To mark the end of this current season of Everything Is Amazing, all paid subscriptions are currently discounted by 20%, and will be until October 1st. Would you come on board and join EiA’s paid supporters, getting access to everything behind the paywall and helping me get this thing up to full speed? Thank you so much! Season 7 Is Done! What's Next? [Part Two]We're going in search of trees and books and an *incredible* night's sleep.Hello again. Hot on the heels of yesterday’s look at where Season 7 of Everything Is Amazing took us - here’s where we’re going in the next season, and during the six weeks leading up to it. When I was a kid, I fell hopelessly in love with a children’s adventure novel my late father gave to me: Brothers Robin, John and Harold are waiting for their parents to return from India and suffering under the stern guardianship of their Aunt Ellen - and during the Easter holidays from their boarding school, Harold catches measles. Having missed the window for returning to school for the next term and facing the profound existential horror of spending months (months!) with Aunt Ellen, the three boys pack their bags, steal some food and their father’s rifle and some ammunition, and decide to go live in the woods as outlaws. (At this point Robin, of course, renames himself “Robin Hood“, John as “Big John” and Harold as “Little John“.) Hijinks naturally ensue. They build a shelter within a hollow oak tree, they eat whatever they can forage, kill & cook, and start wearing rabbit-skin coats after their clothes wear out. (I can’t remember how many rabbits this involved, but of course there’s somewhere on the Internet that calculates stuff like this, and it must be hundreds.) After 8 months of evading capture by the fun-ruining adults of the local police force, the intrepid trio heroically turn themselves in to save the life of a loner they’ve befriended in the woods - just in time to meet their father, to explain themselves in a way that makes him proud, and presumably to celebrate with lashings of ginger beer. It’s that kind of story. The story ends with an escaped bear they encountered earlier in the story, finding their hollow oak tree and settling into it to hibernate away the coming winter. Brendon Chase was published in 1944, but is set in earlier, seemingly simpler times, with all the wistfulness you might expect from a book written during one of the most violent social convulsions of the 20th Century. But it’s also a book about loneliness. 'B.B’. - his real name being Denys Watkins-Pitchford - had recently lost his 7-year-old son to Bright’s disease, and himself had a lonely childhood with no close friends. It’s a book about the power of young friendship and camaraderie, of the kind demonstrated in the real-life version of Lord Of The Flies… And good grief, the artwork! Watkins-Pitchford was also a professional illustrator, so…well, just look at the way he uses light and dark to…I mean, the sheer…. *rendered speechless for a while* It’s also, of course, a book about boys and men. Note how it’s the father serving as their “reward” at the end of the story. The lip-curling implication: what, girls roaming the great outdoors? Good lord, I say, steady on old man, nobody would believe it, the fairer sex is far too feeble to endure the rigours of Nature, what? (In these less grossly sexist times I really don’t have to offer counter-evidence here, because most of us know a thousand times over what twaddle it is. But hey - Jasmin Paris, guys!) Nevertheless, it’s still a lovely book with a lot to teach about paying attention when you’re outdoors, giving all your senses to it, and to look and look - until, at last, you begin to *see*. (Here’s someone else who feels the same way about it.) Yet somehow, when I became what I laughingly refer to as an “adult”, I clean forgot about my love for Brendon Chase - including when a few years ago I returned to the tiny village in Norfolk I lived in my early teens, and slept in my bivvy bag under a tree in the exact same woods I used to dream of living in as a teen, Brendon-Chase style. I’d forgotten it all. As I wrote about last year, nothing can lie to you like your own memory: Every time you remember something, it’s like a blurry photocopy of a photocopy. Your recollection of the past can be fickle & slippery. Your whole identity is standing on quicksand. But books? Ah. Books can bring it all back. They can anchor you and bolster treasured memories, they can fact-check your emotions, and they can even overwrite your most self-deluding recent inaccuracies. Sometimes, books can remember you better than you can. For Season 8 of Everything Is Amazing, I’m going to be chasing these ideas in two different directions. Here’s the first, available for all readers. (You’ll hear about the second one in a few days.)
I’ll be taking this terrific, bestselling book from 2017 as my starting-point… …and then looking at everything that’s been uncovered in the years since its publication - including data collected in those dizzying years when the world went quiet and the skies cleared in ways they hadn’t for decades. All that to come when season 8 gets underway! But before then, paving the way towards it over the next month and a half - hey, would it be too much to ask that we can all get a good night’s sleep for a change? Maybe you’re actually sleeping like a baby these days! If so, I’m happy for you, in a envious and slightly mean-spirited way. Bah. But for whatever reasons, I’m not. My sleep has been disrupted for a long while now - better than it was a half-decade ago when my stress levels were as high as they’ve ever been, but still messed-up enough to leave my eyes gritty and my energy levels all over the place. Some of this isn’t a mystery. There’s certainly a lot of anxiety-inducing things in the news - but, isn’t that more of a reason to find something to help us sleep better? I’ve written before about how utterly catastrophic to your health being long-term sleep-deprived can be: So I want to do something about it. Something experimental. Something radical. Something maybe even completely stupid. As I write this possibly ill-advised words, it’s hammering down with rain outside the window of my apartment here in western Scotland. That’s certainly nothing new: this is Scotland, after all. But the sound of the rain is reminding me of how soothing rain-noise on canvas is, when you’re sleeping snugly in a rain-lashed tent - which is exactly why modern meditation apps like Headspace and Calm have so many rain “sleepcasts” and “soundscapes” you can listen to as you doze off. In 2017, Outside writer Erin Berger found herself in a similar situation:
But then she tries sleeping outdoors for a while, to reset her body and mind - and it works:
I mean - that sounds really great, right? So I’m having a go, in my own nerdy way. Despite it increasingly being the worst time to sleep outdoors in To be clear, I’m looking for things that can be adapted to work anywhere, not just in a tent. And everything I learn along the way, I’ll be passing along to you, in the hope it unlocks the good night’s sleep you desperately need and richly deserve, wherever you are in the world. Sound good? If you’re currently a free reader and want to join this science mini-adventure, you can become a paid supporter here, with a 20% discount that’s only running for the next 4 days: If a year’s worth is a bit out of your current budget, just become a monthly subscriber for the next couple of months and cancel at the end! I’d totally understand if you wanted to do that. Or - if you know someone else who might benefit from this, how about giving them a paid subscription as a gift? Click the button below to do it: Thanks so much for reading! I can’t wait to get started. - Mike |







