use on top if my upside down fire doesn't burn. I just always try to have this little backup. Okay. Spindle. Okay, there's some cracks in this, which is not good. So I'm going to be trying to go up above the cracks and just going to hope for a clean break. Oh, it's cracking. No, no, no. Okay.
When you have a cracked spindle like this, if you don't have a nice rounded edge, it will tend up the length and then you're done for. So I'm hoping that's enough. Okay. Okay. Theoretically now, I've got a spindle and a board. I have to figure out how to get a hole into this board to start this. My dentist would not like this. This is working, but I'm having to. . . Oh, they're just waiting for me to keel over. I'm having to really try to keep my mouth dry so I don't get this wet. Okay. I'm going to see if I can. . .
Oh, that's not going to work. See if I can set a hole in here, but I don't have enough of a hole yet. That didn't make much sense. I'm trying to set this in and get an initial burn before I try to figure out a notch, but I don't have enough of a hole in there for it to hold yet. I can tell. My feet are definitely on their way out. Check this out. It's grown in close to the tree. And so I've got a little tool here that I can use to make a hole. And I'm hoping it will make me a notch too.
And I'm going to start that right now. I think it's going to work. Okay. What I'm doing here is an upside down fire. So I have my biggest pieces on the bottom and I work my way up to really thin stuff that should take really nicely. This is the crappiest notch I've ever made, but I have been able to get my spindle to spin in there. And it'll be a miracle if this notch works, but you can see it does come in to the edge and as this burns down, I'm just going to hope that I get something. So I'm shaking. You can see. Need to find, ah here, something flat.
Stay. To do this on. There's my base. Okay. I can see I'm going to need to cut this notch deeper. This notch is much better. I'm getting myOMG. price. I'm going to be doing third stage. I'm slimming it down. And I am also For me, I love the music. Come on baby. Oh, come on. It's drizzling outside. Come on, baby. Is that a duck-button бесconceited sovereignty. Come on. Oh my gosh. Oh I'm having no say going. Oh, okay. Good slap you with excitement. Okay. Yeah flames. Steady. Easy. Oh my gosh. That was my. I just. I guess.
I got fire and hopefully I won't have to get it again. Okay. Oh my gosh. Okay. Look at that. Fire. Okay, now I'm going to warm up on that fire. Okay. First my feet. I can't really feel my feet so I'm going to have to make sure that I'm really, you know, taking it easy with this. Just a little burst. I don't want to burn them. Singeing a lot of hair. That's fine. Okay. So, the teeth are chattering. I'm cold but I have fire so. That's a really good thing. Now I've got to start thinking a little bit. Because. There's. This is great that I have fire.
There's a whole night in front of me. And. That's many, many hours. It's going to get a lot. Colder. Oh. That's nightfall. Okay. At the moment I'm just going to enjoy some heat. And then. I'm going to gather some firewood. And I think I'm also going to start collecting some rocks. There was some rocks down in that valley. And. If I get enough rocks going here. I could get them really warm. And. I think I can create something here where I'll have hot rocks. To keep me warm. Through the night. Oh my gosh. Oh. Too hot, too hot. I chose white pine as my original. Wood. Because. This little white pine. Branches.
I don't think I have any left here. There's one. And. These just. They take so well, even if they're wet. And then the rest. The white pine just. It's an easy. Starting wood. And so. Once I. I knew once I got. The Tinder bundle going. But it would take. The white pine. But I am going to start getting. If I can, some downed ironwood or larger pieces. These are both ironwood here. Because they're keeping me off the ground. But find some others because that's going to give off. More heat and it's going to burn longer. Where the white pine. Is it's hot, but it doesn't last a real long time.
I'm having to keep coming back. I'm hoping to go down there. And collect some more. But I'm a little bit. Entering into the first. Stage of hypothermia. So I'm going to. Really make an effort here. Get a really good. Big fire going. They can warm me up. Fortunately, I don't have a lot of materials. In this area to work with. And I do have. A wind. A shelter would be nice. But. I've chosen an area that doesn't. You know how. I mean the white pines are over there but. It's a cold walk. On my bare feet. So. Got to kind of balance things out here and decide.
What's going to be my best course of action. Nice. Okay I've got a nice collection of. Smaller ones. And. I'm going to go ahead and. These little rocks. To repeat. They're going to give me. You know they're going to. Give me something I can hold. And kind of. Cut a lot. Of the. That need heat. In order to really like. Return some of the. Heat that I'm very swiftly losing here. So. Might be using them on my core. Might be using them. The back of my neck where a lot of heat is lost. On my feet or extremities. If. I can't get these guys warmed up. Enough because they're.
