Divining the time
There I was, lying in bed in the middle of the night. What time it was, I could not be sure. But that didn’t stop me from trying to figure it out.
The most recent issue of Outside magazine has an interesting article about navigating using only the clues in one’s surroundings. No maps, no compasses — certainly no GPS receivers. Things like the sun, damp hills, and wave interference patterns served in their stead.
I’m pretty decent at dead reckoning for location, and I can almost always return to a spot if I’ve been there once. That said, I always bring serious navigation equipment when I’m solo hiking in the wilderness: topo maps, a high-end hiking GPS, and a phone that will work in the area. I like the romance of instinctive way-finding, but I like not getting lost, too. And I really love maps. Clocks, too.
I have no traditional clocks in my bedroom (my iPod Touch is my alarm), and I don’t wear my watch when I sleep, so I have no way of checking the time in the middle of the night without getting out of bed and stumbling to my desk. Unfortunately, I sometimes wake up with an incredible urge to know how much longer I’ll be able to sleep. With that knowledge acquired, I can fall back into bed and quickly doze off for a few more hours. However, if I don’t get up and go look at my iPod or phone, I just lie in bed, unable to sleep, wondering what time it is. Then a blog post results.
Anyhow, the Outside article got me thinking: would it be possible to use the clues from my nighttime environment to divine the time?
There isn’t much to go on. The neighbors are pretty quiet. It’s dark outside. I can’t hear automobile traffic from my room, and the distant trains that I can hear don’t seem to obey any particular patterns of activity. I can usually feel when my alarm is about to go off, but if that’s more than a few minutes away the usefulness plummets.
What I can hear are two cyclic appliances: the surprisingly noisy refrigerator compressor turning on and off, and the soothing expansion and contraction of the radiator as the system heats and coasts. Thus, I can judge the relative passage of time, but absolute time remains elusive.
Surely there must be a way to figure out the time to within, say +/- 30 minutes without a clock on an overcast night. But how?
My next door neighbors always have a screaming argument starting between 10 and 10:30 every night. I’m not saying I like knowing that, but they’re definitely consistent.
1. sing your lowest note. Your vocal cords relax after you hit the pillow and your low range will increase by approximately 1/4 note per hour. You’ll need perfect pitch to tell where you are at, however. But you can “tune” this by fining a harmonic in your skull. My skull resonates at the first B flat that exists to the right of center C. You’ll need to know what time you went to bed of course.
2. measure your feet. no kidding, you feet shrink a full size and a half overnight in what is a pretty linear progression over an 8 hour slumber.
3. weigh yourself. depending upon the relative humidity in your room, your body will dispense with approximately 13 ounces of water during this same 8 hour slumber, again in a relatively linear fashion at a rate of approx. 1.5 ouces per hour.
4. train yourself. for 2 weeks, set an alarm to wake up and play heart and soul on your keyboard at 2am. After this training, when you wake up at night you will either think you are early or late to your heart and soul gig. how early or late will depend upon your lowest note, your foot size, and your weight.
Or maybe more logically (and closer to truth): since you cannot tell what time it is, you can simply pick a time and it will be correct as it cannot be proven incorrect. I’d suggest simply going back to sleep satisfied after this realization, i.e. no need to wander to the kitchen and reset the stove’s clock. Those things tend to wander a bit you know…
Those are some great ideas! The fourth one, especially.
As for the question of relevance, well, sure, knowing the time isn’t critical. I think knowing an incorrect time would work only if I were unaware of the ruse. The placebo effect, or something.