The Weightiness of the Long Distance Helper

 I was attracted to the lifestyle of animals at an early age. I longed to be something like a fox, needing nothing more for shelter than a safe enough place to sleep, finding food and water where I might, carrying nothing but my fur. 

As I got older, I admired the frontiersmen on TV who carried nothing but a bedroll, a gun and a knife. I admired Indian braves who rode horses bareback, not needing the heavy, bulky saddles used by the whites. 

It seemed to me that one of the main things setting humans apart from other animals was that humans were oppressively encumbered. In the story, A Christmas Carol, I knew the truth of the chains Bob Marley lugged around. They were the stuff we burden ourselves with.

Still, I lived life more or less conventionally. I owned cars, as well as a house at one point. Renovating and selling that house convinced me to never again undertake home ownership. I divested myself of a lot when I moved into a series of ever smaller apartments.

Then came the war in Ukraine, the horrors of the atrocities in Bucha, my determination to go help, and my move from my apartment to a bedroom in a lady's home, keeping just enough to enable me to wind down my life in the USA and prepare for an extended stay abroad. Toward the end of that period of preparation, I traded in my big computer for a laptop, got rid of most of my clothes, and sold my car. I had been sleeping on an air mattress for a whole year, but I gave it away and for the last month slept only on the pad I used for camping.

What to do with things of sentimental value was a challenge. I just couldn't put Winky, my one-eyed stuffed dog companion of 60+ years in the trash. I left him and some other mementos with a sweet friend. I left my djembe with my best drumming buddy.

On the practical side, I also left a box of winter clothes and a flak jacket with another friend, hoping to have him ship them to me when I get settled in Ukraine. He also got one of my cherished pieces of art, a framed print of a wolf in snow.

I left the landlady, now a friend, a few boxes of gear that could be useful for folks finding themselves homeless, and also my other cherished piece of art, a gorgeous print of a Russian painting of an elderly angel and an angel cat, both guided by a lovely mortal girl.

That left me with about 70 pounds of stuff to take to Ukraine: essential camping gear (tent, sleeping bag and pad, a bivvy sac for added warmth); a week's worth of summer clothing plus raincoat and hoodie; lots of tech (computer, iPads, backup drive, headphones, earphones, cables); emergency radio with solar panel, a larger solar panel, rechargeable batteries plus spare alkaline batteries, emergency water filters, flashlight, all manner of iPhone mounts (tripod, car mount, bike/motorbike mount), first aid kit, toiletries, extra sunglasses, padlocks of various sizes to secure equipment in questionable areas, plus a few other sundries.

Let me tell you how unprepared I was to lug 70 pounds around an airport let alone walk a few blocks to a subway stop. I traveled this way up to the fifth stop on my farewell tour and then decided I just had to shed some weight. But what? Everything was mission-critical. I just had to keep all the tech. Who knows? My greatest contribution might take the form of a documentary. And what would I run it on in places where Russia had taken out the electrical power? I had to keep the solar panel and rechargeable batteries. I ended up shedding two days of clothing, the flashlight and the spare batteries for it, all but one of the padlocks, and my extra sunglasses. I gave it all to a guy who was asking for money on the street, plus ten bucks.

That purge lightened my load by about ten pounds. I now carry 45 pounds in my big 75 liter pack on my back and 15 pounds in a small pack on my front. I'm still pretty iffy walking long distances but I'm doing better around the airports and negotiating transit. Maybe after a year of this, I'll be strong enough to hoist my big pack from the ground up onto my shoulder, but not yet. For now, I'm happy to find anything around chair height or higher on which to set the pack so I can get my arms through the shoulder straps. I shudder to think how I would have managed all of this had it not been for all the hefting of djembes over the past two years!

I'm still far from that life of the fox, but the fox is also far from the life of a helper, a 21st century helper, venturing into a war zone with accoutrements that could help secure peace. I guess 60 pounds is a good compromise.