The first pack I can remember owning was a green JanSport. When I was about 21 I replaced it with a blue 115 liter Lowe Alpine. I used the Lowe for a while, eventually replacing it with a Dana Designs Astralplane (also in the 115 liter range, and weighing a now unfathomable 7.5lbs), and then with a Black Diamond Infinity 60, and then with a Boreas Buttermilks 55. In retrospect, the BD and the Boreas weren’t bad packs but the swiveling hip belt on the BD squeaked and the Boreas hip belt nearly tore off one time when I carelessly stepped on it while hoisting the load onto my back. Oops.
Driving Through the Summer Storm
Near the Drum Mountains in central-western Utah the virga approached us, and we sped towards it in my 1993 Nissan truck. Dark blue and humanlike it swept the plane. It touched down somewhere, its feet the fleeting monsoon, welcomed by reaching greasewood and shivering russian thistle. Lightning cut across the dark form and we entered the deluge. Flash and boom inside of it, and flash and boom again. The rain transitioned from a heavy downpour to individual drops and the drops lessened and we looked back and the great dark form was now behind us; we had passed through its body. Lightning hit the sagebrush and greasewood plane where we had just been.