food for the mind, body

A box arrived from Campmor with seven freeze dried meals.  I had already purchased seven locally, but there was a limited selection at our outdoor stores.  Ordering from Campmor, a suggestion from sailor, writer and freeze dried chef Webb Chiles, allowed me to find more variety, and at a lower cost even with shipping costs added in.

Most of my dinners will be freeze dried camp meals on this trip.  Energy in the evening is a precious commodity and using these meals from Mountain House, Backpacker's Pantry and AlpineAire Foods will save both time and energy.  Heat two cups of water on the jetboil, pour the water into the aluminum pouch, stir, seal the pound and wait eight to thirteen minutes depending on the meal.  The waiting time will be perfect to pack up the jet boil stove and stow it away.  Eat dinner, wash the spoon and then move on to the next tasks for the evening: setting up the bivy, filling our the day's journal and maybe a little reading (see below).

I do need to reconfigure the cook kit, which will have less gear and less cooking supplies.  The coleman stove with griddle will, sadly, be left behind.  I've had some great meals, including fresh caught speckled trout, striper and blue fish from that griddle.  I will have a frying pan and some oil and spices in the kit.  Should I catch a fish, it could become dinner.

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I have ordered the third book that I will be bringing on the trip.  I most likely will read only one book, maybe two, but I like to have a selection on board to suit my mood.  After leaving the dock there will not be very many bookstores along the shores of the NC Sounds, I want to have a good selection along.  Those not read on the trip will be for fall reading on the couch.

I already have Train Whistle Guitar and Goodbye to a River in hand.  The third book, just now ordered, is Totch, A Life in the Everglades.  Here is a review of the book.

A commercial fisherman, marijuana smuggler, and alligator hunter and poacher, Totch is a native son of Florida's southwesternmost coast, the Ten Thousand Islands. His natural-style storytelling enlivens his and his family's history of eking out a living on the edge of the Everglades. These memoirs--which begin with his pioneer grandparents in 1880, proceed to his childhood in the 1920s, and end up in the 1990s--give us a glimpse of a hard life of poverty and pride, honesty and crime. Totch lives by his own rules; he doesn't glorify or excuse his lifestyle but lays it out for us so that we can understand the strength it takes to survive on the edge. Recommended for folklore, ecology, and Florida history collections.

Between a fictional book about coming of age in the South - Train Whistle Guitar - a tribute to a Texas river that was about to be broken up by dams - Goodbye to a River - and a story of the days of old along the Ten Thousand Islands of Florida, Totch, I think I will find something to read.

steve