Kraken (kra-khun): Noun — A legendary sea monster that, when provoked, is believed to have devoured helpless voyagers.

Just when I think it’s safe to get back on a plane, to venture away from mud season in Rangeley, I hear its primal bellowing. What begins as a low, guttural vibration soon erupts into a full-on war cry. “Whaaa….ugmph….AARRGGGGH!”

Did I make that beastly sound just trying to lift my own luggage? Did I bring the devil of unwieldy travel logistics out of hibernation to, once again, haunt me for packing way more than I needed?

“It’s just vacation stuff,” I mumble. “And ah…eeergh, it feels like I’m going for a year!”

Each time I go through this me-versus-my-material-belongings ritual, I remind myself of the classic George Carlin “stuff” monologue. According to George, we spend our whole lives getting more and more stuff till our houses become just “covers for our stuff.” Then, right after we convince ourselves we need bigger houses for bigger piles of stuff, we realize we have extra rooms to hold more and more stuff, and on it goes. Traveling poses the huge dilemma of selecting, carrying, and reloading some of our stuff into a new, usually smaller, containment pod till we have to reverse the process and lug the stuff back home.

But each time my packin’ kraken resurfaces, I also console myself that I am not a Carlin joke. I now have less stuff than ever, not more. During the Big Move to Rangeley, I sold stuff, gave or threw away stuff, whittling my stuff hoard down to what would fit in my smaller log “cover” by the lake. My vacation stuff—a subset of the downsized stuff—fits into a small bedroom holding area, neatly encased in Ziplocs and Tupperware. Come travel time, I plop it into rolling luggage fillable to within a few ounces of the standard checked baggage limit, a backpack fillable to cram but not jam into an overhead bin, and a personal carry-on fillable with just enough overflow to not sprain my shoulder and still pass as a “pocketbook.”

Fortunately, most of my vacations are in climates where a perfect day means changing out of my bathing suit long enough to eat dinner and watch the sunset before I’m back in the summer jammies I can only wear a couple days a year on Mooselook. Lightens my load as much as possible. Otherwise, I find myself whittling down my packing list to whatever color scheme I think will get me through various climate zones. Like my “green” trip to Chicago last fall, where my entire wardrobe was various shades of green so I could “mix and match” a week’s worth of carry-on clothes.

Wherever I’m going, when I get there I blissfully unpack my stuff, admiring how my plain necessities look better, more exotic, while temporarily arranged on a gleaming Hampton Inn counter or tucked into cute, eclectic little condo shelves. And then the race is on to actually use most of my vacation stuff—my dental floss, my ear wax removal kit, my alcohol (rubbing and drinking) and all those things so critical to my temporary survival I lugged along like I was going to Timbuktu—far flung from any place resembling a Rite Aid or Hannaford. I start swapping just enough stuff out to cram in souvenirs and any last-minute tingums I buy at the airport in a moment of nostalgia-tinged panic. And, on the last day of vacation, I practice good condo rental ethics, paying it forward big time. I hope that the thrill the next renter gets upon finding a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and a box of Wheat Thins in the cupboard far outweighs my need to haul ’em home.

Still, when the time comes to transport my stuff back through the airport, there’s a fine line between getting the most bang for my baggage allowance buck and not being able to drag it along without bellowing or taking out small children in the process. When the equation works, the packin’ kraken and the TSA agents are temporarily tamed. Passage is smooth till the last leg “up over the mountain” back to Rangeley.

“AAAARGH!” I groan, thundering over the threshold with bulging canvas now covered in all manner of travel spewage. It’s all worth it, I tell myself, leaving the stuff in a pile till tomorrow. Besides, the packin’ kraken always roars louder at the end of mud season. It’s a monster of mythical proportions until it can haul out summertime stuff and submerge in the lake once again.