• can alter what is considered important
• value of a wilderness day may be learned

That anything can change you life is a pretty strong statement, and deserves to be challenged.

I think it is true though, that backpacking can change your view of what you consider important, and of the value of making the most of whatever free time you have.

Let me put in this way: I, like most people, have to work for a living. I love my job, enjoy getting on the bus every day to go to work, sitting with other working people, some of which I have been sharing this ride with for almost fifteen years. I particularly love it when I take a route home through downtown and stop to browse at the greatest bookstore on earth. (Tattered Cover).

The thing is though is that this takes up a heck of a lot of my life. At age fifty have been working for nearly thirty years, which means a whole lot of my time is spent here in the city to maintain my job. I am not complaining (already said I love my job), just stating the way it is, which is also true for most of working people.

Which gets too my point of how backpacking can change your life:

When you compare all those days, months, years (decades) that you spend in the city at work, with what a single day can be like when you are up on a trail in the mountains, the difference can be startling.

The reason for this is pretty simple - out on a trail you are affected by the beauty and magnificence of nature, and a day in the wilderness has a way of cleansing your spirit and body in several ways:

For starters , you can't backpack without getting in better physical condition. I have heard it said that the hard work of walking with a heavy load out on a backpacking trip is just weakness leaving your body. Emotionally you slow down which is a good thing. A person is renewed spiritually by 'having face to face encounters with the high art and godliness of nature' as naturalist Eustace Conway described it.

Here is a concrete list of the ways I truly believe that backpacking can change your life:

1. Material things are kept in perspective. (you don't want to get so much 'stuff' that you have to spend more time working to pay for all of it, which can keep you away from backpacking. When you carry all that you need on your back for a few days, and are incredibly happy, it makes you understand that true happiness does not come from what you possess).

2. The value and miracle of a day is understood. Up in a wilderness you appreciate each day, and how fantastic it is to be here and a part of it all - whether the day is sunny, full of rain or snow or thunderstorms, cold or hot, calm or windy. John Muir put it this way: 'Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality. '

3. you feel a connection with the divinity in the universe. I am one of those people who feels that a lot of the freedom and beauty that I witness up there in the wilderness comes from the divine. I sense this just as I am beginning to hike in to a glacial basin covered with tall spruce and fir with white mountains rising out behind them. I sense this in the still of a moonless summer night, when the milky way spreads out from horizon to horizon. It surely has changed my life, and I feel it has made me a better person, one who carries some of the wilderness back home with me, holding a love of wildness and freedom and beauty as the highest of all values. From this comes a desire to live my life aware of reducing my impact on this earth (living in moderation), and a desire to be true and honest in my dealings with others.