Treading Lightly

Avalanche Pass, ADK

As MontAnia mentioned, this weekend marks my move to the captivating Adirondack State Park. I will be working for The Wild Center as a canoe guide/naturalist, and I've been excited about the move for a while now. The Adirondack mountains are my favorite playground and a wonderful example of the delicate balance between wild and settled areas. For those of you that do not know, the Adirondack State Park, which is larger in area than the state of Massachusetts, is a mix of public and private lands, a working harmony that has been evolving for over a hundred years. If you can do it outside you can do it in the Adirondacks, and visions of adventure have been dancing in my head for weeks on end. I invite you all to come visit.

Now, I have packed up and moved my life a couple of times, and I try to pack light, but this time I decided to take on a special challenge. I had read once about a minimalist who lives with only 100 personal objects in his possession. 100 sounds like a lot of stuff at first, but that includes clothes, technology, books, jewelry, even his wallet. He did not count items he shares with his family-forks, TV, bed, etc. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to take on that challenge for myself this summer.



I have a variety of reasons for doing so. Living simply always appeals to me, and material possessions only matter in the ways that they allow me to interact with the world around me. My smelly, dirty, beat-up climbing shoes are one of my most prized possessions, not because they are great shoes but because they allow me to do great climbing. I figured if I whittled down my stuff to the things that really matter, I would be able to focus on what truly brings me joy.

There is also a certain environmental ethic to this decision. So many of our environmental issues stem from unchecked consumerism. As a culture we have found ourselves at a point in time where objects are incredibly transient; the energy put into their production greatly outweighs the amount of use they get. We simply don't assign value to things-if it breaks, get a new one. If you don't want to carry it anymore, throw it away. Stuff is so easily available to us all the time, and that availability decreases their value. Mass production worries me, and so I am quietly, ever so slightly, no longer taking a part in it.

Also, I find it hard to resist a challenge, so bring it on, minimalism.

My Summer Reading

If you're curious as to what I packed, I will publish a full list below*. I took a few concessions: toiletries all counted as one item, books (I brought 16 in total, one is not pictured) counted as one item, and things like socks and underwear were grouped into one item. Laptop and charger are grouped together, because one is useless without the other, as are similar items. I did however count each individual peice of clothing as one item, and other doubled up objects (I brought two knives, for example) are counted individually.

Could you live with only a hundred objects? What would you get rid of? What would you keep?



 *Note that a Masters Degree is not listed among my 100 items.