Ditching some crap
A story about my first fastpacking trip and trying to carry around less shit.
On the way to the trailhead, I scolded my boyfriend for the way he was driving.
“Why are you so cautious today?” I snipped, as he meandered down 30th avenue at an aggravating 6.5mph over the speed limit.
Then, as he went to pass a truck on the highway, I yelled at him for being too aggressive.
“What are you doing?!” I screeched as he drifted over the dashed center line.
We were on our way to the Three Sisters Wilderness to go fastpacking for the first time and I was as ready to explode as a lit firecracker.
It wasn’t Ian’s driving that was the problem, of course. It was the stress and anxiety and grief that was boiling out of me and misfiring in his direction.
It’s been a chaotic stretch. Moving out of one place on short notice. Moving into another. Buying a home in a wild housing market. Grounding into a new spot. Bursting pipes and no AC during a heat wave. Dealing with maddening and hurtful family stuff. Feeling the threat of depression. Riding waves of grief. Seeing a loved one endure the worst pain.
And my daily to-do list has been overly ambitious for months: working, running, training, recovering, essay writing, book proposal writing, moving, life, life, life. Things keep piling on like someone’s dousing my post-it notes in miracle-gro.
It’s been too much.
“How are you at relaxing?” my therapist asked during a recent visit, when it was clear that my anxiety levels might benefit from smoking a joint and booking a flight to Tahiti.
I just laughed in response. The night before, I’d brought my laptop to bed because I thought I could maybe make progress on my chapter outline at 10:30 pm while my eyelids were fighting the gravity of sleep.
On our way to the trailhead on Sunday, I caught myself misdirecting all that stress at Ian and tried to settle down, but I could still feel that unease simmering as we drove the two-hours to the Three Sisters Wilderness. Part of me hadn’t wanted to go on this trip at all – the tentacles of depression inflated it into something bigger than it was and my stressed-out brain thought it might be more prudent to stay at home and tackle a few to-dos.
But I also knew that it would probably feel like a good decision once I was out of the car and in the wilderness. And I suspected I would feel grateful to be looking at a snow-smothered volcano and not at my computer screen or a booklet of furniture assembly sketches.
When we pulled into the parking lot, we grabbed our 20-liter packs and made a last round of adjustments to what we were carrying. Our set-ups were much lighter than any other backpacking trek that I’ve been on. Which is the point of fastpacking – to carry less so you can move faster and easier. So that you can even run, with everything you need for an overnight trip on your back.
When I’d piled my gear on the kitchen table the night before, it took up less room than a single night of groceries. I had a light sleeping quilt and inflatable pad, an extra snuggly tent we scored off the REI clearance rack the day before – that was technically for two people, but that we would squeeze a 50-pound pickle puppy into, too, 1.5 liters of water and a filter, a top and bottom layer, a stove that’s smaller than my fist, and just enough food and instant coffee to get us through the trek – with a few extra calories just in case.
And an IPA, just for fun.
I looked at the tiny pack and laughed. This was very unlike me.
I am someone who overpacks for everything. I bring my 80-liter duffel to weekend-long trips, I always have at least 8 extra pairs of shorts and socks, and I usually look like a professional bag lady with a baker’s dozen of tote bags – all overflowing with a mess of gear and snacks.
I am very good at weighing myself down with too much shit.
But I had to pack lighter for this trip. I would have no choice about what to wear or what to eat. If I got cold, I would have to put on my teal puffy jacket and for breakfast, I would have apple cinnamon oatmeal.
We slung our 12-pound bags over our shoulders and clipped Dilly into his puppy pack and headed into the woods for our experiment in fastpacking.
The trail unwound into a flat pitch and I started running down the soft dirt. My legs felt slightly heavier than they do during a long run – but infinitely lighter than they do during a traditional backpack.
I felt some disbelief that everything I needed to sleep was currently on my back as I bounced down the trail. It felt like we were getting away with something. To be able to run AND have everything we needed for an alpine slumber party in a stretch of wilderness that was bursting with snow-streaked volcanos, sapphire lakes, and fields exploding with wildflowers.
It didn’t take very many steps for me to feel like this was a very good idea.
We kept trekking higher up the trail, rotating between a quick hike and a jog, until we popped into the alpine and caught our first glimpse of the mountains that we’d hang out in overnight. My heart rate melted and my breath reached a deep corner of my lungs as I watched Dilly trot toward a turqoise lake and cannonball in. We were all feeling very good about our decision to immerse ourselves in this alpine wonderland.
We wanted to climb Broken Top before finding a campsite so we started hiking up to its splintered summit after Dilly emerged from his swim-a-thon.
Our trek up the tall volcano stretched into the afternoon. The summit block involves some fourth and fifth class scrambling and is not very dog-friendly – so we had to take turns on the final bit of the climb while the other person stayed with Dilly on the pickle summit.
Ian needed just 20 minutes to scramble up and down the spicy section, but I took a bit longer since I am not very comfortable or very fast on terrain that involves mildly life-threatening exposure.
As I was butt-scooching over a narrow catwalk that dangled over a violent cliff, I yelled down the mountain to Ian – who was waiting with Dilly below.
“I’m sorry this is taking me so long!” I cried. I was aware that booty-inching was not a very efficient form of alpine travel.
“You take all day,” he yelled back.
And it hit me again that we really did have all day. We had nothing to do and nowhere to be but here.
There were no to-do lists taunting me from the top of the mountain. There were no tasks to tackle or projects to chip away at. We had no agenda other than to hang out in the wilderness, which is exactly what we were doing.
And even as I was grappling with some very raw fear on the precarious ledge, I felt relief hit. I had managed to leave my mountain of stress behind. My heart rate wasn’t choking me. And my mind wasn’t racing with 10,000 thoughts a minute.
As we made our way back down the mountain, my steps were giddy and light. I couldn’t get enough of our bird’s eye view of the Three Sisters as we meandered down the ridge. I savored every crevice of the horizon and got more and more excited to wander around looking for a campsite tucked into the wild paradise below. With so little on us, and nowhere to be, I felt blissfully free.
We found a place to sleep sandwiched between two peaks, next to a brook meandering through a lush meadow. I didn’t need a joint or a flight to Tahiti to feel myself relax into a gloriously calm state as we sipped on stream-chilled IPAs and gawked at our surroundings. When the temperature dropped, I put on my teal puffy.
“I’m a big fan of this fastpacking thing,” I whispered to Ian as I zipped up the one jacket I had brought with me. “It’s so fun and so freeing to carry around less stuff.”
I let my gaze linger on the quiet mountain across the meadow. I wasn’t tormented by what I should be doing or how to cope with life crap, I was just so happy to be there, on that hillside with my one jacket, an extra snuggly tent, and much deeper breaths of crisp mountain air. Ditching some shit was exactly what I’d needed.
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