Positive Backpacking Quotes

Running a marathon with a backpack is tough and may hinder you from winning the race. Don’t let the baggage from your past - heavy with fear, guilt, and anger - slow you down.

I can text in complete sentences. Oh, yeah, it’s a skill.” He smiled, proud of his accomplishments. “And, thanks to my mom being a competitive dancer as a teen, I know how to do the Lindy hop and the jitterbug.” I sat bolt upright, and Akinli rolled his eyes. “I swear, if you tell me you can jitterbug, I’m going to . . . I don’t even know. Set something on fire. No one can dance like that.” I pursed my lips and dusted off my shoulder, a thing I’d seen Elizabeth do when she was bragging. As if he was accepting a challenge, he shrugged off his backpack and stood, holding out a hand for me. I took it and positioned myself in front of him as he shook his head, grinning. “All right, we’ll take this slow. Five, six, seven, eight.” In unison, we rock stepped and triple stepped, falling into the rhythm in our head. After a minute, he got brave and swung me around, lining me up for those peppy kicks I loved so much. People walked by, pointing and laughing, but it was one of those moments when I knew we weren’t being mocked; we were being envied. We stepped on each other’s toes more than once, and after he accidentally knocked his head into my shoulder, he threw his hands up. “Unbelievable,” he said, almost as if he was complaining. “I can’t wait to tell my mom this. She’s gonna think I’m lying. All those years dancing in the kitchen thinking I was special, and then I run across a master.

Now, the last one was that the demon king can’t stand either in heaven or on the earth. Urga set the demon on his lap, which means I guess I’ll have to…sit on your back.” Awkward. Even though Ren was a big tiger and it would be like riding a small pony, I was still conscious that he was a man, and I didn’t feel right about turning him into a pack animal. I took off my backpack and set it down wondering what I could do to make this a bit less embarrassing. Mustering the courage to sit on his back, I’d just decided that it wouldn’t be too bad if I sat sidesaddle, when my feet flew out from under me. Ren had changed into a man and swept me up into his arms. I wiggled for a minute, protesting, but he just gave me a look-the don’t-even-bother-coming-up-with-an-argument look. I shut my mouth. He leaned over to pick up the backpack, let it dangle from his fingers, and then said, “What’s next?” “I don’t know. That’s all that Mr. Kadam told me.” He shifted me in his arms, walked over to stand in the doorway again, then peered up at the statue. He murmured, “I don’t see any changes.” He held me securely while looking at the statue and, I have to admit, I totally stopped caring about what we were doing. The scratches on my arm that had been throbbing a moment ago didn’t bother me at all. I let myself enjoy the feeling of being cuddled up close to his muscular chest. What girl didn’t want to be swept up in the arms of a drop-dead gorgeous man? I allowed my gaze to drift up to his beautiful face. The thought occurred to me that if I were to carve a stone god, I’d pick Ren as my subject. This Urga half-lion and half-man guy had nothing on Ren. Eventually, he realized I was watching him, and said, “Hello? Kells? Breaking a curse here, remember?” I just smiled back stupidly. He quirked an eyebrow at me. “What were you thinking about just now?” “Nothing important.” He grinned. “May I remind you that you are in prime tickling position, and there’s no escape. Tell me.” Gads. His smile was brilliant, even in the fog. I laughed nervously. “If you tickle me, I’ll protest and struggle violently, which will cause you to drop me and ruin everything that we are trying to accomplish.” He grunted, leaned close to my ear, and then whispered, “That sounds like an interesting challenge, rajkumari. Perhaps we shall experiment with it later. And just for the record, Kelsey, I wouldn’t drop you.” The way he said my name made goose bumps rise all over my arms. When I looked down to quickly rub them, I noticed the flashlight had been turned off. I switched it on, but the statue remained the same. Giving up, I suggested, “Nothing’s happening. Maybe we need to wait till dawn.” He laughed throatily while nuzzling my ear and declared softly, “I’d say that something is happening, but not the something that will open the doorway.” He trailed soft, slow kisses from my ear down my neck. I sighed faintly and arched my neck to give him better access. With a last kiss, he groaned and reluctantly raised his head. Disappointed that he’d stopped, I asked, “What does rajkumari mean?” He laughed quietly, carefully set me down, and said, “It means princess.

