Meet the Man Who Wants to Make Sitting an Extreme Sport

Life on Cuverville Island can be hard. Colonies of orange-billed gentoo penguins scale its often windy, snow-covered slopes, building nest for their young with small stones and pebbles they gather from the island's rocky outcrops. Some of the few signs of flora on an otherwise barren land are patches of moss and lichen. There was a man sitting in a chair in February.

Jonathan Fuhrmann, a Scenic Eclipse cruise ship glaciologist who was in charge of helping passengers get to and from the island, said he had never heard of someone wanting to bring a camping chair to the island.

Silk, 49, was participating in the sport of competitive chair-sitting, a still-evolving endurance activity that involves sitting in extreme environments, from sun-up to sundown without any sort of time pieces or electronic. This budding trend-setting had only been in desert settings before, including the state of Arizona and the McDowell Mountain Regional Park. Many of the surrounding islands are considered to be tundra, but the largest desert on the planet is theAntarctic continent.

Silk's endeavor is unusual, but endurance sports have been around for decades. Pole sitting, or paalzitten, is a Dutch sport in which people sit atop wooden poles for hours, each trying to beat the other. It was invented to help stave off boredom during winter. Cash prizes are awarded to the last team standing at danceathons, which can last from hours to weeks.

The world needs to be tasted!

Silk says it would be amusing to be in the Guinness Book, but he hadn't thought about it. Anyone who has ever flown thousands of miles in an airplane knows that sitting for long periods can wreak havoc on everything from mental stability to physical dexterity.

Silk is the only competitor who can complete the most difficult sit. This generally means a factor of high temperature, total degrees of heat, and length of day for deserts. The more daylight you get in the summer, the more the temperature will go down. In a place where the focus is more on sitting, Silk says that icicles can be good. But cold? He says it is meant to be uncomfortable but not deadly.

Silk came up with the idea of extreme chair sitting in 1995 during a six-month sojourn in Israel. Silk was reading a novel. He came across a scene of a man waiting for a delivery in the desert. A traveler asks a man what he will do if it takes a week.

The man saysWait.

Silk found a world in which time is meaningless. He decided to try his hand at waiting-in-the-desert. He wanted to spend the entire day watching the arch of the sun.

His first attempt at chair-sitting was short-lived. Silk was stung by a bee just three and a half hours after he planted himself in Arizona's Sedona desert, and he was having a hard time swallowing cheese he had eaten the night before. He was done by 9 a.m.

He decided to try again in Joshua Tree National Park a year later, after the idea of desert chair stuck with him for the next two decades. Silk didn't know that it was the perfect sport for the era of social distancing.

Silk was able to find a spot in Joshua Tree that was accessible, though away from any parking lots or hiking trails, with plenty of direct sunlight and a panoramic view. Then, dressed in a long-sleeved shirt with light SPF protection, long pants, hiking boots, and a wide-brimmed hat and shawl for his neck, he sat. His provisions included a chair, beef jerky, chunks of fresh watermelon, energy bars, and two gallons of water. He packed a couple of books, a journal, and a tube of SPF 50 sunscreen.

Silk didn't do much over the next fourteen-plus-hours. Several large beetles and lizards were watching him. He lay down for a while and stood to stretch and relieve himself. He wondered if a thoroughbred is a better athlete than a greyhound. Silk says that your surroundings matter more than anything.

Silk and his friend, Peter Wick, who filmed Silk's Joshua Tree stint, are currently in the process of securing grants for a chair-sit in one of the driest places on earth.

Silk recommends starting slowly, sitting for a few hours or in the weather that isn't too hot or cold. Silk says that the sun, cold, or wind might start getting to you when you are doing full-day sits. Being an endurance athlete is part of being an extreme outdoor sport and dealing with physical discomfort is part of that.