The Pack

Into the Wilderness: Story 19

In front of me: Catina’s huge backpack from wilderness. It sprawled across my garage cement like a corpse. With pandemic lockdowns and limited socializing, I had cleaned and sorted almost every inch of my house. Now, I had turned to the garage, my husband hauling the pack from the storage loft and dumping its dead weight with a thud.

It was time to look inside.

I slowly unzipped the pack and peeled back the canvas skin. Its interior was a dark cavern of the remaining supplies from her wilderness stay. A tightly wound sleeping bag, a crumpled raincoat and poncho, several dirty plastic water bottles. A worn pair of hiking boots tied by their laces. A remnant stash of toilet paper nestled deep in a pocket (there was a point during lockdown last spring when we could have used this). Dirt from the mountains crusted the boot soles and flaked to the garage floor.

Fully packed with clothes, metal bowl and spoon, food supplies, papers, books, journals, filled water bottles, it had once weighed 40 pounds.

Throughout Catina’s wilderness stay, I had pictured her with this pack. She is a petite 5 feet, and this enormous, stuffed pack runs more than two-thirds the length of her body. She had worn the pack every day, chugging up sides of mountains with its dead weight pressing her down. She had carried it across streams. Once, she had tumbled down a mountain, rolling with the pack still intact and landing like an upended turtle. I would picture her sitting on it. Or tossing it into a pile with all the other girls’ packs. Opening and closing it for snacks, a spare change of clothes, dirty Crocs she wore without socks around the campsites. I pictured her removing the tarp she stretched into her nightly shelter. Stuffing her letters and pencils into a pocket, crumpled among dirty clothes. Open. Close. Open. Close. The zipper sliding its teeth apart and together. This was her life with the pack.

Back then, when I pictured her, I had felt both guilt and hope. The guilt came from removing Catina from the comforts of life. No longer a bed to sleep in, a dining table to eat at, a refrigerator and cupboard for snacks- we had taken the comforts of life from her. I worried she would never forgive me for this hardship, and if I were to go by her letters at the time, that was a possibility. While the pack was her moving home, it was my weighted sorrow. It was so weighted that when it first arrived at our house after wilderness was over, I had Chuck stuff it into a storage loft so I couldn’t see it.

Now, two years later, sitting in my garage, it was an empty shell. It no longer held Catina’s life necessities. It no longer symbolized the heavy guilt and sadness I carried with me. Instead, I actually wondered about using it for camping overnight in the woods near our house. It could come in handy. A practical item.

I called Catina downstairs to see it, telling her I had a surprise. “What?,” she asked. “Come see,” I said. When she saw the pack she laughed. “Oh wow, that brings back memories.” She picked up the boots, explaining how they had to order a special pair because her feet are so small. She extracted a water bottle, looking at its filthy interior, saying “gross.” She pulled out the rain poncho and more Georgia dirt filtered from the folds.

We sat shoulder to shoulder on the floor with the pack stretched in front of us and marveled at how it once was a heavy symbol of shared trauma and loss. This worn pack had taught us a few things. Here are its lessons:

1. Life’s symbols can teach us. One advantage of wilderness is that it creates metaphors for the way we live our lives. The pack was a symbol of all that we carried inside us. It could have stayed stuffed and weighted, pulling us down. But instead, we chose to unzip it and peer inside. We are much lighter two years later.
2. Pain isn’t permanent. It’s easy to forget that life can shift quickly. Pain and suffering can seem to last forever. But they don’t. I never imagined two years ago that I could reflect so deeply on her wilderness stay and not feel the sharp pang of deep loss. It’s not easy, but I am learning patience for the better moments.
3. We heal. We all carry baggage. I have written about that in previous blogs. We carry shame, guilt, sadness, loss. But working together as a family and on our own, Catina and I moved the trauma from a trudged burden to a moment in time. Doing the emotional work leads to healing.

Our pack is now sitting in the corner of the garage. In the spring, we plan to go camping.