Oh, what a difference a year makes.

Last night, I woke up at around 4 a.m. because I was cold. I sleep with the windows open, and so far this summer a thin sheet has been plenty of cover. Sometime before dawn today, a cotton sheet was not enough, even after 20 minutes of experimenting with variations of the fetal position and sheet wrappery.

Perfect North Dakota August weather. We live in so marvelous a place.

I laughed out loud in my kitchen this morning as I battened the windows, when I recalled that exactly one year ago this week I was coming off the Little Missouri River at the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, after 17 days of hiking and camping. They were amongst the hardest and most satisfying days I can ever remember. There were no chilly nights.

I had started at Marmarth on July 31, bear-hugged, fed and ridiculed by my old friend Patti Perry, the mayor. She is not the kind of person who worries much about the fate of geeks in the Badlands, but this time her farewell lecture at the U.S. Highway 12 bridge consisted of three propositions, one of them uncharacteristically serious. First, she said, only a fool would hike the Little Missouri River Valley under any circumstances. Second, anyone who hiked the Badlands in an August as hot as 2006 was taking unnecessary risks and might actually suffer or perish. Third, as I walked off, she turned to my dear friend and driver and said, "There goes pure insanity."

It turned out to be a blisteringly hot summer adventure. I would call it an ordeal, but for all of the heat, dehydration and fatigue, it was as glorious as anything I have ever experienced, and never once did I consider bailing out. The temperature never dipped below 85 degrees at night, and by 9 a.m. the next morning, it was usually well over 90. There was only one day in which the afternoon temperature did not top 100 degrees, and always well before noon. On the hottest day, it was 109. My rule was "nine by noon." If I could lug my 65-pound pack and my middle-aged body nine miles by noon every day, I reckoned, I could proceed on at least 12 or 13 miles a day and thus complete my hike. Under normal weather conditions, I could expect to hike up to 25 miles per day, but in extreme heat anything over 10 was a triumph.

An adventure of this sort, as Thoreau taught, reduces us to lowest terms, what in "Walden" he calls "grossest groceries." My 17 days consisted of eating beef jerky (homemade) and freeze-dried food, and moving from random flowing well to random flowing well. Each time I blundered upon a well, I doused myself with water, like a child running through the sprinkler, and forced as many ounces of that water (good, bad and indifferent) into my stomach and my water bottles as they could possibly contain. Then I rested for a few minutes, topped off my waterlogged stomach and lurched off with determination to the next water source, all day every day for more than two weeks.

On previous treks in the Little Missouri Valley, water had never been an issue. This time, because of the heat wave, it was the issue, and on a few occasions I actually worried about whether I would get to the next cattle trough in time or whether I would be reduced to drinking from the Little Missouri itself. I tend to regard that as a fate worse than death, but Patti Perry says - in her wise but scoffing way - that it is, in fact, just the reverse. Not knowing just where the next well might be added to the anxiety and adventure of the hike.

When my friend Jim picked me up at Juniper campground in the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in mid-August, he stopped for gas at the convenience store on the south end of Killdeer. We separated as he paid for the gas, and I strolled along the aisles, shaking my head at what capitalism can stock in a quick shop. Eventually he found me, mesmerized, drooling, before a rack of powdered doughnuts, Twinkies, Ho Hos, Cheetos and Hostess cupcakes. I felt like Chevy Chase (as Clark Griswold) in "National Lampoon's Vacation" after his solo hike across the Arizona desert. When, half dead, he finally staggers up to his family at a roadside gas station, he hugs his son Rusty and cries out, in his shrillest and most neurotic voice, "Hey! Shall we get a pop?"

A few weeks ago, I hiked up White Butte near Amidon with a good outback friend to see how things looked from the highest point in North Dakota. The view is magnificent. It was a hazy day, but we saw at least 12 prominent buttes from the summit, and the sense of standing on the top of the world, even at a mere 3,506 feet above sea level, was delightful. It was the hottest day of this summer. As we hiked up with our lightly-loaded day packs in the oven-like afternoon, I actually said, "What kind of idiot would do any serious hiking in this kind of weather?"

And then I realized. Oh, my kind of idiot. As usual, Patti Perry was right.

Last summer, let us hope, was an anomaly. This summer is how I think of North Dakota. Spells of seriously hot weather, with just a few nights in which the temperature does not drop to comfort levels, surrounded by long stretches when it rises into the 90s by day, but drops down to about 68 at night. Add to this some gray days in which the temperature does not nearly reach 80 degrees and a cool, at times almost chilly, breeze perfects the morning. All that has been missing this summer are appallingly beautiful thunderstorms.

I love waking up cold in my bed, summer, spring and autumn, and seeking out a blanket to pull up and huddle under. There is only one thing more pleasurable: waking up slightly cold in a sleeping bag in the Little Missouri country when the breeze is performing a sweet rustling symphony in the cottonwoods overhead.

(Clay Jenkinson is the Theodore Roosevelt scholar-in-residence at Dickinson State University. He lives in Bismarck. Contact Jenkinson at Jeffysage@;aol.com.)