Take a Load Off, Fannie

Annie Dillard writes about the doomed Franklin Expedition which set out in 1845 to map the icy Northwest Passage. The expedition wound up frozen in an ice floe. Fourteen years later the men’s bodies were found and it was clear that their survival was hindered by the amount of useless crap they tried to take with them:

Another search party found two skeletons in a boat on a sledge. They had hauled the boat sixty-five miles. With the skeletons were some chocolate, some guns, some tea, and a great deal of table silver.

Dillard notes that some of the officers died because they felt table silver was essential to survival, others died because they thought that it was barbaric to wear anything but a summer weight Royal officer’s uniform. Decorum killed them.

I’d like to think that I had better survival sense than Franklin and his crew. But the truth is that a search party would be likely to find my body next to a boat filled with, among other things, several crates of Christmas and birthday cards. I mean, people gave me those cards. It wouldn’t be polite just to throw them away, now would it?

So, like Franklin I’ve got a weight that’s slowing me down.

In the coming week I’m going to look into doing some house cleaning. And maybe brush up on my survival skills.