The first and most profound lesson backpacking taught me about intentionism was minimalism. When you are hiking 15-20 miles a day to summit mountains, you don’t want to be carrying a lot. Honestly you don’t want to be carrying anything but the bare essentials. Did you know that water weighs a pound for every 16 ounces?! But seriously, it’s heavy. And necessary. So of course, you have to think about what’s not necessary. What can you let go?
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Never in my life had I needed to meditate so intensely – with so much intention – on the things I carried with me. Did I really need a change of underwear? Could I eat out of the package instead of bringing a bowl? Just how much toilet paper was I going to use? Every item was carefully considered – the value it would bring and the cost it, or more aptly I, would carry. You see, backpacking leaves little margin for error: if you don’t bring something you need, you can’t run around the corner and buy it. Alternatively, if you bring something you don’t need, you can’t just discard it. No, you’ll carry the weight of that mistake for the next 40 or 50 miles.
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While mentally and emotionally exhausting, the effect of all of this careful examination and intentional letting go was something truly remarkable. When all was said and done, I had a pack that contained only and completely what I needed. Only and completely. I don’t mean to exaggerate, but when I think about my pack, I get thrills of excitement. It’s empty of anything frivolous or duplicative or otherwise unnecessary. At the same time, it is brimming with things of value – things necessary to my survival! When I open the pack, each item has a purpose (hopefully multiple purposes). Every item is used. Every item has a place in the pack to optimize weight distribution. For every single item, down to the smallest handful of grams, I can ask “why?,” and I have a confident and enthusiastic answer. When it comes to my pack, I am an intentionist.
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What a radical concept! Carry only what you choose. An intention behind each item. Harmony and coherence in the sum of the things.
Before that experience, it had never really mattered how much stuff I had. There was inevitably an extra drawer or storage unit or checked bag to ensure I could always have whatever I had. Space, weight, compressibility, functionality – backpacking introduced a whole set of parameters and limitations. Suddenly, I had to optimize with a concrete and completely predictable cost associated with each of my choices.
When I came back from that first trip, I remember opening the apartment door and being met with total chaos. Last minute preparations had resulted in a horrific scene – laundry everywhere, boxes and plastic wrap strewn about from last minute additions, piles of discarded stuff that didn’t make the final cut. Even more, I saw for the first time the sheer enormity of the stuff we had. It was everywhere! On shelves and window sills, stuffed in bins and cabinets – like some kind of twisted tetris game of materialism where the object was to cram every open space with stuff. We couldn’t even have a bare wall. No, we needed to hang some kind of meaningless but pleasant-on-the-eye painting or mirror on any open white space.
Were we marking our territory? Were we proving something? Were we so unsure of ourselves that we found comfort in the accumulation of things? I didn’t know the answer, but I knew clearly that I didn’t know the answer. I had never really questioned my things and so not surprisingly, I had no explanation for them. Ironically, I gave so much energy and attention to things I was going to have with me on a backpacking trip for 72 hours, but gave no thought to the things that surrounded me every day.
What followed was months of reduction, of discarding, of letting go in a relentless attempt to replicate the bliss of “only and completely” in our home. My husband and I probably gave away 50% of our stuff within the first couple of weeks. From there we just kept hacking. We looked at every item, carefully considered its value and the cost it carried. We let go joyfully, feeling more and more energized as, with each successive round, we gained confidence in who we were and what we valued.
We’re still going, and honestly I don’t know if we’ll ever be done. I can say that overall our home reflects more of the backpacker mentality now. It reflects more of the principles of minimalism. Most importantly, it reflects more of us and the life we’re intending to live.
Red giant shooter suite 13 1 98. Backpacking is a microcosm of intentionism in so many ways, and while powerful, minimalism was just the first lesson.
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