A Modern Day Iceman

I’m not a fan of the cold. Winter is my least favorite season. When my feet are cold, I feel terrible. All of that goes against the philosophy of a man named Wim Hof.

Wim Hof, (AKA “The Iceman”) holds some world records for endurance and exposure to cold from doing things like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro wearing only shorts and shoes and running a barefoot half-marathon in the Arctic Circle. He stood in an ice-filled container for more than 112 minutes. This guy really believes in the natural power of the cold.

Cover photo from Becoming the Iceman

He teaches breathwork and the health benefits of cold plunges. He has millions of followers who say his method results in a wake-up call to the brain and body. Some say it has cured a variety of things from depression to diabetes.

Hof is Dutch. He is 61 years old. He summitted Kilimanjaro in 31 hours nearly naked. Climbers often take a week to do that with all kinds of cold-weather gear and oxygen tanks.

In the book, Becoming the Iceman, he says that it is unfortunate that we are taught to fear the cold and protect ourselves from it. Hof believes that the ability to control the body’s temperature is not unique to him, but is an ability that can be adopted – and should be adopted – by everyone.

What is called the Wim Hof Method includes a lot of breathwork.  It’s breathing that is like controlled hyperventilation.  Here’s an example: Do three to six sets of 30 to 40 deep breaths. That means a strong inhale through the nose and a relaxed exhale from the mouth. On that last breath of each set, you exhale and hold for one to three minutes. I tried that. It made me a little dizzy and there was no way I could hold my breath for even a minute. I guess I need a lot of breathwork training. After that held breath, you take a recovery breath and hold it for 15 seconds.

This may sound familiar to you if you have done meditation or pranayama (kundalini yoga’s breath of fire) or the tummo of Tibetan Buddhist meditation. All of these are rhythmic-breathing disciplines. I have tried these techniques in the past. Some people enjoy the resulting buzz in the brain as a natural high. Some people feel dizzy and start seeing flashes of light. Not everyone feels it’s a good thing.

As I said at the start, I don’t like the cold. Hof would tell me that after all that intense breathing, what I need next is cold exposure. He is of the school that believes you should immerse in freezing water, but he would be okay if I started with even a minute or two under a cold shower to get an effect.

The initial effect is panic in the brain. Like a meditator dismissing the intruding thoughts, he says you need to dismiss the panic and relax and focus. That focus can be visualizing heat inside you and generating warmth in your body.  (I agree. Warm is good!)

That cold shower also floods your brain and cells with oxygen. Your vascular system gets a boost. Endorphins, which are structurally similar to the drug morphine, are released. They are natural painkillers. Your opioid receptors are activated. They can bring about feelings of euphoria and general well-being. Hof believes it brings you fully into the present moment.

I read a long article in Outside magazine about Wim Hof. He has turned his philosophy into a business. That always makes me apprehensive.

He might answer my apprehension like this: “This method is very simple, very accessible, and endorsed by science. Anybody can do it, and there is no dogma, only acceptance. Only freedom.” That comes from his book, The Wim Hof Method, which I plan to read this winter while sitting in a warm house, possibly under a blanket.

Then again, maybe I will venture out into the cold after reading it. I do find that stepping out a cold morning for my daily walk is very “bracing.” Of course, I’m not naked or wet, so it’s nothing like what he is preaching.

He has a company called Innerfire and, despite his entrepreneurial side, he is a “counterculture” hero. He has more than a million Instagram followers. He has written or contributed to a shelf full of books. He hosts seminars around the world and there are certified Wim Hof instructors offering their own workshops. This is a business.

I tried out the free minicourse on his website and it was an interesting teaser and I could certainly try some of the basic techniques on my own. But I am not ready to do any polar bear plunges into the Atlantic Ocean.

I would say this Iceman has arrived.

from Hof’s Instagram page where he writes “If you trust the messages of nature, then nature entrusts you to be a messenger. Breathe and use the cold.”

Forcing the Season

How should I interpret that I really like forcing the spring season?  For many years, I have been forcing plant bulbs over the winter, and branches in February and March. It was something my mother did when I was a kid. Clearly, it is my way of getting a glimpse of Spring in the cold months.

