You just can't understand sense of liberation felt by a convert to ultralight backpacking, until you try it yourself. When I, with my eleven-pound pack, walk past overloaded backpackers struggling up steep trails, I remembered being in their place, and I know I am enjoying myself more now.

Misconceptions About Ultralight Backpacking

Lighweight Backpacking Means Sacrifice

Not so. Bring your favorite camera! A lighter load means you can stop to use it more easily. If you leave behind things you don't need, and bring a lighter backpack, tent, and sleeping bag, you can more easily bring that telephoto lense or whatever is really important to you.

Lighweight Backpacking Is Less Safe

The opposite! Bring all safety items; a sleeping bag, first aid kit, shelter, water purification, etc. Just bring lighter versions. A light load makes you less likely to lose your balance and fall, or to otherwise injure yourself. It also means faster response to iffy situations.

A note about safety:

It is lagely a matter of knowledge and experience. A trained survivalist will always be safer backpacking with no shelter than a neophyte with best tent. Learn a little about how to use you equipment properly, or to read sky for comimg storms, and you can go lighter and safer.

Lightweight Backpacking Is Less Comfortable

Is it less comfortable to have 18 pounds on your back than 50? Is it less comfortable to have an ultralight sleeping bag if it keeps you just as warm? I stopped getting blisters (totally) when I started using running shoes instead of hiking boots. Cut weight on your back by twenty-five pounds, and you can add back a heavier coat, if that is what you need to be comfortable.

Lightweight Backpacking Is Expensive

Ultralight sleeping bags are expensive. Almost everything else needed for ultralight backpacking can be found for same price or cheaper than traditional gear. There are many sub-three-pound backpacks under a hundred dollars, for example.

Bottom Line:

Try it. The first time you are fifteen miles into day, and you realize that you can easily run up that hill-just to see what is there, you'll know you made right decision.

When we consider this outline of what a player really has to do, we can readily see that it is not so easy a matter to play, even simple music, correctly.

The writer has among his acquaintances a violinist, a man about thirty years of age, a fine player on his instrument, who had held a position in a first class orchestra for some time, who decided that he would learn piano playing. After a trial of over a year he came to conclusion that he could not learn, because he could not conquer difficulty of reading two different staffs at same time. Had he begun study in early life he, no doubt, would have compassed his desire like many another has done. This illustration emphasizes contention that every musician, be he violinist, vocalist, or what not, should begin his musical studies with a certain amount of piano work. While we may not admire violinist's lack of perseverance, it nevertheless shows that reading from two staffs, at same time, is a difficulty.

It is only through constant and plentiful practice that we finally can conquer all these difficulties. Were it not that through doing these various acts, one at a time, over and over again, until they become fixed habits, we would never succeed in playing at all, but could only stumble through, making a most unpleasant and unintelligible jumble of music.

Even as it is, it takes practically all of our senses ever on alert - sight, touch, hearing, feeling, and we might almost say taste - to play piano acceptably. When we realize all these difficulties it will help teachers and parents to be a little more patient with those who are trying to master difficult but at same time most delightful art of piano playing.