Field Note 006 — The Best Gear Is the Gear You Stop Thinking About
I remember the day I was sitting in my red Kijaro chair and felt the rip.
No, I didn't get up.
I knew what was happening. That chair had been with me for more than a decade, and if this was how it was going out, I was going to ride out the end with my friend.
Over the next fifteen minutes the tear slowly grew. A little farther, then a little farther. Eventually there wasn't enough chair left to hold me anymore, my ass was on the ground, and an era had ended.
I have another Kijaro that's just as old, along with two more I've purchased since. They're chairs. Folding camp chairs. There shouldn't be anything particularly sentimental about them.
But it wasn't until I was sitting on the ground next to the remains of that red chair that I realized how much I loved the damn thing.
And I think that's true of some of the best gear I've ever owned.
You stop thinking about it.
When It's Good, It Stays
There's a no-name "tactical" backpack that has been with me forever. There's a torn-up Condor shell that I have an actual replacement for. The replacement is perfectly good.
I don't use it.
There's my Camillus machete, a dumb little pour-over coffee brewer that somebody randomly gifted me, and a wash basin I think I paid about three dollars for on eBay. Some of this stuff cost real money. Some of it didn't. Some was carefully selected, while some practically fell into my possession.
But when it's good, it stays.
Not necessarily because it's the lightest, toughest, newest, or because some guy on YouTube tortured one for twenty minutes and declared it indestructible. It stays because somewhere along the way it stopped being something I had to think about.
It just became part of camp.
I have a TOPS/Buck folder that's an amazing knife. It's incredibly well made, does exactly what it's supposed to do, and it's always attached to my backpack when I head out.
I don't think I've ever actually used it.
Then there's my Morakniv Companion. It cost less than one-fifth as much. I've used it, abused it, replaced it, and bought more of them. My significant other carries one. I carry one. There are multiple Companions floating around because they've become one of those things I don't really think about anymore.
That doesn't make the TOPS/Buck a bad knife. Far from it.
It just illustrates something I've learned after years of doing this:
What makes a piece of gear great and what makes a piece of gear great for you are not necessarily the same thing.
Specs can't really tell you that. Price definitely can't. Sometimes you don't even know it yourself until enough years have passed.
The Stuff That Becomes Camp
For years I had this little no-name round Bluetooth speaker.
It was red. It took an SD card, so I loaded one with something like a thousand songs and left it in there. That playlist barely changed for maybe half a decade.
That stupid little speaker came camping over and over and over again. Everybody knew it. Everybody listened to it.
Eventually I retired it and bought a nice JBL, along with a nice Milwaukee. Depending on the trip, one of those came along instead.
Objectively, they're better speakers.
And people kept asking me about Old Red.
Where's the red one?
Apparently that cheap little speaker had become part of camp without any of us noticing. Nobody cared about its specifications. Nobody knew what it cost. Hell, I couldn't tell you who made it.
But everybody noticed when it wasn't there anymore.
Funny thing is, I never retired the SD card. That same card, with that same ridiculous collection of music on it, lives in the 4Runner now.
Old Red is gone.
The soundtrack apparently earned its place too.
I have two Coleman folding aluminum tables that have done much the same thing. I've been using them for over a decade, and both fit into one bag. That's basically the entire sales pitch.
Plenty of people have brought other tables camping with me. More expensive tables. Newer tables. Fancier tables. I've brought other tables myself.
Nothing has beaten those two dumb old Coleman tables.
They weren't the cheapest when I bought them, nor were they the most expensive. They're not some particularly interesting piece of equipment I'd expect anybody to get excited about. They just work. They've worked for more than ten years, and I genuinely hate thinking about the day when one of them finally gives up.
The same goes for an old folding Ozark Trail grill I've dragged around for more than a decade. It's warped. It's rusted. I've actually replaced it.
And somehow the old bastard still comes along whenever the trip allows for it.
At some point, replacing something and replacing its place in your system become two different things.
Older Than Me
Dig around in my camping box and you'll eventually find two thick blue plastic plates from the 1980s.
I know that because I grew up camping with them. My parents eventually gave me two.
They're not heavy. They're not particularly light. They're just thick, durable plastic plates from an era when apparently a plastic plate was expected to survive a small war.
Every once in a while somebody notices them.
"Yeah. These are older than me."
And then dinner gets put on them.
That's it.
What's funny is that elsewhere in my gear I have modern ultralight snap-fold stuff that I also think is fantastic. Those two things don't conflict.
The old plastic plate doesn't win because it's old, and the ultralight gear doesn't win because it's new. They have different purposes. They solve different problems.
They've both earned their place.
You May Have Already Solved the Problem
I think there's a tendency with outdoor gear to constantly evaluate what we own. Is there a lighter one? A newer one? Something made out of a better material? Something that packs three inches smaller? Something with another feature? Something more expensive that must therefore be better?
Sometimes those questions matter.
Gear improves. Needs change. Trips change. I've replaced plenty of things over the years, and I'll replace plenty more.
But there's also something to be said for recognizing when you've already solved the problem.
Because eventually, the good stuff disappears.
Not literally. It disappears from your attention.
The backpack is packed because it's always packed. The knife is where the knife always is. The tables are in their bag. The grill comes out. The old plates get dinner. The wash basin gets filled. The coffee gets made with that stupid little pour-over.
You aren't standing in the garage the night before a trip wondering whether any of it is going to work.
You already know.
That's valuable.
A lot of my camping gear just lives packed, and that's intentional. I've spent years getting to the point where going camping doesn't require rebuilding camp from scratch every time I decide to leave.
Grab the system and go.
That's part of why boring, dependable pieces of gear become so important. They remove decisions, reduce friction, and give me one less thing to think about.
That doesn't mean everything I own is simple. Some of my gear absolutely fills some bizarrely specific niche.
Some doesn't.
That's not really the point.
I don't carry something because it's fancy. I don't carry it because it's cheap or because it's expensive. I don't carry it because it's old, because it's new, or because somebody else decided it's the best.
I carry it because at some point it proved that it belonged there.
Once something really earns its place, I tend to stop thinking about it altogether.
Maybe that's the highest compliment I can give a piece of gear.
It fits my niche.
Which is probably insane.
Buy less. Go more.
— Dane Justus
Founder, Weekend Route