They're not frostbitten but they're cold. I think hot rocks are going to be my salvation. Tonight. I hope. So. My next mission. Trying to think clearly here. Is going to be. To. Collect. Some more firewood. And build up this fire. Even bigger. And then. Get a few more rocks. And then try to build some kind of a. A windbreak. On the back over here. So that I'm not getting. You know losing so much to the wind. This puts almost. Well not really. It's almost back to normal. This one I got a little too cold. Trying to bring it back to life here. So in this situation the tricky part.
Is that I have to balance out. The coldness of my extremities in this case my feet. And my core temperature. I need to block this wind. Burn myself a little bit there. I need to block this wind. Because if I don't. I'm losing a lot of core temp. And even with a big fire on this side. The amount I'm losing to the back. It's I'm playing a losing game there. But. To go out and gather materials. To build a shelter. Is going to take a lot out of my feet. My feet have already been. Very abused. So particularly my toes here.
I have to see if I can get them back to some semblance of normalcy. Before I try to build this windbreak. But the more I think everything in me is saying I've got to block this wind. Because that's just killing me right now. Here's that crappy notch. You can see why I thought it wasn't going to go through when I was going to stop again. But then there's this little hole in it. So it went right through. And fell down through that hole. Sorry I can't hold things very well because I'm shaking so much. But I guess I shouldn't call it a crappy notch. Because it worked really well. Okay so what I'm doing.
Is I've got this branch here. And I'm going to try to collect some logs. And place them upright along here to block the wind. If I can block the wind and build this higher up more. It will really really help. Okay here's what's going on. I started putting some logs up here. But the cost to my feet to go out there and gather materials. In this ecosystem which is a little sparse in materials. Is too much. So I lose too much through my feet. To warrant trying to make this work. Here I'll show you what we've got out here. This ecosystem just doesn't have a lot of materials to work with.
So you know I went out and collected these two uprights. Thinking I could fill this all in with uprights. But it's just not going to happen. So again sorry for the camera shake if it's shaking because it's pretty cold. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to build kind of a long fire back behind here. So that the heat coming from my back. The wind is going to be warm. And then I'll have this fire in front where I'm heating up rocks. And that hopefully will be enough. But if I don't do something about that wind behind me very soon. It's going to be game over.
Because I'm now losing core body heat. Ok I'm losing sunlight fast which isn't good. But I've started to put together a little shelter behind me. And I'm using a hot rock right now. This one's just perfect. But you know I can tell with my hands that I can touch it for a little while. And then I can rest my feet on it. And not leave them on there too long because they will burn. These rocks can get really really hot. You can see the steam coming off. It's not smoke. Luckily it's steam. It might be over here. But this is letting me warm those toes back up.
As I continue to gather materials to try to build a wind block. And gather firewood. It's going to be a lot more difficult to gather firewood after it gets dark. Ok here's what I've got going. It's very crude. But I'm sitting right in here. I've got a nice little wind block. And a good fire with all my hot rocks to keep me warm. And so I'm going to keep building on this and collecting firewood. And so far I'm still losing too much heat to make it through the night. But if I can cuddle down in here and warm myself up with some of those hot rocks. I can regain my heat.
And unfortunately I still have to gather a lot of firewood before I can do that. Because I'm losing the sun. A little bit more. There it is. Ok this is looking more likely. It's still really cold. But what I'm doing now. As you can see I have a little bit of a wind break behind me. Which is helping a lot. I've got these nice warm rocks. That I have to check with my hands. Sometimes my wrists. To make sure that they're not too hot. Because it's hard to feel. But then on this side it's too hot. It burns instantly. But on this side I can put my foot down. And rest on the rock.
This rock is warming my hands. Which have been working hard. And I'm starting to use it on my core too. Well it's a little hot for that. One trick is that if you have these facing. Like this one. This side was facing the fire. So this side is really hot. I can use it to warm my feet. Or I can do it sporadically. The other side is nice and hot. But not as hot. It won't burn me. So I can hold it up against my core. What I have going here. Is basically a fire that I can feed. Throughout the night. This won't be enough.
