My friend John described a wilderness hiking trip he took with his son.
“No pop-up campers out there, eh?” I asked.
“Only what we could carry on our backs. We even slept under the stars.”
“No tent?”
“Nope.”
I must have shuddered or made a face, because John grinned and tried to convince me of the beauty of backwoods camping. “It’s liberating to realize that everything you really need is stuffed inside a pack on your back.”
I’ve thought about that often, especially when cramming my crockpot or mini-fridge into our pop-up camper. Could I fit everything I truly need into a backpack?
But I’ve also thought about it as a lifestyle. A lifestyle of liberation. What would it take to live that lightly all the time?
Maybe this is what so many people are craving these days when they are irresistibly drawn to simple living. Are we feeling imprisoned by stuff, weighed down by the accumulation of possessions, drowning in excess?
Sara at Nesting Gypsy and her husband have sold all but the barest essentials and moved to Montana. She first introduced me to Compacting in one of her posts. I was struck with this radical idea and started Googling it, learning more about the trend toward simplifying, trimming away what isn’t needed to live in, say, an RV full-time or a Tiny House.
It lines up with my own decades-long craving for simplicity and frugality. I’m not liberated quite yet, and I certainly don’t have family buy-in to try Compacting for a year. But we did have a fairly simple Christmas, at least by suburban American standards.
I’ve been reading Writing from the Center, by Scott Russell Sanders. When preparing for a trip into the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota, Sanders and his daughter had to pack lightly. How does one decide what the take on such a trip?
The criterion for deciding what to load in a canoe or backpack is the same as that for deciding what to load in a spaceship: Is it worth its weight? Eva and I have winnowed down our gear and food to an amount we can carry. What we portage across land and paddle across water is only a tiny portion of what we need, of course. To provide everything we need, we would have to carry the sun and moon and stars, fruitful grass, fertile soil, nourishing sea, trees and ferns, bacteria and bears, rock and rain and air, and the countless moorings of our love. No pack smaller than the universe would hold it all. (p. 120)
Wow. I want to experience liberation from all the stuff holding me back because I think in the end, I crave everything—the sun and moon and stars, the grass and soil, the trees and sea—not the stuff from Target.
Is it any wonder I’d like to unload and live a liberated life? I want to make room for things that truly nourish.
I want to make room for the universe.
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Everyday Mommy says
This will seem like a painfully daffy comment, but my family wants a pop-up camper. I’ve not had coffee yet, so that’s as deep as I can go in a morning without caffeine.
annkroeker says
Well, you can’t pack the sun and moon in a pop-up, but you *can* stuff in a crockpot, a small fridge, several totes, a portable grill, a bike trailer for the preschooler, folding chairs, a fan and an electric heater, along with blankets, sleeping bags, pots and pans. All that, and most importantly, you get to sleep up off the ground. We love it and appreciate the “luxuries” we can squeeze inside that don’t fit in a tent. It’s a far cry from a timeshare condo, but we’re cheap. We love being able to vacation right on the water in a Florida campground for $26 a night. It’s been a vehicle for many happy family memories, literally and figuratively.