Thoreau makes me want to sleep outside. I'll start in my own backyard. Once a week I'll set up the tent and make a night of it. Maybe not a big night. Just something to break the routine, but waking up and jumping into the groove in the morning anyways, rising from the grass and washing the dew off in the shower, and before I know it I'll be making coffee and heading to work. These will be shallow sleep nights at first, so I'll need plenty of coffee, but soon I'll be used to it. The sounds won't wake me and the feel of the hard earth against my body will be one of enveloping gravity. Then on nice nights I'll eschew the tent, eventually even the sleeping bag, everything except for a hat over my face. One shouldn't need a whole bunch of equipment just to sleep outside. Especially in Texas. Some of the idea is liberation, after all. But not the whole idea. Once I'm comfortable with the bugs and the night sounds and the cool of the evening, I'll expand my territory. Ideally there will be woods nearby for my nocturnal nesting on the weekends. But the real step is a bold one. Riding my bike around town I'll be vigilant. When the night falls I'll stake my claim among the cardboard box sleepers. Nothing serious, not like joining their ranks, although I wouldn't mind being friendly. A foray into sleeping outside in the city. Soon I'll get an eye during the daytime for spotting the most ideal spots for the nighttime. And before long I'll know what it looks like when one of those spots is already occupied. Then with this eye a whole different world will emerge. A subterranean current as it has been described, the network of pathways above and in-between the commerce of traffic and business that occupies a city during its hours of operation, one that supports a whole different human ecosystem during the nighttime.

Thoreau isn't the only one to blame. So's Kerouac, for a long time. And those couchsurfers who bugged me but who I can't get out of my head, and which bugs me more.

Urban Camping. About a million hits on google. It's part of the greater movement. Less.