Culinary Innovation

There is an anthropological phenomenon that happens when people go camping. A transformation that occurs, independent of who they are in the outside world. A Jekyll and Hyde response triggered by a Jetboil.

There are two clearly defined camps when it comes backcountry cooking: the gourmands and the garbage goblins. The gourmands make pizza on their camp stoves and pack a butane torch for crème brulee and roasted red peppers. They carry cast-iron skillets during overnight backpacking trips for shakshuka breakfasts and season their s’mores with chili powder they collected while trekking through the Himalayas.

The garbage goblins, on the other hand, eat what they can scrounge from tins and plastic bags and sometimes, if they feel fancy, heat it up first. Their diet is 43% Pop-Tarts. They eat cold black beans straight from the can while the gourmands whisk up homemade carbonara. I watched one coworker eat trail mix out of half an avocado and heard another brag about their combination of ramen, tuna, and peanut butter as though it were the culinary innovation the world had been waiting for.

Guess which camp I am in?

My brother takes care to remind me frequently and vociferously of the “mac and cheese incident”, which he claims left him with deep psychological scars. It happened eight years ago, but he continues to send me invoices for his therapist (a bold move from a person whose diet at the time consisted mainly of quesadillas.)

It’s probably for this reason that I lose weight during the field season. I’m so caught up in the thrill of being outside and chasing adventures that I forget to eat until I collapse at camp at the of the day. Either that, or what I cook isn’t appetizing enough to make up for the calories burned. The exception was my time in Mexico, where my landlady made sure to ply me with daily fresh tortillas, tea that was more sugar than water, and a truly worrying amount of hotdogs. It didn’t take long until I had to spend an evening widening the waist of my hiking pants.

I stopped using a cooler during the field season a few years ago. The faff of making sure I had enough ice, and swaddling it in my sleeping bag to stay cold for longer wasn’t worth the variety in my diet, not when there are 14 different flavors of instant mashed potatoes. Did you know you can eat a bell pepper like an apple when you crave a vegetable? No one can stop you. You can just bite into that thing.

That said, some of the best meals of my life were during those summers when I was always moving. There was the burrito that I still dream about. The pizza in Leadville that I gorged myself on until I had to slither back to camp like a python with a belly full of water buffalo. The rotisserie chicken and a gallon of chocolate milk that I shared with friends after running the 10-Mile-Traverse.

It’s made me realize there are two ingredients for a memorable meal: being incredibly hungry, and having the meal with people dear to you. On one survey in the Maroon Bells, my dad joined me for a couple of days. It was memorable, and not just because of the brown-capped rosy finches. There was a juvenile bear hanging around camp, and the thunderstorm that night made the basin sound like a giant’s bowling alley. That night was spent wondering what was going to get us first: the bear, the lightning, or the rockfall. On the hike back, we spent the last 2 hours talking only about food. Food we had eaten, food we wanted to eat, food we had heard of. By the time we got to the trailhead after 24 hours above treeline, we were in a famished haze. We trekked into town and stopped at the first restaurant we saw, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that had two options on the menu: burger, or burger with cheese. I haven’t been able to find it again since. I suspect it exists in that interstitial space normally occupied by second-hand bookstores and magical wardrobes, only appearing when the seeker has a great need.

It’s not really about the burger. It’s about the whole experience. The Maroon Bells story has entered the family annals, and is polished off when there is a lull in the conversation. Each time, the bear gets bigger, the thunder louder, the burger more delicious.

My brother may not agree with the sentiment. For him, the mac and cheese I served him was an abomination that I must still atone for. It’s absolved me of cooking duty for any foreseeable camping trips with him though, and that is a blessing for both of us.