My Bags are Packed, I'm ready to Go...oh wait, not yet.

I think I’m more apprehensive about Mali than I’d care to admit. My mom and I had a disagreement over packing today and rather than go into the details, I’ll share a story instead.

I used to work for an organization at U of M called Outdoor Adventures; we were the premier campus outfitter, providing the university community with a rental center, rock wall, wilderness medicine classes, and weekend trips, to name a few services. Most of what I’ve learned about leadership and group management has come from my experiences with OA.

Because we were a department funded by the University, we led “institutional” trips, which basically means that we had a lot of rules so that no one would sue the school. Each trip leader needed significant medical training (80 hours for me) and had to prepare for anything and everything that could go wrong with a group of 12 students in the backcountry. As responsible leaders, we needed to plan evacuation routes from our camping spot each night. We stuffed our backpacks with extra gear for those just-in-case moments and worst-case scenarios. Inevitably, we never needed to use these preparations, but it put our directors’ minds at ease.

Around the same time, I took my first cross-country road trip with three friends. Being influenced by my mom and OA, we hit the road with a white binder filled with a strict itinerary, phone numbers, and at least three hotel options for each night. While it was an absolutely wonderful experience, it lacked a certain spontaneity that should be characteristic in a college road trip.

On my last OA trip, I took eight students backpacking on Cumberland Island, GA, over spring break. One of our highlights was meeting a lone hiker, Stu, who was staying with his mom in Florida and on a whim, decided to hike on the island for a weekend. He packed light, bringing sneakers instead of sturdy leather boots. Rather than carry the weight of a stove and fuel, he just brought food that didn’t need to be cooked, like apples, bagels, and peanut butter. And instead of an expensive rain fly for his tent, he just draped a plastic shower curtain that he had swiped from his bathroom at home.


I remember looking at this hiker, and then back at our group with our Patagonia jackets and matching tents and thinking, “When did having the perfect gear become a requirement to enjoying the outdoors?” When did we lose the essence of traveling, that excitement that comes when we face the unknown? Why do we feel like we have to know the solution to every single obstacle and have it fit in neatly in our suitcase? Would Stu have gotten wet under his make-shift rain fly if we had had torrential rains (which we did the day before he arrived)? Sure, but would he have died? No. Are we all such pansies that we can’t deal with a little discomfort, that we need to be protected from the world like when we are at home?

Guess what? It’s impossible to plan for every single scenario and trying to do so makes one paranoid and scared to step outside. If one truly wants to grow from traveling, there comes a point where one must relinquish a degree of control and just do it. There will inevitably be challenges and obstacles and regrets for gear left at home. Get over it. The self-satisfaction of getting through these “problems” is well worth the risk of leaving one’s comfort zone.

Think about your favorite travel stories; no one wants to hear about how you walked from the Eiffel Tower to Notre Dame on a perfect Sunday afternoon. We want to hear how you got lost and had to ask directions at some shady bar but ended up getting a personal tour by some drag queen who was actually the nephew of a priest at Notre Dame and got you in after hours so you could have the entire sanctuary to yourself before you and your new friend went clubbing until the sun rose over the Seine.

Look what you would have missed if you had remembered to pack your map.

Clarification: I’m not advocating being so ill-prepared that you put yourself in life-threatening situations. There is some amount of planning that has to be done or else you end up having too many bad experiences and annoying the heck out of people who work in information services (like me!). But that’s another tangent.

I’m just trying to point out that as a society, we see the unknown as something that could go wrong and consequently, we become too afraid to truly travel.

Those are just my thoughts as I read through scores of CDC warnings on malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, cholera, sun poisoning, river blindess, filariasis, leishmaniasis, schistosomaisis, African Trypanosomiasis, and Ebola. Oh, and my personal favorite: Deep Vein Thrombosis a.k.a. Economy-Class Syndrome where blood clots form in legs of airline travelers. These may even break off (the clots, not the legs) and travel through the bloodstream, causing a pulmonary embolism.

My head is so full of travel warnings and recommended medical supplies that it’s hard for me to get excited about leaving. Sorry to end on such a rant, but that’s what I’m thinking right now. It’ll all be okay once I get my bags all packed.

Maybe we need another Photo Booth picture to lighten the mood: