A Walk in the Woods Read Free Page A

like rockfalls, bear encounters, cookstove explosions, and snakebites, which he described with a certain misty-eyed fondness before coming back to the topic at hand.
    With everything, he talked a lot about weight. It seemed to me a trifle overfastidious to choose one sleeping bag over another because it weighed three ounces less, but as equipment piled up around us I began to appreciate how ounces accumulate into pounds. I hadn’t expected to buy so much—I already owned hiking boots, a Swiss army knife, and a plastic map pouch that you wear around your neck on a piece of string, so I had felt I was pretty well there—but the more I talked to Dave the more I realized that I was shopping for an expedition.
    The two big shocks were how expensive everything was—each time Dave dodged into the storeroom or went off to confirm a denier rating, I stole looks at price tags and was invariably appalled—and how every piece of equipment appeared to require some further piece of equipment. If you bought a sleeping bag,then you needed a stuff sack for it. The stuff sack cost $29. I found this an increasingly difficult concept to warm to.
    When, after much solemn consideration, I settled on a backpack—a very expensive Gregory, top-of-the-range, no-point-in-stinting-here sort of thing—he said, “Now what kind of straps do you want with that?”
    “I beg your pardon?” I said, and recognized at once that I was on the brink of a dangerous condition known as retail burnout. No more now would I blithely say, “Better give me half a dozen of those, Dave. Oh, and I’ll take eight of these—what the heck, make it a dozen. You only live once, eh?” The mound of provisions that a minute ago had looked so pleasingly abundant and exciting—all new! all mine!—suddenly seemed burdensome and extravagant.
    “Straps,” Dave explained. “You know, to tie on your sleeping bag and lash things down.”
    “It doesn’t come with straps?” I said in a new, level tone.
    “Oh, no.” He surveyed a wall of products and touched a finger to his nose. “You’ll need a raincover too, of course.”
    I blinked. “A raincover? Why?”
    “To keep out the rain.”
    “The backpack’s not rainproof?”
    He grimaced as if making an exceptionally delicate distinction. “Well, not a hundred percent. …”
    This was extraordinary to me. “Really? Did it not occur to the manufacturer that people might want to take their packs outdoors from time to time? Perhaps even go camping with them. How much is this pack anyway?”
    “Two hundred and fifty dollars.”
    “Two hundred and fifty dollars! Are you shi,” I paused and put on a new voice. “Are you saying, Dave, that I pay $250 for a pack and it doesn’t have straps and it isn’t waterproof?”
    He nodded.
    “Does it have a bottom in it?”
    Mengle smiled uneasily. It was not in his nature to grow critical or weary in the rich, promising world of camping equipment. “The straps come in a choice of six colors,” he offered helpfully.
    I ended up with enough equipment to bring full employment to a vale of sherpas—a three-season tent, self-inflating sleeping pad, nested pots and pans, collapsible eating utensils, plastic dish and cup, complicated pump-action water purifier, stuff sacks in a rainbow of colors, seam sealer, patching kit, sleeping bag, bungee cords, water bottles, waterproof poncho, waterproof matches, pack cover, a rather nifty compass/thermometer keyring, a little collapsible stove that looked frankly like trouble, gas bottle and spare gas bottle, a hands-free flashlight that you wore on your head like a miner’s lamp (this I liked very much), a big knife for killing bears and hillbillies, insulated long johns and undershirts, four bandannas, and lots of other stuff, for some of which I had to go back again and ask what it was for exactly. I drew the line at buying a designer groundcloth for $59.95, knowing I could acquire a lawn tarp at Kmart for $5. I also said no to a