One Pan Wonders

Recently, I invited Erin McKittrick of Ground Truth Trekking to write a little something for my blog. Here is what she had to say.

I met Dicentra last year at the ALDHA West retreat (where Hig and I demonstrated the "Buttery Goodness"). Now my book on our year-long adventure is out, and she's invited me to write a guest post for the blog.

I thought I’d start with an exerpt from my book:

"Lava flows ooze out across the Iskut and Unuk river valleys, choking the rivers into deep canyons of columnar rock. Above the gorges, collapsed lava tubes pockmark the mossy forest floor, sending chill air flowing out of deep cracks. The forests are young; a natural second growth of skinny trees, with only mushrooms and moss growing in the dark understory. In the first lava gorge, the Unuk’s gravel bars disappeared. We walked in the forest, on a miner’s roadbed long since overgrown with a lush carpet of devils club. Occasional pieces of rusted and moss-covered machinery, a broken down cable crossing on a river, and an unusually straight track were all that marked this dirt path as anything more than another animal trail.

Beneath this upheaval of rocks lies a glitter of gold, driving modern prospecting as it drove the old-time fortune seekers.

People have been looking for gold in these hills since the arrival of the white man over a hundred years ago. Only the scale has changed. Packrafts in hand, we stood at the edge of the opaque yellow water of Sulphurets Creek, eyeing the mining exploration camp on the other side. A helicopter sat near a small collection of buildings. We hadn’t spotted any people, but we could hear the steady hum of a generator. Obviously, someone was home.

“I think we should stop in and chat,” Hig suggested. “Sure….” I replied hesitantly. “Only maybe we should play down our greenness a little. That might increase the chance of them giving us food.” As Hig inflated his packraft to cross the creek, I stuck my hand into the greasy ziploc bag at the top of my pack, pulling out a handful of “Buttery Goodness”.




Utterly sick of store-bought cookies, we had become more inventive in our resupplies. Our new favorite creation was a raw mishmash of butter, oats, sugar, and cinnamon, which tasted exactly like oatmeal cookie dough and which we dubbed “Buttery Goodness.” We’d replaced our meals of soup packets with a heavenly macaroni and cheese—full of real cheese and butter, with wild mushrooms, garlic, and a touch of curry powder. But nothing could change the basic math. Food was heavy, and as the difficult terrain lengthened all our detours, we found we weren’t carrying nearly enough...."

For the whole story, you’ll have to get the book. But the miners were very generous with their food, asking only for a nondisclosure agreement in exchange.

From A Long Trek Home, 4000 miles by Boot, Raft, and Ski - by Erin McKittrick From the Puget Sound to the Bering Sea

Four thousand miles along the edge of the Pacific A world reduced to just two small packs and the next 100 yards... From June 2007 to June 2008, my husband Hig and I walked, packrafted, and skied from Seattle to the Aleutian Islands. We passed through crowded cities, massive clearcuts, lush rainforests, intricate inlets, steep mountains, storm-tossed beaches, snowy valleys, frozen lakes, and windswept tundra.... Sections of the trip were so remote we had to carry 16 days of food at a time.

And food is heavy. We tried to carry enough. But at times, when the route proved more complicated than we had anticipated, we inevitably ran short. We raided food from molding and abandoned logging trailers. We received the great gift of a pizza dropped from the sky. We dug razor clams with our bare hands. And when all of that failed, we rationed our Buttery Goodness, dreaming up imaginary feasts as we walked.



Hig and I (and our 8 month old baby Katmai), are on book tour now. We'll be giving slideshow presentations and book signings in Seattle, Portland, Eugene, and Minneapolis in the next month. If you're in the area, or know anyone who is - see details on our schedule here. If you have ideas of other places we should visit, tell me that too. If this trip does well, we might make another one.

Either way, you can buy the book! (I'm selling signed copies online through my website).