Overburdening
THERE is more danger that a man take too much than too little into the wilderness. No matter how good his intentions may be, how conscientiously he may follow advice, or how carefully he may examine and re-examine his equipment, he will surely find that he is carrying a great many pounds more than his companions, the professionals at the business. At first this may affect him but little. He argues that he is constructed on a different pattern from these men, that his training and education are such as to have developed in him needs and habits such as they have never known. Preconceived notions, especially when one is fairly brought up in their influence, are most difficult to shake off. Since we have worn coats all our lives, we include a coat in our list of personal apparel just as unquestionably—even as unthinkingly—as we should include in our calculations air to breathe and water to drink. The coat is an institution so absolutely one of man's invariable garments that it never even occurs to him to examine into its use or uselessness. In like manner no city dweller brought up in proximity to laundries and on the firm belief that washing should be done all at once and at stated intervals can be convinced that he can keep clean and happy with but one shirt; or that more than one handkerchief is a superfluity.
Elimination
Yet in time, if he is a woodsman, and really thinks about such affairs instead of taking them for granted, he will inevitably gravitate toward the correct view of these things. Some day he will wake up to the fact that he never wears a coat when working or traveling; that about camp his sweater is more comfortable; and that in sober fact he uses that rather bulky garment as little as any article in his outfit. So he leaves it home, and is by so much disencumbered. In a similar manner he will realize that with the aid of cold-water soap the shirt he wears may be washed in one half hour and dried in the next. Meanwhile he dons his sweater, A handkerchief is laundered complete in a quarter of an hour. Why carry extras, then, merely from a recollection of full bureau drawers?
Essentials
In this matter it is exceedingly difficult to be honest with oneself. The best test is that of experience. What I have found to be of no use to me, may measure the difference between comfort and unhappiness to another man. Carry only essentials: but the definition of the word is not so easy. An essential is that which, by each man's individual experience, he has found he cannot do without.
How to Determine Essentials
How to determine that? I have elsewhere indicated[1] a practical expedient, which will however, bear repetition here. When you have reached home after your trip, turn your duffle bag upside down on the floor. Separate the contents into three piles. Let pile No. 1 include those articles you have used every day—or nearly that often; let pile No. 2 comprise those you have used but once; and pile No. 3 those you have not used at all. Now, no matter how your heart may yearn over the Patent Dingbat in No. 3, shut your eyes and resolutely discard the two latter piles.
Naturally, if you are strong-minded, pile No. 1 will be a synonym for your equipment. As a matter of fact you will probably not be as strong-minded as that. You will argue to yourself somewhat in this fashion:
"Yes, that is all very well; but it was only a matter of sheer chance that the Patent Dingbat is not in pile No. 1. To be sure, I did not use it on this particular trip; but in other conditions I might need it every day."