Musings on Backpacking Gear

Musings on Backpacking Gear

The low, leaden skies dropped two inches of snow on us last night, a travesty in April. I draw my backpack near, now completely trail-ready, and drape an arm across it like I would an old dog napping next to me. “Soon, dear one. Soon. We’ll be back on Trail in seventeen days.”

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This offering of musings is not a review of gear. There are hundreds of those on YouTube, each making opposing claims as to ultimate comfort, ease-of-access, or jiving for position in the “more ultra-lite than thou” contest. I, too, have a small assortment of packs, sleeping bags and pads, stoves, puffy jackets, all waiting to be chosen for their next right trip. I am not writing to defend my choices for this next trip. I am writing to better understand why they are there in the first place. This is an exploration of how gear is an extension of the body and soul of the one who stuffs stuff into a backpack in the first place, laces up their Vibram Soul, and sets off into the unknown (or - barely known) for whatever adventure lies ahead.

I can only consider even taking another trip because of gear, and all the ways gear has changed since 1983 when I loaded my external frame Jansport to fifty-five pounds and headed down the Appalachian Trail. My sleeping bag was an EMS extra-long down bag, my pad was a Thermarest with the little brass screw knob in the corner (BTW, 42 years later, it still holds air!). I carried an MSR Whisperlight stove with a long, red fuel tank. I slept in a Eureka tent with poles of unmatching lengths NOT connected by shock cords. It always took me a good ten minutes to figure out which poles went where every time I set it up with the storm blowing in. Did I mention I carried an extra pair of bluejeans?  🤯 As I got older, the ground got harder, nights got colder, and gravity more consequential. I figured that part of my life was done, as I could not imagine ever carrying that much weight again.

Then one day, my son tossed me his UL puffy jacket. “Look what’s happened in jackets, Mom,” he said. I could not tell when the jacket landed in my hand. I was astonished at its weightlessness. The question began to form at the outer edges of my psyche: if they could do this with jackets, then…….sleeping bags? tents? What else had changed in the forty years I had been off-trail? That was the day I became a gear-head. With my discovery of very lightweight gear (I still won’t pay uber-bucks for the ultra stuff), re-connection with this old part of myself was again possible. Lightweight gear made it possible to consider connecting again with a me that I once celebrated, explored, loved. I could find my inner Zorba again, my adventurer, my wild self. I could re-claim “backpacker” as a core identity.

So I begin with a deep bow to all those who have put their education, training, and experience to re-drawing backpacking gear to be more manageable by the human body. Friends, hats off to you. When I swing a pack on my back now, I am conscious of my indebtedness to all the intention and work that has gone into designing a fully functional pack weighing slightly less than two pounds. The development of every piece of gear I carry deserves a symphonic ode to their creators. I carry the work of hundreds of people, and am grateful to them and to those who lay the Trails in the first place. Trails shift on and off public lands, water sources dry up, roads get pushed across the landscape; those who keep online maps up to date all need to be celebrated. Though I backpack alone, I know I only do so because of a great community of creative lovers of the wilderness who make it possible for people like me to do what I love to do.

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Backpacking gear is not just a means to an end. It is an extension of our own fragile bodies in conversation with the longing of our souls to be Out There; on Trail (or better, bushwhacking), secure in inclement weather, secure in lostness, holding our mortal frames with some modicum of comfort. A backpack turns us into backward kangaroos, carrying on our backs all that we will need for safety, for maintenance, and for rest. We need this because, while our ancient ancestors did this better, our bodies cannot do this without some level of support. So a backpack is the acknowledgment that our skin and skeletons require some help. I can’t carry it all loose in my arms. Even Grandma Gatewood did it carrying a carpetbag. Backpacks are designed to work with our sense of balance. We walk (or stagger) easily under the weight. Backpacks are miracles.

Sleeping bags and quilts are extensions of our skin. When there is a fifty degree difference between 3 PM and 3 AM, our bodies need help adjusting. These poofy wonders of insulation and comfort make it possible for our bodies to recalibrate, restore, and heal after a day of brutal hiking. The pads help hold the heat in, protect our sides and backs from the rough desert floor, the damp forest floor. We can dig our shoulders into the ground without (much) pain.

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Shelters likewise shield us from the elements, from winds tossing dust and and sharp sand around. We stay dry in rain and snow. The thin fabric is a wonder of engineering doing such work with such strength and such little weight. A single clawed bear paw, drawn down, would easily shred the most expensive tent. Shelters are an incredible conversation between security and fragility. To snuggle in a sleeping bag in a tent on a stormy night and know I am safe is a great peace.

