While the air does get chilly during Maine winters.  Conduction from the ground is the number one issue to address in cold weather survival. Conduction is the active lowering of your bodies core temperature by making contact with something more dense and colder than you. Sitting on a rock, making contact with the frozen earth, standing on ice; each of these common situations can lead to hypothermia more rapidly due to conduction.  This heat transfer from your body to the earth, rock, or ice occurs because colder, more dense objects absorb the more active molecules of a warmer, less dense object much like kinetic energy is transferred through colliding objects, only on a molecular level.

 

Winter survival and primitive skills practitioners prevent conduction by getting off the ground.

Winter survival and primitive skills practitioners prevent conduction by getting off the ground.

 

To prevent or slow conduction, make sure your body avoids contact with dense, cool materials. Wear thick wool socks inside plush cold weather boot liners and stand on pinky logs, a pile of boughs, or a sleeping pad to prevent the cold from robbing your body heat. By using porous and/or less dense materials as a barrier between you and the frozen substrate, you slow or prevent the energy transfer necessary to begin the conductive processes responsible for causing so many people to lose their lives.