I’ve been collecting my small kit for this weekend’s walk to and from Zealand Hut with the NZ crew. I’ve been using the same list for hut-based walks for a long time, and it can easily be made to coincide pretty well with the one prescribed by our leaders. My problem at the moment is that I can’t find one of my favorite pieces: an old Patagonia Zephur jacket. The Z is very light, very compact, and it takes the place of a windbreaker, a medium fleece and, on its better days, a rain-resistant layer. It works very well over a light baselayer, and I rely on it for walks in the Fahrenheit 30s and low 40s, which is what we’ll likely find in the Whites in a few days. I haven’t needed it since last spring, and I obviously stored it somewhere I thought was very clever indeed. I can get along without it, of course—God knows I’ve got enough stuff—but I’d be both functionally and sentimentally sorry to have to.

I lose things all the time. Significant things. Last week, it was my iPod Classic, which eventually turned up being used as a bookmark in an novel I had set out for someone else to read. A month or so ago, it was a tiny Photon LED pocket flashlight with some important keys attached. That one’s still gone.

This would all be fine, and even funny, if I were an absent-minded professor with better things to think about. But it’s actually infuriating, because I am in fact just an inattentive guy with a lazy habit of mind. In other words, I have no excuse.

And no Zephur.