[Deserted Isle Books is our new series in which our contributors discuss the one book they would choose if they were, well, stranded alone on a deserted isle forever. Read other installments of the series here, get your own copies at Powell's, and explore other series like this on our Special Features page.]

One book. Two sticks.

I’d love to have the sensibility to pack something useful, such as Stalking the Wild Asparagus, or anything else by Euell Gibbons, or perhaps Tintin in Tibet by Hergé, or even The Quest for Karla by John Le Carré. But God, who wants to lug that thing around, especially since cold war spy stories don’t have much of a shelf life after the first read. Besides, with a Tintin book I might end up saying nothing but “!” or “Wooah Wooah!” for the rest of my life, and with Le Carré I’d spend too much time thinking about stupid stuff, like why the BBC made only two insanely good mini series movies out of the trilogy (starring Obi-Wan Kenobi as head of Britain’s intelligence agency), and whether Karla would have been more formidable if he wasn’t Captain Picard, and so on.

Growing up in New Mexico among mathematicians and backpackers I’ve learned a thing or two about how to pack well when leaving civilization. There’s a tricky equation involving the actual weight of something in ounces, the emotional weight of what the thing is going to give back to you in terms of happiness, and some random factor of how many other uses you can get out of the object and the value of these other uses should things turn ugly. For example, a Frisbee can be used as a plate or a cutting board; it’s also good for fanning fires, and collecting rainwater. The stuff-sack that holds your sleeping bag during the day can be filled with fleece in the evening to make a nice pillow. A good night’s sleep improves the possibility of good decision-making under severe weather conditions. If you are not rescued for many years, you can wear the stuff-sack to keep your hair out of the way. Alcohol at high altitude is a fun thing, but beer is heavy, and the glass has to be hiked back out, so we compromised by leaving a 12-pack in a cooler at the trailhead as a reward for coming back to the real world, causing many of us to break into a run for the last mile. Some of us packed schnapps, which provided more bang for the bottle and went beautifully with hot chocolate like a game of Pooh sticks at a river crossing. Oranges were hotly contested, as was dental floss, open toed shoes and bakeless cheesecake mixes. …
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