My brother's backpack

Something wonderful happened to my brother Sandro the other day. A backpack he had lost while climbing the Aconcagua two years ago was returned to him... and by the Argentinean police!!! This last bit is what astonishes me most, and at the same time gives me hope in the institutions of my country. They delivered it at home and wouldn't even take a couple of bottles of wine he wanted to give them as a thank you gesture! Perhaps i am too pessimistic in my vision of them. Sandro says that the mountain police is entirely different from those patrolling the streets: they take their job seriously and are really principled, he affirmed on the phone. That comment still says a lot about the street patrols, though, the ones people have to live with every day. My family doesn't live close enough to the Aconcagua.

In any case, it was a friend of his who had accidentally dropped the backpack into a ravine. He had been carrying two at a time, because my brother was helping take down the mountain another friend to whom high altitude had given all the symptoms of someone pissed to the gills, an extremely dangerous state to be in at over 6500 meters above sea level. Night was coming, they needed to get to the shelter and they did not have the equipment to climb down and fetch the backpack, so it was left there. It contained 200 euros, some clothes, a stainless steel thermos...

My brother reports this was all returned to him as he had packed it. The only changes were some discoloration on the side of the backpack that had been exposed to the sun and on the clothes on that side, too. The thermos must have bumped hard against some rock when the backpack fell, too, because there was a slight dent on it (although it still works perfectly, my mother was quick to add; your father really missed that thermos, she said).

I was thrilled by this little story of the returned backpack. I know it's just stuff, but Sandro must have felt a thrill, too, having a bit of his past returned to him like this.

I do feel sorry for the lost moment of archaelogical delight someone else might have felt, at some time in the future. What would they have made of these things, even twenty or thirty years from now? What stories might they have come up with and what questions asked? Perhaps the climbers that found my brother's backpack last week felt some of this themselves. Or maybe it was the mountain police who did, and this bit of mystery, this meddling with happenings and their outcome, is part of what keeps their interest on their job, and their integrity.