He couldn’t have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life. This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn’t exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges. The owner took her time unpacking the books she’d bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She’d never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.' The owner of the secondhand bookstore lowered the volume of the radio. She flipped to the back flap of the book to find out more about the author, but all it said was that Zvi Litvinoff had been born in Poland and moved to Chile in 1941, where he still lived today. There was no photograph. That day, in between helping customers, she finished the book. Before locking up the shop that evening, she placed it in the window, a little wistful about having to part with it. The next morning, the first rays of the rising sun fell across the cover of The History of Love. The first of many flies alighted on its jacket. Its mildewed pages began to dry out in the heat as the blue-gray Persian cat who lorded over the shop brushed past it to lay claim to a pool of sunlight. A few hours later, the first of many passersby gave it a cursory glance as they went by the window. The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it. And that’s what happened. One afternoon a tall young man saw the book in the window. He came into the shop, picked it up, read a few pages, and brought it to the register. When he spoke to the owner, she couldn’t place his accent. She asked where he was from, curious about the person who was taking the book away. Israel, he told her, explaining that he’d recently finished his time in the army and was traveling around South America for a few months. The owner was about to put the book in a bag, but the young man said he didn’t need one, and slipped it into his backpack. The door chimes were still tinkling as she watched him disappear, his sandals slapping against the hot, bright street. That night, shirtless in his rented room, under a fan lazily pushing around the hot air, the young man opened the book and, in a flourish he had been fine-tuning for years, signed his name: David Singer. Filled with restlessness and longing, he began to read.

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The other component was to build cadres through political education. Republicans sought out wealthy donors to set up foundations and think tanks as safe spaces outside the university for elaborating the Republican catechism, a document that grew from a cocktail napkin to a vast library of popular books and academic policy studies. They set up summer camps where college students could read Aristotle and Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich von Hayek, and learn to connect them. They set up reading groups for professors, who got paid to attend. They funded graduate students and apprenticed them under movement-approved professors. They also funded campus newspapers and national organizations like the Federalist Society, which introduces students to the "originalist" interpretation of constitutional law and acts as an an employment agency for young lawyers looking for clerkships and teaching positions. This one organization has revolutionized the way law is taught and interpreted in this country, and therefore how we are governed. It is the fruit of the conservatives' pedagogical strategy. The movement's fathers and godfathers, some of whom had once been Trotskyites, understood intuitively that to make lasting change the movement would have to build and sustain cadres, and send them out with full backpacks on the long march through the institutions. Marching with the aim of dismantling government by first seizing control of it, thus achieving anti-political ends by political means.

Researchers at the University of Virginia once set out to explore a certain theory about friendship. They strapped heavy backpacks onto a group of volunteers and one by one positioned each person in front of a big hill, as if they were going to climb it. Each volunteer was asked to estimate how steep it was. Half of them stood alone in front of the hill; the other half stood next to someone they’d identified as a friend. And consistently, those who were with a friend viewed the hill as less steep, the climb ahead less difficult. When people who’d been friends a long time stood in front of the hill, the results became even more pronounced: The slope only seemed to flatten out more. This is the power of having others alongside you. It’s a reason to tend to your friends.

