Reasons Not To Go Backpacking

hey y'all dixie here today i want to talk to you about all of the reasons not to go backpacking obviously if you've watched this channel for any amount of time i would never discourage people from going backpacking so what i mean by that is i want to talk about all of the reasons that people tend to have for not actually making that leap and going backpacking even after they've become interested in it i know we've had a lot of new subscribers to this channel lately but i also know that there are some of y'all still lurking in the shadows who have been hanging out for a while but still haven't crossed the line and gone out there on your first backpacking trip so wherever you fall into that i'm hoping that i can give you all that little loving nudge today to finally make it happen one of the most common reasons i hear that people don't go backpacking even when they want to is they can't afford it or they say they don't have the gear and they can't afford the gear but you don't have to completely break the bank when you buy backpacking gear now this is coming from somebody who has a 700 dollar backpacking tent of used backpacking shelters that cost more than that but i am somebody who also in any given year might go backpacking for several thousand miles and several months so it makes sense that i would invest more in the gear that i use because i spend a significant portion of my life using this gear in the woods on the trails but that doesn't have to be the case for everybody i've even reviewed a 50 tent on my channel before and purchasing backpacking gear can be something that you do over time and you can still get out and start enjoying the wilderness now with day hikes and then buy some gear to build up to car camping and then buy some gear to build up to making it mobile and going backpacking i have a video on this exact topic and give some examples of the gear to move up to each level so i'll include the link to that video in the video description to this video also i have a video where i detail a gear loadout that is just under 500 but i talk about some things that you could switch up in there to make it more inexpensive i really feel like you could get it down closer to the 300 range again if you're willing to compromise on your base weight so with that number you could save about ten dollars per month and have all of your gear in less than three years and for ten dollars a month i feel like most of us have some item in our home that we could part ways with sell it on facebook marketplace for 10 bucks and put that money in your backpacking gear piggy bank you could also pick up some sort of side hustle like uber lyft door dash something that you can work when it's convenient for you that will put a little bit of extra money in the bank for stuff like backpacking gear you can sell your kidney like i did i'm just kidding i didn't do that but i do know a young lady who sold her eggs like not chicken eggs in her yard but her actual eggs to fund her adventures or you can do something less extreme like be patient and look for used gear online or big sales at certain times of the year there are dedicated groups on facebook where people buy and sell used gear so keep your eyes on that if you don't want to compromise with base weight you know that would be a good way to get something that's much less expensive but still more lightweight but a final word on not having gear and not being able to go backpacking if y'all have never heard of grandma gatewood you should check out her story it's an incredible one i recently listened to an audiobook about her life and she was a 67 year old lady who in the mid-50s decided that she wanted to go for a walk on the appalachian trail like the whole thing she ended up completing it she did it a second time and then even did a section hike of the trail which she did some pretty big sections and then went from missouri to oregon on the oregon trail and what she took with her was a shower curtain a blanket she hiked in regular sneakers teds to be more specific and some other basic gear now i'm not suggesting that people should get out and do things exactly like she did especially in the colder months she was really a trooper uh and put herself in to some potentially dangerous situations but you know in the warmer months maybe that's something that could work you know you go to a section of the at where you hope to stay in the shelters but you can always rig up a shower curtain like a tarp otherwise you know and a blanket would probably be just fine in the summer months so i'm just saying that i feel like a lot of people think that they have to have the fanciest of the fancy gear out there or else they just can't do it and and a lot of people make you feel that way and probably this channel included because i do talk about a lot of this high-tech new age gear but the truth is people like grandma gatewood were getting out and enjoying nature even when cuban fiber wasn't a thing another common reason that people don't go backpacking is they say they're not in good enough shape and you're not going to get that way if you don't get out there and start backpacking i know that some people are not in adequate shape to actually put on a pack and go for a long distance hike i get that but if you're able to walk and you are to the point where you can make daily walks around the block and then make daily walks around the block with your pack on then even if you took all day long to put your pack on go find a trailhead that allows you to camp wherever you would like to walk in whatever you feel like for the day and if that's literally a mile like you spend all day doing a mile and then set up your camp and then come back out i promise you that if you keep doing that you will slowly build up and you'll find yourself doing more and more miles eventually i mean it takes time and the reason that i know this is true is i have met people on through hikes that had no prior backpacking experience i mean for myself i had never backpacked before i started my through hike of the appalachian trail and while i know that i'm relatively physically fit when i started that through hike and when i've started every thru-hike since then or any backpacking trip my max is about seven to eight miles per day max and then i'm slowly able to build up my pct thru hike that i started i started off very slow and somewhere in the middle of all of it i tested to see how much i could do in a 24 hour period and i hit 62 miles now that's the same person who right now if i went backpacking i would do seven to eight miles per day starting out so i went from doing that to being able to do 62 miles in a 24 hour period now i was training day after day and this was probably at least two months in but my point is that even if you go out every weekend and you do that one mile down the trail take a lot of breaks to get there that's fine and then set up camp turn around come back the next day you're going to find yourself becoming more physically fit building up stamina strength and being more healthy overall so backpacking isn't something that you have to be physically fit for