'JOURNEYS OF SIMPLICITY' Travelers' packing lists make for light reading

The shortest list in the book is for the birds.
By THERESA M. HEGEL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
"Journeys of Simplicity: Traveling Light with Thomas Merton, Basho, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard & amp; Others" by Philip Harnden (Skylight Paths Publishing, $16.95)
Philip Harnden's "Journeys of Simplicity" could be a good book to keep at hand when you're packing for a summer vacation.
Then again, its short lists of what light packers took on their journeys might be more disheartening than helpful when you compare them to your own bulging suitcases or overloaded trunk.
Harnden has been collecting such lists for a number of years because he is "drawn to their spare poetry -- the poetry of emptiness."
In his beginning notes, Harnden explains that "the lists themselves retain as much as possible the language, word order, and spelling of their sources."
Each entry starts with an introduction, which contains some biographical information and gives a context to the list that follows. Harnden selected historical figures, such as Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau, and fictional characters, such as Bilbo Baggins from J.R.R. Tolkein's "The Hobbit."
Shortest and longest
One of the travelers mentioned is not even human. The list of what the arctic tern takes on its 22,000-mile migration between the Arctic and Antarctica is the shortest in the book, if a blank page can even be considered a list.
The longest list is probably of what Thoreau -- who has the distinction of having two entries in "Journeys of Simplicity" -- needed for a 12-day canoe trip. It's three pages longs and includes such items as a "small pocket spy-glass for birds," "two pocket-handkerchiefs" and "three or four old newspapers."
In stark contrast is the list of what Thoreau brought to his small cottage on Walden Pond, hardly more than a few pieces of furniture and some dishes.
Of local interest is the list of what Emma "Grandma" Gatewood (1888-1973) carried with her on the Appalachian Trail. According to the Hocking Hills Web site (www.hockinghills.com/i_grandm.htm), Gatewood, who lived most of her life on a farm in Gallia County, was an avid hiker. In fact, part of the Buckeye Trail, which passes through Hocking Hills State Park, was named after her.
When she was 67, she hiked the 2,000-mile Appalachian trail alone. She carried with her only what fit in a homemade denim duffel bag.
Contemplation
"Journeys of Simplicity" is meant to spark contemplation and spiritual reflection. Harnden asks the reader to ponder what it would mean to travel through life "unencumbered, uncluttered, without distraction -- a journey of focus and intention."
It's an interesting thought, and the lists Harnden has chosen can be quite charming, but if you take his ideas to heart, would you really feel the need to clutter up your life with a book that, however spiritual its intent, is essentially a novelty?
I doubt "Journeys of Simplicity," though it has a clever and somewhat unorthodox premise, would have been something the travelers featured on its pages carried with them.
If I were playing the old what-would-I-take-to-a-deserted-isle game, "Journeys of Simplicity" wouldn't make the cut.
hegel@vindy.com