LOST LUGGAGE

When writer Katherine Laidlaw’s backpack is stolen during her trek through the Argentinian mountains, she finds a new version of herself.

When a writer’s backpack is stolen while she’s on vacation, she loses literal and figurative baggage but finds herself.

Habla inglés? Habla inglés?” I ran from person to person, my eyes wide with panic. It was past midnight, and the coach I’d boarded in El Chaltén, Argentina, 22 hours before had just pulled in to a nearly deserted bus station in Bariloche. I waited patiently, watching the driver hurl backpack after backpack onto the concrete—steamy from the heat, even after dark. He crawled out of the cavernous underbelly of the bus one last time, empty-handed. My bag was gone.

I stumbled my way through a Spanglish-laced conversation, trying to find out what had happened, but the weary driver simply shrugged, gave me the phone number of the bus company’s headquarters and then quietly ambled off into the night. I was devastated.

I’m one of those neurotic packers who agonizes over what to bring on a trip a week before I leave home. In this case, I had spent many weeks deciding what clothing and keepsakes I should carry in my forest-green pack for my four-month trip through South America. There was my dependable first-date shirt (a navy-blue silk tank top that drapes perfectly), gold-coloured Birkenstocks that had moulded to my feet after five summers of wear and a black bikini that is kinder to my curves than I have ever been. There was also a little blue MEC tent my father had bought me before he died and a love letter from the onagain, off-again boyfriend I’d left behind in Canada.

I was 9,600 kilometres from home, adrift, with nothing but a flimsy grey racer-back tank, a pair of grey nylon convertible pants (which look exactly as unflattering as

they sound) and hiking boots caked with Patagonian dirt from a week’s worth of hiking on the trails in El Chaltén.

I cried in my taxi as it drove to the hostel. I cried in my bunk, tucked under well-worn sheets. I cried when another backpacker gave me her flip-flops after realizing our feet were the same size. When my mom, after fielding one too many tearful phone calls, said, “It’s just stuff,” I struggled to explain why it didn’t feel that way to me.

I am a creature of habit, in terms of both my daily routines and my wardrobe. My low-maintenance “uniform” consists of ripped boyfriend jeans, a ribbed white tank top, black Keds and a Mackage leather jacket. Before I settled into this look, I had a conflicted relationship with clothes. I often felt curvy in all the wrong places, thanks to genetics and disordered eating that caused wild weight swings.

My uniform, which I thought looked writerly, made me feel comfortable and complete. Who was I without it?

After days of raising hell with the bus company, I realized that they weren’t going to find my bag or reimburse me for what I’d lost. I was almost out of money, and my return ticket was four weeks and three cities away. I considered heading home early, but in the end, I decided to take this unexpected opportunity to step outside my carefully crafted sartorial boundaries.

For the first time, I wasn’t going to worry about how I looked. I took my remaining pesos to the local markets and bought a pastiche of pieces inspired by the places I was visiting. I walked around Pucón, Chile, in microscopic jean cut-offs (a first!) and spongy platform sandals. In Santiago, I donned a fitted mini-dress splattered with multicoloured palm trees (much louder than anything I’d normally wear) and silver hoops a tennis ball could fly through. My carefree new look mirrored my own unmoored but increasingly liberated state of mind.

I began to experiment in other ways, too. I hiked to the top of an active volcano and skinny-dipped with a new friend at twilight. I also went out with a group of near-strangers and danced until dawn. When a handsome backpacker gave me one of his T-shirts, I felt a shimmer of what I had been missing in my life. My new-found confidence took a temporary dip when I realized I’d have to replace my trusty black bathing suit with a thong bikini.

Before this trip, I wasn’t especially good at dealing with the twists and turns that shape a life. “Certainly for artists of all stripes, the unknown, the idea or the form or the tale that has not yet arrived, is what must be found,” writes Rebecca Solnit in A Field Guide to Getting Lost. “It is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar….” It turned out my lost baggage was the metaphorical doorway that inspired me to find my new, bolder self.

My backpack was never returned, but I hope that someone somewhere is loving my Acne Studios slip-dress as much as I did. Aside from the obvious (that it is possible to live with less), my highway robbery taught me to be better at the art of surrender—the slow and steady cession to the yet uncovered wonders of travel and life.

Now, if I feel anxious when packing, I remember the rush from walking a tightrope along the edge of mystery. I leave a space in my suitcase to capture that feeling, that person—and when I return, I try to bring a bit of her home with me.