A Scout’s Campfire

Backpacking Philosophy

November 5th, 2006 spryken

Mark Zimmer’s article on The Backpacking Theory got me thinking.  He explains how he came up with his “How to enjoy life: Appreciation through Deprivation” theory.  And what exactly it is.  In a nutshell, he espouses that the best way to learn to appreciate what you have is to subject yourself to total misery. 

And he states:

the quickest, cheapest, and easiest path that I know of to leave your
comfort zone and give you a healthy dose of deprivation is: backpacking.

Read the article to see all of his reasoning.  But one that really spoke to me was the issue of food.

Take something as basic as a real meal. Quickly jumping back to our
first issue, we remember that less is better, and this goes for food as
well both in weight and quantity (and usually quality). After a week of
rice, beans, dried fruit, and oatmeal; a cheeseburger is a real Godsend.

When we were finishing up our trek at Philmont, one of our favorite activities on the trail was to regal each other with “the meal” we were going to have first thing when we arrived back home.  We occupied many miles with imagining “the meal”.

There is one other point Mark makes:

The best thing, however, that I feel backpacking offers is the chance
to think. Backpacking is physically tiring but mentally stimulating.
There is very little noise, and the mind gets a chance to just relax
and wander.

I will deal with this in more detail in another post, but it is true.  I advocate leaving the “noise” at home.  That is the CD-Players, MP3 Players, Radios, etc.  Without those distractions and with the surrounding nature I find that I can let my mind go down its own trails.  That is one of the reasons I enjoy backpacking so much!

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