He guarded him . . . like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions. The Lord alone led him; no foreign god was with him. (Deuteronomy 32:10–12) Our almighty God is like a parent who delights in leading the tender children in His care to the very edge of a precipice and then shoving them off the cliff into nothing but air. He does this so they may learn that they already possess an as-yet-unrealized power of flight that can forever add to the pleasure and comfort of their lives. Yet if, in their attempt to fly, they are exposed to some extraordinary peril, He is prepared to swoop beneath them and carry them skyward on His mighty wings. When God brings any of His children into a position of unparalleled difficulty, they may always count on Him to deliver them. from The Song of Victory When God places a burden upon you, He places His arms underneath you. There once was a little plant that was small and whose growth was stunted, for it lived under the shade of a giant oak tree. The little plant valued the shade that covered it and highly regarded the quiet rest that its noble friend provided. Yet there was a greater blessing prepared for this little plant. One day a woodsman entered the forest with a sharp ax and felled the giant oak. The little plant began to weep, crying out, “My shelter has been taken away. Now every fierce wind will blow on me, and every storm will seek to uproot me!” The guardian angel of the little plant responded, “No! Now the sun will shine and showers will fall on you more abundantly than ever before. Now your stunted form will spring up into loveliness, and your flowers, which could never have grown to full perfection in the shade, will laugh in the sunshine. And people in amazement will say, ‘Look how that plant has grown! How gloriously beautiful it has become by removing that which was its shade and its delight!’ ” Dear believer, do you understand that God may take away your comforts and privileges in order to make you a stronger Christian? Do you see why the Lord always trains His soldiers not by allowing them to lie on beds of ease but by calling them to difficult marches and service? He makes them wade through streams, swim across rivers, climb steep mountains, and walk many long marches carrying heavy backpacks of sorrow. This is how He develops soldiers—not by dressing them up in fine uniforms to strut at the gates of the barracks or to appear as handsome gentlemen to those who are strolling through the park. No, God knows that soldiers can only be made in battle and are not developed in times of peace. We may be able to grow the raw materials of which soldiers are made, but turning them into true warriors requires the education brought about by the smell of gunpowder and by fighting in the midst of flying bullets and exploding bombs, not by living through pleasant and peaceful times. So, dear Christian, could this account for your situation? Is the Lord uncovering your gifts and causing them to grow? Is He developing in you the qualities of a soldier by shoving you into the heat of the battle? Should you not then use every gift and weapon He has given you to become a conqueror? Charles H. Spurgeon

I want them to come get us right now.” The little girl drew her mouth down in a pout. “I’m all dirty and hungry. I’m cold too.” “Poor little princess,” her brother mocked. “I’ve got something you can eat.” Kobie’s smile brightened before he dashed across the small clearing to retrieve his backpack. “Just how long are we going to be stuck here?” Wade demanded. He took a step toward the others who were gathered around the fire, then coughed as a wave of thick smoke hit him. “I have important business in Chicago.” “Oh yeah, real important,” Bryan sneered. “You’re just afraid your girlfriend might find someone else before you get back.” “Bryan!” Chelsea spoke in a warning voice. Wade took a step toward his son, his fists clenched and fury showing on his face. Web shifted his weight, prepared to intercede should Wade attempt to strike his son. “Look! M&Ms!” Kobie stepped between the combatants, waving a large package of the candy-coated chocolate pieces over his head, oblivious to the confrontation between Bryan and Wade. He hurried to Rachel’s side. “My grandma gave them to me, but you can have some.” “Perhaps you can share with everyone,” Shalise said. “I think we’re all hungry.” “And thirsty,” Emily added. “Don’t you think it’s ironic that we spent all that time and effort escaping water, and now we don’t have any to drink?” “Actually we do.” It was Cassie’s turn to retrieve her backpack. From its depths she produced a plastic bottle of water and three granola bars, which she quartered and passed around. The tiny squares of breakfast bars and a handful of candy were soon washed down with a squirt of water from the plastic bottle. Web listened for more planes as he munched on his share of the meager rations. Occasionally he caught the drone of the small plane that had flown over earlier, but it seemed to be concentrating its attention on the other side of the main canyon. He wished he could communicate with the sheriff or the pilot of that plane, but his radio and supplies had been left behind in his cruiser. He wouldn’t even have been able to light a fire last night if Bryan hadn’t slipped him a cigarette lighter when his mother wasn’t looking. Gage walked up beside him.“How bad is the slide?” the younger man asked. Web knew he was referring to the slide blocking the trail out of the canyon. “There’s no way we can cross it.” “And there’s no way a chopper can set down here.” Gage answered back, gesturing at the small clearing where they sat dwarfed by towering pines. “By now the water will have receded a great deal, but it will be days before we’ll be able to walk out.” Gage hadn’t heard Cassie approach, but he nodded his head at her words, acknowledging that her judgment was correct. “That means we’ve got to find a spot where the rescuers can reach us.” Gage stared thoughtfully at the steep mountain towering above them. “There is a place . . .” Gage paused and Web turned to him, anxious to hear what he might suggest that could possibly lead them out of this nightmare. CHAPTER 5 Shalise sat beside Chelsea Timmerman on one of the logs near the fire pit. They changed position each time a fickle breeze shifted the plume

