With the calendar advancing towards summer, those of us who are into it are approaching hiking times. And that means, it’s time for an inventory. Are our shoes still good enough for what we intend to tackle? Do we need special shoe accessories for icy areas in the mountains? Are our working sticks still working or do they keep collapsing? Above all, are our rucksacks ready? Ah, yes, another Germanism.
“Rucksack” (pronounced ‘rookzuck in German) means back sack. I come from a family of hikers, and I got my first one when I started school. Why not earlier? Why not later? My father used to carry most of the load for our (smaller) hikes back then. My mother usually carried some food in a larger handbag, too. But as of first grade, there were hiking days in school, and we children had to carry our own provisions, of course. So, into mine went a small bottle of herbal tea, an apple (halved and cored), a sandwich, sometimes a sausage for grilling, and a jar of pudding for dessert. Also, a package of paper tissues and Band-Aids. Now imagine 30 little kids with their rucksacks, in columns of two or three kids wide, accompanied by one teacher and two or three mothers, moving through the gentle meadowed valleys and the wooded hills of my hometown … We always ended up somewhere with a firepit and a playground, one place or another.
Back in the day, our children’s rucksacks were simply like soft satchels with a sportier look. Nothing like the incredible specialized affairs we get at outdoor stores these days. Enter REI or any other of these outfitters, and they will ask about your purpose, measure your size, check whether an external frame is advisable or not, how the straps or harnesses are fitting, whether you need a cover for bad weather. Rucksacks have become a business for all those who need them for fun. They ARE an important business in professional fields such as rescuing services or the military. But I don’t even want to go there.
My husband and I share the load when we go on a hike. Still, he usually takes the bigger load, and I wonder how he does it. We pack heatable food and water with us. We always have a water-filtering system along, too, and we have made use of it quite a few times! There are extra clothing and an entire Ziplock bag filled with items for human needs including sanitizing wipes. We have emergency blankets with us and rain capes. We check whether our first aid kit, sun blocker, and insect repellent have to be replaced. We carry a GPS that has helped us decide which path to chose more than once when signage was bad or missing. And we take along radios in case one of us (usually me for all the photos I take) falls behind and needs help – thankfully, that has never happened so far. Caps and mitts are a given when heading for the mountains. Bear spray and bear bells also come along.
Back in Germany, I would have thought this an overkill. A rucksack was simply a rucksack, a bag to carry on your back, holding mostly food and beverages. Basically, because hiking there happens in a cultivated landscape where human abodes are rarely that far away. Over here, the wilderness starts pretty much outside any city limits and small-town boundaries. There are places without internet or phone reception. Sudden weather swings can get you stranded – we hear about people going missing on hikes every year, around here.
Our rucksacks are not mere leisure gear. They are items of life support. That’s why hikers pay so much attention on them and check them as if they were treasure. Because they are.
