The Worst Kind of Envy

It's the kind of envy that consumes you at night. When you're curling up for sleep. When you're with someone else.

Sleeping bag envy.

I've always been the one with the practical sleeping bag. You know the one. Something compress able, synthetic, light. Rated rated just a hair below the actual outside temperature, so that it prevents you from dying but it doesn't keep you warm. Come sleeping time I watch my tent mate shake out a triple thick, -20 degree, down, cushy marmot something or other. It's like the difference between sharing a bed with a boyfriend or body pillow, only much much worse. They slide in, disappear into its depth and refuse to come out until morning, wearing nothing but their silk weights. I'm wearing everything I brought, including the down jacket I wanted to use as a pillow. I shiver away the night, hoping they'll sleep-spoon me (oh yeah!) and cling to the little comfort I can gain from knowing that at least I'm tough: it's survival that matters, not comfort.

Ha ha! Bull shit! Not anymore! I'll take comfort over survival any day and I'm happy to admit it. My life turned a corner during a winter trip in the Cascades with one of my best friends, Ryan. Ryan of the -40 down marmot sleeping 'womb' as he calls it. I love him for his gear, I really do. I made such a show of shivering the first night in my own worthless bag that he stoically gave me his the next. It was like sleeping in another world....a world where wilderness is warm and love doesn't disappear upon sobriety. I want to live in that world. At the very least sleep in it.

So! Since I've signed away at least the next to two years to living out of a dry bag, I'm biting the bullet and buying a better bag. Say that five times fast. I want it to be down, 800 fill, small (because I'm not so tall) and I want to be able to sink into it. The Big Agnes bag is a wicked cool invention but so far I have yet to find it in the store in Down, just synthetic. Somewhere between comfortable and packable. And, most importantly, it has to be better than that of anyone else who is travelling with me.

That last part is very important.