A life between the covers

Commence official packing mode. This is a stage that would normally be marked by sleeplessness or anxiety dreams about leaving my toothbrush in the Hellespont or some damn thing. Currently, however, I'm taking muscle relaxants for reasons unrelated to travel, and as a result have been sleeping like a dreamless log. Not only that, but fighting off the fog of analgesia leaves me with little oomph to worry too much about the luggaging process. Pack the jeans, don't pack the jeans, whaaaatever.

On an intellectual level, however, it is clear that arriving for a horseback trek sans pants would not be wise, so I've made a list and am carefully checking off items as they go into the monster duffel or my ripstop backpack. (The misfortunes of others have taught me to carry my helmet onto flights rather than putting it and my faith in the checked-bags system, and now I've got a carry-on camping pack large enough to hold the helmet and a change of clothes. Listen well, o wolves: Do explain your intentions to the REI staff before you start cramming one of their boarding helmets into one of their packs to test the sizing, lest they get an understandable wrong impression.) Shirts, shoes, swimsuit, toiletries, Tiger Balm, sunblock, fleece jacket, rain gear, check check check.

The real struggle is choosing solid vacation books. The standard beach reads go far too quickly, the cost of cheesy magazines outweighs their entertainment value, and one vacation with only Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for refuge was enough to cure me of being over-ambitious. I managed well in Argentina, with Foreign Devils on the Silk Road and Tom Shippey's excellent book on Tolkien's linguistic scholarship (my geek flag flies free and proud), occasionally supplemented with a neighbor's memoirs of life in Patagonia in the 1930s and the estancia's enormous compendium of Jeeves and Wooster stories. I'm trying not to dip too far into the current pile of possible contenders—some Oliver Sacks case studies, Drunken Forest, a few books of French history, a couple of Mary Renault novels—or to bemoan the lack of another Patrick O'Brian series. Maybe it's time to crack a gothic novel or two? It is bliss to be so spoiled for choice.