The propinquity of the equator means that islanders don’t have to worry about weather prediction. It’s pretty much between 80 and 90 degrees there year-round, with matching humidity. Never having lived in a tropical climate, my first contact with the air there astonished me. It had such a presence: thick, heavy and enveloping. But after a few months there, I was no longer surprised at one weather phenomenon: it seemed to get even hotter on some evenings after the sun went down—high humidity is a warm-breathed beast.
Exercising in this climate ramps up your body’s evaporation engine, but the duration of its motorings can be startling. I rode (streaming all the while) my bike for a half an hour many early mornings, and when I dismounted, the flow really began. And continued. And continued. For every minute of riding, there was a minute of post-ride sweating. More surprising yet was performing some seemingly aerobic-neutral action—for instance, washing the dishes—and finding myself coated anew.
When you’re flowing freely, it’s a joy to apply a counter-coating—like air conditioning—to your skin. I kept the home-office computers air-conditioned, so to that room I stole away when I was in a heat swoon. Your skin says “ahh” when it’s bathed in the remarkable crispness of air-conditioned air. But just step from that cool source back to a room of tropical air and the sweating begins anew. You realize that air-conditioning must be applied and reapplied to the skin, like sun block, to be effective.
Certainly, you might wonder if clothing is a concern, in a place where the body is always cooking. And it was—I found myself wearing three shirts in a day. But my standards had been compromised as well—I mingled in public wearing shirts whose shoulders and hems betrayed serious brow-mopping stains, something my pre-tropics life would never have sanctioned. But you must move with the local motion; you simply got dirtier there.
Reassuringly, just outside our door there’s that old standby, the ocean, for some quick cooling. In Kosrae, its waters are a frosty 85 degrees. I melted, tasted my own salt waters drip down my lips, and returned them to my warm mother, the sea. After a year, I began to get comfortable being a part of the Great Cycle of Sweat.
Go with the flow.