Intro

I sold my sea kayak yesterday morning. It was gorgeous: red, sleek, fast, light. Fiberglass, just under sixteen feet. It paddled like a dream, but despite my aspirations of getting lost in long expeditions in the Sea of Cortez as giant rays glided in silence beneath the bow, I’d owned it for seven years and had only taken it out a half-dozen times. I had good intentions, but the kayak inertia was high, while that of mountain biking, trail running, and body surfing was low.

When Joni got home in the afternoon, I told her, “I sold the kayak.”

“Oh?” she said. “Are you sad?”

Well, now, that’s an interesting question. Selling a boat that gets wet less than once a year should spark no particular feelings except perhaps relief, but she knows and I know and you know that gear is bound so tightly with our identities—not just who we are, but who we think we are and who we want to be—that