Gratitude for Home Basics
A Guest Post by Ed Barnhart - A 5-day hike brings renewed appreciation for home
Recently I went on a week-long backpacking trip with my wife. It was our first backpacking trip of this length together. The definition of backpacking is “carrying everything you need” for whatever duration your trip is. So, you’re essentially carrying whatever home you need on your back (45-pounds in my case, 30-pounds hers – roughly body-weight proportional). Therefore, if on day four you run out of something, well, you’re either going to have to tough it out, or improvise. The challenge is trying to find the sweet spot. On the one hand, eating, sleeping and being appropriately clothed (in any sort of weather) are all important. No one wants to be tromping around tired and hungry with cold, wet feet. On the other, everything entails adding weight that you must carry – a real buzzkill when hiking up a mountain.
When planning the trip my wife and I kept asking ourselves and one another – is this enough, or too much? Will we have enough food having sufficient calories to maintain us? Will we run out of cooking fuel? (Open campfires are prohibited in the region in which we were camping. Never mind that on some days there was so much rain that we couldn’t have started a wood fire if our lives depended on it.) Will we run out of clean (enough) underwear or dry (enough) socks? If you’re one who tends to be anxiety-prone, backpacking might not be your first choice of activity. My wife and I seemed, in this case, to have experience and planning skills which nicely complimented one another.
On day one of our backpacking adventure however, we were rather immediately disabused of how well we’d planned when stopped by a park ranger who asked: “how are you storing your food?”. With confidence, I replied: “We have a food sack with a tree-hanging rope”. It was hard to read the look his face next delivered. Was it disbelief, scorn, or resigned compassion? I think it was a mix of all three. In any event, he calmly retorted: “That isn’t allowed around here” and went on to inform us that “bear canisters” were required for any food or food waste. Neither my wife nor I had ever so much as heard of such a thing. Assuming that you haven’t either, they are roughly cylindrical, about 16-inches long and 9-inches in diameter – made from dense plastic and having no protruding seams or edges (and weighing 2.7 pounds apiece).
After arranging to procure two (as needed to accommodate our 8-day food supply) we continued on our not-quite-so-blissful way. Thereafter, for the next two days or so, things went along swimmingly. Then I started to experience anxiety – specifically, toilet paper anxiety.
At home, who thinks about toilet paper? Rolls are say, 5-inches in diameter and you’ve got a half-dozen spare rolls in the linen closet. Worst case scenario is that you forget to check the amount left on the roll on the bathroom wall before you start doing your business. For our backpacking trip, we had two camper-sized rolls of TP between us, which having no cardboard core, only amounted to a paper roll slightly larger than the tube that household TP comes on.
Honestly, I have no idea what length of paper a camping roll would amount to if unrolled. Perhaps, if my wife and I had individual use rolls, as I’d advocated for, rather than the “in joint custody” strategy she persuaded me to adopt, I might have had a clear sense of my rate of TP usage. Lacking that, I found the diameter of the TP roll diminishing at a seemingly alarming rate. It was at this point that words of my dad, recounting his service in the army during WWII, rang in my ears. He said: “We were allotted two squares a day”. He wasn’t talking about hot meals, but rather how they rationed toilet paper to soldiers overseas. I guess I’d never seriously considered what that meant – consequentially. Two squares a day? Are you kidding me? I don’t know about you.... Well anyway, long story short, we made it home with toilet paper to spare – without anyone getting poison ivy on their butt!
Thankfully the tenets of the hikers motto of “Leave No Trace Behind” do not include having to carry out one’s own bodily wastes! If you’re in a more popularly used camping area, there are occasional lean-tos having the upscale convenience of an outhouse nearby. However, if you’re simply pitching a tent somewhere, toileting is undertaken by first digging a “cat hole” large enough to accommodate your solid human waste and used toilet paper. (Phew.) I quickly learned that the serrated edges on the digging trowel were essential to hack through the forest floor root density!
Next go-around I’ll probably treat myself to carrying a bit more toilet paper and a lot less food.
Ed Barnhart, founder of Always by Design ARCHITECTURE based in Philadelphia, PA focuses on creating wellness-centered homes -- promoting mind, body, spirit, and soul wellbeing. Visit a-x-d.com for more info.
Backpacking can be a great experience--mind, body, soul--and is never easy! It renews an appreciation for what comes easy (such as oodles of TP when at home!) and what we can live without (so much sugar, personally). I wish he had mentioned where on the AT he and and his wife were--I've hiked several sections and always like to know where others go!