Community News, Ideas, & Comments
Natural Environment · 17th December 2010
Whitey Lueck
It’s just after noon on the day before Christmas, and I’m enjoying Life here in the West Cascades of Oregon. The ground is carpeted with about two inches of fresh snow, the temperature is in the mid-30s, and the sun is shining brilliantly in a cloudless sky. And here I sit, wearing nothing but my glasses.
“He must be crazy!,” you say. On the contrary, I am confident that all my intellectual faculties are functioning at peak capacity at the moment. You see, I have learned the art of basking, and I am practicing it as I write.
For some curious reason, basking is very little known in our culture. Oh, sure, in the summertime when it’s hot out, people lie in the sun because it feels good, or they’re trying to get a “tan,” which many people consider attractive and a sign of good health. And in the wintertime, in areas where winter sports are popular, one sometimes sees skiers or skaters, when sitting down and taking a break, with their faces pointed skyward on sunny days. They’re clearly “soaking up the sun,” but in my view they’re only Beginner Baskers, because they usually still have most of their clothes on. And how can one efficiently warm one’s body with sunshine if it is covered with multiple layers of clothing?
My first exposure (so to speak) to basking was when I was living in northern Sweden in the mid-1970s. Year-round, the sun is seldom very strong at that latitude, nor the temperatures very warm, and people take every opportunity to soak up as much sun over as much of their body as possible. In the downtown pedestrian mall in Umea, the small city closest to where I lived, there were long rows of benches that all faced due south. On sunny days at almost any time of year, I could find there several to a dozen or more people sitting quietly on the benches and facing the sun.
My first experience with “domestic” basking, back in the U.S., was in Madison, Wisconsin, where I went to graduate school. Many winter days were wonderfully sunny, and I soon found a couple of excellent spots on campus where, after swimming laps mid-day at the university pool, I would eat my picnic lunch and just bask for a while before heading back to classes or to my office. Even when the snow was deep and a frigid wind was blowing from the northwest, the dark red brick wall on the south side of the Steenbock Science Library building was out of the wind, warm, and inviting. (Interestingly, however, I was apparently the only person ever to take advantage of the wall’s generous invitation!)
Since moving back to western Oregon in 1983 and establishing my tradition of weekly trips to the West Cascades every Thursday, I have perfected the art of basking. Although western Oregon weather from June through October is mostly sunny, we can suffer during the winter months from sun deprivation, especially here in the southern Willamette Valley which is socked in with ground fog for many days every winter. But when it’s foggy in Eugene, the sun is almost certainly shining everywhere else, so I happily hop the bus to the Cascades, as I did earlier today, to spend a few hours blissfully basking.
The principles of professional basking are few:
1. You need to take your clothes off, or strip to the waist anyway, or at the very least roll up your sleeves and pull up your shirt to expose your midriff, so the sun can reach your body to both warm you and make some vitamin D!
2. You must find a spot that is out of the wind and faces south. In urban areas, the best places are stone or brick walls, the darker the color, the better. (The uppermost level of a parking garage is, in my experience, ideal for both maximum sun exposure and for privacy, but watch out for those pesky security cameras.) In the wilds, the best places are south-facing slopes or cliffs, preferably in a concave area or depression,or at the base of evergreen shrubs or a large tree trunk, where there will be the least wind and the sun’s rays will be most focused.
3. You need to be able to lie on the ground atop an insulated pad or an article of clothing; or, if you’re sitting up, have your back against a wall, cliff, or tree trunk. This keeps the shady side of your body from getting cold. If you can’t do that, you’ll need to at least drape a sweater or coat over your shoulders and back, while exposing your naked front side to the full sun.
4. Your body, or the part(s) you want warmed, needs to be as perpendicular to the sun’s rays as possible, for maximum effect.
5. From November through January, when the sun is lowest, the best basking hours are from 10am until 2 or 3pm. But especially well-chosen basking spots can warm you already quite early in the morning and quite late into the afternoon; seek out such spots and tell no one else about them!
I don’t anticipate that publicizing my “basking secrets” here is going to create much competition for my favorite spots. But it would be great to sometime encounter someone else doing what comes so naturally to most other animals, but among humans seems to be an almost forgotten practice. See you out in the sunshine some winter day!
