Inside An Ethnobotanist’s Backpack: A Powerful, Miniature Flashlight

Posted in What's In Your Bag on March 24, 2014 by Michael Balick

Michael J. Balick, Ph.D., is Vice President for Botanical Science at The New York Botanical Garden and Director and Philecology Curator of the Botanical Garden’s Institute of Economic Botany. For more than 30 years, he has studied the relationship between plants and people, working with traditional cultures in tropical, subtropical, and desert environments around the world.

An ethnobotanist by trade, I spend a great deal of time in remote parts of the world, thinking about how people relate to plants and how this relationship shapes their cultures. While packing for one of my expeditions, I realized that many of the tools I rely on during my travels are items I carry on a daily basis or have close at hand. In this series, I’ll share some of the things that I’ve found useful in the field and the city alike. Perhaps you will find some of these items helpful, even essential, in daily life or times of need. — M.J.B.

A flashlight is an essential part of fieldwork in places with no electricity. On my earliest travels to remote areas, each researcher had to carry a dozen or more large, D-size batteries to power a heavy flashlight during trips of several months’ duration.

These days, I carry a very small flashlight with a mini carabiner clip that can attach to a pack or keychain or hang from an elastic string. This light weighs 0.2 ounces, and the body is just over 1 ¼ inches long. Astonishingly, it produces 10 lumens of light—enough to see 20 to 30 feet ahead of you with reasonable visibility, even at night along a dark forest path or inside a dim thatch house in the evening. Four tiny button batteries contained in a plastic tube in the body of the flashlight provide full power for around 15 hours before the light starts to lose intensity.

Living in the city or country, a small source of light can make a huge difference—from finding a keyhole in the dark, climbing down a pitch-black set of stairs, or recovering something you’ve dropped in a dark theater. This thing is tough. Rain does not bother it, and it has proven dependable. With a price of around $10 online or at your local camping store, I carry a couple of these during a four-week trip, along with two changes of batteries for each. And I have a larger and more powerful flashlight when more lumens are needed.