What I would give to talk to Grandpa right now. In panicked moments on my first backpacking trip in Latin America, I’d called him from a pay phone just to hear his calming, rational voice for ten minutes before my credit ran out. “Your sympathetic nervous system is just manipulating you,” he’d tell me matter-of-factly. “A classic biological fight-or-flight response. All you need to do is take back control. Close your eyes to eliminate external stimulation. Then take a long, deep breath and release it slowly.” Though he’d given the instructions years ago, I stood outside the gas station and did what I’d been told. Eyes closed. Breathe in. Breathe out. “Now, instead of focusing on all the things that have gone wrong,” Grandpa would then say, “think about the next right step forward you could take to move things in a positive direction.

Let’s go, I’ll walk you down and get you cleaned up.” “You will?” He slanted me a look before picking up his trekking poles and backpack, slipping the straps on, then maneuvering the two sticks through crisscrossing cords on his back, leaving his arms free. Finally aiming his body back up the trail toward me, he held out his hand. I hesitated but set my forearm into his open palm, and I watched as some emotion I didn’t initially recognize slid over his face. “I meant your backpack, angel. I’ll take it for you. The trail’s not wide enough for both of us to go down at the same time,” he said, his voice sounding oddly hoarse. Maybe if I hadn’t been in so much pain, and been so damn cranky, I would’ve been embarrassed. But I wasn’t, so I nodded, shrugged, and gingerly tried to take my backpack off. Luckily, I just started to shimmy a strap off when I felt the weight leave my shoulders as he tugged it away. “Are you sure?” “Positive” was all he replied with. “Come on. We’ve got half an hour to get back to the trailhead.” My whole body slumped. “Half an hour?” I’d thought I had… ten minutes max. My landlord pressed his lips together and nodded. Was he trying not to laugh? I wasn’t sure because he turned around and started heading down the path ahead of me. But I was pretty sure I saw his shoulders shaking a little. “Let me know when you want water” was one of the only two things he said on the way down. The other being, “Are you humming what I think you’re humming?” And me replying with “Yes.” “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” I had no shame. I tripped twice, and he turned around both times, but I gave him a tight smile and acted like nothing had happened. Like he predicted, thirty minutes later, when I was basically wheezing and he was acting like this was a stroll down a paved path, I spotted the parking lot and almost cried. We’d made it. I’d made it. And my hands hurt even worse from how dry the cuts were, and my elbows felt the same way, and I was sure my knees would too, but their joints were so bad, they didn’t have room to wonder about any other pain. But just as I started heading toward my car, Rhodes slipped his fingers around my biceps and steered me toward his work truck. He didn’t say another word as he unlocked it and dropped the tailgate, shooting me a look over his shoulder as he patted it briefly before heading around to the passenger door. I went straight for the tailgate and eyed it, trying to figure out how to sit on it without using my hands to boost myself up. That was how he found me: staring at it and trying to decide if I went face-first and shimmied up on my stomach, I could wiggle around and sit up on my butt eventually. “I’m trying to figure out how to—okay.” He scooped me up, one arm under the backs of my knees, the other around my lower back, and planted me on the truck. In a sitting position. Like it was no big deal. I smiled at him. “Thanks.” I would’ve figured it out, but it was the thought that counted.