Whitey Lueck
In the West Cascades
24 December 2009
“He must be crazy!,” you say. On the contrary, I am confident that all my intellectual faculties are functioning at peak capacity at the moment. You see, I have learned the art of basking, and I am practicing it as I write.
For some curious reason, basking is very little known in our culture. Oh, sure, in the summertime when it’s hot out, people lie in the sun because it feels good, or they’re trying to get a “tan,” which many people consider attractive and a sign of good health. And in the wintertime, in areas where winter sports are popular, one sometimes sees skiers or skaters, when sitting down and taking a break, with their faces pointed skyward on sunny days. They’re clearly “soaking up the sun,” but in my view they’re only Beginner Baskers, because they usually still have most of their clothes on. And how can one efficiently warm one’s body with sunshine if it is covered with multiple layers of clothing?
My first exposure (so to speak) to basking was when I was living in northern Sweden in the mid-1970s. Year-round, the sun is seldom very strong at that latitude, nor the temperatures very warm, and people take every opportunity to soak up as much sun over as much of their body as possible. In the downtown pedestrian mall in Umea, the small city closest to where I lived, there were long rows of benches that all faced due south. On sunny days at almost any time of year, I could find there several to a dozen or more people sitting quietly on the benches and facing the sun.
My first experience with “domestic” basking, back in the U.S., was in Madison, Wisconsin, where I went to graduate school. Many winter days were wonderfully sunny, and I soon found a couple of excellent spots on campus where, after swimming laps mid-day at the university pool, I would eat my picnic lunch and just bask for a while before heading back to classes or to my office. Even when the snow was deep and a frigid wind was blowing from the northwest, the dark red brick wall on the south side of the Steenbock Science Library building was out of the wind, warm, and inviting. (Interestingly, however, I was apparently the only person ever to take advantage of the wall’s generous invitation!)
Since moving back to western Oregon in 1983 and establishing my tradition of weekly trips to the West Cascades every Thursday, I have perfected the art of basking. Although western Oregon weather from June through October is mostly sunny, we can suffer during the winter months from sun deprivation, especially here in the southern Willamette Valley which is socked in with ground fog for many days every winter. But when it’s foggy in Eugene, the sun is almost certainly shining everywhere else, so I happily hop the bus to the Cascades, as I did earlier today, to spend a few hours blissfully basking.
The principles of professional basking are few:
1. You need to take your clothes off, or strip to the waist anyway, or at the very least roll up your sleeves and pull up your shirt to expose your midriff, so the sun can reach your body to both warm you and make some vitamin D!
2. You must find a spot that is out of the wind and faces south. In urban areas, the best places are stone or brick walls, the darker the color, the better. (The uppermost level of a parking garage is, in my experience, ideal for both maximum sun exposure and for privacy, but watch out for those pesky security cameras.) In the wilds, the best places are south-facing slopes or cliffs, preferably in a concave area or depression,or at the base of evergreen shrubs or a large tree trunk, where there will be the least wind and the sun’s rays will be most focused.
3. You need to be able to lie on the ground atop an insulated pad or an article of clothing; or, if you’re sitting up, have your back against a wall, cliff, or tree trunk. This keeps the shady side of your body from getting cold. If you can’t do that, you’ll need to at least drape a sweater or coat over your shoulders and back, while exposing your naked front side to the full sun.
4. Your body, or the part(s) you want warmed, needs to be as perpendicular to the sun’s rays as possible, for maximum effect.
5. From November through January, when the sun is lowest, the best basking hours are from 10am until 2 or 3pm. But especially well-chosen basking spots can warm you already quite early in the morning and quite late into the afternoon; seek out such spots and tell no one else about them!
I don’t anticipate that publicizing my “basking secrets” here is going to create much competition for my favorite spots. But it would be great to sometime encounter someone else doing what comes so naturally to most other animals, but among humans seems to be an almost forgotten practice. See you out in the sunshine some winter day!
Whitey Lueck
In the West Cascades
24 December 2009
Basking Cat