Half an hour later, Brendan's watch alarm went off. He wormed his arm out from inside his sleeping bag, reached into the netting above his head without opening his eyes and pushed the button to turn it off. He drew his hand back inside his sleeping bag and rolled back and forth to tuck it in tight around his neck. He writhed in the sleeping bag, flexing and stretching his legs to generate some warmth. He opened his eyes and rolled over so he could see the pack by his side. He freed his arm again and plunged it into the pack, felt around inside for a couple of seconds until he found a pair of underwear and jammed them deep inside the sleeping bag between his legs. He did the same with a pair of heavy wool socks. He lay there for a couple of minutes until he heard the zipper of someone's tent nearby open.
"Sweet Mother of Hairy Jesus," he said. He struggled out of his sleeping socks and sweatpants and into the still cold underpants and socks. Then he sat up with the sleeping bag still around his legs, took off his sleeping tee shirt and put on the driest working tee shirt he could find. He struggled into a long-sleeved work shirt, put on his watch, and crawled out of the sleeping bag and unzipped the door of his tent. Like the 40 or so other tents near him, there was a plastic tarp strung up a couple of feet above his tent providing extra protection for the tent and a sheltered awning in front of the door. He grabbed his boots from beside the tent and shook them upside down briefly. Some moss and a twig fell out of one of them. He put his boots on, still sitting half inside the tent, then swivelled around into a crouch outside the tent and did the door zip back up. He jammed his toque on his head, picked up his daypack and headed down the path to the cook shack.
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