Gorp and the time a ranger ‘shot’ a bear — maaaybe

No matter how it’s defined, gorp is the best snack food going.

The nuts, Chex mix, freeze-dried fruit and M&Ms give a satisfying salty-sweet crunch and energy, especially rewarding during a day of backpacking on the trail. Sometimes it was the enticement — the reward — that got us from one point to another.

Every time our family prepared for a hiking trip, often in the Cascade Mountain range, we set up a staging area in our house’s main floor center court. From tables laden with needed gear we’d shop for our necessities, such as eating and drinking implements, water bottles, flashlights, food, tents, et al.

One of my favorite parts was assembling the baggies full of trail snacks, carefully measured for each day of our outing.

REI.com, the retail outdoor equipment mecca, says one side argues that gorp is an acronym for “good ol' raisins and peanuts” and the other side stands for “granola, oats, raisins, peanuts.”

The Oxford English Dictionary in 1913 defined gorp as a verb meaning “to eat greedily,” which REI thought sounded “pretty appropriate.” We munched it with gusto.

I remember pulling out a baggie another time when our family reached a glorious viewpoint in the Central Cascades that positioned us above little lakes where the water is so achingly clear every stone and sunken log is visible from a distance.

A favorite all-family trip in 1971 was when our party of seven hiked from the west side of the North Cascades to the east side, ending up in Stehekin at the north end of Lake Chelan.

One afternoon we set up camp in a deep valley with high peaks towering overhead.

Dad visited a neighboring campfire and spoke with a ranger taking a few days off.

His news was unsettling. He was toting a rifle and on the lookout for a troublesome campsite-marauding bear.

The ranger apparently had dispensation to shoot it, which he did. Except he reported he was unsure if he missed, winged or ultimately killed it, leaving open to speculation that a wounded bear could be on the loose.

This resulted in the bundles of our food supplies being tethered as high as we could hang them. Bear country experts say to be bear-proof, “food must be suspended at least 10 feet off the ground and 8 feet from the trunk of a tree.”

The same night, my sister Janet and I nodded off, zipped tightly into our tent. All of a sudden, there was a scritch, scritch, scritch on our rip-stop nylon wall pretty close to my nose.

Flashlights snapped on and beamed towards the sound. To our relief, it was a teeny tiny creature with teeny tiny paws and teeny tiny claws trying to work its way in to get our gorp.

On the trail after that, we spotted bear spore and claw marks on the sides of trees, which ramped up our anxiety. It was enough to put some pep in our step, let me tell you.

It was an idyllic hike, sunny and leisurely, air crisp and fresh, despite the threat of a potentially wounded, angry ursine.

In the evening as we kicked back, youngest brother Craig, age 7 or so, perched atop a big flat rock. Once the sun dipped behind snow-capped peaks towering overhead, the temperature dropped and for warmth, Craig tucked his criss-crossed legs inside his voluminous sweatshirt.

Kids that young can make their voices go extremely high and so when he heard a marmot whistling in the distance, he replied with a tone that could shatter a wine glass.

They conversed for many minutes, one high-pitched eeeeee to another, bouncing back and forth across the valley.

Our oldest brother, Scott, was on leave from the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and brought an olive green canvas hat, the kind that looks like an Aussie slouch hat where one side is pinned up.

I loved that hat. He loaned it to me as our family hiked up to the top, out of the deep valley to see the view.

Somehow, to my everlasting regret, I left that hat somewhere on the Cascade Trail. Rats. Still hurts. Especially because it was Scott’s.

We had beautiful weather. It was summer and the snow had receded.

Dad urged us before we left home to bring books, puzzles and playing cards, something, anything packable that we could carry with us.

Once we got to the trailhead at the north end of Lake Chelan our only access to civilization was journeying aboard Lady of the Lake, an ancient passenger vessel that plied the route from 1945-1996. It took six hours, six interminable hours, to get to the town of Chelan at the south terminus on the 55-mile long 1,486-foot deep glacially carved fjord, the third deepest lake in the United States.

The barren scenery along the lake was nothing to write home about — very few trees, next to no greenery at all. Without entertainment, it was a long slog, indeed.

Nonetheless, it was one of the most fun trips. It turned out to be bear-free and the supply of gorp we rationed carried us through.