out of the gate it's something that you can slowly build up and do more and more as you continue along your journey i met a girl on my through hike of the at who was overweight and her goal was to lose weight while through hiking she started from georgia she finished in maine now of course there are some life changes that have to come after that to maintain that weight loss but my whole point in all of this is to just say that you don't have to be physically fit to start backpacking it's something that you can work on along your journey some people say that they're too old to backpack or man i wish i had done something like that when i was younger but you're always gonna say stuff like that the older that you get so i don't know why people when they hit a certain age they feel like they're done with learning a new skill or activity or starting a new chapter in life and and that's the way that i look at life it's it's a book and it's cool to start new chapters along the way i can't remember where i heard it before i think it was on a podcast but somebody said that they look at every 10 years of their life like a new chapter and in every 10 years they kind of became a different person with completely different interests so why not start backpacking at the age of 70 or 80. if you are fit enough again to walk around the block and to carry some weight on your back then you are fit enough to go down a easy rated trail where you can walk for a mile and set up camp some examples of older backpackers on the extreme side of things is nimble well nomad right now he is currently setting the record for being the oldest person to backpack the appalachian trail also when i threw hiked the at there was a lady that i met named bluebird who was hiking with her daughter hakuna matata and she was 71 years old and i know a lot of people who subscribe to this channel currently backpack right now in their 70s and 80s so age alone is not the limiting factor in fact if any of y'all are watching right now who are in your 70s and 80s and you still backpack please make a comment in the comment section below because i think that would give encouragement to some of the people who think that they can't backpack just because they were born in a certain year in fact i think that this activity in itself backpacking can be something that gives a confidence boost to a lot of people because when you do something like this it's like man if i can get out and carry all the things that i need on my back and come back alive what else can i do next is fear the truth is fear is a bad mamajama and probably encompasses a lot of the reasons that people don't go backpacking whether that's fear of animals fear of the dark i mean a lot of people even adults are afraid of the dark you get out there in a tent by yourself alone for the first time in the dark and it's it's a little intimidating it can be maybe fear of being alone or fear of failure sometimes people are even afraid of just looking stupid asking questions so they never learn the skill of backpacking and the truth is fear is something that has probably debilitated all of us at some point in our lives but fear is also something that we regularly work through in life from the time that we're children i remember being so scared to start a new grade once i finished the other one so like from kindergarten to first grade first to second each time i was so afraid and i was going to the same school with the same kids but for some reason it just seemed so scary because it was change and a lot of times fear can be associated with changing things up in your life if you think about starting a new job or moving to a new state those are things that adults commonly do and there is some intimidation and fear there but we managed to work through it anyway so all of this is just to say that the same is true of backpacking once you start getting into it you'll become much less fearful of it and you will work through those things and this is something that you don't have to jump all the way into at one time if you've got one of those fears you can slowly work through it if you start off with day hiking just getting out there being in nature seeing the animals during the day being alone during the day you know facing those things when it's not such a scary situation because you get to get back to your car and then moving up to car camping where if something bad were to happen you could just jump right in the car and flee away you know leave all the gear there and then move up to a one mile hike in and then a two mile hike in and as you slowly build up to that i mean you can even camp in your backyard maybe that's you know another little baby step but as you build up to those things those fears just kind of start to fade away and like anything else that you've been afraid of in your life that you've worked through you look back on it and say i don't really know why i was ever afraid of that to begin with there's a common saying in the backpacking world that we pack our fears and that's so true if you look at people's backpacking loadout if they've got extra stuff to stay warm well you know that person's afraid of being cold for myself i tend to have more food than i need i'm afraid of being hungry i like to eat you know so a lot of us who are still out there with a lot of experience have fears that we still face and we overcompensate for so it's absolutely normal and i feel like having fear means that you care about yourself and you've got some form of self-preservation but we can't grow as people from the safety of our comfort zones as much as we can when we're willing to step outside of that and take some risks because oftentimes with backpacking the reward is definitely worth it i read a quote online one time that says the fears we don't face become our limits and i don't know about y'all but when i hear something like that it just it gives me a little twitch because i don't like to be limited you know what i mean and if i have limits i want to push those limits it just kind of made me feel like what else am i afraid of i gotta face that too next is analysis paralysis i think this holds people back from many things in life we like the ideas of things and we like to think about them and then we start putting pen to paper to create a plan and you finally see how much is actually involved in this thing a lot of information out there and with backpacking there's so much information about gear and then permits and then the logistics of planning the trip where do i go how do i get to the trailhead how do i get back to my vehicle etc and when you have all of those thoughts in your head you just go into analysis paralysis where you're kind of like never mind i'm just not going to do it because i don't even know where to start so the best advice that i can give for this situation that i have also dealt with myself is actually set a goal for yourself and start to do something even if you're like i don't know where to start i have a lot of videos on this channel that can help you get started so start with a water filter next month you are going to purchase a water filter or whatever water treatment