Alright, so why backpacking?
As I write this I am less than 24 hours removed from touching down at Logan Airport after spending over a week fully immersed in the beautiful and dynamic California landscape. As much as I cannot wait to recap that trip, it will need to wait until next month after I’ve had a little more time to process it. And by that I mean… after I’ve had more time to edit the photos. So! For this month’s entry I thought I would focus in on one part of that trip, but speak to it a bit more broadly as one of my favorite forms of adventure - backpacking.
For those unfamiliar, backpacking, or backcountry camping, basically involves filling an aggressively large backpack with all the essentials needed to spend a night (or multiple nights) in the woods - a tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, extra clothes with layers, food and water, something to cook said food with, and, in most of my cases, a bear canister - and then just wandering into the woods for a certain about of miles (which varies based location) and finding a site to reside for a little while. Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to call various spots of wilderness temporary home in Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Yosemite, Sequoia, Big Sur, and of course the mountains of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. And yes, the bear risk is very real. Regardless, it truly is my favorite way to escape, literally and figuratively. More on the why in a little bit. First, I want to touch briefly on what this means as a photographer. Frankly, it’s a pain in the ass. Consider all of the above items, and then add a camera body, multiple lenses, and a dozen or so other accessories. It’s a lot. For the overnight trip in Yosemite last week I included the Nikon Z7 II, the 24-120 f4, 14-24 f2.8, 70-200 f2.8, and 50 f1.8 lenses - all crammed into a Wandrd camera cube - as well as a Peak Design tripod, in my 65 liter backpack. It was not an insignificant amount of added weight to have on your back for several hours, at an elevation that fluctuated between 9,000’ and 10,000’ feet (approximately). Hopefully that offers at least a bit of an idea of what goes into it for me.
That said, it’s always worth it. First, there’s the escapism of it. There’s an unmatched feeling of liberation tied to removing oneself from the societal distractions we’re constantly bombarded with and stripping our needs and wants down to quite literally what is physically around us - what we can see and touch - and understanding the ways in which we need to immerse ourselves to get the most out of the experience. Or, you know, survive? Alright fine, that sounds too dramatic even for my taste. But you get the idea. It’s fascinating really, how quickly we forget about some of the things we spend so much time unnecessarily obsessing over when we know we are committed to being without them for an extended period of time. And that’s just one, very introspective, part of it... but perhaps the most important. This opportunity it gives us to stop, shut up for a minute, and just simplify things. The wilderness doesn’t care about what’s on our mind, and it doesn’t need or want the air filled with our disrupting voices validating or combating anything. Yet it still understands, and still provides support when it’s needed most. The more we adapt and embrace all of this, the more we benefit from it. It’s beautiful.
The second reason I can relate back to my marathon running pursuits. It’s symbolizes a departure from the immediate gratification that we are so addicted to. Not only does the process of backcountry camping require numerous hours and miles on the trail to reach any form of completion, but the planning that goes into it - studying maps, the climate, personal ability and comfort levels, and so on - can be intense. Months of planning may go into a 24 hour trip. But as I have learned, the more hours and sweat you pour into something, the more you benefit from it and the more you appreciate it when it’s time to reflect (something I do often). So those feelings of escapism? The calmness of the forest scenery? The warmth of a fire on a cool night? Enhanced in a way that cannot be described.
And finally from the more, I don’t know, aesthetic angle I guess (since this is a photography blog), if you want to see and experience a landscape in all it’s glory - if you want to truly form a relationship with a place - you need to see how it’s aura and energy changes with the cycle of a day’s light. Those cliffs in the distance? The stillness of the lake’s reflection? The sounds of the surrounding forest? They are constantly changing. You feel connected to a place when you stop and observe these changes. Choppy water becomes glass. Granite white cliffs become gold. Bluebird skies become a forest of stars. And it all happens while we sit, quietly, offering our time to nothing but the familiarization and appreciation of our current place of being. The landscapes are expressive. They have much to share with us, visually and otherwise. Take the time to let them. At the very least you’ll see and feel things that the overwhelming majority of people never will, just because of your willingness to push yourself farther in both distance and time.
This is how you end up in situations where a family of moose interrupts your morning coffee, you awaken to a heard of elk grazing in the morning mist, or - comically - a porcupine tries to take refuge under your tent’s rainfly during an overnight storm. That, coupled with the aforementioned shifting visual landscape, are just a few very real, and occasionally very intimidating, moments that would otherwise not be experienced on a day hike, or less. So backpacking? It’s a pain in the ass. It’s uncomfortable. And it’s always worth it, and there’s no other way I would rather experience a place.