Yet there is also the lure of exposure, of being under the glittering universe with no shelter whatsoever blocking the glory of the stars. I tend to prefer cowboy camping for that reason, know that in doing so I am more open to small creatures with curious whiskers, or slithery creatures on their own business going over me when I am lying across their path, or larger mammals investigating my water supply. I rejoice in such wild encounters, but please, not in the pitch dark. 

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Stoves are my luxury item. It is my gift of hospitality to offer hot coffee to the cold-soak people whose shivering bodies covet my steaming Toaks cup of rich, pungent coffee on a cold morning. My body doesn’t just need food; she also needs heat. I could do it without a stove, and have warmed food over fires but here in the desert that carries an element of risk I am rarely willing to take. Heat is a means of safety under some circumstances as well as comfort. So I carry a stove.

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Trail shoes are artificial soles under my feet. I grew up barefoot; did not don a pair of shoes until I was eleven, but still my bare feet cannot tolerate rough ground. Many years ago I watched the Sherpas run barefoot up unforgiving rocks carrying 150 pounds on their backs. But that is not me. So the shoes are extensions of my feet taking me where my unshod feet alone cannot go.

 

Trekking poles are extensions of my inner ear. As I’ve gotten older my balance is not so good. I include balance exercises in my training, but still fall over while pulling on my socks. Trekking poles have saved my limbs many times. I stumble, and my amazing body knows just how to plant a pole to catch me. It really is astonishing how my arms, legs, and poles are in silent conversation together to keep me upright. Whichever pole is in my left hand is “Lolly,” and whichever pole is in my right hand is “Rolly,” and, after recovery, I thank whichever pole just saved me from falling.

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To carry backpacking gear then, is to acknowledge my physical vulnerability. I have osteoporosis and so need to be more careful about how to continue living this passionate exploration with the wilderness. To hear the silence, to engage the rhythms of walking, to feel the burn in my muscles, to spread out on the ground after hiking fifteen miles and take a deep sigh, giving myself to the night, is to be alive even though I am vulnerable. I could fall and not catch myself with a trekking pole, and break a bone. It could happen quite easily in an unmindful moment. It could be a bad break, like a hip, where I could not set up a tarp while I wait for help. Knowing this vulnerability of body, I need to accept my mortality. I am updating all the letters to my nearest and dearest if I don’t make it back alive from this next trip. I’m not being morbid. I’m embracing the reality of vulnerability. Not even backpacking gear can protect me from everything. But the glory of the adventure makes all this a reasonable risk. I’d rather die on the Trail than on my way to the post office.

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And I do know where the SOS button is on my Garmin. Ah, my Garmin, which gives me the gift of navigation inherent in the DNA of migrating creatures. I can travel on trackless lands toward an intentional direction, in part because of the technology I carry. I can communicate with my Beloved who has, in past, reached through it to alert me I was 10 miles off-trail and headed into a fire-eaten wasteland. Later, the technology stopped working and I was five days without outside communication. It made for a lonelier time; I felt my vulnerability more keenly, but the imposed radio-silence also deepened my solitude. Technology like that can be life-giving but also invasive. I often stop watching the route unfold on my cell phone. That’s when I get lost. But I need the technology because I do not have, in my body, the ancient wisdom of navigation in the dark.

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One more observation about all this: I am keenly aware that backpacking is a privilege. It costs money, sometimes lots of money to support this habit. There are millions of people who live with exposure outside of homes, shelters, high-tech backpacking gear. Whatever the reason for them being there, their lives are precious, unique. Their level of vulnerability under bridges is far riskier than mine on the Trail. This is a privilege I do not take for granted.

The air here is now clear of snow, the sun shining, the land slightly muddy. I have let the fire in the wood stove go out. In my imagination there is a slight hum coming from my fully loaded backpack. It’s ready. Seventeen more days, and the astonishing collaboration between this wonderful gear, the reality of my aging body, and the singing of my adventurous spirit will again begin to dance together on the next section of the Continental Divide Trail. The reality of who I am, body mind and spirit will encounter the reality of the Trail through this part of the high desert wilderness. Supported by the gear I have carefully researched and purchased, we will continue the adventure.

 

 

Story by Carolyn "Canyon" Metzler | 5 April, 2025 | Datil, NM

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