My first backpacking trip in 1999 was when I first got excited about the idea of a more simple lifestyle. For those weeks, everything I needed was on my back... simple food, only the basics for clothes and toiletries, etc. Laundry meant rinsing my clothes in a stream and hanging them in the sun. Luxury was coming across a campsite with an outhouse (avoiding a fresh set of mosquito bites in inconvenient places...). I appreciated small luxuries so much more than greater luxuries at home. It made me realize just how freeing it can be to live with a little less.
Not that I want to always live on the bare essentials. But after a short overnight backpacking trip this week, I'm remembering some of what first drew me not only to enjoy backpacking/camping trips but to seek a bit of that kind of simplicity in my everyday life.
I'm thankful to come home to a bed, an indoor flushing toilet, a warm shower and a machine that washes my clothes. I'm thankful for refrigerated/frozen food and so many other small things that I usually take for granted or ignore completely. But I'm also thankful for the chance to get away from all of this and remember how little I actually need on a daily basis, how quiet and uncomplicated life can be, the miracles and beauty of nature... when all I have to do during the day is put one foot in front of another, eat when I'm hungry, drink when I'm thirsty, and pitch a tent when I'm tired.
And even just a short trip to the woods can help me remember what's important, what's necessary, what's reasonable, what's a pleasant luxury, and what is excess in a way that hurts me and others. I think I may need to draw away to the woods more often.