you decide upon there is a lot of information out there but for myself i go with the sawyer squeeze filter so that's your goal next month if you don't have that that's what you're going to do and then the next month you're going to do something else or whatever time period you can work into your budget but that way you actually start doing stop being frozen and just make one step in that direction and if you're thinking well i don't even know what all gear i need there are tons of backpacking gear lists online i've got some in the video description of this video for gear that i've used on my different hikes now given you may not want the same exact gear that i have it may not be in your budget a thru hike can be very different than a weekend backpacking experience but it'll give you a point to start with and you'll know okay i need a bag to carry everything in i need a shelter to sleep in at night and as far as the logistics of everything else you can start with something very simple a place local to you that doesn't have stringent restrictions on where you can camp or if you can camp or you could even go with a place that does have designated camping but start off with something that's close to the car so something for me that stresses me out still to this day is going to a national park and having to declare where i'm going to camp and how many miles i'm going to do because i just like to do how many miles i like to do when i'm tired i stop so i tend to undershoot the miles in situations like that so if i know okay i can do seven to eight miles per day typically then i'm gonna look for probably five to six miles per day if i'm going to an area where i have to declare my miles but again that sounds like a lot so maybe the best thing to do is to start at a place that's local to you or closest to you that doesn't have restrictions on where you can camp that way you can get out there just take it easy and do what you want to do and you don't have to come up with this intense plan and one app that might help you find backpacking trails near you is the all trails app and then it should give information in there where to research the trail a bit more and make sure you don't have to have that permitting etc again i know it can all be like drinking from a fire hose when you're looking up backpacking information but just start with one little thing and do it another reason people give for not going backpacking especially folks in my age group is that they've got family obligations they've got kids at home so it holds them back from going but i've got a little secret for you and that's that kids like being in nature too in fact there are two children that threw hike to the appalachian trail this year with their families one is mommy and me adventures and the other one is live sutton one's a little girl one's a little boy that's their channel names but this is not an uncommon thing there have been whole families in the past that have gone through hiking with their children and there was a little girl several years ago that she didn't actually through hike because she was only 11 months old when her parents started but they took her along and that's the dirtbag baby she's also on youtube and on instagram so all of those channels could give you information about backpacking with children and through hiking with children which is a whole different level but to just go out for a weekend with your children can be so beneficial for them it's great physical exercise it's great for mental health they can actually go out there and be kids like throw rocks and climb trees and it's something that is a team building exercise for the family as a whole because you grow stronger when you go through experiences together like getting rained on and sitting in the tent soaked throughout a thunderstorm or you know whatever just the ups and downs of the backpacking experience they can take ownership of the adventure themselves so the planning of it hey what kind of adventure would you like to go on this weekend do you want to go see a waterfall or do you want to go see pretty mountains they can also do planning with food deciding what foods they want to eat while they're out there so this is something that can make it very exciting for them and then they can learn skills while they're out there like building a fire and i know as a family i'm one of five children so i've seen it firsthand you've really got limited time and you have to figure out what activities are most important to you and and maybe baseball or basketball or you know whatever other activities your children are involved in are more important and those are your priorities and that's absolutely fine but like with anything else if you sit down and look at the calendar and go okay we're going on two backpacking trips a year we're gonna go on one in the spring and on one in the fall and we're just going to do it and that's it and i feel like that's the best way that if you actually want to get out there and go backpacking it's like anything else when you have a busy life and a busy schedule you just put it on the calendar and you say you're going to do it instead of going all right well eventually i'd like to do this you know because the someday stuff always gets put on the back burner and is a false timeline that we use to lie to ourselves and then it never happens all right y'all that is all i have for you today on the excuses i mean reasons that people have for not going backpacking and if some of y'all have been held back by anything i listed today then i hope it's kind of helped you work through that but if you have any more questions on these topics ideas please feel free to leave them in the comments below or also check out the homemade wanderlust backpacking forum group on facebook we've got people there with all different levels of experience from never been backpacking but want to go to have done several through hikes and people are pretty good in there about being nice to the newbies who have questions that they feel like are silly in fact if they're not nice then they get booted but even if you're still too timid to post a question and ask we've got a search bar there where other people have been brave enough to ask those questions and hopefully that will help you get started just remember that backpacking is literally as simple as putting stuff you need for a night in a bag walking a mile into the woods staying for the night and coming back out the next day and from there it can be built upon and all of that starts with just taking a single step anyway thank you all very much for watching if you enjoyed this video please be sure to subscribe before you go and we will see you all next time

Channel: Homemade Wanderlust

Views: 71,044

Keywords: travel, hiking, backpacking, hike, gear, adventure, fun, story, Appalachian, Trail, PCT, CDT, thru-hike, Auburn, Alabama, epic, climbing, canyon, national, nature, mountains, update, park, lake, trail, tents, camping, summer, University, Aubie, River, stream, Mountains, National, Scenic, Dixie, Camino

Id: nT9mh5T8sdw

Length: 22min 18sec (1338 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021