Let go, already!

Stay in control - like my life depends on it! Traveling by canoe calls me out on this every time. When you’re on a river, you really don’t know what is around the next bend. 

"Trust the world to carry me and show me where to flow along" (from "For Nalini") can be so hard to do.

We have three big, waterproof Ortlieb sacks; five plastic barrels; a Coleman cooler; three water bags.  All our essentialities, methodically packed up according to purpose and plan: the very idea that any of these innumerable objects could end up in the „wrong“ place fills me with a nervous dread. Take things out, put them back in the proper order! Don’t let the cooking oil anywhere near the barrel of (still) dry, clean clothes! Put shoes in their proper plastic bags before putting them in the barrel labelled „shoes“! I want to be able to locate the bug spray on the first try (In the baggie with the sunscreen, lavender oil, chapstick and disinfectant spray - in the small, white barrel, towards the top). 

Yet after the first time we set up and break camp, things have inevitably mixed themselves up a little. 

My theory is that if I pack well, logically, finding things won’t cost as much mental effort. But that discounts all the effort I put into maintaining order and devising ways to improve the system. How much energy and joy do I lose over worrying about whether my husband has put things back where they „belong“? Would it really be so bad to relax my hold on things and let entropy do its thing? 

Is it always life-threatening to lose your grip? 

A line from a Susan Werner song keeps running through my head: "So heavy when you're holding up the ceiling - ain't it better just to let things fall?"

On this trip I was gradually able to let go a little. Routines, ideas, opinions of how things should be - all useful, perhaps, but only when tempered with a bit of flexibility and openness to change. 

A river is a good teacher.

See the travel video! In English, auf Deutsch