Food In The Forest (Revised)

            On a sunny morning in late August two busses pulled into the parking lot of a McDonald’s and 80 hungry and exhausted college freshmen descended upon the empty restaurant like a swarm of locusts.  We had traveled through the night, beginning on the campus of Kalamazoo College, and after breakfast, would soon be arriving at our destination, Killarney Provincial Park in Ontario Canada.  We were all signed on for LandSea, a sixteen-day hiking trip set up as an optional pre-freshman orientation program.

            I ordered a Bacon, Egg & Cheese Bagel and sat down with the people I’d met on the bus in one of the last remaining booths, while the unfortunate folks from bus two walked up to a line that went well past the door.  Discovering my meal had mayonnaise on it, I promptly lost most of my appetite for the thing.  I was disappointed that my last experience with “real food” was so dissatisfying.  I figured it would be two weeks before I got to eat anything really good. 

A few hours later, the two busses pulled into our main camp.  After everyone had gathered up their stuff, we were divided into our patrols, the groups of people we would be living with for the next two weeks.  I was put into patrol C-5 along with Ian, Katrina, Craig, Emilie, Evan, and Faith.  With our two leaders, Jessica and Joanne, there were nine of us total, which made us the smallest group that year.  After sorting through equipment, we were given a large blue tub stuffed with food.  Our first task as a patrol was to sort out rations for the first five days of hiking, leaving the rest behind at the main camp for when we returned for the canoeing part of our trip. We decided to start our trip with three blocks of cheese, two large and three small sausages, two large bags of dry oatmeal, three jars of peanut butter (two creamy and one crunchy), one small bag of lentils, one bag of assorted spices, two packages of tuna, five carrots, seven potatoes, several apples, one large bag of brown sugar, one bag of chocolate chips, one bag of powdered milk, two bottles of Parkay (a liquid butter substitute), one bag of macaroni noodles, three packages of powdered soup, two packages of tortillas, one bag of beans, one package of bisquick, and our own personal bags of gorp, a mixture of  peanuts, chocolate chips, dried papaya, prunes, and pretzel sticks.  Looking at it all, I wondered how this was going to turn into satisfying meals each day. 

             I did not sleep well that first night, lying on the hard ground, scrunched between Craig and Ian.  We woke up at five in the morning to rain and I regretted to find the bottom of my sleeping bag sopping wet.  The rain stopped that morning just long enough for us to spread out our rations and decide who would carry which items.  Along with food, we also had to carry the group gear, two tarps, two first aid kits, two bottles of fuel, one stove set, two bear bags, two ropes, and the patrol science project, which contained a device neatly packed in duct tape that we would use to test the levels of something-or-another in the water.  Along with all of our own personal gear, this added up to about forty pounds per person.  Sleep deprived, cold, and exhausted after just five minutes of placing my heavy pack on my shoulders, I began day one and contemplated whether I had made a mistake in signing up. 

Climbing The Crack.

            It rained on and off all day.  It seemed that every time we sat down the rain would start again.  We joked that nature was telling us when we’d been sitting down for too long.  We climbed The Crack, a steep hike up crumbled boulders between two towering rock formations.  The rain made everything slippery, and the going was slow, but the view from the top was breathtaking.  We sat for a moment and enjoyed the sight, the sea of trees disappearing into the haze of the rainy sky, interrupted by lakes and rivers that we would probably be canoeing on in just a few days.  I could have stared at it all day, but the rain picked up again, so we kept walking.

The view from the top of The Crack.

By the time we reached our campsite after hours of walking, climbing, and occasionally sliding down steep drop offs, my feet were screaming and my shoulders were about ready to give out. Setting up camp was a long and tedious process and when we were done all I wanted to do was crawl into my sleeping bag and never wake up.  The point of LandSea is to help make its participants more self-reliant.  Our leaders are there for guidance, but from making food to figuring out our route, it was supposed to be up to us.  Huddled together under a drooping tarp it began to rain again.  We were all hungry, but the thought of leaving the comfort and warmth of our sleeping bags didn’t seem worth the effort involved in feeding ourselves.

Joanne making dinner.

Joanne mercifully made dinner for us that night.  It was a bland and flavorless vegetable soup, but I gratefully took it, as it was warm and bore some resemblance to food.  Ian was less accepting, and produced his own personal bottle of extra hot Tabasco hot sauce.  He must have emptied half the bottle into his small helping of broth and it soon became apparent that his dinner was inedible.  Jessica feared he was suffering from hypothermia when she heard him complain about his lips being numb, but it was just his soup.  He ate about half a bowl before he started passing it around to others, who used portions of his dinner to spice up their own.   I took a small helping.  My soup went from tasteless broth to a painful attack on my mouth, and mine was a filtered version of the original.  It took me a few moments to recover from the initial shock of that first spoonful, and I seriously contemplated whether or not Ian’s lips would ever regain feeling.

            The next morning we woke up to blue skies.  The sun came out, our clothes dried, our spirits lifted.  I got used to the weight of my pack and I began to bond with my patrol-mates.  We passed the long hours of walking with stories from home, riddles, and the occasional group sing-along to a Disney classic.  One day we spent an entire afternoon retelling all our favorite Family Guy jokes, until I’m pretty sure we had retold the entire series. 