But if I can get about 10 more logs like this. Then I can just pull them down. And keep them feeding nicely into the fire. All throughout the night. I'm on a slope here. So it's really nice. It won't take much effort at all. To pull them down towards me. This rock on my belly. It's really nice. Finally I feel like I'm starting to stabilize. I'm no longer losing heat. But still it's going to get a lot colder tonight. Probably looking like a mess too. I'm with my pet rock. I've got a good fire. And my tripod's hot. And a nice collection of wood. I think I still need more.
But now I'm just going to hunker down for a little while. And see if I can really regain a bunch of my body heat. I'd like to be cozy. I am losing my sun. But I really probably just need a few more really big logs. In order to make it through the night. So I'm going to just risk losing some time. In order to warm back up. Again it's my feet. They're having the most problem. They're down here on a hot rock. And I'm going to see what I can do to really warm them up. Okay. It's crude but here I am. I've got a nice supply back here of smaller sticks.
It's out of range of the camera. I'm afraid. Those are to put underneath here. In case these big ones are too high. The way I have it set up. They're a little bit high. And it's actually nice because it's going to keep them burning slow and warm. I don't really want a lot of heat. Otherwise I'm going to be blasted out of my little shelter here. Because it's so small. But if I can keep it just like this. And I've got my hot rocks for my feet. Pretty comfortable. So that's what I'm hoping will keep me going through the night. My feet are not happy but nor are they in the danger zone anymore.
And I'm able to heat rocks right up here and keep them warm. And then I can use them. That's a little bit too hot. I can use them on my body. There goes the sun. And my camera isn't shaking so much anymore. That's because I'm kind of warm. Well not warm but that would be like. But I'm not freezing anymore. Well it's a lot darker obviously. And it is colder but I'm warm. And these hot rocks really do the trick. I've got them on my feet. And I've got one I've been warming up here. It's a little too hot to hold at the moment.
But I'm letting it cool down and then I'll bring it up against my body more. You know I think something that's missing in our culture is a feeling of being vibrantly alive. Our culture gives us all kinds of stand-ins. They call it entertainment. And entertainment is. . . It gives us a vicarious feeling of being alive. So if we watch a movie and we can kind of pretend we're Wolverine beating up a bunch of people. Or traveling to some amazing place. You know we're Frodo in Middle Earth. And we can play video games. And those give us a feeling too. Because actually we get to be right in the action.
And shooting at things or going on adventures or wielding magic. And so these things give us that feeling. We know it's a fantasy. We know it's not real. Even sports. We watch sports and we shout and we cheer on our heroes. And we criticize them when they don't do a good job. But we're sitting on our couches. And if you're watching this, you're a person I just know that. . . Loves that feeling of being alive. And there's that passion in you. And maybe you've found ways to capture that and find it and nurture it, cultivate it in your life. Maybe it just feels like it's completely missing.
You know when our culture teaches comfort. And because comfort is kind of numbing, it gives us the entertainment to try to make things feel more alive. But it just doesn't work. And I would love to hear from you in the comments about if you've felt this desire to be alive. How you've cultivated it. What you've tried. What's worked. What hasn't worked. And I think by all of us sharing, we can help each other to start to find this more in our lives. Because we don't have to go out and spend a night naked in the woods. We don't have to go and do some adrenaline junkie thing.
And we don't have to take these pale limitation handouts that our culture gives us. You know the movies and the video games. I've found in my life that I can feel vibrantly alive in every moment. And that's something I try to share with students that come out here. And it's something I'm trying to share through that online course that I just put out. And it's something I try to share in a lot of these videos. But I know that you all have wisdom too. And you have ways that you've explored this. So please down there in the comments share what's worked for you. What hasn't. What you've tried.
I can envision a world where we all have that feeling of just feeling so alive. In a way it almost wouldn't work in our current system. Because our current system needs us to buy the nice car that's going to make us feel cool. And the Xbox that's going to make us feel like we have adventure in our lives. Without us purchasing those things it's going to shift our culture. But I can envision that. A culture where we don't need all those things. Because we're feeling alive right now just in a conversation with somebody. Just when we eat. If we skip a meal. If we just skip one meal.
And then we eat the next meal. How good it tastes. How fulfilling. And just ah! It's amazing. But when we have that perfect comfort of eating constantly. You know usually overeating constantly. Then we never get to experience what it's like to be hungry. I'm going to settle in for the night here. Curl up on this and see if I can actually get a little bit of sleep. I'm going to be able to pull these down through the night. And I've got this rock is really just becoming my best friend here. I'm going to keep this rock with me. And there's others that I can put my feet on.
