more than a lost bag

March 30th at 10:35pm I received unexpected phone call from my friend. He asked what was in my backpack and how much it was worth because his care was just broken into. Someone smashed his back window, took his GPS system, ipod, some personal items and my backpack. Quickly I tried to recall what was in it of importance, thankfully not any wallet or passport. The backpack itself and my ipod were the most expensive things I lost-around £80. I mainly focused on how he was, especially since he was getting married 5 days later-horrible timing!

It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized all that I had lost; it was more than a bag and its contents. The biggest loss was my journal from the last 6 months, something I had hoped to look back on years from now. It was filled with memories and reflections on my time in London-names of new friends, observations of a new community, a log of ideas and desires, notes of new tastes, words and sounds, a testimony of solace within transition. I had a small hand-sized journal of personal writing, collected notes and favourite quotes of friends, authors, heroes-people who have shaped how I see the world and myself. Only some of them did I record elsewhere. I had Belgian chocolate to give away-Cote D’Or. I had one tiny chocolate from Leonidas I had kept from my last day in Belgium from a café, a Belgian lager, an ipod given by a friend from the states, an 8GB USB that held 100s of documents and articles of different subjects, my small print leather-bound Bible. Its worn cover, battered pages and penned in comments gave its own history. Then there were random items I habitually had in there: athletic tape, penknife, sharpie, paper, notes, and water bottle. Most obvious is the backpack itself. I won it in a six mile trail race on Signal Mtn, TN, USA March 2005 by getting 3rd place after wrenching my ankle the first mile on a rock. I stubbornly ran on after stopping a few minutes. It was not a smart thing to do. I hobbled around with an ice pack the rest of the day. It was a nice trail pack that I would never let myself buy but I loved. I used it all the time with my nomadic lifestyle. I took it to 5 countries, backpacking up mountains, canoing across rivers, running/hiking through forests…it didn’t look very good but it held a lot of memories. And now it is gone. I couldn’t even post a photo of it here since I never took one. I know all of this sounds ridiculous but I thought I’d share. I’m not creative enough to make this sound like a eulogy but maybe you’ll see that this is about more than a lost bag.