Backpack Cleanout

The other day, I cleaned out my hiking backpack.

I was on a work trip, and when I arrived at my hotel, I realized that the shopping gods had smiled upon me. Right across the street from the hotel was my favorite store of all time, REI.  To make it even better, I actually had a legitimate reason to go into REI: I needed a new hiking day pack. My old one was ripped, the elastic that held my water bottle in place was going bad, and for some reason it seemed to be getting heavier every time I went out on the trail. 

Two hours later, I sat on the bed in my hotel room with both my old and new backpacks, and prepared to move my stuff from the old backpack into the new. This was exciting stuff.

I'd had the old backpack for several years, and it had been some time since I'd actually sat down and cleaned it out.  As soon as I started unpacking it, I discovered why it had started to get so heavy.  The backpack was full of stuff I'd put in there and never gotten around to removing.

In addition to the usual stuff- binoculars, sunscreen, bug spray, and an extra hat, I found the following items: six baggies that had once held PBJ and now held nothing (I knew they were PBJ bags because of the residual PB), one desiccated orange, one shriveled up apple, one broken seashell,  a five dollar bill, a hand towel, an empty bottle of hand sanitizer, a broken up granola bar, a small rock, a bunch of sand at the bottom, six bandannas, two quarters, a bunch of dried up hand wipes, a small notebook, four pens, a spoon, and several paper bags.

I tossed what needed to be tossed, put the $5 in my wallet, and put the rest of the unnecessary items in my suitcase. My new backpack felt considerably lighter when I put it on my back.  I kept asking myself, where did all that stuff come from?  I don't remember putting all that stuff in there. Obviously I did, planning on having a piece of fruit as a snack or thinking I'd throw away the baggies at the dumpster at the trailhead.  I just didn't realize how the weight of it all was adding up.

This is generally how my life is- I go about my daily business, collecting actual things, responsibilities, commitments, ideas, perceptions about life, beliefs, goals.  I never really stop to think about where I came by those things, or if I still need them, or if it's time to do a little cleanup and get rid of whatever I don't need or no longer use, or to consider whether some of my ideas, perceptions, beliefs or goals might be getting a little desiccated like that poor uneaten orange.

I thought about how this is the season of Lent, and although I'm not the most spiritually devout person on the planet, this is as good a time as any to do some mental, spiritual, and physical spring cleaning.  Maybe it's time to assess commitments and responsibilities, to see if I've acquired any in the last several years that need to be let go.  Maybe it's time to think about a long-held idea or belief, to consider if I still truly think that, or if it's just years of lazy habit and it's time to re-evaluate.  Some stuff will need to go.  Some stuff I'll definitely keep.

Maybe, from a practical point of view, it's time to finally tackle the overflowing box of assorted paperwork that resides in my sunroom.  It would feel great to get that taken care of.

When I returned home from my work trip, I took my new backpack on its inaugural journey on the trails.  For the first time in quite awhile, I was able to put my hand in my backpack and locate my binoculars without having to rummage through a lot of stuff to find them. A small success, but I'll take it; it's the first step in my 2017 spring cleaning.