Erin clapped her hands. “Great work, everyone! Time to shut it down and go shopping!” “Woo-hoo!” Lucy cheered. When I didn’t, she raised one of my arms for me. “Woo-hoo!” “Um . . . can Nicole come with us?” I asked. Lucy promptly dropped my arm. “Boo-hoo.” Erin made a pained expression. “Does she have to?” I frowned. “She doesn’t have to, but it would be nice for her to make more friends.” “So let her decide that,” said Sophia from where she was packing her bag. “She hasn’t tried to get to know any of us. Why should we make the extra effort?” “That’s not tr—nice,” I said. She was kind of right. Nicole didn’t seem to spend time with anyone but me. “Fine,” I said, texting Nicole back. As I typed, I said the message aloud. “Sorry, can’t. Have plans.” “Thanks,” said Lucy. “Maybe we can all hang out some other time, but I just want it to be our group today. And Nicole’s . . . you know.” She didn’t have to say it, but I could fill in the blanks. Nicole’s an outsider. “Sure,” I said. Lucy got to her feet. “For now, we have places to be and things to buy!” “Shoppinggg!” Erin sang, hoisting her backpack onto her shoulder. “Let’s go!” She pulled me to a standing position. “Woo-hoo!” Lucy cheered again. “Have fun!” Leila told us. “How can we not?” I said, forcing a lighthearted laugh. Since I was excited about shopping and I’d argued with my friends enough for one day, I decided to let it go.

I grabbed the flashlight and the backpack before closing the seat and resuming my sitting position. Switching on the light, I unzipped the main compartment and began to rummage in search of the key. Within it was another knife, a box of matches, a loop of rope, an unlabeled white tube of pills that looked suspiciously like Benuxupane, a compass, a camera… and then two photographs. I removed the compass and placed it in a small holder that was fixed beneath the gears. Then I picked up the photographs and shone my light down on them. My breath hitched. One of them displayed an all-too-familiar sight: the table in the queen's library, etched with the words "FOR THE BOYS OF MATRUS". The second displayed a different message.

But it wasn’t our differences that I wanted to focus on. So I parked in one of the visitors’ spots and pulled out the GPS I had taken to carrying in my backpack when I went running. I switched it on so I could pinpoint my coordinates, the longitude and latitude that placed me here and nowhere else in the world. The problem was, inside the car, the device couldn’t locate the satellites, so I unrolled the window, stuck my hand out and held the device to the sun. As soon as it calibrated, I grabbed my notebook from my backpack, ripped out a random page, and wrote my position on the paper. As I folded the sheet in half, I caught sight of my meager notes from the lecture about Fate Maps all those months ago. Genetics might be our first map, imprinted within us from the moment the right sperm meets the right egg. But who knew that all those DNA particles are merely reference points in our own adventures, not dictating our fate but guiding our future? Take Jacob’s cleft lip. If his upper lip had been fused together the way it was supposed to be inside his mother’s belly, he’d probably be living in a village in China right now. Then there was me with my port-wine stain. I lifted my eyes to the rearview mirror, wondering what I would have been like had I never been born with it. My fingers traced the birthmark landlocked on my face, its boundary lines sharing the same shape as Bhutan, the country neighboring Tibetans call the Land of the Dragon. I liked that; the dragons Dad had always cautioned me about had lived on my face all this time. Here be dragons, indeed. I leaned back in my seat now, closing my eyes, relishing the feel of the sun warming my face. No, I wouldn’t trade a single experience — not my dad or my birthmark — to be anyone but me, right here, right now. At last, at 3:10, I open my door. I don’t know how I’ll find Jacob, only that I will. A familiar loping stride ambles out of the library. Not a Goth guy, not a prepster, just Jacob decked in a shirt as unabashedly orange as anything in Elisa’s Beijing boutique. This he wore buttoned to the neck and untucked over jeans, sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned arms. For the first time, I see his aggressively modern glasses, deathly black and rectangular. His hair is the one constant: it’s spiked as usual. What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I’ve ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.