Tastes Like Breakfast

A Basecamp Dispatch from the back steps

Welcome to Basecamp Dispatch — my weekly check-in from the woods, the homestead, or somewhere else with spotty cell service.

It’s been a strange week.

The outdoor industry will bruise your ego. If you’re not careful, it will bruise your soul, too.

Spend enough time in it and the lines start to blur. You start wondering what’s real and what’s marketing. What’s personality and what’s persona. What’s honest and what’s just good PR.

Bruises and all, I still can’t imagine doing anything else.

So this week I’ve been ambling around a bit. I sent out some pitches. Started a fluffy novel. Put the jon boat in the water and caught a few shad.

This morning, I fried potatoes in bear fat I rendered from a bear I killed back in December. I paired them with two eggs I pulled from the hen house at daylight, courtesy of Charlotte and Marietta. Then I scrambled those eggs with roe from an American shad I pulled out of the river, not a quarter mile from my house.

It tasted like home with a little splash of the ocean mixed in. So good it almost made me cry.

I ate it sitting on the back steps while the morning sun warmed my face. My husband had set the coffee to brew before he left for work, so I had a hot cup with some milk and maple syrup.

And sitting there, I realized something.

I don’t know what the outdoor industry will do next.

But I do know what’s real.

And it tastes a whole lot like breakfast.

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P.S. Last week’s essay stirred up a little controversy. If you missed it, you can read it here.