He walked thousands of miles over mountain ranges and forded rivers; slept in trees and deserts and forests; and carried with him only a washcloth, a bar of soap, a loaf of bread, a compass, and, oddly, a stack of heavy books he felt were as vital as the bread—which I think is ridiculous—so I see his books and raise him one library card. But as Muir loved Thoreau, I love Muir, so every move to each new house, I pack The Wilderness World in with the socks.

Socks are important. Warm, dry feet are key to movement, and therefore to freedom. Socks are packed pressed flat together and rolled, tight, like well-made sushi. Two pairs of shoes (indoor and outdoor), one raincoat, one lightweight warm coat, seven sausage-rolled shirts, three pairs of pants, one pair of shorts, two sets of pajamas, three bras, seven rolled-up pairs of underwear. Basically, your suitcase should look like a grocery store deli platter of cotton-pinwheel party sandwiches, exactly a week’s worth of outfits—laundry on Sunday. No new item of clothing is allowed in unless an old one is removed; anything reversible is twice as welcome in any well-packed case. Seriously, I could give a TED Talk on this shit and, oh, let us not forget the Holy Grail of packing: the toiletry kit. Flat, water-resistant nylon and plastic, four refillable bottles for soap and shampoo, pocket for a nail clipper, razor, tampons, hair ties, toothbrush, toothpaste, and your one floss.

I can pack and be out of any house in four minutes flat.

Except this day: eight minutes, twenty-three seconds.

Dying in sweltering summer heat in a bedroom crammed with bunk beds the day after my seventeenth birthday, I kept Joellen waiting while I debated for the hundredth and maybe last time the merits of abandoning a secret I carry that renders my “John Muir Packing” TED Talk a bunch of hypocritical garbage.

Hidden among the sushi socks and sausage shirts is a stash of compulsion in a blue-and-white-striped pillowcase tied in a knot. A sieve of burden and humiliation that in each house catches new things I collect and carry with me year after year, and I don’t know why.

Muir would be so disappointed. Or maybe he would understand.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.

“Little blackbird nest,” Joellen said the one time she saw it, while helping me pack in fifth grade. I rushed to hide it. “Not everything has to be useful to be loved,” she said.

In my experience, that’s debatable.