Nalgene Therapy
Reflections on a stalwart staple
The Nalgene water bottle is ubiquitous in certain circles. The last time I saw them everywhere was in college in Vermont. Very college-y, very New England-y. A prominent aesthetic at a school like that is the look that says, "I'm here but in the blink of an eye I could be scaling a rock face or basking in a mountain lake." Teva sandals, hiking boots, sporty shorts, and the perfect accessory for adventure, the Nalgene water bottle.
They are simple, basically a big jug. Nalgenes can carry your survival water or your cafeteria chocolate milk (that'd be a lot of chocolate milk). Whatever it is, into the jug! The iconic look is practically synonymous with college: the milky white plastic bottle with a light blue screw cap tethered to the bottle by a thick strip of plastic. Hang it from your messenger bag or dangle it jauntily from your pointer finger. The Nalgene tells the world that you are ready for anything and with this "anything" there comes the need for effective hydration. When you are ready for a swig, make a few dramatic spins of that massive lid and take a pull, being careful not to douse yourself, because here you won't find any complicated internal straw systems, just a wide open mouth ready to dispense all the chocolate milk you can drink.
They are sturdy. Whatever that plastic is, it never seems to crack under pressure. You can beat a Nalgene bottle black and blue, it never gives in. Nothing I've ever bought from Target or the Apple store has done its job more consistently and for a longer time. The dings and scratches they acquire actually contribute to a sort of industrial plastic patina.
Stickers weren't quite so ubiquitous in my day. You could find a good sticker, sure, but it was more likely to represent an accredited college or university or a state in our union or a desire for us all to coexist. Less common were what you see today, the beautfully illustrated, the event-specific, the eye-catching and self-identifying. The walls o' sticker. Yet the Nalgene water bottle was ahead of the curve, a wonderful billboard for self-identification via the sticker. My Nalgene today is tastefully festooned in a collection of well-designed, punchy, colorful stickers of every shape. They look great, accentuated with the graceful curve of the bottle itself.
In a recent episode of the podcast, Adam and I talk about privacy settings, reflecting to little avail on the overwhelming complexity of the world. As complicated as we have made our world, water is simple. A drinking gourd, a leather sack, a Nalgene bottle. Holds water, is along for the ride.
