Packing Light

In about an hour, I set off for Iceland and England, asked by my hosts to pack light.

I was recently visited by my good friend Kristen, aka Gingersnap, who is through-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Going on a gear run with her made me reassess both the contents of my apartment (not able to be carried on my back for a few months) and my packing for this trip. In short, I crammed all of my clothes into a compression sack, cinched it down, and will be flying to England with a daypack-sized backpack and my camera case.

The problem, of course, is the books. I bought, at the bookstore, for a mere 50 cents, a copy of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Long, interesting, critically acclaimed, and published in stubby mass-market paperback with a cover that makes it a dead ringer for The Da Vinci Code. That's the perfect airplane book. The other book was the problem: The Same Axe, Twice, by Howard Mansfield, problematic not only because of the unnecessary comma in its title, but also because I was halfway done with it when I packed. Bringing half of a book's worth of already-read pages would overfill my backpack.

I did the only thing I could do: plopped down on my parents' couch and steamrolled my way through the second half of the book. It is worth reading slowly, though it holds up very nicely when read fast.