Travel Light (Life Lesson #2)

“How do you pack for a four-month European road trip? There’s not much room in there.”

It was last Sunday, and I was talking to another Porsche enthusiast at German Car Day at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum. I had opened the hood to grab my water bottle and it was clear to everyone around me that the Blue Car doesn’t have a lot of space for luggage.

But it’s enough for me.

I have learned over the years that traveling light means the difference between an enjoyable trip and misery. For those of you who have read my “Traveling with Ralph” essay on my website, you know that many years ago while studying abroad, on my first trip to Europe, I seriously over packed for a two-week travel break in the middle of the semester. At one point, I threw out all my guidebooks when I just couldn’t take the weight any longer. I cried regularly and in one particularly horrible moment in the pouring rain on a deserted train platform in rural France, I had violent fantasies about strewing all the contents of my backpack across the tracks, like a crime scene. I was soaked to the skin and in my distress, the irony of the moment was lost on me: I had packed a lot, but not an umbrella.

That summer traveling with an overloaded bag on my back forever shaped my packing philosophy. Every subsequent trip began with a serious assessment of luggage size and weight and two questions: Do I really need this to have a good trip? Will I be too weighted down to care about the joys I encounter along my journey because all my focus is on getting to the destination and lightening my load?

Years later, as a single mom with a three-year-old and eight-year-old, I traveled to Italy for two weeks with one medium size rolling bag, two backpacks, and a stroller. I packed for that trip by picking up my younger son and looking at the children’s clothes, toys, and equipment strewn on my bed. I shifted Louis to one arm and thought about what else could be carried comfortably. I quickly decided the only critical things I needed were a five-day change of clothes, toiletries and some laundry detergent, a few children’s books, some colored pencils and paper, and a stroller. Traveling with children isn’t the exhausting thing, it’s all the crap we bring along.

Light packing has been ingrained in my travel psyche for a long time now, but I give the Blue Car credit for refreshing and expanding this life lesson well beyond my travel adventures.

Traveling along this messy journey we call life isn’t the exhausting thing. It isn’t the really hard thing. It’s all the crap we bring along. All the baggage and expectations we carry with us.

What happens when we ditch the baggage?

I felt curiously unencumbered on my U.S. road trip and it’s a feeling I have worked hard to hold onto since my return. Yes, it started with my packing decisions. What can fit under the front hood? (and I refuse to call it a “frunk” – the Blue Car is way too classy for that word). What do I need for all the places I will visit, the weather conditions I expect, the events I might attend?

I didn’t have answers for all of these questions because I had an open-ended itinerary and few expectations. So in the end, the things I packed were generic – things that could do double duty for casual or fancy with the addition of my one pair of heels or a nice pair of earrings, low maintenance wash and wear clothes, layers and more layers.

The unexpected result was something that went well beyond vacation packing; I had the feeling I was prepared for anything. On the face of it, it wasn’t what you would expect: be prepared for any place, situation, or weather you might encounter by limiting your baggage. But oh, what a life lesson it is.

There was something curiously freeing about my limited load, by the way I could combine and mix and match and layer to meet any challenge. I didn’t have the burden of worrying over what choices I could have made. I didn’t lose time trying to decide between many options. All the fuss and the extras, all the “noise” disappeared.

Combined with my few expectations (the trip was going to be what it was and I was happy to let it unroll one day at a time), I was left with a startling clarity of what my choices were every day…and the gift of being able to make quick and effortless decisions, to see the joy in each moment and to meet it head on-- the sunrise to be experienced, the winding road to be traveled, the towns to be explored.

You could say the Blue Car’s lack of storage space is a gift. It reminds me of something I believe in deeply—that it doesn’t take much to enjoy life. To look forward and not get bogged down in choices and “stuff.” It’s a reminder that all we really need for the journey is ourselves. And that the less we carry in baggage, the more we can enjoy every stop, detour, surprise, and encounter on this journey called life.