Forcing plants is unnatural, right?  Is it some little power thing – you’re beating Nature (or God) at her own game? Maybe there’s some of that, but I find it so hopeful to see those blooms on a cold day when there might still snow falling outside.

a fragrantly forced hyacinth

It’s not like no one else is doing this as a commercial operation. I buy some bulbs in winter. Hyacinths are popular and I see them sold in glass containers to force them in water. You can also buy pre-potted tulips almost ready to open. You could do your own pots of bulbs and chill them for a make-believe winter, but the timing is tricky.

It’s too late to start on forcing bulbs for this year – unless some garden store in the area has done it for you. If you have forsythia bushes in your yard or nearby you can clip a few branches (with permission), clip some footlong tips and put them in water in February and March (any time before they are already blooming) and after about a week they will open. So easy.

Lots of forsythia forced indoors

There are other bushes and trees that are suitable for forcing. Ornamental trees and shrubs often set their flower buds during the previous growing season. The buds need to experience the cold which puts them into dormancy or they won’t open. They need at least 6 weeks of cold temperatures. The buds then usually wait for 2 to 3 weeks of moisture and warmth to come out of the dormancy.

That depends on where you live, but for much of the U.S.  February is usually enough dormancy time. I usually start on Valentine’s Day and clip a new batch every week until they start opening outside. It’s also the time when you can prune deciduous trees and large shrubs. So, while you’re out there in the cold with the pruners, you can use some of the cut branches for forcing.

I pick a mild day (definitely not freezing) and pick thin branches (less than a half inch) that have nice, fat flower buds. The flower buds are round and fat; leaf buds are smaller and pointed.

Forsythia bushes and pussy willows are two easy ones and are usually fairly plentiful. I love the yellow burst of forsythia in the house and then the full bushes when real Spring is here.

I try to cut some branches each weekend in February to keep blooms going. I might still have some trims I can make in early March, but then it’s close enough to real spring to stop.

I cut branches with my big vase with water in hand. 12 -36 inches is the range and I’ve heard that if you put them in a bucket of warm water and cut the bottom inch off the bottoms while they are underwater because that submerged cut is supposed to prevent air from drying the stem and promotes water intake. Some people use some floral preservative in fresh warm water and even cut again. I don’t get that fancy, but you can buy preservatives but they are not easy to make – lots of recipes online.

A little sunlight, warmth (not heat) and high humidity will speed up the bloom, but they are pretty forgiving and even in a cool, dark indoor setting you’ll eventually get some blooms.

Love Is a Mix Tape

Back in 2009, I came across a website edited by Jason Bittner called CassetteFromMyEx.com.  It seems to be gone now, but on the site, people shared their stories of lost (or everlasting) love that centered around a mix tape they made for the object of their love.

Bittner took the website idea and used it to put together a book, Cassette from My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves which is a collection of stories, essays, art, and other contributions by various artists, musicians, and writers.  It’s the story of the role of the mixtape that was especially big in the late 1970s and 80s when cassette tape reigned as the way to share music.

I don’t know if anyone still makes mixtapes or mixCDs. I guess shared playlists might be the latest version, but that doesn’t seem like the same thing to me. I made lots of mixtapes and a bunch of CD mixes. I made ones for my wife to listen to in her commuting. I made ones for friends, especially to accompany them on a long drives across country or to their summer place. Before I was married, I made them for girlfriends. I carefully selected songs and sequences to convey messages. Sometimes I even added my own voice so that they sounded more like a radio program. I spent a lot of time on them. I even made artwork for the cases.

The compact audio cassette came to us in 1963 and into the 1970s after the car 8-track tape died. These inexpensive and portable tapes were part of the “downloadable” music culture long before the Internet, Napster, iTunes, and Spotify. In my no-money-for-records high school days, I would record songs off the radio on my cassette deck with the built-in radio.

Mix tapes let the DJ in you loose to create thematic mixes. Mixtapes probably fit into some categories, like the Romantic Tape, the Break-up Tape, the Road Trip Tape, even the Indoctrination Tape you made to turn someone on to a band, or to you via “your music.”

One extended story of mixtape romance is by rock critic Rob Sheffield. He wrote a memoir using 22 “mix tapes” to describe his life with his wife, Renee, from their meeting in 1989 to her untimely death in 1997. Each of the chapters in Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time begins with song titles from their mixes.

I made (and still have) a lot of mix CDs made for my own listening pleasure, so that in the car I am listening to my own radio station. I made driving ones – hard rock for highways, folk-rock for byways – late-night radio sets, an hour of quieter music.

