How Did You Prepare This Week?

There’s a great line somewhere near the end of Earnest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms that came back to haunt me this week. It speaks to the times: “The war seemed as far away as the football games of someone else’s college.”

That’s how the political chaos feels now.

Far away.

Meanwhile, our lives increasingly turn to the everyday needs of our families, friends, and communities living through the early stages of collapse. The current administration’s actions matter a lot, but the noise it generates? Not so much. Many of us are far more concerned with practical matters.

This week, we got a lesson in preparedness when a wildfire erupted between home and school. It underscored the need to be ready all the time, because not being ready has… consequences. In that sense, it taught me that every trip could turn into an unplanned bugout. That means I need something a little more strategic than my normal messenger bag from my teacher days. So, what kind of bag lands between a messenger bag, a tote, and a full bugout bag?

And what happens if you can’t carry a heavy bugout bag?

How do you bug out without bugging out?

I went looking.