[at-l] Light weight. Does it end on the trail?

[weathercarrot@hotmail.com (The Weathercarrot)]

Ultimately, I would like to be able to exist 365 days a year, whether I'm on 
the trail or not, with only the amount of material objects that could fit 
into a day pack or a small backpack. I have a long way to go. Everything I 
have now in the whole world can fit into a medium sized closet, but I'm 
having a hard time shrinking it further. Much of these things are 
non-functional items from the last 25 years or so - sentimental type stuff - 
books, spoken audio tapes, photos, letters, etc - things that I had set 
aside purposely to keep into the future as a representation of that era. The 
passage of time has severed a few of those sentimental attachments. I also 
have lots of old gear I need to ditch . I feel like they are a bit old and 
used to be desirable to many people, but I don't want to just throw them 
away either (any ideas?).

The times that I have traveled across the country with a day pack have felt 
very liberating (even if it was only because I had shipped the rest to avoid 
Greyhound's incompetence). This is a hard topic for me to convey in words - 
I guess it might come down to (among other things) the idea that the more 
stuff you have (and are emotionally dependent on), the more you are 
negatively impacted in the potentially sudden loss of that stuff. And this 
also gets back to that ancient debate on what constitutes "need". For me, 
whether we define "need" through some universal absolute, or through the 
relativity of individual realities, that definition applies equally on or 
off the trail.

wc


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