I made a series for friends of summer songs. They included the obvious ones – Beach Boys’ tracks like “All Summer Long,” and “In the Summertime,” and “Summer Breeze” as well as songs we associated with summer because they were summer hits or we just associated with summer (“Time of the Season,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” “Take It Easy”).  Then I did the sequencing after gathering them from our collected CDs and with a few iTunes downloads. I listened to all of them trying to pick out references to a month or part of summer and created June, July, and August sets.  “See You In September,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “School’s Out” are part of the June set.  For July, “Up on the Roof,” “Summer in the City,” “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” Kodachrome,” Hot Fun in the Summertime.”  The August CD included “Summer, Highland Falls,” Boys of Summer,” “Groovin'” “Summertime Blues,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” Summer Wind.”

My friend Pat was a big fan of the summer set, so she (a teacher) also got back-to-school and end-of-school mixes. And I had done winter, spring, and winter into spring CDs.

I still have most of them in a plastic crate. I look back at those first mixtapes (pre-marriage) that were actual tapes I made for car rides to the beach or vacations.  Have you seen the movie As Good As It Gets? Jack Nicholson’s character makes careful mixes for a car trip in the hope of seducing the character played by Helen Hunt. If not to seduce, then at least made to reveal who he really is via the songs – something he can’t seem to do in person. Been there; mixed that.

I love making lists anyway, so making song lists is something I like doing – like the people in Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity and the great film version (and even the soundtrack CD).

Did you ever make or receive mixtapes in any form?
Post a comment. I’d love to hear your story.

You Missed Earth Hour, Right?

Earth Hour is a program where you switch off and give an hour for Earth, and this year it was Saturday, March 23rd at 8:30 pm your local time.

It began in 2007, and Earth Hour has been known for the “lights off” moment, with individuals from around the globe switching off their lights to show symbolic support for the planet and to raise awareness of the environmental issues affecting it.

Okay, it is a small and mostly symbolic gesture embracing 60 minutes of conscious energy usage, but it is also about the collective impact that simple switching off can make. Landmarks and homes across the world switch off. Some participants also “Give an hour for Earth” by spending 60 minutes doing something positive for our planet.

In 2023, over 410,000 hours were given to our planet by supporters in 190 countries and territories, representing 90% of the planet, making it the Biggest Hour for Earth so far. Let’s see how they did in 2024.

Worried about artificial intelligence? You should be more worried that we are on course to breach by 2030 the 1.5°C global temperature increase limit set by the Paris Climate Agreement. The next 7 years are therefore crucial to all our futures. We have to stay under the 1.5°C climate threshold to avoid irreversible damage to our planet, and we need to reverse nature loss by 2030, ending the decade with more nature than we started, not less. To make this happen, individuals, communities, businesses, and governments must all urgently step up their efforts to protect and restore our one shared home.

Banking Some Daylight for the Future

It is time once again for the U.S. to “spring forward” an hour for daylight saving time (DST) – unless you live in Hawaii, Arizona, the Midway Islands or Wake Island, where they do not play this game.

Tonight at bedtime, people push the hour hand forward, losing an hour, but with the supposed benefit that tomorrow’s sunset will be an hour later and that we are “banking” those hours for future dark days.

Do we still need Daylight Saving Time? (By the way, it is “saving”, not the plural, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.) Benjamin Franklin sometimes gets the credit for the idea of DST saving time. In Britain and Germany, they began using the concept in World War I to conserve energy. The U.S. used it briefly during the war, but it didn’t become widely accepted. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 set that clocks should be set forward on the last Sunday in April and set back on the last Sunday in October, but Congress has changed that several times to add more daylight saving to the calendar.  This year, daylight saving time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.

TimeandDate.com says that about 75 countries and territories observe daylight saving time and 164 have no time change. So, not everyone is on board.

The supposed plusses of DST:
– more time in the day for exercise and socialization = happier people
– increased visibility = decreased traffic accidents
– energy savings = less time that we use lights and other devices
– more time for tourism, shopping etc. = boost to the economy

Are you feeling the benefits? The “spring ahead” idea appeals to me because I feel a kind of resurgence – as does the nature around me in Paradelle – when spring arrives. I appreciate more daylight for me to be outside working in the garden or walking in the woods.

I always set the clock ahead at dinner time when I have settled into the house. (I would never recommend doing it the morning after.) so that I have at least six additional hours to adapt to the time change. I have never experienced the disorientation that some people report after the time changes during the year.

