Happiness is a Backpack

"She's not a girl who misses much..."
- Happiness is a Warm Gun (Lennon/McCartney)

"Backpack, backpack!"
- Dora the Explorer

Last year, I mostly traveled with a suitcase, the first time I did so after oh-so many years (okay, maybe not that many)--- and it did feel strange. I had mostly travelled using a backpack even though I would be gone for weeks. The convenience of using a backpack is pretty obvious: even though it's a burden on your back it makes you more mobile horizontally, vertically and all its directional possibilities.

When I first started using a backpack in a, well, "backpacker" sense I was in my mid-20s, finally liberated from the fears of independent travel thus courageous enough to go on what I used to call back in college as "Lonely Planet-ing". Now, in my early 30s and after a year of suitcase traveling, I am faced again with the prospect of having this thing on my back, scaling mountains (literally) and exploring places I haven't gone to before.

A mark of a real sexy leg: a splatter of mud,
feet wrapped in hiking shoes.

Am I excited? Hell yeah. Scared? Even more.

I am worried about the physical requirements of going outdoors, to be honest. I am not hardcore; I just like to do things and it is my ambition. Preparation is important; I have gone on hikes where I suffered because I wasn't physically prepared. Heck, I threw up in my sleep when I was on Mt Kinabalu and I've noticed going heady in the first thirty minutes of any climb because of altitude sickness. My problem now is, yes, I am anything but prepared.

I don't sound very encouraging.

I will be off to the mountains very, very soon and I am SO excited. But I have to say that everyday realities have dampened this excitement because I have been too busy that I haven't even packed yet. The backpack hasn't been dusted off, the shoes are still caked with dried mud. I am far from being a proper explorer because I have been too anchored. I feel like I am being thrown off into the unknown, into this familiar place of not knowing.

Then again maybe that is the entire juice of happiness: you will just realize it while in the middle of it. It is not necessarily marked by anything. Maybe, when I make my way up north, freezing on a bus, the wave of relief and wonder will just hit. It's like that moment of carrying heavy load on your back: you'll notice that amidst the pain the prize comes in the form of experience that cannot be easily contested. It's in the miles you cover, the places of immersion, the universe suddenly rolled into the marks you make on your map.

Sometimes I cannot help but roll my eyes every time people remark this statement when a vacation ends and they go back to the daily grind: "back to reality". Why do they consider such experience a mere escape? Do we go on adventures to "get away" from our lives? How come it is not part of reality?

To be honest I don't want to think of these moments of adventures as compensation. It's part and parcel of the entire picture. It's also the reason why you breathe, it's not just a reason why you have to work.

But anyway. Funny how a friend told me to "relax" while I'm away. I told him it's going to be far from relaxing. I can just imagine bruises, cuts and moments of screaming my head off and complaining why I subject myself to these things--- and then afterwards I complain why I do not do it most of the time. It's like that song that goes, "So I walked under a bus, I got hit by a train, keep falling in-love, which is kind of the same... and it felt so good, I wanna do it again". A masochist's theme? Nah. I call it luurrvvee.

Besides, if I want to relax, I have a comfy couch in my living room and my Y Tu Mama Tambien DVD to keep me entertained.