On the rare occasions when the subject of backpacking comes up
with my contemporaries (i.e., old people), the conversation
invariably ends with the clever quip,
“For me, roughing it is spending a week at the (insert name of
expensive swanky hotel here).”
On the rare occasions when the subject of backpacking comes up with my contemporaries (i.e., old people), the conversation invariably ends with the clever quip, “For me, roughing it is spending a week at the (insert name of expensive swanky hotel here).”
Ever heard that one?
Yes, I know backpacking is a tough sell. Try on this pitch for size: Inside this sack are your shelter; your clothes; your bedroom, bathroom and kitchen (including appliances and pantry). It weighs between one quarter and one half of your body weight. Now, put the sack on your back and carry it eight miles over that 10,000-foot mountain. Okay? It’s fun!
All of a sudden, selling refrigerators to Eskimos doesn’t sound so tough.
It’s a good thing, I suppose, that backpacking doesn’t appeal to everyone, or going into the wilderness would be too much like going to the mall. But some people know that hauling that pack, sleeping on the ground, and eating that just-add-water food reward the soul as nothing else can.
Common words take on a special and expanded meaning to anyone who has lingered and traveled on foot in the wilderness. Words like: Tired, weather, broken, alone, big, pain, beautiful, silence.
But last night in bed as I pulled the covers up around me, I remembered what is for me one of the small, but best things about backpacking.
Years ago, tired of spending cold nights in the backcountry, I vowed to get the warmest sleeping bag I could find. In the late seventies, I went to REI and bought the best bag they had. Damn the extra couple pounds! Comfort is paramount.
So now, on cold, cold nights, I am warm. As an example, last fall I returned to the southern Sierras to walk up 14,000-foot Mt. Tyndall. An equipment failure had cheated me out of the opportunity to climb the peak earlier in the summer. I love fall in the Sierras because most of the people are gone and so are the mosquitoes. But the nights are cold. This October night, at 12,000 feet without a tent, would be just such a night.
As the setting sun drained the warm colors from the bare granite landscape, the evening chill in the thin air set in quickly. I inflated my Thermarest pad, stuffed my down parka into my sleeping bag stuff sack to use as a pillow, and climbed into my goose down refuge.
This is the favorite backpacking moment I was recalling last night. Lying there, miles from anywhere, comfortably reclining on my mattress and down pillow, I knew that three inches from my body, just beyond my goose down bag, it was freezing cold. I love lying in cozy comfort only inches from hypothermic temperatures.
The opening in my bag exposed only my face, but on this moonless night, the astronomical floor show was unobstructed. Uncountable stars and a brilliant milky way were tastefully accented with the occasional shooting star. I’ll take this show over the Engelbert Humperdink dinner show at Caesar’s Palace any day.
I was so warm that before falling asleep, I stripped to my underwear. When I awoke in the morning from a peaceful night’s sleep, the quart in my water bottle had frozen solid.
Maybe that is one reason people travel to the mountains. The distance between comfort and discomfort, safety and danger, sometimes life and death can be three inches of goose down, sometimes less. What other pastime in our modern world, a pastime that is within the capabilities of nearly everyone, gives us only our wits to face situations with such potential consequences?
Ron Erskine has lived and worked as a builder and brewery owner in South Valley for 20 years. He lives in Morgan Hill with his wife and two children.
