Slogging Under the Weight of My Pack
Maybe it’s the long string of cloudy, gloomy winter days, but I am LOW! Low energy, low motivation, low in spirit. How about you? I’m TRYING to be buoyed by my upcoming mid-April camping trip to Arches and Canyonlands. My mind drifts to packing. Clothes, complicated by early spring – pack for both warm and cool weather. Layers, synthetics – check.
Of course, the wilderness survival “essentials!” Can you name them?
Shelter, fire starter, knife, first aid, clothes, food and water, headlamp, map and compass, whistle. Or at least that is what outdoortech4u.com says. Since I will be car camping with day trips my load should be light, right?
My mind harkens back to wonderful backpacking memories – the Superior Hiking Trail, Isle Royale, Boundary Waters Canoe area – the fresh air, beautiful vistas, great comradery. My blissful imagery is interrupted by the backpacking reality – as Richard Leider would say – the “slogging under the weight of my pack.”
In Repacking your Bags, Richard shares one of his life lessons from backpacking in Tanzania:
Richard was leading a walking safari in Tanzania along the edge of the great Serengeti Plains. Looking like a walking advertisement for Patagonia, he was delighted when his new friend Thaddeus Ole Koyie, a Maasai village elder, expressed a fascination with seeing the contents of his impressive backpack. Proudly, he commenced to lay out all of his high tech essentials. After several minutes of just gazing at everything, Koyie asked with great intensity, “Does all this make you happy?”
Richard shares that he changed his strategy – for the remainder of the trip and for his life. He would only take the essentials. Repack your bag – lighten your load.
Pack. What will make us happy in the next phase of our lives? Richard encourages us to ask the right question, rather than offer the wrong answer. “Am I living in the place I love, with the people I love, doing the right work, on purpose?”
And so, as I prepare, for my upcoming camping trip and for my next phase of life – I will focus on MY essentials and lighten MY load. How about you?