At Best B&B in Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, comfortable Matresses are the best investment you can make. But what is the flip side? I did a deep dive on mattresses and this is what I found out

When I was younger I used to backpack with my adventurous sister. We trampled all over the beautiful North Mountains, Squamish and the Fraser Valley. I mostly loved it, until it was time to go to sleep. I’d anxiously roll out my thin bed mat on the floor of the tent. Although the bed mat was easy to carry, it felt like I was sleeping on a cement slab by the early hours of the morning. I would try to find the sweet spot on my hip to finally get comfortable before dawn but never could. The mylar foil blanket crackled every time I shifted.

        “You look like a baked potato on a plate”, my sister joked sadistically, “Try sleeping on your back.”

        It never worked. I investigated all kinds of interesting ways to sleep on a hike, including the extra puffy sleeping bag with “pant legs” so that you could easily flee from whatever else was out there, to hammocks. Hammocks looked easier to carry but maybe seemed like a tangle-y death trap when face to face with a cougar.

       “Really?” my sister mocked, “You would be sleeping in a candy wrapper. Don’t.”

        Thankfully on the mornings of our expeditions, I would emerge from the tent and the dopamine would kick in as we scrambled up the mountains giddy to get to the top. But I was always happy to get back to my soft mattress at home.

        At the Best B&B in Port Alberni we have the best hotel mattresses we could afford. But it’s got me thinking about mattresses in general. Who invented them? And when? What kind of society would be without them? I had to find out.

        Jane Goodall’s research confirmed that chimps, like humans, like a nice soft spot to sleep. The young chimps learn from their mothers and build nests out of branches and leaves in the trees at dusk. Every night they build a new nest in a new location and almost never reuse them to avoid lice and other parasites.

        Cave people did something similar. They slept on animal hides and aromatic grasses to repel insects. Cave people slept around the fire communally in a heat circle to survive the cold.

        In Ancient Egypt, the rich raised their beds on wooden planks to avoid the rats and snakes. They began to stuff their mattresses with wool and feathers. By the middle ages, rich people were thinking more aesthetically and began covering their mattresses in ornate fabrics.

        Coil springs were invented in the 1800’s to make metal beds more supportive and bouncy and by the 1930s the springs were encased in their own box. Water beds were invented around the same time for a similar reason. They were used to help immobile patients to avoid pressure related bed sores. The water bed regained popularity in the 1970’s. It was a product that embodied the sexual liberation of the times.……………………..

     Have you ever wondered how astronauts sleep? They sleep in a sleeping bag attached to the wall inside a compartment so they don’t float away. I have presented a short video of Canada’s imaginary boyfriend and astronaut Chris Hatfield. Click on the link on the Best B&B Facebook page if you would like a tour.

        Since then NASA has taken over the evolution of the mattress by inventing memory foam and air beds for allergy sufferers and an endless array of sleep products. Without all this development our society would be a cranky, sleep deprived lot.

        But If I can “flip” it back around to my hiking experience. With all the technology out there for more comfortable mattresses, why can’t someone just invent a better hiking mat? Just putting it out there…anyone?