The ineffable backcountry

For the most part, when we escape to the hills or wilderness or backcountry or whatever wonderful name we give the beloved pristine, what we escape from includes the easily describable. Nature’s magical knack at rendering us mute both connects us to our wordless roots and gives us exactly what we wish we could talk about.

Basically, when we hear ourselves trying to describe our love for wilderness, we feel shallow and stupid.

So, an effable backpacking thought does not find the backcountry lover often, or at least, as often. Experiencing wilderness, away from human noise and scars, is mostly an ineffable affair. But sometimes, thoughts too easily find the right words.

An effable backpacking thought

Not that there is any one thing to blame, but I did grow up in a culture that taught me how to glue cotton balls on Santa’s face instead of how to identify edible plants in the wild.

Fast forward a few decades and I’ve discovered a love for backpacking. A love and a market. Over the last few years, I’ve collected a small fortune of lightweight synthetics, all designed to protect me from the wild that I feel so good and free and at home and alive in.

While in various ways (psychological, spiritual, physical, etc.), I feel at home in wilderness and interact with wilderness, in order for me to feel as such and interact as much, though, I am encumbered by and dependent on gear. I become a foreign body in a place that feels so familiar. If this gear fails, my life is in danger. An astronaut would say as much about outer space.