Years ago, when our youngest son took us alpine camping in British Columbia, we were two years from turning age 60. We had long been accustomed to mountain climbing, since from the time our children were in their early teens we had explored mountains in Vermont, New Hampshire, Quebec and New York State. It was a family recreational enterprise that we always looked forward to and which we expanded upon in Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and climbs not far from the city limits of Tokyo, Japan. Mountains and forests always seemed to attract us; far less ocean settings.

Gates of Shangri-La

On that alpine camping trip halfway through our climb near the Stein Valley as we were approaching Long Peak, our destination where we would be introduced for the first time to glaciers just beginning to melt in July, we came across an alpine cabin built for the use of climbers, particularly during the winter months, as a stop-over. We explored the interior before moving on to complete our climb. There was a visitors' book inviting whoever might come by to sign it, and we read a few entries. They were all written by people who had stayed over the night, using the cabin's rough but useful facilities, including a wood stove for warmth.

Our son would himself, from time to time on winter climbing forays stay over in that cabin if he was in that area. He described for us the cabin being completely inundated by snow, so that he and his companions would have to work to shovel out a tunnel to the door and entry to the cabin. After which the wood stove, the basic bunking facilities and the shelter the cabin provided was a treasure in itself.

Most of the more recent entries in that book of comments made mention of a packrat that inhabited the cabin, or which lived nearby, entering the cabin from time to time. All of the comments sang its praise, as a sturdy picker of items from the stores of the unwary.  Packrats of course are known for their inbred propensity to collect objects and store them away in depositories where those prized objects remained the property of the packrats. They would include keys, and other such things that people would not necessarily be pleased to lose. Fortunately, it seems that the frantic loser-of-keys would always find them stored somewhere in the cabin, often inside the wood stove.

I think of ourselves sometimes as packrats. Mostly, when it comes to the weekly day I assign to clean the house. Like packrats we too gather to ourselves all manner of objects that please us for their aesthetic attraction. And, of course, while packrats might not concern themselves with continually dusting the objects in their treasured caches, we humans do. We burden ourselves with the ownership of bits and pieces and then assume the obligation of their care. It is the dusting of this and that which tends to consume so much of my cleaning time. Getting down on my hands and knees to wash the floors of our house is a relief; easy to do, doesn't take much time and thankfully it's the final thing I attack on house-cleaning day.