Pancakes & Bacon

I am, in my way, a professional camper.

It started with the Cub Scouts, which then led to the Boy Scouts. (Hey, I’m an Eagle Scout, but don’t hold it against me!) I remember being wet and freezing and starving, as only young kids can be. After clamming in Bolinas one grey winter day, we waded back across the lagoon and were greeted with beef bouillon heated on a technological marvel: the Coleman stove. That was a first—and a revelation. What about this outdoors stuff?

Then there was a first overnight: Wolfing down hamburger stew made with carrots, potatoes, and onion soup mix in a 2-pound Folger’s can with a clothes-hanger bail, boiled above the campfire in a vacant suburban field. The best. Summer camp with some pancake mix that can’t have been real food. Maybe even some Tang! (“Shit, astronauts drink it!”)

My life was ruined by the Sierra Nevada. I can recall backpacking trips from a half century ago day by day by day--almost hour by hour. Future trips were incessantly planned while poring over ‘Starr’s Guide,’ ‘Sierra North,’ and ‘Sierra South.’ And there was the magic of USGS maps, straight from a bank of file drawers in the Menlo Park office. Tracing the Muir Trail in 15-minute sections. And the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail. Or the High Sierra Trail. Weighing westside vs. eastside trailheads. Finding the best campsites in all the best campgrounds. And all the worst of the early freeze-dried dinners.

Things seemed like a pointless dream without this other world where trails went. “All you ever want to do is go camping.” OK, shake your head; everyone else does.

My mind became a shadowbox of granite, trees, meadows, and streams…morning light with jays squawking; hot midday pulls to passes; smears of stars at night; or a full moon at 11,000 feet so bright it required a bandana tied like a blindfold to sleep.

At some point I started bringing a camera. First a borrowed Pentax, then a Minolta, and later a series of Nikons. Those were Kodachrome 25 days. And then there was the giant leap from 35mm to my first 4x5 field camera, a cherrywood Wista that I duct-taped back together after the bottom screws ripped loose and the rest fell off the tripod into Big Bear Lake. This was a new world of craft and of seeing. Rocks, trees, water and I began a new conversation. I was now schlepping film holders and changing tent and spot meter and darkcloth via pickup or pack…

And along the way I also studied literature at Berkeley and discovered Thoreau…and Emerson…and Whitman…and Muir…and Snyder…and found out that others had been ruined by wilderness, too.

Memorial Day weekend marks the official kickoff to the family-camping season. And what would those mornings be without the smell of burning pancakes and Wesson oil, plus the sizzle and smoke of bacon, all coming from a neighbor’s red-hot griddle atop a campfire or Coleman? They’re cooking up some memories.

While circling the campground, I hear the ping and rattle of thin camping pots and tin plates (which are always lined with paper plates… which then blow away).  Plus the classic creak of that Coleman stove’s windscreen or the squeak of the pump on an older white-gas model. Or the shriek of a fireplace grate as it’s lowered into place. Kids are shouting back and forth—even though they’re 3 feet apart.

And how’s about them hot dog spreads! Everyone’s smeared with French’s mustard and shooing yellowjackets between bites. It’s a royal banquet-in-waiting for bears. (So, who would you bet on in a Nathan’s hot dog throwdown—Joey Chestnut or a black bear?) Mom calls out: “Save room for Jiffy Pop…and S’Mores.” Life’s toughest choice? Whether to slowly and evenly toast the marshmallow or just light it on fire.

I rarely eat like that now, especially when traveling on photo trips. But each time I smell pancakes and bacon on the chilly, smoky morning air amidst a campground’s sights and sounds, it’s like my own memories are floating there, too. And I think of how, for better or worse, I got here.

It’s like serving Proust’s madeleine with Log Cabin syrup.

By Scott Atkinson

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