In defense of cold showers….
The most important thing about taking a shower is to cease ALL thinking while taking it. How on earth can one enjoy a shower while thinking? Thinking ruins the experience.
It has been scientifically proven (or so I’m told) that it is far more difficult to think while taking a cold shower rather than a hot one. My vast experience with cold showers seems to validate this.
Almost a hundred years ago I lived for 5 months in a cabin out in the middle of the desert. What a glorious experience that was! The cabin had no water heater and no indoor plumbing. We peed and pooped in an outhouse. It is extremely important to cease ALL thinking while pooping but that is quite difficult in an outhouse because one simply can’t stop thinking about black widow spiders, scorpions, rattlesnakes, and bats. Still, pooping in an outhouse is an experience that connects us with the planet (especially if there is a window to look out of).
Though we had no indoor plumbing, we did have a well and an outlet to the water in that well in back of the cabin. We connected a garden hose to that outlet and when we cranked the lever open we had running water. The water was surprisingly cold despite the 112 degree desert heat.
So for five months my newlywed bride and I took naked cold showers out of doors with a garden hose. For me it was a religious experience.
At first, I kept looking around to see if anyone was watching. I quickly realized that the only ones watching were the birds, the black widow spiders, the ground squirrels, the tarantulas, the bobcats, the coyotes, and the rattlesnakes. God only knows what they thought.
Sadly, the newlywed bride and I never took cold outdoor showers together. After all, one of us had to stay in the cabin to watch the baby. As for that baby, we did have a propane tank and a stove to heat water on so we filled a large metal bucket with warm bath water in which we bathed the baby. Boy, was that fun!
Thinking back over the many decades of my life I have to consider those naked out-of-door cold showers to be the very best showers I’ve ever experienced. And it wasn’t just because it’s fun to be naked out-of-doors. It’s because those showers involved very little thinking. They were all about experience rather than thinking.
Nowadays, when I take a shower in my apartment I have to consciously force myself to cease ALL thinking in order to truly enjoy the experience of taking a shower. It’s not always easy. But this summer we’ve had some days here on the Great Plains when it has gotten up to 108 degrees or above. So I’ve taken a few cold showers this summer…. and boy has it been delightful! I try not to think but the memories come flooding in.
