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For outdoor people, gear is better than sex. So, it can then be said, that gear organization is the outdoor person’s masturbation. I may have lost some readers already, and that is probably for the best. If you are pressing on, however, that is because you are either an unapologetic gear head, a chronic organizer, or both. No matter your predilection, we’re going to have a lot of fun.
I am entering my twentieth year in the outdoor industry. It all started during my awkward days as a retail sales associate. I was learnedly spouting lumen quantity, cubic inches, and ounce count at college girls shopping for little more than a water bottle and dorm socks. These days, in my current position as an ultra-laid-back ski area employee, I still encounter a vast array of outdoor folk. When the race for the best possible parking spot has ended and we’re all opening our trunks and cargo boxes to withdraw skis, boot bags, and all manner of powder-day gear, I can’t help but notice the organized families who just really have it together. When I see papa bear reaching up to the rack and handing down everybody’s skis, while mama bear is pulling labeled boot bags from the trunk, and the baby bears, all alert, involved, and with their skis shouldered, emitting an aura of readiness to shred the day’s gnar, I can’t help but warm with appreciation. While I’m booting up at a trailhead and I see the four-door pickup, with five-grand worth of racks and lights bolted to it, park right next to me, I await one of two encounters. Either the human contents are over funded, under organized punks who hike for the selfies, or the truck is carrying geared-up badasses with organizational drawers spanning the full length of their truck bed below a beefy plywood deck. On that deck sit multiple bags, fully packed, but with room to spare, and almost nothing strapped to the outside. Those capable of organizing their time as well as their kit, cam strap a trusted expedition cooler to their roof rack. It is covered in stickers and packed with the perfect ratio of sandwiches to beer to ice that will provide maximum post-adventure refreshment. Cheers. How we present ourselves at the mountain, at the put-in, or at the trailhead starts with how we care for, store, and organize our gear at home. People who haphazardly throw everything in the back of the closet or in the corner of the garage until the next adventure befalls them, end up looking and acting just as haphazardly when they are in the field. But those who select each piece of their non-gimmicky gear from an array of cleaned, re-charged, and maintained items hanging from individual hooks on a calico of color-coded peg boards, end up looking like guide-gods, wilderness-skills-instructors, and learned-naturalists wherever it is they choose to grace the water, dirt, or snow. It is just as important to select good gear as it is to keep your equipment organized. Too many serious adventurers falter when they become more serious about gear collection than usage. This becomes akin to the psychological condition known as Hoarding disorder, where sufferers become immobilized by clutter and unable to find the most important things when they need them most.
The ultimate crux of my outdoor-ness did not present itself while I was rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, or while I was shooting a survival show in the jungles of Panama, or while I was thru hiking the Long Trail in Vermont. My crux came eight years into my relationship with my partner, over a bottle of good wine in our kitchen, when we decided to buy a camper. I once cooked in, and ate out of, the same titanium pot for a week while mountain biking in the Sonoran Desert. My entire kitchen and all my first aid equipment has to fit in a custom wanigan I built myself for canoe expeditions. But now, I would have a truck camper that comfortably sleeps two adults, a ten-year-old child, and a dog named Salmon. Now I could have both pots AND pans. Now I would (hopefully) never mix-up antiseptic wipes with salt packets ever again. Our chosen camper had such an expansive solar charging system that each family member could have a phone, an e-reader, a rechargeable headlamp, and a fitness watch all the time! -But with great capacity comes great selectability. We have to keep our weight down. We have to share a confined space for days, even weeks at a time. We have to remain fed, watered, rested, clean, and content. We have to gear up, as a family, for the most complicated adventure of our lives, our first truck camper vacation. To follow are a series of essays, rants, convoluted thoughts, and unwanted advice about all things outdoors. I’ll likely mention entering my forties and yet feeling not a day older than maybe thirty-four. I may describe the time I got a little drunk by myself and shaved my head and chest. I’ll mention how I liked the results and how it improved my snorkeling. I will write about leaving careers behind where I was the fittest, tannest sucker in the office only to find myself bearded at a ski area where the twenty somethings discuss their sub-six-minute-miles. I don’t expect you to read all or any of the works to follow. I only hope that you won’t mind too much that I write them. Badass Outdoors is a place for reviews, and an outlet for me that may result in the transference of some information gained the hard way and perhaps a chuckle or two shared over the world wide web. |