Conversation on backpacks varies widely. But there are always three themes that pop up: food, gear and poop. And I love talking about these things. At least the food and gear. Poop must be discussed, but that, much like Pooh Bear himself, just is. It is a thing on the trail, at least for me and it was for a lot of the kids I used to lead on backpacking trips.
Sometimes, i am introduced to a food on a backpack that then becomes a thing i eat IRL. Even when I was fifteen, even when by many measures (especially since I am half locavore by birth) the food stuff is only acceptable eating if you do not have access to fresh food eg. canned chicken. After my first summer at Camp Unalayee, a backpacking summer camp in the Trinity Alps of northern California, where among other things trail lunches sometimes included canned chicken, I would eat canned chicken at home, on crackers, with mustard (which before that summer I would never eat). On crackers, at home, in a place where I had access to Acme Bread Company. Canned chicken, in a place where my mom would take us to the "Chicken Farm" to feed the donkey named Eeyore, the geese, and buy freshly killed chicken.
I think because I want to feel like I feel when I am on the trail. I want to feel my heart full of fresh air, and mountains, and red rocks, and fir trees...and...my first love (which I consider the wilderness). I want to feel the right kind of tired, the kind that makes me feel the right kind of relaxed, that gives me the ability to feel the right kind of things. Right by my own measure.
Maybe it's the smell more than the taste? That's supposed to be the trigger, according to Science. And what am I if not a Scientist? Either way, i get to spend a moment, or a fraction thereof wherever i remember eating that thing. Even today, even if it happened when I was fifteen.
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