Out in the cold.

New York--My teenage son and I put in a lot of hours together in Boy Scouts. Then girls came along and he quit just short of his Eagle. It's a sore point.

But he'll still camp with me--including winter camping in New York state's sometimes-deep snow. Last year we did an overnight at Harriman Park, a sublimely beautiful section of wild mountain 50 miles above New York City. Drive an hour from Times Square and you're in 360 degrees of primeval forest. It's also about 15 degrees colder.

Global warming took a vacation last year and there was more than a foot of snow on the ground. As we motored up the highway the thermometer registered a balmy 35 degrees, but the radio said a cold front was moving in. Our final destination was an open log shelter a mile up the mountain.

We started hiking. The drifts were deep. As we neared the top, the wind had leveled all the snow and there was no telling what was beneath. Step on a perfectly fiat spot and you were hip-deep in snow, wrestling through a vat of molasses. It took us two hours to reach the shelter-twice normal. Still, we had an hour of daylight to pitch our tent and start a fire.

When you're out in cold like this, you realize how much you depend on your own body. It's 98.6 degrees in your gut, and zero outside, so you have to conserve that "slow burning" fuel inside. Our boots were soaked, so Dylan left his by the fire. I threw on a few extra logs, and we crawled into our sleeping bags by 9 o'clock.

Two hours later, Dylan went outside the tent. "Dad, my boots are gone."

"Yeah, somebody must have taken them."