Fight the Boredom

For most things I'm a bit of a gadget guy; I like new shiney gadgets that tout to improve my quality of life, but when I'm Backpacking I still like to keep things simple. Sometimes, however this means that I end up with nothing to distract me from the boredom that can creep up when you've been hiking though 5 miles of uphill trails with nothing to look at but rocks and trees. During one trip in particular the view was so lacking, and the conversation so dried up that each step felt like an eternity. That is until one of the guys I was with remembered he was carrying a tiny AM/FM radio (by tiny I mean the size of a pack of Juicy-Fruit). He turned it on, tuned to the only station we could pick up and lashed it to his pack providing us with "Feliz Navidad" and several other Christmas songs sung over and over again (we were hiking in late December). The point here is not that the Radio saved the day, but that having a small gadget (such as an AM/FM radio) tucked away provided us with many more hours of Converstation (making fun of the songs, singing the songs, making up our own songs) and something to distract us from the drudgery of the hike. So I've realized that, when backpacking, gadgets can have a place among the neccessities packed away in my Bag so long as they are something the whole group can enjoy (and so long as they are only pulled out as a last resort).