A new thing?

Not really - The backpack. 25-odd years ago, my dad and I embarked on a journey. I suppose it was a journey that change me. But then every day in life pushes one way or another. This journey however, cemented in my psyche a desire or longing for the high country. You know, that “white area on the map” (link to crested butte post). That love of spreading maps out on the floor and planning the next adventure.

The next adventure, so to speak, comes from a disdain of goals. I have caught myself saying at work this year “goals are for people who didn’t live last year”. Maybe that’s the “joy in the journey” part of me speaking, being goaded along by the instigator in me. Whatevs.

So, this year, a backpack trip. Some impressionable youth. Maybe a lifelong desire for the high country. Melville has his oceans, I have my mountains.

Oh, give me again the rover’s life - the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let me feel thee again, old sea! Let me leap into thy saddle once more. I am sick of these terra-firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs, and not the dull tramp of these plodders, plodding their dull way from their cradles to their graves. Let me snuff thee, sea breeze! and whinny in thy spray.

Herman Melville, White Jacket, 1850

I can only hope.