A Bookbag is not a Backpack

I went backpacking once.
Maybe it was my idea. Often times when I get into bad situations it was my idea to begin with.
We were a bunch of young reporters. We lived in Palm Springs at a time when all the people dancing, and romancing, and generally having a high-time of it were in their sixties and beyond.
We were jealous of them. We were bored. We needed an adventure.
In front of us was Mt. San Jacinto. It had a tram that dangled from wires and could swoosh us to mountain adventure territory. Someone (Oh, please God let it not have been me) decided we should all go backpacking.
Among our number were Joe, an outdoorsy Tennessean known for singing "Rocky Top" at the top of his lungs whenever inebriated, and Debora, my size 2 Brazilian friend, who at that time wore her hair big and favored high-heeled pumps. Deborah once had the waiter change our table in a restaurant three times - the first one we sat at made her feel too isolated from the ambiance and general clamor, and then the second one was too loud, she wasn't sure about the third table, but we clamped down on her and made her swallow her out-of-control feng-sui madness so as to not be forever banished from mediocre Mexican food on the main drag.
Even in real life (as opposed to backpacking life) Debora sometimes rubbed Joe wrong. And this was stunning because Debora was a beautiful Brazilian and Joe usually had a truckload of tolerance for a pretty girl.
The days leading up to our departure were a delightful buzz of anticipation. We repeatedly checked among each other to see who had what and what we needed to beg or borrow. Everyone said they had, or had acquired the use of a backpack. They were to bring it to my place on the morning of our departure, so we could divvy up the bottles of wine and boxed organic pasta dishes and baked goods and chocolate bars and fruit that we'd bought for the trip. (I'd read the backpack book that talked about top-ramen noodles and water purification tablets and thought that was just hard-core nutty. Why would someone go to all that work to climb a mountain if they weren't going to have a fine meal and some nice wine at the end? Besides we weren't going for days on end, just a weekend trip, and how much did a bottle of wine weigh any how?)
My place was quite snazzy. Me and another of the backpackers to be, were house-sitting. It was such a cool house, in Bob Hope's spaceship hilltop home neighborhood. (This is what it is to be young: Sometimes too poor to buy groceries, but free to house-sit million-dollar properties as you don't have your own stuff or responsibilities anyway). I still recall how the desert sunshine danced through the many glass doors onto the pots and pans and scoops and bottle openers we planned to bring. Joe had said to keep it strictly to necessities. And this yard sale collection of items displayed on the living room floor was what us meal-planners had deemed the bare essentials.
Debora was late. She was always late. She even habitually out-lated me and I have a knack. But this time she was really-really late, so when Debora's "backpack" turned out to be a small bookbag, even though Joe had checked with her several times to make sure she had equipment, there was nothing to be done. We had to get going to catch the early tram. So Debora got a little envelope of stuff and everyone else got loaded up. Joe had pots and pans sticking out of a tower of stuff that stuck above his head. He was like the human version of The Clampett's truck on their way to Beverly Hills. Deborah insisted she didn't know what Joe was being all huffy about since her bag could carry ALL of her clothes.
I was sick of backpacking before we even got to the trail. I had so much weight that I couldn't look around. I was sort of hunched over trying to see where I was putting my feet. I even had trouble stepping off the tram - I was a wobbling wide-load. We couldn't really talk, because to see and or hear someone you had to slowly turn your whole body trying not to lose the small house of possessions on your back.
Debora was the only one who seemed to be having any fun, swinging her water bottle and scampering along with her cute little book bag.
That night felt like the coldest I have ever spent. Even after helping consume the several bottles of red wine that we had killed ourselves packing, I couldn't sleep. The forest was a noisy place. All sorts of nerve-wracking tromping going on in the bushes by the carnivorous beasts that were no doubt going to devour our drunken, unprepared, city (well, resort village) asses. My head hurt in a short-of-oxygen, high altitude way. Everything ached. Would morning ever come? Would any of us ever speak to each other again after the spats involved in setting up tents and making dinner?Why were two of Bob Hope's neighbors sleeping on the cold ground in the woods? Would Joe at least sing Rocky Top?
The next day was slightly better, but only because we decided to go home which meant going down hill.
There's a photo of us taken at the end of the hike. I got to thinking about all this and pulled the photo out the other day. The smile on my face should go down in the history of forced smiles. I look exhausted and beat and frumpy. Everyone does--except Debora. She is in her trademark poster-girl pose, a big smile on her face. And now that I'm looking at it from more than a decade's perspective, could that smile hold a hint of devilish satisfaction? I wonder now if it was no accident that D. misunderstood the concept of backpack. I haven't spoken to Debora in a while (we've all gone separate ways all over the country) but I may just give her a call tomorrow. After all, it's been more than 10 years, the statute of limitations on backpacking skullduggery must be over. Will she confess? Was it on purpose? Did we all fall victim to a Brazilian bookbag/backpack scam?