Rudy Hummel emerges from his sleeping quarters early last winter. PHOTO: snoreoutdoors.com
Rudy Hummel, 17, of Hermantown, will spend one more week sleeping outside his northern Minnesota home before a long-awaited return to the indoors this Saturday. Hummel has slept outside every night for nearly a year. Yes. In northern Minnesota.
Some nice writing from Sam Cook at the Duluth News Tribune:
[Hummel] started with the idea of sleeping outside all summer. When fall came, he didn’t want to quit. He decided to go for a full year. When snow arrived in early December, he and his dad built a snow house, and Hummel slept there through the second-coldest and third-snowiest Duluth winter on record. On 76 nights, the temperature dropped below zero.
In early April, he left the snow house and transitioned back to the tree platform, where he stays warm in three sleeping bags and a quilt inside a one-person tent. He enjoys not having to scrape the ceiling of his snow house to keep it livable, but he misses the tomblike silence of the shelter. Those songbirds wake up early.
Hummel is raising money for Habitat for Humanity and Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory at his website, snoreoutdoors.com. He’s asking everyone to sleep outside Friday night in recognition of housing and homelessness issues, and to enjoy the great outdoors.
Meantime, I recommend the Sam Cook story from Sunday’s Duluth News Tribune.
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