Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Say, have you seen...?

I’ve been collecting my small kit for this weekend’s walk to and from Zealand Hut with the NZ crew. I’ve been using the same list for hut-based walks for a long time, and it can easily be made to coincide pretty well with the one prescribed by our leaders. My problem at the moment is that I can’t find one of my favorite pieces: an old Patagonia Zephur jacket. The Z is very light, very compact, and it takes the place of a windbreaker, a medium fleece and, on its better days, a rain-resistant layer. It works very well over a light baselayer, and I rely on it for walks in the Fahrenheit 30s and low 40s, which is what we’ll likely find in the Whites in a few days. I haven’t needed it since last spring, and I obviously stored it somewhere I thought was very clever indeed. I can get along without it, of course—God knows I’ve got enough stuff—but I’d be both functionally and sentimentally sorry to have to.

I lose things all the time. Significant things. Last week, it was my iPod Classic, which eventually turned up being used as a bookmark in an novel I had set out for someone else to read. A month or so ago, it was a tiny Photon LED pocket flashlight with some important keys attached. That one’s still gone.

This would all be fine, and even funny, if I were an absent-minded professor with better things to think about. But it’s actually infuriating, because I am in fact just an inattentive guy with a lazy habit of mind. In other words, I have no excuse.

And no Zephur.

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