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Backpacking
I went on my first
backpacking trip when I was ten. My dad was always quite an
outdoorsman, and I had come along on fishing trips many times already,
waking before down to drive out to the lake and catch the fish feeding
on morning stillness under a soft blanket of mist, but this was to be
something altogether different. You see, on those trips, although the
morning lake sometimes provided moments of the illusion of solitude,
the noise from the road, shattered it every few minutes. And later in
the day, the motor boats destroyed it completely.
Backpacking was something else completely. We drove all the way from
our home in Detroit, up into the woods of Ontario. We stayed overnight
in a rustic motel and got an early start. At first, it was just like
the lake – even more so, because it was early, and there was
already a crowd milling about. This was only because we had chosen a
popular spot to begin our journey. Before dusk, we were bathed in a
stillness more profound than any I had seen on that lake, a stillness
which would last for the rest of our backpacking trip.
How can I describe that first night, camping on a rise above that
giant, mist-covered lake? The loons called and called, lonely
and longing, beginning below us and trailing off among the interlocking
lakes branching into eternity. Night creatures scurried around about
us, going from stillness to frantic motion to stillness again, as all
night, the wind fell and rose and fell, and the moon ceaselessly
rippled on the water's bright skin. I can remember all of it
– every sound, and wished to stay awake for the duration of
the night, yet somehow, sleep overtook me quickly in the exhaustion of
a full day's hike, and I awoke fully refreshed.
And then there was the next morning, awakening to the water lapping
softly below us, and the smell of a cooking fire. It's a curious thing
about cooking outdoors; the multitude of aromas – the burning
wood, the pine trees, the wind from the lake – every thing
adds its flavor. I remember being quite sure that the pancakes which my
dad cooked that morning were the best thing that I had ever tasted.
Our backpacking trip was over far too quickly. Nine days and it was
over – such a paltry duration when confronted with the
infinite expanse of nature. I remember on the last day, my dad showed
me on a map where we had been – that little speck, the lake
we first camped beside, that tiny snake, the ridge that had seemed to
mighty as we climbed it, the ridge that skinned my knees twice and left
my legs throbbing. It was tiny, a little patch of knowledge drowning in
a massive sea of green. I didn't know whether to despair or laugh,
seeing how much there was to explore – so much that in a
dozen life times, I would never see it all. Finally I chose laughter,
and though I still have seen but a speck of the whole spectacular
natural world, and will never see it all, I have returned many times to
try.