Packing

An intelligent person, when faced with a year sans income, would intelligently hunker down and try to not spend any money and try not to burn through one's precious and embarrassingly tiny savings. But, in the middle of July I had just wrapped up a five-figure contract job for a college textbook publisher (ok, just barely five figures, but still, five instead of four...). Armed with that bit of savings, plus the reassuring knowledge that I have a job waiting for me in January, off I went to Episodes 4 and 5 in Kathleen's Excellent Year Off. Episode 4 was California Brazil Camp; and Episode 5 was Burning Man.

(If you missed the earlier episodes, they were: Episode 1, a three-month Carnaval trip to Brazil; Episode 2, a stunningly beautiful month in Greece; and Episode 3, three weeks of high-altitude mountain fieldwork, complete with grizzly- and bison-dodging, in Grand Teton National Park.)

The problem with Episodes 4 and 5 is that they were right in a row in the same trip in the same car, and right on the heels of Episode 3, the Tetons fieldwork. And so I had to pack for them all at once, more or less simultaneously (though I did get a one-day turnaround in Portland to dump some of the Episode 3 bird gear, and pick up the Episode 4 drums and the Episode 5 water jugs). All three were camping expeditions, but all requiring slightly different sets of gear: from the drenching thunderstorms of the Tetons, to the chilly nights in the California redwoods, and then to the shimmering heat and notorious duststorms of the Nevada desert.

So I spent a week in July carefully studying my trusty midnight-blue Subaru Forester and all its possible configurations of gear-storage.... (while trying to ignore the small voice in my head that was saying "Hey... since the car is that nice blue color, you could paint stars all over it and turn it into an astronomically accurate constellation map!" Shh, Art Car Voice, that will only happen with the Forester is 10 years old, and it's only 8 right now.)

First I arranged my basic fieldwork gear. (I'm writing this out mostly just to make a list that I can refer to next year.) First, a sprinkling of new clean earplugs everywhere. New earplugs! Like manna from heaven - a pair stashed in every possible drum bag, purse, backpack and container that I own, plus a few more pairs scattered throughout the car and even some attached to the bike. Then the major packing begins. Tucked under the driver's seat: Jumper cables, duct tape, paper towels, extra pair of hiking shoes, scissors, jackknife, mallet, spare tent stakes, screwdriver, wine bottle opener; a little cutting board, camping dishes & silverware; a sack of spare batteries; and a big bag full of bungee cords and various lengths of rope. In the glove compartment: the Mini-Office, containing envelopes, stamps, paper and pens, and my brand new passport, birth certificate and international driver's license (just in case. Cause you just never know when you will suddenly be headed to Mexico.)

Under the passenger seat: rows and rows of canned food (tuna, pears, pineapple, peaches), with boxes of Triscuits and Cliff Bars piled on top. Nothing that requires any cooking. In the door pockets: band-aids, sun block, bug spray, sunglasses, compass, flashlight and headlamp. On the back seat: A big 5-gallon jug of drinking water, my Clothes Bag, my Bathroom/Shower Bag, and two towels. In the way back: A huge cooler stocked with beer, cheese, yogurt, fresh blueberries (which last way longer than any other berry, ya know), bread, and the Emergency Drug Bag, (containing a whole pharmacy of goodness, from high-altitude Diamox, to malaria medication, to prescription-strength painkillers and an enormous supply of at least four different antibiotics. All triple-bagged in ziplocs and kept in the cooler). Stuffed everywhere else: tent, tent fly, 3 tarps (one for under the tent, one for over, and a third for emergencies); and a sleeping bag AND 2 Ecuadorean wool blankets AND a comforter AND a pillow AND a big fat sleeping pad, AND the Sleep Bag (containing eye mask, earplugs, sleeping pills, fuzzy hat and warm socks); because if I've learned anything from twenty years of fieldwork, it's that You Need Your Sleep.

Finally, wedged in the corners, the Bag Of Foul-Weather Gear, plus the Bikini Bag, plus a helmet; cause you just never know when you going to unexpectedly be either on a beach, or freezing to death, or caught in a thunderstorm, or in a kayak or on a horse and needing a helmet. Or sometimes all of those simultaneously. You just never know.

