My Pack

I was once a field biologist. An attempt to settle on a definition of such a job is an endeavor fraught with difficulty, due to wildly different duties and responsibilities. However, I think that most biologists would agree that one indispensable part of that life is a functional and reliable backpack.

I’ve heard stories of gear that lasted for decades and passed on to kids, but in my line of work backpacks tended to last only a little longer than boots (boots fell apart after two years, packs after three or so). I have used packs to carry unspeakably heavy and bulky objects, including car batteries, radio-telemetry antennae, 5-gallon buckets, fish-shocking equipment, sledgehammers and dry suits. I have ridden packs, sled-like, down snowy slopes. I’ve cut holes in them to carry wounded hikers during SAR missions, rested my head on them as pillows and even once used a pack to defend myself from an uncommonly aggressive marmot. I long ago lost count of the number, styles, and manufacturers in my career-long parade of packs.

I have an office job now, concerned with the manipulation of data and organizing of information, and a great deal less punishing on gear. Since I haven’t been forced to replace my pack as frequently my last purchase has hung on, in the process traveling thousands of miles from the mountains of Montana to the easternmost point in North America (the isle of Newfoundland) to the dry desert valleys of the southwest.

I chose light weight over durability with this pack, after hauling some very durable and hence very heavy military packs. That choice had consequences, and the ripstop nylon skin carries ugly scars from sharp metal edges, cuts from unruly bungee cords, and abrasions from wooden critter boxes. These injuries have been treated with a wide assortment of oddly-shaped Tenacious Tape ™.

Having traveled such distances, I admit the pack has accumulated some accessories which now languish out of context. An old bear spray holster, for holding a small canister of stuff calibrated to deter a charging grizzly, was out of place in the north Atlantic. The copious amount of paracord attached to my pack – useful in creating makeshift lassoes and leashes for the numerous scrawny bear-hunting dogs wandering lost in the Great Smoky Mountains – is an unstylish non-sequitur among the pampered canines of the Wasatch Front. My small stash of survival gear is confusing to urbanites who hike with a bottle of water and an iPhone. Normal people are often not prepared for the explanation that one particularly stubborn stain is the result of an unfortunate choice to set my pack too close to a dead bighorn sheep.

This pack is clearly on its last legs. Seams are weakening, each successive layer of Utah dust is harder to get off, and it is long past its projected service window. Maybe we’re both in that particularly abhorrent boat, which could explain why I’m so loathe to get rid of it. Maybe giving up hope on that the worn, highly-experienced pack – having witnessed austere western deserts, icebergs, and dappled eastern forests – is symbolically giving up hope about ever regaining my outdoor career. I suppose I have to entertain the possibility that someone in their 40s working in the field is just as unlikely as the continued persistence of that that aging pack.

Then again, I have a little more repair tape left . . .