Mary North Face

The other day, as I tottered across the Bolivian border at a surprisingly slow pace, I started wondering how on earth my backpack had gotten to weigh at least 35 pounds. So I did a mental inventory of my belongings and discovered that, in fact, I am much more like a travelling art store/library that can camp out in the wilderness for several days at a time (you know, so I can supply the llamas with crayons and reading material) than like a normal backpacker.
Here is a list of things found in my backpack that will startle, amaze, and suport my previous claim:
1. Can of spray paint of that mint green color that is found in older bathrooms
2. Manilla file folders for making stencils
3. a bag of 90 white plastic doves that normally belong on the tops of wedding cakes
4. a compass the kind for drawing circles, not the kind for finding your direction, although I have one of those too
5. several notebooks for journaling and general scribbling
6. exacto knife again for stencils
7. about six tiny tubes of super glue and one tube of something that i think construction workers use to glue pieces of buildings together when welding fails
8. eight books
a. a book of literary criticism that focuses on travel writing that I sort of stole from the DC public library
b. a spanish childrens book about Lorenzo the penguin, who totally kicks ass and is my travel hero
c. Peru guidebook
d. spanish dictionary
e. spanish coursebook
f. spanish verb book
g. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (hopefully not indicative of my social future)
h. guidebook that focuses on trekking

How do I fit all of this stuff, along with a tent, a camp stove, a sleeping pad, clothes, two bags of dried beans that I have had for at least a month now, and various other odds and ends, into one single backpack, you ask?? My only answer is that Mary Poppins and North Face must hace some sort of contract going on.