Packed: MC In the Wild

Welcome to Packed, a series where we show you our favorite people’s most personal possessions, necessities, and go-to gear for doing what they do best. From surfers on tour to photographers in Afghanistan. This time around, we look in our own bags and show you what you ought to have when stepping out into the bush. Or in our case, the high hills of Los Angeles County.

A good shovel; 2. Notepad and pen; 3. Palo Santo; 4. Jet Fuel hiking stove; 5. A hamock; 6. Film camera (and spare film); 7. SAD sunglasses; 8. MC x TJB Knife; 9. Phone; 10. A camping chair; 11. Danner Logger Moc 917 GTX boots; 12. A coozie for our beer; 13. Good water bottle; 14. Bang & Olufsen speaker

We love being outside. Surfing, skating, hiking, traveling - it is what we live for; it fills our hearts right up. When times are tough, our significant others decide that they don’t want to be anymore, our houses go up in flames and we want to crawl into a hole and fade away, crawling into the outdoors is a saving grace. As Henry Thoreau so cleverly theorized, ‘God is in nature,’ or something like that. He didn’t mean actual Evangelical God, so much as that God’s metaphorical touch is in nature, and he was right. It calms and resents and renews.

I mean, Henry was a bit of a weirdo, he spent years in a cabin next to a pond and wrote hundreds of pages about it, so maybe he had a little bit too much of nature, but we - and probably you - simply can’t get enough of it.

Unfortunately for us, we are urbanites who spend most of our time staring at computer screens in air conditioned offices, so when we finally get to head out, it’s quite an exciting thing, and something that we don’t take lightly, or for granted. What you bring with you when you step outside of your comfort zone and into the natural world can mean the difference between a rejuvenating weekend or your literal demise (live and learn, get it?). That in mind, here are some pieces of equipment and essential comforts for your mental health day out among the trees.