Shelter. Food. Water. That’s it. Everything that you put into your backpack has to cover one of those basic needs. Sure, everyone has their own justifications for some little luxury, but when you are carrying everything that you will need in the back country it all revolves around those three necessities. Mostly because, as humans, that’s all we really need. We need a place to sleep and a way to protect ourselves from the elements. We need some food. And we need some water. That’s it. That’s all you get to carry.
It’s almost instantaneous. That or you just don’t realize the moment that it happens. You strap a bunch of stuff to your back and you head out on a trail with the hopes of enjoying some of that all too rare peace and quiet. You start to walk, you start to sweat. Hell, you may even start to regret this whole thing and you probably start cursing under your heavily drawn breath. You stop and rest, then begin again trudging reluctantly upward. This, this is what you wanted. You are hyper-focused on your slow, deliberate movements. And then you fall into a rhythm. Soon you can’t remember the last time you checked your watch for the time or thought about what was going on at work. It’s still there. You know that life does exist outside of those foot steps and what is strapped to your back, but it’s taken a secondary spot, where it should be, to the wilderness.
It’s always a trip to come back to the fake world we have created after spending any time at all in the backcountry. It’s noisy. The noise always hits me first. The return journey tends to be in a vehicle with a windshield and climate controlled air. When you get back to town, you open the door and the noise hits you squarely in the face. The longer you’ve been tramping around where there isn’t any pavement, the louder it sounds. After my ears readjust to the tempest of noise raging through the air, I can begin to distinguish the sounds that are assaulting me. It’s always the same, an AC unit blasting air as I stand unloading everything that I have needed for the past few days. It fits in a back pack.
Kathleen and I headed out at 6 pm. We had three miles of climbing ahead of us and over 3,000 feet of climbing followed by a couple miles of flat to make it to our sleeping place, Further Water. Brother Meinkey and Ben were there. We were taking the short, steep route due to the lack of time we had. The long way has the same amount of climbing but takes more like eight miles to get there.
I pull my backpack out of the truck and take a quick mental inventory of everything I pack. Food? Tent? Water? Filter? OK, let’s go.
The trail is extremely overgrown and goes straight uphill. If you look at Pine Valley Mountain from the South, it’s a steep, rugged mountain. The other side isn’t so bad, but the Southern edge… Oak Grove sits at the bottom of the ledges you can see from town. There happens to be one ridge that you can walk up to get to the top. It’s not an easy route, but it’s direct and gets you to the top pretty quickly. It also happens to be almost entirely in the shade by 6 pm.
It only takes about twenty minutes before I realize that it is best to not stop. Each time I stop to catch my breath and rest, it feels like hell to get going again. Sure, the rest feels necessary and almost like a gift, but once the rhythm of forward motion is halted… Inertia is a bitch. Soon life is nothing more than what is on my back and how it is affecting me going uphill. I’m just walking. And soon that is all I can think about, moving one foot in front of the other. My mind is clear as I breath deep the cold, clean air. There is a throbbing in the back of my head as my heart tries to desperately deliver oxygen to my brain at this altitude.
We make it to the meadow. Ben and Shelby are off somewhere doing something. There is a fire smoldering and their tents are set up at the edge of the trees. KB and I drop our packs and begin making our home for the evening. Chaco is very happy to have us remove his pack and then all he wants is the food he’s been carrying. KB has similar thoughts and soon there is water boiling. I set up the tent and we roll out our bags. We have everything we need.
Maybe it’s the temporal juxtaposition of the wilderness and modern living that makes me feel like we have fucked up our world. Maybe it’s the noise and how loud it is when I step back into this “world.” Mostly, it’s the amount of shit that we all have, myself included. Traveling with everything you will need on your back makes it clear what one really needs. Everything else is just fluff and we would probably be better off without it.
And this is what we’ve created.
P. L. and R.
