Food Thoughts

On a trip like ours, food is much more important than something you literally cannot live without.

We like to eat. The result - we carry more weight in food than typical long-distance hikers. It's a quality of life thing. So we've striven to find interesting and creative ways to make our potentially monotonous staple supply of nourishment more interesting to the palette. For instance, powdered coconut milk in our morning oatmeal makes breakfast interesting again. Mixing chicken stock, butter and Parmesan cheese into rehydrated green beans adds a new sparkle and desperately needed calories to a dinner side-dish. Powdered peanut butter added to chocolate pudding leads to a protein-rich post-dinner treat. Despite the obvious shortcomings of dehydrated and freeze-dried food planned three months in advance, imaginative preparations have kept our pre-packed food enjoyable.

At the same time, we truly appreciate opportunities to supplement, even replace our must-add-water meals with fresh fruits and berries. Early in the summer we painstakingly bent over with full packs to pinch off tiny, intensely-flavored wild strawberries from their low-growing stems. We let the juice of fat, soft thimbleberries run down our chins when we passed through their shoulder-high growth. Later in the season wild huckleberries provided refreshing bursts of wet sweetness. In fact, when we ran dangerously low on food near the end of our nearly two-weeks in the Pasayten, alpine huckleberries became invaluable as we gathered the small round, chilled berries by the handful on rainy Sky Pilot Pass. Earlier that week we'd plucked tantalizingly delicious purple vaccinium berries at 7,400 feet. The miniature purple berries were nearly hidden among the thick green ground cover just shifting into the russet hues of autumn. Then, days after the autumn equinox, we walked through the Skagit valley, a lovely agricultural mecca nestled between the western Cascades and saltwater. We could almost forget the pain of hiking miles of asphalt when we crunched into fresh, crisp apples straight from the tree.

And recently we were reminded the simplest meals can often be the most satisfying. Imagine our excitement when we found ourselves at Toby's Tavern on Whidbey Island sharing a meal of fresh, local mussels with new-found friends and fellow campers. We lifted pints of cold beer before diving into giant bowls of the wine-steamed bivalves, complemented with fresh sourdough bread and lively conversation. The joy of food, and company, need not come in fancy packages.

Food can complement your location and provide a creative outlet. Food tastes best straight from the source, especially when you have no other. And food grounds us. Food is much more than nourishment for survival – we are what, where, and how we eat.

Skagit Valley apples, crisp, sweet and delicious