My body on. And I think I might actually be warm tonight. Coyotes calling. It's nice to know I'm not alone out here. Look at that moon. Nice thing about when it's this full. Is that it rises and sets just about opposite the sun. So I can watch it go across the sky. And you can see it moving even there. And it will tell me when the sun is going to rise. Good morning. I won't say that that was a comfortable night but mission accomplished. Made it through and now the morning birds are singing and the sun is coming up over the horizon. Quite a feeling.
This in my little shelter works pretty well. This kept the wind off if I stayed really huddled down in there. And I guess some problems I had were this support bar here and one here. And my logs were feeding over this and eventually that burned through and this one fell. And caused things to topple. I had to do a little rebuilding of my shelter during the night. But otherwise that feeding method worked really well. And this actually, when this came down it oddly made things a little bit more comfortable. I didn't actually get any sleep I don't think. But that angle was more comfortable for some reason. A little bit lower down.
And it made feeding the logs easier because I had that bar here that they had to come up over. And then they rested right down in the fire. So the fire made things easier for itself and for me I guess. This is the whole secret to making it through night like this. These hot rocks. And there's an art to this. As I said before, if there's one side facing the fire and the other side isn't, this side can get too hot to touch and this side can be just right. But the other real trick to this is if you cook them slowly then the heat will go into their core.
And then they'll hold heat for a long time. I mean this can have good heat for an hour or more. And if I just heat it up quickly, which is what I used to tend to do, then it'll have good heat but it won't last a long time. And I'm constantly cooking rocks. But this way I could cook them slowly and then trade off rocks and have nice rocks that I could hold up against my body. The back of the neck really tends to warm you along where your major blood flow is, up against the core and the extremities, of course, the hands and the feet.
I thought I might have to use some of the wood in my little shelter and platform as firewood, but I didn't. So that was really nice. I did make one run during the night to get some smaller pieces before this fell through because it wasn't my. . . you know, when you do that feed-in fire, if it's not feeding right onto the ground, then that has trouble, you know, the base of the fire, the heart of the fire has trouble coming up and keeping that fire alive. So I had a little collection here and I used that up and had to go and get some more.
But that was fine because by then, you know, I had a really good heat base here and could just put my feet on these rocks and they were just fine. You've probably experienced one of these nights if you've been out camping or something when it's just endless. And this was one of those nights that went on for eternity. And the. . . you know, I showed you earlier the moon and talked about how at that phase it was, you know, roughly correlates with the sun's rising and setting. And so it gave me a really good idea when the sun was going to come up. In effect, it was like I had a timepiece.
And I think that got my mind, not as disciplined as I thought, but got my mind thinking about, you know, the end of this experience a little bit. And then that makes it last longer instead of really absorbing straight into it. That's why I always try to have students, you know, even when I'm camping with friends, I really encourage people not to bring timepieces because timepieces change our perception of time. So I think in a way, if the moon had not been up, this experience could have been even more powerful. I mean, it was awesome to have the full moon throughout the night, but it also was a timepiece and that detracted a little bit.
Most of all, I just want to thank you for coming along on this adventure with me. And it was a chance for me to see what I was capable of, mostly mentally. I don't think this was physically a horrible, horrible challenge, because once I got fire and that fire came surprisingly easily, then things went pretty well. But it was a long kind of, I won't say cold, but it was a long night where there was, there was, it was hot on this side, it was cold on my back. And so it was a long, uncomfortable night.
It always reminds me when I'm doing things like this, you know, that there's people that are having medical issues or are in other situations in their lives that they can't get out of. I had a ruddy escape if I needed it. And it just, it really makes you feel compassion for people that might be caught, you know, in a hospital bed for weeks or months enduring pain and discomfort that makes what I experienced tonight look like nothing. So, you know, that's a good reminder to me and I think to all of us that we can watch these survival programs and see people doing all these extreme things.
But those people are not as heroic in a way as, you know, going as deep into their physical and mental resources as a lot of normal people. It might be some woman in her 80s who's in that hospital bed and is just trying to get through each day, maybe each breath. That's a powerful realization for me. I'm going to go ahead and head home. Thank you so much for watching. And again, please share in the comments your thoughts, your experiences with taking things to your edge or places in your life where you haven't had a choice and you've had to take things to your mental and physical edge.
And how did you deal with it? How did you get through? I'm sure your stories can inspire us all. Ah, boots. It feels pretty good. Thank you. .