Being outside: a state of mind

I find that with garden helpers, the most important predictor of success is their experience of being outdoors for extended periods of time.  Otherwise willing and able persons--strong, fit, environmentally conscious, friendly--don't succeed if they aren't used to being outside.

Outside is a state of mind as much as a different environment.  Obviously, it's hotter, colder, more variable.  There are creeping bugs and flying bugs.  The angle of the light changes over the course of a day.  It's wet. It's dusty. There's lots of air--moving, usually:  you're often in a draft of some kind. It's super-bright, MUCH brighter than any indoor environment.  It's so bright that focusing on white (a newspaper or a book, or someone's white shirt) actually hurts.  People who work outdoors all the time have permanent squints, even if they habitually wear sunglasses.

If you're not used to it, this constant assault of the environment on the body is quite wearing. You get messages (cold! itchy! drafty!) from your skin, messages you don't get indoors, and this is distracting, at least initially. Yet, you get used to it, and even get to like it.

Every spring, I have to go through the process of getting assimilated again.  By summertime, I can stay outdoors a long time, and by fall, I can stand around outside in a short sleeved shirt in the shade, while others have already broken out the sweaters and jackets. The stimulus of skin-delivered messages has become pleasant, and putting on long sleeves and shoes feels muffled-up--something's missing.

Yet, while I can stay outside more than most people I know, I'm not REALLY an outdoorsperson.   I am pampered, cosseted, can go indoors whenever I please.  Too hot, damp, buggy? I'm gone.  I tell myself that I like to be outdoors, but that is partly because I know I can always retreat to warmth (or coolth!). Still air is mine to command, as is light not searingly bright.

This is rather different that those who work outside with no such retreat.  Concrete workers, carpenters, utility workers--these people work outside all the time, regardless of the conditions, and they are as much tougher than me, as I am to people who never go outside at all.

After a several years acquaintence in which I never heard a single complaint, I asked my carpenter once whether he ever complained. He said "doesn't do any good, does it?" A neighbor who works concrete keeps his house at 60 degrees all winter, and colder at night--that's plenty warm enough for him, even at rest, but I would huddle and shiver through the winter at those indoor temperatures.

I think true outdoor workers look down on the rest of us as wimps, and they're right.  By comparison, we are, most hobby gardeners included ( yes, even if we think secretly to ourselves how outdoor-hardy we are).