It happens every year.

I take my last backpacking trip in late October or early November. I say to myself, last trip till Spring…

And I mean it, when I say it.

I go on with my life. The busy holidays in December. The short, but cold and dreary days of January. And then it gets to be February. The days begin to get longer. There will be a mild weekend. And I get the itch. And it won’t go away.

Next thing you know, I’m packing my pack; wearing layer over layer of clothing; getting ready to go out backpacking in sub-freezing weather. This invariably leads to huddling in a sleeping bag, shivering, hoping to make it through the night with out having my extremities fall off.

Well, maybe it’s not quite that bad. But it gets cold. In this day and age, most of us just ignore cold. Cold is something we endure between the house and the car. And again from the car to inside of an office building, or grocery store, or whatever. But when you are out in it, with no where to go in to, it is a different thing. A persistent force to be reckoned with.

As I type this, my pack is packed and I have several layers of clothes laid out. I’m going backpacking. Tomorrow will get up to about freezing. On Sunday it will be warmer, in the high 30s, of course it will probably rain. Guessing the weather is aways hard. The mountains, even small mountains (like the ones we’ll be hiking this weekend,) keep their own weather. But I don’t think it’s gonna be pretty.

I don’t care. I can’t wait till late March. I’ve the itch. I need to get out there and be away from everything else. Even the huddling and shivering is therapeutic. It’s not much fun while it happens, but when you get back to work and deal with the everyday annoyances, they don’t seem so bad.

At least that is what I’m telling myself tonight. Monday, when I get back, I may have a different story to tell.