When this is the view from my window, it is so easy for me to imagine that I am someplace else. Then again, it is not someplace else. It is here. It may be that I am some place else. I only need to return here--to get back to where I am, that is, to where I always was, since I had never really left to go some place else. I only thought I was someplace else.

Maybe what I long for is a different time, a different decade, or even a different century. It is so easy to romanticize the past. I simply select those bits and pieces, which I find attractive and blow them out of proportion and take them out of context.

The present is the present; presence is the gift.

The new pack basket arrived on Monday. This was timely. I had used the old one Sunday to pack a chili and cornbread lunch out to a friend's cabin. It literally came apart, though I managed to make it back to the trail head without spilling the contents. I salvaged the sternum strap that I had fabricated for the old pack and put it on the new pack. This is more than an attempt at continuity between the replacement and the one being replaced. There is also something to be said for making a personal modification to any new piece of equipment. I think it is what campers and backpackers are compelled to do. Mainly, I find that a sternum strap steadies the pack so that it doesn't move as freely side to side. A shifting pack makes me very unsteady on my feet. Couple that with an uneven surface, and it can look like I am about to fail a field sobriety test.

I haven't yet brought myself to put the new pack basket with the other camping equipment under the stairwell in the basement. It is sitting in my home office. I like looking at it. Its presence may well incentivize me to make appropriate use of it in the near future. I certainly hope so. I will resist any urge to use it as a newspaper or magazine rack--even an outdoor magazine and camping catalog rack.

 

 

 

 

I ordered a new pack basket this week to replace the Chinese made facsimile that I had been using for several years. I used it as if it was the genuine black ash or cedar strip version. It has now become barely serviceable despite several attempts to repair and strengthen it. The new one, which has yet to arrive via parcel post or UPS, is made of some space-age material and comes with a lifetime guarantee.

I took notice of the lifetime guarantee on two accounts. First off, my present basket is at the end of its days, and I am not at the end of mine. (My current basket also didn't come with a guarantee of any length.) Secondly, as my 67th birthday approaches later this month, a lifetime guarantee doesn't have the same saleable commodity as it did when I was, say, 45. Maybe there is a way to add significant value to such a guarantee. I have two grandchildren, who will be celebrating their first birthdays later this year. Talk about a lifetime guarantee of investment grade quality. I could claim that everything that I purchase is really for a grandchild, and that I am simply holding onto the item, until he or she grows into it.

The old basket has used primarily to pack supplies to and from the sugarhouse early in the syrup season, when the road in is impassable. It has carried its share of water, fuel, tools, lunches, extra clothes, and trash. I am not sure how to lay the old one to rest as I transition to the new one. I suppose I could simply hang it on a nail out at the sugarhouse. If it should end up in the firebox of the evaporator one day, that would be a fitting end, in my judgment. More than one pair of gloves, which no longer served their intended purpose, have ended up that way. Come to think of it, the firebox on a large commercial evaporator could even accommodate an old syrup maker should the question of what to do with one, who is no longer able to serve any useful purpose--flannel shirt, bib overalls, and packboots included.