Contents of the Single Backpack I Returned Home with After a Year of Travel

• 1 llama sweater from Peru
• 2 travel journals (completely filled)
• 1 XL sleeping sheet with new stains from the floor of the LaGuardia Airport
• 1 ribbed tank top from my wedding sporting Amazon River mud stains and the word “bride” written across the front
• 1 survivor of a D700 Nikon Camera (complete with cracked lens)
• 1 barely functioning HP laptop with a year’s worth of photos waiting to be edited
• 1 kindle (every Harry Potter book re-read)
• 2 Ziploc bags of clothes (1 pair of faded jeans, 1 skirt, two shirts, 2 sets of underwear that used to be white)
• 1 purple and yellow dyed bra from the Festival of Colors in India
• 1 pair of running shoes too small for swollen feet
• 1 iPhone that forgot how to function out of airplane mode
• 1 miscellaneous Ziploc bag (a frayed toothbrush, Indian toe rings, half a pack of blister tape, a spork from a Swede, a bottle of ibuprofen, a Virgin Mary pendant on a blue thread from a nun)
• 1 seashell to prove I was a pilgrim and walked across Spain for more than a month

Moral of this story? Collect experiences, not things.