It might not be an exaggeration to say that I am addicted to backpacking.
I haven’t spent a night outside since late August, and I am starting to feel utterly deprived of the ineffable experience of being out in the woods. I haven’t even been in the woods or gone on a hike. I mean, I’ve done some running on the Greenbelt, but that’s not the kind of nature I need to recharge myself. And, actually, I usually start getting the jitters in December, but this off season, I’ve managed to make it all the way to February without jonesing for the outdoors.
I personally think it’s due to the fact that I’ve been using my old sleeping bag as a blanket for sleeping at night. It has never been washed, so it retains a good amount of outdoorsy smells, and probably fooled my body into thinking I was maybe getting outside overnight.
But I’m not.
And if I had a real backyard, I would totally be planning an outside overnighter some weekend soon. But while there is some lawn at my apartment complex, there isn’t enough flat space to comfortably pitch a tent. And for some reason, I’d feel a bit unsafe sleeping out in plain sight of the street with a flimsy plastic fence as the only barrier between me and randos wandering the night (not that it’s warm enough for many people to be wandering around at night). And that’s kind of funny, because every time I tell people about the fact that I do solo hikes, someone seems to bring up how scary it must be to be all alone in the wilderness, but I don’t feel scared out there anymore.
So I’m going to hope that the weather holds cold enough to let me go on a hike this weekend. January was actually pretty warm here, and wet, so the foothills trails were largely unusable due to mud. Okay, and I didn’t make much of an effort to find one that was usable.
All I know is I’ve got to do something to get my backpacking fix before I drive my husband completely over the edge!