Faith and Katrina make dinner.

It never rained again after day one, and never again did I suffer a tasteless meal either.  Evan and Ian turned out to be talented cooks.  They knew how to add spices to bring out the flavors in their dishes.  Katrina and Faith managed to make a half decent apple strudel for us twice.  One morning our leaders even surprised us and made pancakes for breakfast.  Even our simple lunch of cheese and sausage was phenomenal after hours of hiking or canoeing.  I loved the spicy meat and the creamy cheese and embraced the two flavors that elegantly mixed together so well when I popped them both in my mouth at once.  By the end of the trip most of my patrol mates hated them, but Ian and I never got sick of it. 

Ian passes out our usual lunch of sausage and cheese.

But the most loved and prized snack was peanut butter.  Sweet and smooth and absolutely delicious, it was exactly what I needed to satisfy my sugar fix.  I was never completely devoid of sweets.  I had chocolate chips and brown sugar to add to things, but I longed for candy bars, ice cream, just one wholesome Oreo, I was desperate for the kinds of desserts that contained more calories than some meals did.  We horded our peanut butter, conserved it, we made sure we never took too much, careful to leave enough for each day of our trip.  We ate it straight out of the jar; my spork leaving grated trails behind in its delectable, delicate surface.  Slathered on papaya, it neutralized the less than desirable flavor of the dried fruit, leaving only the taste of pure joy in my mouth.  One day Faith suggested I add chocolate chips from my gorp bag into my spoonful of peanut butter and it became godly.

Loon.

            During the canoeing part of the trip our days went much faster.  We covered more ground and reached our destinations with more time to go swimming, play cards, and nap.  With campsites next to the water we sometimes fell asleep to the lonely calls of loons at night and often woke up before the sun rose in the morning.   We paddled out onto misty lakes and gazed at stars that reflected in the water below us.  Once we even got to share the waterway with a family of moose.   

On our last day together, my patrol prepared to do our science experiment, the one we'd been carrying with us since day one.  Our leaders gathered us around the waters edge.  Jessica handed Ian the package and told him to open it fast, that the device was “light sensitive” and needed to go in the water immediately or the results would be botched.  Everyone waited in anticipation, Ian feeling the pressure as he slit his knife across the tape and pulled it apart.  Before we could see what the device looked like, he looked up at us confused and asked, “Starbursts?” 

            Everyone simultaneously leaned in, and then jumped back in surprise.  Jessica and Joanna began laughing hysterically, Evan’s booming voice echoed across the lake, and Faith ran away and I’m pretty sure started crying.  Our “science experiment” was a package of Starbursts, a Crunch Bar, a Butterfinger, and a Snickers.  The thing I had missed most, the one food item I had been craving: candy.  Delicious sugary chocolate, and I had been carrying it with me the entire time.

            Every bar was cut into even sized portions.  Those doing the cutting passed each precious piece of chocolate to the rest of the patrol before taking their own.  There were twelve Starbursts in the package.  We each got a whole one, and then cut the last three pieces into thirds.  No one thought this was ridiculous.  We each took our thin sliver of gummy chewy candy with gratitude, and enjoyed every delicious second.

We were given this treat because the next morning marked the start of solo, a two-day ordeal in which we were left alone in the woods with no food or human companionship.  My stomach was already growling by the time my leaders pulled away in their canoe, leaving me to my lonely little plot of land where I would spend two days and nights in solitude. 

When the sun set, I was surprised by my sense of calm.  I was sure the darkness and strange little noises the woods like to make at night would be sending shivers up my spine the entire night.  But I was perfectly comfortable by myself, sleeping under the stars on what I considered to be a very comfortable rock.  All day I had been thinking about what I was going to eat when solo ended.  I made a list of the candy I’d buy at the first pit stop we made on our way back to Michigan.  I dreamed about a McDonalds cheeseburger with a chocolate milk shake.  When I woke up the next morning though, I didn’t even notice I was hungry anymore.  My stomach stopped growling, like it was tired of trying.  I was notably exhausted though, and had never realized just how long one day is until I sat through day two of solo.  

After one more night alone, I woke up to the sound of paddles hitting water as my leaders came to pick me up the following morning.  I smiled at Faith and crawled into the canoe, happy to be reunited.  And then, from behind her back, Jessica pulled forth the most beautiful, perfect looking green apple I had ever seen in my life.  I cradled the fruit in my hands for a moment, taking in its elegance.  Just as I was about to take a glorious bite, Jessica asked if I wouldn’t mind paddling in the front of the canoe while we picked up the rest of my patrol.  Around the lake we went, gathering my patrol-mates who gratefully devoured their apples while mine remained sitting in my lap, its smooth inviting surface taunting me while I desperately paddled as fast as I could towards shore. 

And then my moment finally came. An apple has never tasted so good since.  Back home, where I am surrounded by all the food I could want, I often forget about that moment when I made contact with the apple’s smooth skin, its crisp crunch, its sour juice.  I sometimes forget there was a time when an apple could be something extraordinary.  I devoured all of it, even ate the cyanide infused seeds.  The stem was all that remained.