I, for one, enjoy sleeping. Particularly in a nice warm bed, piled high with fuzzy blankets (But no pillows. Pillows are weird). But that’s not true for everyone.

Logan Moir, a senior studying civil engineering, spends his nights outside.

“I choose to sleep in a sleeping bag because it maintains a neutral back position for me. I used to sleep on a nearly concave mattress, but it gave me back pain — and sleeping outside makes it easy to wake up early,” Moir said.

Moir started sleeping outdoors on a sleeping pad to adjust himself for sleeping while on climbing trips.

“I love climbing, and more recently, mountaineering and alpine climbing,” Moir said. “All three frequently require nights, or weeks, on the ground, but those places are where I feel most alive — whether resting under a meteor shower or the Milky Way, breathing in crisp air before a climb or collapsing into the deepest sleep after a physically and mentally exhausting summit.”

Moir utilizes a tent during the winter months, but with the current “nice” weather, he goes tentless in his back yard.

Out of scientific interest, I decided to join him for a night.

I rented one of those mummy-style sleeping bags with blue stripes and a pad from the Rec and Outing Center in the Union (it took me four years, but I found out you can get all sorts of stuff from them. Snowshoes? You bet. Tents? But of course. Kayaks? Why not?), and thus prepared, made my way to Moir’s back yard.

My guide to outdoor unconsciousness promptly fell asleep, and I sat there soaking up the night, the gentle breeze rustling through the trees, the stars and their brilliance.

Then a horrible realization struck: I never sleep on my back. It’s impossible. I flipped over onto my side and nearly suffocated against the mummy wall of my sleeping bag. It turns out you have to turn those sleeping bags with your body — air holes are important.

After finagling into a sleep-worthy position, I realized it was uncomfortably hot.

“Man, this sleeping bag really does its job,” I naïvely observed.

Since I didn’t want to wake my backyard sleeping buddy with an overly-loud zipper, I attempted to remove sweatshirt and sweatpants from within the sleeping bag. The only problem is that those mummy-like sleeping bags are horribly constricting. I did my best impression of a giant angry blue inchworm, and eventually succeeded in removing the extra layers.

Temperatures equalized, and I quickly drifted off to sleep in the cool outdoor air. Everything was perfect.

Until 3:00 in the morning, when I woke with a start to realize that I, like the burrito you tried to microwave, was frozen in several places.

I recalled some words from my outdoor guide.

“When the temperature drops, you’re shivering in clothes that have soaked through from climbing, setting up camp, and shoveling a snow barrier around your tent in 45mph wind and snow, rest does not come easy,” Moir noted.

“The sounds and sights of a tent deforming under the seemingly endless force of a snowstorm keep you perpetually tense. If anything goes wrong, a cold, wet sleeping bag is not a fun place to shiver the night away.”

I mean, I didn’t climb a mountain or anything, and there wasn’t any snow, but I did walk from the parking lot to the back yard. I think the levels of suffering were probably roughly equivalent.

I did another impression of an angry inchworm as I struggled back into my extra layers. The inchworm cussed out the sleeping bag for being inconsistent. The inchworm was huffy.

At roughly 5:30 a.m. when a garbage truck started throwing around dumpsters like bowling pins, the angry inchworm and its frozen feet realized it was built to sleep indoors. Or at least in a tent. Or perhaps in the middle of nowhere where the garbage trucks don’t roam.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m glad I attempted the outdoor sleeping experience, but I think I’ll leave it to the mountaineers among us. I’ll settle for seeing meteor showers and the Milky Way from my bedroom window.

Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll chance the outdoors on a calm summer night, when I can enjoy the stars, cool breezes and outdoor sounds without feeling like a frozen burrito.