Getting Lost

Sometimes it is good to get lost.

I’m not what could be considered a serious hiker. Maybe a serious walker. My knees don’t allow the hiking I once was able to do. I can think of two times I was in the woods and got lost. I can think of many more times that I did not know where I was at some point, but that’s not the same thing.

In one case, I was walking and did not time my leaving very well with the setting of the sun, so I ended up in darkness. Everyone knows that roads and trails don’t look the same when you’re on your way out at night as they did when you were on your way in during the daylight.

This was in a woods that I had walked many times before, and I knew that if I walked straight in any direction I would be “out” in an hour or two. And yet, I panicked. I found myself running and following what seemed like a trail, though not a familiar one. And I know those are the wrong things to do.

The other time I was lost it was a bit more serious. I was on a section of the Appalachian Trail with a group, but I hurt my knee and was walking/limping at a snail’s pace. I was slowing down the group. Someone offered me a map with a shortcut back to the parking area (they wanted to finish the loop they were hiking) and I said that they should go on without me and I would head back on my own. Not a good idea on my part, but they went ahead.

We had been hiking for about 2 hours, so it would be at least 2 or 3 hours for me to get back using the shortcut at my slow pace. They had at least 4 hours left to complete the loop.

I was fine until I hit a long downhill section that was just murder on my knee. I made lots of stops, hopping when I could, trying to use my staff as a crutch, and cooling my knee with my water bottle. I was so focused on my knee that I lost the trail. I lost THE trail, but I ended up on some trail.  After 2 hours, I knew I wasn’t passing any landmarks on the map. I knew I couldn’t walk back, so I studied the map trying to figure out where I was on it.

Even though I am pretty good with a map and compass, I couldn’t really fix on any landmarks to triangulate where I was sitting.  I took my best guess at the straightest path to the highway near the cars hoping that if I made it there at least the walking would be easier, and I might even hitchhike a ride to the parking lot.

Now I was off the trail. In my head, I ran several scenarios where I just could not walk anymore or would slip, fall, and break something or get knocked unconscious.  How long before the group would miss me?  And wouldn’t they look for me on the shortcut path I was supposed to follow?

Obviously, I did make it out. I actually arrived at the road, walked to the lot, and arrived just minutes before the group. My shortcut had taken me about 4 hours. I told them I had been there for an hour already, resting my knee and waiting for them to return so that we could go out for dinner and a few beers.

This past week I spotted a book titled  You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall written by  Colin Ellard,  a psychology professor. He says that Italian homing pigeons navigate using mental maps which include major highways and railroad tracks. He suggests that people make mental map stories to remember their way.

He says that if we were out in the woods, it doesn’t take far (a few hundred yards off course perhaps) for us to become lost.  Then we find it difficult to know if we are walking in a straight line anymore. We can make remarkable turns and still feel that we are walking in a straight line. We also tend to speed up our movement, so we go farther off course faster.

What should we do when lost?  Stop.

Still, I think it’s a good thing to get lost once in a while. On purpose. Preferably in a place where you won’t die of exposure or be attacked by bears if it takes you 6 hours to get out. And you should follow all those rules about telling someone where you are going, taking a map, some food and water, a cell phone…  Of course, all those things also make it, perhaps, too comfortable. Can you really be lost with all that preparation?

And, there’s always that idea of getting lost in a less literal sense.

In writing, I find it’s a good idea to strike out to lands unknown and get lost a bit, if for no other reason than it feels so good to find yourself.

I have a friend who was forced to retire and he did not deal well with the situation. He was lost about what to do with his time and life after 38 years of having it pretty well set on a very clear path day-to-day. I asked him how long it took him after college to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. “I’m not sure I ever did,” he said.

Of course, he ultimately did. It took him about four years of walking down the path to find the one that worked for those 38 years. Maybe it wasn’t the perfect path, but it was a good one.

“So, why do you think it’s reasonable to expect that after being home for a month that you would know what you want to do with the rest of your life?” I said.  “If you said you were taking the next year to try some things and see what appeals to you, it would sound more realistic.”

I think he needed to be lost for a while. He needed his family and friends nearby. He needed a therapist and some medication too. He is a religious person – a believer – and that should help.

He can consult maps. He can draw his own paths on them too. But he needs, like the rest of us, to be lost too if he is ever to find himself.