Back in the late 1970s when I lived in Boston, I took a continuing education course on backpacking. It culminated with a two-day, two-night camping trip and hike up Mount Chocorua in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. It was my first experience with backcountry camping and my first hike to the top of a mountain. I was hooked.
Based on what I learned in that course, I bought my first backpack, tent, sleeping bag and ground pad, cooking gear, hiking boots, and more. I collected trail guides and topographical maps so I could plan my own adventures. I embarked upon several short backpacking trips, either alone or with a friend.
I returned to Chocorua and backpacked up other peaks. Along the way I discovered that the sections of trail I enjoyed most ran alongside or near rushing waters. So I began searching for trails that followed rivers and streams. I backpacked into the White Mountains’ Pemigewasset Wilderness, on a trail that paralleled the river of the same name, and camped there alone in probably the most remote place I’d ever been.
After I moved to the Midatlantic, I hiked to a primitive campsite on Assateague Island, where I camped on the beach with wild horses grazing nearby. On a driving trip through Shenandoah National Park, I backpacked down a trail at nightfall to a backwoods campsite, amid the deafening screech of multitudes of bats. I backpacked with a friend up Ramsey’s Draft in George Washington National Forest, where a destructive flash flood overwhelmed our trail during the night, forcing us to find another way out. (Meanwhile, the Forest Service was considering sending in search parties; another story.)
Shenandoah was only an hour’s drive or so from where I lived, so I mostly went on day hikes there and in nearby West Virginia. But I never grew to love the Blue Ridge and the central Appalachians as I did the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont. The terrain and trails here seemed monotonous, with none of the lakes and ponds and few of the rushing streams that made hiking in New England so beautiful. Even the mountain vistas seemed less grand.
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I recently digitized some of my old photographic slides, including those few I took on that first backpacking trip. Looking at them again got me wondering what it was about backpacking that so appealed to me—and still does.
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Our first-night campsite in the woods below Mount Chocorua.
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Heading up the mountain along the Liberty Trail.
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Clothes came off as the morning wore on.
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Jim Liberty Cabin, a half-mile from the summit.
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Our campsite below the summit.
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The view from the summit, looking north.
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The view from the summit, looking west.
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Clouds enveloped our campsite in the morning.
Aside from the joys of being in the woods and scaling summits, I think much of why I liked backpacking had to do the satisfaction I derived from traveling self-contained, living simply, and carrying only what I really needed.
But the “simplicity” of self-contained travel requires careful planning and preparation, and no small amount of cash to acquire the clothing and gear you need. Weight is paramount. You think twice about every item you choose to bring. Each must address some basic need, serve to fix a potential problem, or make life on the trail or in camp a little more bearable. You may allow yourself some luxuries—a book or a journal, say, or a plastic flask of Grand Marnier—unless you’re like the fanatic our backpacking instructor told us about, who cut his toothbrush handle short to save a fraction of an ounce.
Hiking up a mountain while carrying a tent, sleeping bag, cooking gear, food, water, and clothing to keep you comfortable in all foreseeable conditions isn’t most people’s idea of fun. You can’t be fastidious about cleanliness and comfort. You have to be willing to get dirty, sweaty, wet, hot, and cold. It’s physically demanding and involves some amount of risk. But the rewards are great: a stronger and healthier body, a powerful sense of achievement, and getting to go places and experience things most other people never do.
All of this applies to bikepacking as well, which I began doing about two decades after my backpacking days. Things I learned from backpacking directly carried over to traveling self-contained on a bike. I think my bicycle travels were a natural outgrowth of my backpacking experience.
Whether traveling with a pack strapped to my back, panniers clipped to my bicycle, or even luggage packed in the back of my car, I have strived to travel lightly, with only what I need. It’s not the easiest way to go. It complicates packing, and sometimes it just isn’t worth the effort. But it’s how I learned to travel a long time ago, when I first strapped on a backpack and headed up a trail.
I haven’t gone backpacking in over 30 years, but I still have that blue Lowe Alpine Systems backpack I bought in Boston in the late 1970s. Its bendable internal frame still conforms to the curve of my back. Its scent takes me back to the woods. Despite my compulsion to lighten my load of possessions from time to time, I can’t quite bring myself to give it away.
David Romanowski, 2021
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