Backpacking as Voluntary Discomfort

Or, How to Brew the Best Cup of Coffee

Following the advice of ancient Stoics, I have experimented with causing myself discomfort, which was one of the justifications for taking an overnight backpacking trip recently after years of non-practice. I had other reasons, but that was one of them I very much had in mind. It struck me that backpacking itself is an exercise in managing discomfort. For an overnight trip in which one sleeps on the trail, he or she must carry the necessary items on his or her back. More items means a heavier pack and that means more discomfort. The pack itself could be selected and purchased based on its weight and the comfort provided by its suspension system. I have an Osprey pack with a 48L capacity, which I find just about right for overnight trips, and I have to say it is the best pack I ever owned. It is just about as comfortable as I can imagine a pack could be. I have a small propane burner that folds up to a size of a double pack of cards, and the thing will boil 8 cups of water in less than five minutes. Pretty damned incredible if you ask me. I take that mainly because trail coffee is the best thing. I take a little dehydrated Folgers and a little creamer powder, and it is better than anything served at Starbucks.

So the first point here is that all of this is relative and contextual. I never drink dehydrated coffee in any other context, and I never use fake creamer. I will say that I am partial to Maxwell House and I have been partial to Maxwell House for twenty years, ever since I had breakfast at a diner in Birmingham and the coffee was so strikingly good to me that I asked the waitress about it.

“It is Maxwell House,” she said.

“Maxwell house, really?”

“Just plain ole Maxwell House.”

So my daily coffee has been Maxwell House ever since. Yet, on the trail I take Folgers. It is a baby-step, sure, but I am out of my comfort zone, and that’s the idea. The idea is that the crystallized Folgers, through a simple rejiggering of the context, becomes the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had.

For the rest of the food, caloric density is the most important criterion. I like to take a block of sharp cheddar and a summer sausage and a bag of triskets. Granola bars. For the rest of the gear, I think a tent is necessary for rain and bugs, a thermal pad to insulate one’s body from the cold ground and a sleeping bag. I put my clothes, a change of underwear, socks, and a t-shirt in a zip-loc bag and use that for a pillow . . . Already, though, I’m struck by this is indeed managing discomfort, because I could just sleep under the stars on the cold hard ground and really generate some intense discomfort.

Let me say, though, that I can’t sleep on the thermal pad. It is some great discomfort. I doze off, wake up after an hour, adjust myself again seeking a position that is comfortable or something close to it, and fall asleep for another hour, and the night passes very slowly like that. It sucks.

It has the effect of forcing me to appreciate my bed at home. Owning a comfortable bed is glorious.

I do not find these to be reassuring thoughts, though. I find them downright troubling. I look out at the birds and the deer and the squirrels and I wonder how they do it. I require a high degree of shelter, to say nothing about beds, but these poor creatures are just out there roughing it 24 hours a day. People’s frailty strike me pretty hard, and how foolishly we have inserted ourselves everywhere, in environments we have no business occupying. I digress.

Back to the point: My bed, relative to the ground, is glorious, and now I have made myself aware of its glory and therefore grateful for it. The Stoics thought deliberately generating this position of gratitude via voluntary discomfort had the effect of inducing satisfaction.

I can verify that it works.