Pack mule. Donkey. Those were the nicknames I gradually picked up because my bag was always so heavy. I don’t carry makeup, but I never leave home without a journal, pens, a camera, and a book. Once I start adding extra lenses, even my shoulder bag becomes almost too heavy to carry. People could be forgiven for wondering if I had a hammer hidden inside. After fifteen years of carrying it everywhere, even my shoulders and spine have slowly begun to take on its weight.
I don’t particularly enjoy carrying such a heavy bag. On days when I have to walk for hours, or when the summer heat makes even standing still exhausting, it feels like a cross I’ve chosen to carry. Yet after fifteen years, I’ve come to realize something: if I don’t have those things with me when the right moment arrives, I regret it far more than the weight itself. Somewhere along the way, one belief became a guiding principle in my life: you never know what moment is about the unfold.
Of course, it’s impossible to carry every tool I might need. Instead of bringing less, I’ve tried to make each item lighter. What I pack depends on where the day is taking me. For important projects, I carry my Fujifilm X-Pro2 along with a selection of lenses. For everyday life, I usually bring my Canon V1. And on days built around cycling, swimming, or other outdoor activities, I reach for my tiny but remarkably capable Olympus TG-830.
It was a Saturday morning. Marco and I decided to take bicycles out for the first time in weeks and ride down to the river for a swim. But as I packed one thing after another, my bag grew heavier by the minute. Marco is the complete opposite of me ⎯ he moves through the world lightly, carrying only what he needs. As I stood there wondering what I could leave behind, I suddenly remembered the pannier bags hanging from his bicycle when we first met in South Korea. They had travelled all across Korea and Japan before quietly retiring to our wardrobe, where they had been waiting all this time.
I transferred everything into the pannier bag and headed down to the garage. After installing a rear rack on the bike, Marco clipped the bag into place. They were still pleasantly heavy, but when I took the bike for a short test ride, they hardly affected the ride at all. It felt as though something that had been sitting heavily inside me for years had finally lifted. I wondered if this was what people had felt when they first learned to load their belongings onto the back of a camel. I could bring almost everything I wanted without carrying the weight on my shoulder. Riding away with my back free felt entirely different from simply tossing a bag onto the passenger seat of a car.
When we arrived at the Danube, I unpacked my outdoor mat, journal, pens, and books from the pannier bag. There was even room for the book Marco had brought along. Now I could go anywhere without having to leave anything important behind. After our swim, we lay on the mat and spent some time reading together. Then I sat up and finished writing in my journal. It made me unexpectedly happy to realize that I no longer had to scale down the way I wanted to live and record the world. A simple pannier bag had made far more than my luggage feel lighter. I think I’ll always choose to adapt my surroundings rather than give up the life I want to record.