For one of my first backpacking trips 20 years ago, I laid out all the gear in my bedroom—sleeping pad, sleeping bag, camp stove and other essentials. My goal was to keep the load light. At one point, I even considered sawing off my toothbrush handle to save a fraction of an ounce. Then I grabbed something not found on most backpacking checklists: a lustrous silk pillowcase.
The item contributed unneeded weight and served the singular purpose of providing comfort, which is at odds with the ultralight tenet that every piece of gear performs multiple functions. My pillowcase would not survive a pack shakedown imposed by the Light and Fast Committee.
I laughed at myself and considered tossing it to the side. The hand-sewn silk case weighs just 2.5 ounces, about the same weight and size as my camp pillow. I sleep with my luxurious companion most nights when not camping. Still, I couldn’t make sense of the pull to bring it on a trip where I’d be “roughing it”: Why did I want this unnecessary item to make the final pack cut?
My love for my pillowcase is layered. The silk fiber is less porous than common linen or cotton pillow covers and does not draw natural moisture away from my hair and skin. These qualities promote hydrated, healthy locks. Additionally, my mother sewed this pillowcase; my closet has held a stack of similar ones in different colors and sizes, made by her and my grandmother over the years. We’ve all slept on silk pillowcases for as long as I can remember because they keep our hair hydrated and prevent breakage—when hair becomes so brittle it cannot maintain length. This one was smaller, perfect for covering an ultralight pillow. The pillowcase’s maroon color was fading after years of use, but that fact added to its permanence for me.
But the pillowcase is also an artifact that symbolizes family and community. It connects my disparate experiences in nature in a way that creates a personal throughline.
My parents grew up in the 1940s and ‘50s in rural Jamaica. They filled their days climbing fruit trees, playing cricket, trapping lizards, caring for crops and animals and generally making mischief and mayhem with siblings and friends. These experiences cultivated a love of nature that stayed with them after they immigrated to New York and raised a family. “We were always outside,” my mother says when asked about her childhood. “The only thing to do inside was chores.”
It’s innate to my parents to know what surrounds them. As Jamaicans, they grew up more connected to the land than many of us in the United States who are shaped by the mindset of a wealthy colonial country; my parents, their parents and preceding generations relied on land for both survival and recreation and needed to live in harmony with it, rather than seeking only to extract from it. Once they became New Yorkers, my mom and dad took the time to learn about the vegetation endemic to their new home.
On the flip side, when my parents first moved to the U.S., they knew nothing about backpacking or other outdoor activities that have come to define the American “outdoorsy” paradigm. They didn’t understand the drive by so many to spend $1,000 on camping gear just to sleep outside—one of many behaviors that I will admit to adopting when I first started backpacking. I learned to know and appreciate my natural surroundings from my parents, but I also learned the American version of the outdoors from the institutions I grew up within: church, school and summer camp. This version of recreation taught me to optimize my packing to move efficiently and quickly on the trail, because it elevated physical achievements above other objectives. And because my relatively extravagant silk pillowcase didn’t fit this framework, I hesitated to see it as belonging among my other gear essentials, like my sleeping bag or stove.
A child of immigrants travels many miles to form her identity, sometimes drawing comfort from her heritage and other times wrestling with it or eschewing it to conform to new social pressures. There’s a very practical need to survive in new socioeconomic terrain, with the children often having to learn lessons that parents don’t have the knowledge to teach.
As an adult, I gravitated toward hiking and backpacking culture, with a bunch of fancy camping-specific gear strapped to my back and without sentimental items like my silk pillowcase. I sought total immersion outside, and was drawn to the vistas of the New Hampshire White Mountains, just two hours from my new home in Boston. The smell of balsam fir and maple bark and the satisfaction of movement propelled me. At times it was difficult to maintain my sense of self and my roots, sown by my ancestors and cultivated by my parents and relatives, while existing within the largely white hiking community. I experienced outright racism on occasion, but more often, I found that the people around me often wanted me to assimilate into white cultural norms and became uncomfortable when I asserted my differences.
People from marginalized identities, including racialized identities, often suffer when their norms and values are unintentionally disregarded by the dominant culture—leading to a loss of one’s own identity, a loss of pride in one’s background and heritage; it can even manifest in self-hatred.
A Black friend summed it up once in a way that resonated with me. She was new to camping, and I invited her on a camping trip with friends. I watched her eyes and body language as she mulled over the idea of spending the weekend, her brief break from the weekly grind, as one of only two Black people in the group. “You know what,” she told me. “I just don’t want to have to explain what I’m doing with my hair.” She might twist it, pile it on her head and wrap it with a cloth. In one sense, not a huge deal. But her statement was a metaphor. She was tired of explaining herself to white people. She was tired of being evaluated, scrutinized, and fielding questions. It’s not that the attention would be innately harmful. In fact, it would likely be coming from a place of genuine curiosity and goodwill. But that was beside the point. She was just tired and wanted to go unnoticed. To blend in and not have to reflect on what makes her different within the group of campers.
As I packed for my weekend trip all those years ago, I eyed the silk pillowcase among my other gear, debating whether to bring it along. My mom and grandma have sewn these for me, for family members and friends for as long as I can remember. My grandpa was a master tailor. Both he and my grandmother were strong and avid seamsters. And the silk pillowcase reminded me of their legacy.
Finally, I grabbed it and stuffed it deep in the pack, far enough down that I couldn’t easily pull it out again. Since that trip, it’s come on most of my backcountry journeys from Wyoming to Alberta to Peru.
On that backpacking trip, and on so many others, I laid my joyfully wooly, nappy head—my literal roots—down on my silken pillow after a long day of being outside. I thought about the loving skill of my mom and grandma’s hands. That love pulsed through me as I drifted off, melding with the sounds of wildlife and wind in trees. Every night under the stars, the pulse regulates my heartbeat to the rhythm of the breath of the earth below me, lulling me to sleep.