At this time a year ago, I was squished with five others in a tent designed to house three, warmed more by Cakey's leg between my thighs than the sleeping bag partially covering me. The tent I shared with two others had been flooded by a river that swelled above the bank with an unusually high tide and heavy rains, soaking our sleeping bags and everything else in the tent. Every clothing item that wasn't on my body was in a bag under my head that night, serving as a pillow. Safira and I moved into another tent while Nik got hypothermia sleeping under a tarp. Rain pelted down for five straight days, preventing anything from drying.
It was the last few days of our backpacking and kayaking trip with the National Outdoor Leadership School in southern Alaska, and everyone was counting the hours for the end. We were less than 25 miles from our final destination, a doable one-day paddle, but rough sea conditions beached us. None of the trip was easy, almost every day travelling was a physical strain for me ending with the hassle of setting up camp and making dinner, but being stuck at the beach was much worse. Inside our overpopulated tent was musty and smelled like urine and feet, the outside cold and wet. While moves on foot or by kayak were invigorating and accompanied by incredible sights, the tent and the rain made for a miserable experience.
As I laid in that tent thinking about dry socks, fresh fruits and vegetables, and temperature-controlled showers, I vowed to appreciate the little things. I said I'd be more responsible with my belongings, that I'd never whine about being uncomfortable again, that I'd easily lose 10 pounds with my newly learned self-discipline. I thought was transformed.
When I first came back from Alaska, I was asked many times what I learned, to which I replied the value of responsibility, citing how I lost my sleeping pad and chapstick in the backcountry and missing those items every day, and that I set new limits for my endurance.
Today, the unpacked clothes from my trip to Europe are strewn around my luxurious, 10-by-15-foot single room with an attached bathroom, and those extra 10 pounds are still packed around my waist. I have a laundry list of things I've misplaced over the past year, including my NOLS water bottle, a staple in Alaska. I don't push myself any harder working out than I did before my trip, and it's no easier to walk away from ice cream now than it was last summer. I've slipped back into efficient, comfortable, consumer-priority industrialized society quickly and easily. I have to ask myself again, with the trip losing its imminence, what did I really learn that reshapes my daily life?
Moving out of my dorm in May, I was paralyzed looking at all my stuff I had to pack. I didn't understand how I had accumulated so many clothes, nor what I could possibly have to do with all of it. I wasn't wearing most of it. I thought about Alaska, how I had four pairs of underwear, four pairs of socks, and two or three tops and bottoms, all packed on my back or in my kayak at all times. The clothes smelled and lacked flair in the outback, but I didn't want or need any more than what I had. I kept in mind the packing-up experience in Chapel Hill and simple life in Alaska when packing for Atlanta. I brought a fraction of the clothing here that I did in Chapel Hill, and I haven't bought anything new. I rotate through work outfits every week. I'm not dreading packing up quite as much as I did at the end of the school year. In Europe last week, my mom wanted to get me a souvenir. I never saw anything I desperately wanted, and purchasing wasn't a priority.
Some of the seemingly life-changing Alaska experiences that I thought I could never forget cross my mind every few weeks when triggered, many lessons have gotten fuzzy. For instance, I tried to attach a beer cooler to a tube while tubing down the Chattahoochee River a few weeks ago with a fisherman's knot, a knot I made probably five times daily setting up camp on the 28-day trip, and couldn't remember how.
I know that, even though I'm not pushing my endurance now, I can, and that there's a whole lot of surplus for life satisfaction and very few staples in the Lower 48. What I did subconsciously learn that transformed my daily life was to appreciate simplicity and jump into the unknown. I crave a rush of adventure, and I don't want more stuff. I'd rather fly than nest.
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