Out on the trail, a bear box is a simple but powerful tool. You take everything that might attract unwanted attention—your food, your toothpaste, even the crumbs in your snack bag—and you lock it away. Safe, sealed, out of reach. It doesn’t mean bears disappear. It just means you’re not sleeping with that fear all night.
I’ve started to think of my anxiety in the same way.
Like food left out at camp, my worries can be scattered and exposed. They attract every “what if” thought that prowls in the dark. What if I can’t keep up? What if I get injured? What if something goes wrong and I’m all alone? Just like bears, those fears are real—they exist whether I want them to or not. But carrying them loose, tangled up in my mind, only makes the weight heavier.
So I imagine my own mental bear box.
When a worry surfaces, I ask myself: Is this something I can control right now?
- If the answer is yes, I keep it with me. I plan, I act, I problem-solve.
- If the answer is no—like the weather, the pace of another hiker, or whether I’ll have cell service on top of a ridge—I lock it away. Into the box it goes.
This doesn’t erase the anxiety. The bear box doesn’t erase the bear. But it creates boundaries. It gives me space to breathe, to rest, to enjoy the parts of life (and hiking) that aren’t weighed down by what might happen tomorrow.
Some days, I have to remind myself over and over: not everything belongs in my pack. Not every fear deserves my constant attention. Like storing food safely at night, I’m learning that containing my anxiety is an act of care—not just for myself, but for the journey I’m on.
The trail will always have its challenges. Life will too. But just as I wouldn’t sleep with an open peanut butter jar in my tent, I don’t have to sleep with every single fear rattling around in my head. I can choose to set them aside. I can choose to close the lid. You can too.