OK. That's the basics that I take on any fieldwork. Then for the Tetons I added: solar shower, hiking pack, hiking shoes, binoculars, all 3 bird books (Peterson, NG, and Kaufman), the guide to Mammals of the Rocky Mountains, a giant can of pepper spray (ok, I didn't buy this till after I met the grizzly bear...), and my trusty old Banding Bag containing bird-banding pliers, color bands, my calipers for measuring tarsus length, my wing chord ruler, and a couple of soft clean bird bags. Last of all, a bag of spices and the necessary ingredients for Field Station Scones and the Amazing No-Bake, High-Altitude, Chocolate-Oatmeal-PeanutButter Cookies.

So far so good. Four weeks later I came zooming back into Portland. Sunburned, dusty, and full of that ineffable serenity that only comes from a month of falling asleep under the stars to the sound of nighthawks, and waking with the dawn.... but that's a whole nother story (see previous posts for a bit about the Tetons). Who would have thought pandeiro would go so well with cowboy tunes? Anyway, now it's time for the swift changeover. Feeling rather like an Antarctic explorer heading his dogteam for a crucial cache of hardtack, I headed straight to my staging ground at a friend's house, where I took a shower (running water!! oh my god!), dumped the Tetons-only gear, and grabbed the two piles of gear that I'd left there for myself a month earlier:

The Brazil Camp cache contained a repinique, caixa, pandeiro, tamborim and frigideira, the Edirol sound recorder (plus batteries), and the required straps and sticks.

The Burning Man cache contained: a bicycle; 15 more gallons of water; two camp chairs and a small carpet; two strapless silver sequinned tops; a variety of odd skirts and pants; three iguana hats, because, you know, you just never know when you are going to need an iguana hat; goggles and dust masks; a fistful of glowsticks; and several battery-powered strings of colored LED lights.

OK, so this is not all going to fit.

One trip to ReRack later, the Forester was freshly equipped with a rooftop cargo carrier and a rooftop bike rack. Said the ReRack guy: "You can't put that cargo carrier and that bike rack side-by-side on the same car. Well, I guess technically you could, but...." Me: "Technically? Technically is good!" The "but" turned out to be that I have to take off the bike every time I want to open the cargo carrier, but that's infinitely better than no bike at all!

I LOVED my new cargo carrier. I LOVED my bike rack. I packed everything in, got it all in with good clear rearward visibility, even; got the bike on top, and last of all I strapped the big foam sleeping pad on top of the cargo carrier.

I got in the car feeling so happy and free. No commitments; no jobs; my textbook contract job all wrapped up; all the supplies I need right here in my trusty car; free, free, free. I could go anywhere, follow any whim. I had two days to get to Brazil Camp. I thought: I want to sleep in a tepee. I've never slept in a tepee. So I found a hot springs resort near Mount Shasta (the stunningly huge volcano that dominates the northern California skyline) that had tepees for rent. OK, headed for Mount Shasta tonight for a hot springs bath and a night in a tepee!

And so I headed for Interstate 5. Southbound.

Half an hour later the foam pad almost flew off the car because I'd forgotten to loop one of the straps through a crucial brace. No damage done, though, so I just hopped out, grabbed the strap and secured everything. And then my cell phone rang; it was two sambista friends who'd just zoomed past and seen me by the side of the road. I assured them I was fine, and we all went on our way; but then I thought, jeez, how many sambistas are on interstate 5 right now, that within 5 minutes after I pulled over, a fellow band member would have seen me? Dozens and dozens, I soon realized; I passed some, and others passed me. (My favorite phone call from that trip was just: "Want a piece of gum?" - from a sambista friend in a car directly behind me) All of us southbound on I-5; from Vancouver, Seattle, Olympia, Portland, Eugene; all on our annual thousand-mile-or-more migration, down the Pacific Coast to California Brazil Camp. And all around the continent, whole bands were mobilizing, packing, catching flights; from Boulder, Tucson, Calgary, Austin, from New Orleans, from New York City, from Boston. (sambistas from Boston! I have to talk to those people!) Even from as far afield as Hawaii and Hong Kong and Tokyo, sambistas were en route. California Brazil Camp, here we come!