Why is it that everything seems to taste better in the great outdoors? Maybe it’s that our most basic instincts kick in or we become less picky when there isn’t a restaurant within rock-throwing distance at any given moment. Whatever the reason, I feel like any food prepared at camp is nearly guaranteed to hit the spot.

I was 14, very wiry, and much against my father’s wishes I had borrowed a compound bow from a friend and started practicing. Not having drawn a rifle tag I was desperate for more deer hunting opportunities. Usually I could keep the cheap aluminum arrows in a dinner plate-sized group at 40 yards.

After a few whoopsies, the neighbors on every side called asking for the courtesy of a warning before I would engage in any archery practice. They thought touching off the air raid siren would unnecessarily rile up everyone’s horses and dogs.

Poor as I was at it, my friend Jeff was a good archer and a decent bow hunter. One day after school he drove up in our driveway. After a short exchange he asked if I could help him pack out an elk he had killed. After getting permission from my mother, I hastily put together an overnight pack and off we went. Apparently this cow elk he had arrowed had charged down off into some deep hole in the Heppner Unit and, while she was done for, it would likely be an all-nighter getting her out.

It was nearly dark when we got to her. Neither of us had a packframe, so we thought we would just cut down a pine pole and carry her out safari style. This worked fine until we had gone a little ways. Every time we took a step the cow, tied fore and aft to our green pole, would sway side to side, grinding the pole deeper and deeper into our bony shoulders. After a couple of readjustment attempts, we’d had enough.

Not having pack boards we decided to leave the bones in the meat as they made dandy handles for manipulating the loads we bore. It wasn’t particularly rough country, but we had an appreciable distance to cover and I was only 14, this being my first pack-out.

It was pretty hard going. We would each take a chunk of meat, walk a hundred to two hundred yards and then leapfrog back for more. On and on it went until Jeff and I had talked about practically everything under the heavens. It was well after dark when we made it to the pickup with the last load.

I don’t remember the drive back to camp as I was probably asleep. When we got back to camp I was already exhausted, but we bagged and hung up the elk in its various pieces from the meat pole. Jeff asked if I was hungry and then, as if mortified, realized he hadn’t stopped at the store to replenish his food supply before we climbed the mountain. In his cooler was one pound of pork sausage.

While I may have been an addlebrained 14-year-old by nature, I had gone to state for the spelling bee a couple of years before. No, I didn’t win, but I WENT. Although I had hastily assembled some clean undergarments at home, I had the wherewithal to grab a single package of Top Ramen noodles. Jeff fried the sausage as I boiled the noodles on his twin-burner propane camp stove. Upon completion we mixed the two and sprinkled the provided chicken flavoring over it all and stirred it up. It was delicious.

Nothing in Eden ever tasted as good to our first parents as did that pot of camp grub. We savored each and every bite, swilling it down with an ice cold Coke. There were no leftovers. When you have earned it the hard way, every morsel of food tastes like victory, even if it was literally the only thing you had to prepare for the table. I’ve been reminded of this dozens more times over the years with more hunts and the accompanying pack-outs.

I went deer hunting with a bow later that fall, and it was fun but it made me miss my rifle more than anything. Nowadays I have a pack, and I still prefer using it for extractions versus the safari pole or the leapfrog method. Eating Top Ramen and sausage for dinner at midnight in the middle of nowhere will do that to you.

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