Foothill Fare

image borrowed from bing

Foothill Fare

When I was a teenager

I loved to go hiking into the mountains

with my grandfather, who was

a seasoned woodsman, hunter, fisherman,

and philosopher,

lugging 60 pound wooden packs

with several heavy hunks of fresh bacon

and canned goods in them, in a time

before lightweight packs, waterproof fabrics

and dehydrated foods.

We would always try to make camp near a creek

in those fondly remembered days when drinking

from its chilled ripples would not make you ill,

before the pellets and filters were mandatory--

just dipped our face into the rushing water

and gulped its rock-washed elixir. 

We would stake out a place between two trees,

scoop out a shallow nest for our tired bodies, 

fill it with a sprinkling of soil over the rocks 

and a bed of soft pine boughs to sleep on, 

tie a clothesline rope between the trees, 

and stretch a plastic tarp over it for our tent, 

holding down the edges with colorful boulders 

from the nearby stream bed.

We would stay up half the night, listening

to the brush snapping from the predators

and foragers in the dark, staring into 

a crackling campfire, its fire sparks dancing

into a night sky that was smattered with serious stars,

talking about politics, poetry, art, literature, history,

family and the future.

Wonderfully exhausted, I would stay tucked deep

into one of our Army surplus mummy bags,

dreaming of a utopian tomorrow, the very one

my Pop promised would one day dawn,

where true brotherhood resided

and actual functional equality reigned.

My grandfather would rise before the sun,

stoke up the fire, smile at my sleepy lump,

roll up and smoke a handmade cigarette,

and squat ready to witness the brilliant birth

of another promise of personal adventure,

then would grab a fishing pole and go out

to catch our breakfast. 

My nose always awakened first, smelling

bacon frying, and the twin blackened

Maxwell House cans of coffee

and navy beans bubbling.

“Get your ass up, Butch, daylight’s a-burning”

I would squirm out of the sleeping bag,

immediately shivering as I pulled on my 

unlaced boots, took a few cramped steps

toward the edge of our campsite and stood there

watering the clover and daisies, spicing up

the dandy dew bubbles with last night’s coffee.

He would cook on the open campfire, pushing

the hot coals under a cast iron blackened

frying pan sizzling with beautiful bacon;

when it was done he would pile it up on

a metal pie plate, then pour in his sour dough

and cook up several bannock hot cakes;

My first course of wilderness breakfast 

was a steaming cup of coffee, 

a thick bannock with bacon,

slathered in butter 

on the first day while it lasted,

and honey from a sticky jar.

As any great cook would do, 

he would just nibble at his breakfast 

as he flopped four brook trout

into the hot pan and fried them up 

in the bacon grease, and the second course 

was constituted of pan-fried trout and navy beans. 

This was more than enough grub to fortify us

for the next five miles of vertical trail, continuing

our climb up to a glacier lake at the foot

of several majestic mountains, where we would

camp in a huge meadow below the glacier, 

in order to reinforce our worship of the earth

and revisit our palaver about the many parasites

who inhabited and poisoned it. 

Glenn Buttkus

October 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets

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