And then summer provided temporary relief.
Here in Florida there is a different hydrating challenge. There is an intense heat and humidity during southern summers that ratchets up your body’s natural cooling system to little effect. You sweat profusely. A short walk with the dog leaves you glistening within about ten minutes, and suffering from “swamp ass” (yeah, gross but it happens) after twenty.
I’ve heard it said that if you want to better understand how it feels down here, take a long hot shower, then put on your clothes without drying yourself off. Multiple daily clothing changes are routine no matter how little you wear. Long pants or sleeves feel like the chemical hot packs you might carry to football games in a Green Bay winter.
Extended time outside requires sunscreen of course. The sun feels like molten copper, blanketing your head and shoulders with the broiling intensity of a Weber grill. And you’re the meat. But the other danger is rapid dehydration.
Our bodies are made up of approximately 60 percent water. Losing ten percent of that amount results in physical and mental deterioration. So you can survive fluid loss via perspiration much longer than the equivalent rate of blood loss.
A good sweat is something for which we enter a sauna or steam room. It’s therapeutic and invigorating when the duration is controllable and optional. But venture outside during August in Florida to do some yard work as I did recently, and it quickly becomes clear that your body’s attempt to cool you requires lower ambient humidity and a nice breeze. The amount of sweat developing on your forehead isn’t readily apparent until you touch it with a swipe of a finger. It then coalesces like the condensation on a cold bottle of beer, cascading and rolling in a gathering wave, surfing toward your eyebrows and spilling onto both sides of your eyeglasses.
Dehydration sneaks up on you, leaves you feeling depleted for the rest of the day, and can cause leg cramps overnight. How do you know you’re headed for a literal melt down? The obvious clue is your t-shirt. There aren’t just embarrassing little patches of darkness under your arms, around your neck and down your chest and back. Your shirt has changed color. Whatever it was before, the entire thing is a dark shade of that color now.
A bit later your hands begin to shrivel. They look like you’ve been soaking in a hot tub for an hour, all prune-like and resembling your ancient aunt Edna’s fingers, through no fault of her own, on a normal day. Pinch the skin on your arm between thumb and forefinger and you’ll notice that it molds like PlayDoh, not bouncing back to its original shape. And eventually, if you lean over to pick a weed, when you stand up, the world begins to spin. The dizziness is a result of low blood pressure. You probably didn’t notice, but your body quit producing urine more than an hour ago. Now you’re headed for heat stroke, and for that there is one treatment: go inside and drink water.
Carrying a large water bottle postpones the above effects, but even several bottles into this experience I’ve found that I have limits, and have staggered into the house in surrender more than once. Along with water, you’re shedding electrolytes that help your tiny sub-cellular mechanisms continue operating. You need to replenish those too. The makers of Gatorade profess that their product helps with this, but studies don’t support the claim. I’ve even heard that football players drink pickle juice, but I have no idea if that’s true.
During a recent visit, my son regularly went for one-hour runs. Even if I could run, I wouldn’t do that. He came through the house, leaving a mop-worthy trail of sweat behind him and then jumped directly into the pool, appearing somewhat frantic. My Haitian neighbor once asked me why I was working outside in the middle of the day. I had no good answer. Lack of experience?
So, why would anyone live in a Godforsaken Hellscape like this? The answer requires a certain amount of gloating about our endless summer, the more pleasant version between November and May, that we get to enjoy when northerners are staying hydrated by taking out the garbage, causing the water in their veins to form ice crystals that time-release moisture back into their organs. This assumes that they haven’t fallen on the ice and broken a hip or had a heart attack shoveling wet snow. Their skin is another story.
You might consider becoming a “Snowbird” if you have the means, enjoy paying two of every bill, and feel like starting up, shutting down and worrying about two properties. It is estimated that 80 percent of residents along the Southwest Gulf of Florida are transitory. But if you stay all year you get to enjoy lighter traffic, available seats in restaurants, and a perpetual thirst that had best be taken seriously. Pickle juice, anyone?