“Non-Necessities” I Always Take Backpacking

Backpackers live and die by weight.  Abiding by the commandment that you should never carry more than 20 percent of your body weight (not an easy feat for a fit demographic), competent backpackers obsess about ounces, always consider the weight of anything they take on the trail, and avoid even light luxuries that they’ll feel at the end of a long hike.  But as a desk jockey and neophyte to backpacking, I take certain items backpacking in Florida that, despite their presumed frivolity, I consider absolute necessities. Perhaps the hope of having them in your backpack may make you less reluctant to try backpacking.

1. Neck Pillow—Yes, Those Oversized, Overstuffed Ones You Get at the Airport: I have never been able to comfortably rest in an airline seat with 31 inches of seat pitch with these things—they do nothing but press my chin down to my chest.  But on the trail, they are perfect.  My most important priority on the trail is sleep, and although my back and body can tolerate asphalt and rocks, my head must be comfortable or I won’t sleep.  Airliner neck pillows shaped like toilet seats check all the boxes.  They’re soft and cushiony.  They lift my head off my air mattress and my shoulder (I’m a side-sleeper).  They frame my skull and ear to prevent me from rolling.  And they move with me when I do roll.  I don’t care how stupid it looks in my backpack, I won’t go backpacking without one. On the downside, my neck pillow does take up a lot of space in my pack. It also smells like my junior high gym locker.  But it also compresses and therefore locks the looser items inside my back into place to prevent them from shifting or moving while I’m hiking.

2. Body Wipes: Laugh at me, please. In my book, I make fun of my obsession with “yuppie wipes.” But this is also an essential tool for sleep.  Through almost a month of nights spent on the trail in my tent, I’ve learned I can sleep through heat, cold, rain, roots beneath my air mattress, sarcastic rodents in the palmettos beside my tent, foul arm pit odor, and even the occasional mosquito.  What I cannot endure is unabated, dried, salty sweat and stickiness.  Water cannot be wasted to clean my body. These body wipes, moistened with self-drying shampooish soap, provide just enough clean to feel marginally less ugh. You can’t use them to walk off the trail into a wedding, but they will neutralize the yick.  They also fit easily in a bear bag.

3. Weighted Item for Throwing My Bear Bag Line: Speaking of bear bags, we’ve arrived at arguably the most space and weight-wasting item in my pack—but again, I won’t leave home without it.  The rule in Florida is that all smellable items (food, trash, toiletries, used body wipes) should be hung in a bag from a tree at least 10 feet above the ground and 4 feet from the side of the tree—otherwise, you may wake up to find a bear playing tetherball with your breakfast.  The trick is getting the line over your preferred limb and then back down to Earth without having the line snag on nearby limbs.  Purists tie sticks or rocks found on the forest floor to their bear bag lines.  But sticks heavy enough to pull the line back down to the ground are rarely small enough to avoid snagging on other branches, and in my experience, it’s not easy to tie a rope around a rock.  I used to use my pocketknife, until two clasps in a row broke and I donated each knife to the forest.

Enter those miracle geniuses who invented dog toys. I’ll never forget when I finally found this one in the pet section at REI.  This mushroom-shaped toy is perfect.  Made of vulcanized rubber, it’s dense and heavy—but not too heavy.  It’s hollow, so I was able to permanently tie a clip for easy attachment to my bear bag line.  It’s small and aerodynamic—easy to throw and aim, like a grenade or a baseball.  And without fail, it always falls back to me with only a smidge of slack thrown up in the line.  My days of spending 20 minutes rethrowing my bear bag lines are now thankfully over . . . for the most part.

4. Fire-starting Briquette and Kiln-Dried Kindling: Ridicule me if you will, but I cheat on fire in Florida.  It’s just too humid.  I’ve spent nights on the trail being unable to light even paper for more than 10 seconds.  And while a campfire is rarely necessary here for warmth, it is often an essential mosquito deterrent.  It also makes you feel less scared of those howls, snorts, and opossum-shaken palmettos you hear after dinner.  A campfire is also a great way to finish a “yuppie shower” with a coating of B.O. suppressing smoke.  So yes, I take a single Solo Stove firestarter briquette and a single piece of kiln-dried kindling in a paper bag on the trail with me.  Don’t tell my Scoutmaster.

5. Always-Handy Sweat Towel: My name is Rob Rogers, and I am a heavy sweater. And nothing gets older while backpacking than having streams of sweat running into your eyes from beneath the brow of your sweat-soaked hat. So I always strap a towel to the top of backpack that drapes over my left shoulder while I hike with which to wipe my salty brow. Your inner adolescent may be asking, “Why not just use your shirt?” Because after three miles of backpacking, every square centimeter of my shirt is already soaked with sweat. I prefer to use the long skinny towels designed to be immersed in cold water and draped across the shoulders of athletes, as they more easily reach my brow when tied to the top of my pack without forcing me to turn my head. Since I don’t carry an actual camp towel for short trips, le towel de sweat also serves other purposes in camp. Por ejemplo, I’ve used the cleaner length closest to the knot to wipe clean my coffee mug. It’s also been helpful when I’ve encountered sappy firewood on the trail that left sticky-icky on my hands that would not rub off, even with the aid of a few loogies.

6. Portable Charger for Phone: When I backpack, I take a lot of pictures, and I track my speed, progress, and location using the AllTrails app.  But this tends to drain the battery in my antique cell phone, especially in cold weather, when the phone expends extra power keeping itself warm.  So I always take a portable charger—if only to avoid being unable to document my adventures.  Or knowing what time it is, that drives me crazy.  I also keep the cord to connect it to my phone in a plastic case that never leaves my backpack.