Life As A Backpack

Who would have thought that as you got thrown over the shoulder that day that you would end up where you did? It’s simply amazing sometimes to see where we get taken on a given day. Sometimes to just hang out at home while the humans are chilling or maybe go to the store but sometimes, we go on adventures, and I mean big adventures. Loaded with all those things that are needed we trip out to places like Big Bend National Park. Spend the day catching rays as your owner carries you up to the South Rim. To watch the sunset from that island in the sky is remarkable. A quick hike to the East Rim affords a remarkable sunrise vista. The beauty of the desert is truly magnificent. With all its faults, the desert is remarkable. Blistering heat followed by cold nights, adaptations to continual fluctuations requires perpetual modifications. Maybe that’s why the owner is continually swapping me out.

Hiking the high desert one encounters some interesting plants, the Lechuguilla, for instance, is a very short-growing plant about to the owner’s ankles https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Agave_lechuguilla.jpg that has a tendency I’ve noticed of liking to point uphill. Ready to pierce the unprotected flesh of the unobservant hiker. Their little black needle tips with their poison are ready to irritate the heck out of whoever gets stuck by them. It is a useful plant in the southwest as it has been used by native Americans to manufacture various textiles including shoes and rope for over a thousand years. The plant flowers once and then die. Cooked with a little butter and eggs these flowers are delicious.

The stalks that the flowers grow on can get up to 12 feet tall and have been a source of many a campfire (Not in the National Park or Big Bend Ranch State Park) once they dry out. The fibers that make up the leaves of this plant are very strong. I once saw I believe it was in the Museum of the Big Bend, a shoe or sandal more appropriately, that had been found in a cave in the Big Bend, that was believed to have been over 1200 years old. Amazing! And I bet if they made shoes out of the stuff then I bet they made something like a backpack out of it too. We don’t sell backpacks or pouches made from the Lechuguilla plant, but we do sell them made from leather, hemp, cotton, polyester, vegan leather, and nylon. Next time you’re traveling and making history, start with willtravelbags.com. Life Travels. Life Needs Bags.