Breakfast Anytime
The hotel had a breakfast buffet.
This was, technically, good news.
There were waffles. There was Fruit Loops dispenser. There was coffee that had been sitting in a stainless-steel urn long enough to qualify as a historical artifact. There were people in pajamas standing around making decisions about carbohydrates.
I skipped it.
Not because I have anything against hotel breakfasts. I’ve eaten plenty of them. I have stood at the waffle iron, waited my turn, watched the green light come on and poured batter into the machine with the grim concentration of a man defusing a bomb. I have eaten eggs from chafing dishes and potatoes from steam trays and enough tiny sausages to populate a moderately successful breakfast buffet.
But somewhere along the line, breakfast stopped being something I needed to find and became something I could make.
So I took my coffee, got in the truck, and drove straight for Crabtree Falls.
The trailhead was quiet. The morning had that particular mountain stillness that makes you suspicious of civilization. No waffle irons. No lobby television. No Fruit Loops. Just trees, rock, water, and the promise of a hike.
And breakfast.
The whole operation fits in a cooler and a small bag.
One propane burner. One stainless-steel skillet. Butter. Salt. Potatoes. Eggs.
That's it.
There is a particular pleasure in preparing breakfast this way. It begins with the knife.
I like slicing potatoes with a butterfly knife. There's something faintly ridiculous about it—an ordinary breakfast vegetable being dispatched with a knife that looks like it ought to be opening a crate of contraband in a dark alley.
The potatoes hit the skillet with butter.
Then comes the waiting.
This is where hotel breakfast has always let me down. Everything is already finished before you arrive. The eggs are done. The potatoes are done. The bacon is done. You're eating food that has been waiting for you.
Here, you wait for the food.
You watch the potatoes change color. You listen to the little hiss as moisture leaves the skillet. You move them around. You give them time to become what they were supposed to become: brown, crisp at the edges, soft in the middle, properly salted.
Then the eggs.
For this, I take a Deer Park water bottle and cut it in half with the same butterfly knife.
The bottom half becomes a mixing bowl.
There is something deeply satisfying about scrambling eggs in the bottom of a plastic water bottle that you have just converted into kitchen equipment with a folding knife. It is not elegant. It is not Instagrammable. It is, however, extremely effective.
Crack the eggs in. Salt. Beat them with whatever improvised utensil is at hand.
Into the skillet.
And suddenly you have breakfast.
Not a breakfast assembled by strangers behind a swinging door. Not something retrieved from beneath a heat lamp. Yours.
Hot potatoes. Soft scrambled eggs. Coffee. Creek water running over rocks ten yards away.
That's when I realized the campsite breakfast had escaped the campsite.
It had started as necessity.
When you're camping, you cook because there isn't anywhere else to eat. You learn what travels well. You learn what doesn't. You learn that eggs are fragile until they aren't, that potatoes will forgive almost anything, and that butter makes nearly every wilderness decision better.
But once you get good at it, necessity becomes opportunity.
Why wait for the campground?
Why not a rest stop?
Why not a trailhead?
Why not the parking lot after a hike?
Breakfast, it turns out, does not require a building.
It requires a hot pan.
There is a scene in Fury where War Daddy has eggs ready. That's the kind of breakfast philosophy I understand. Whatever the circumstances, whatever fresh hell the morning has delivered, somebody has thought ahead about the eggs.
That is civilization.
Since Crabtree Falls, I've started looking for opportunities.
At McAfee, I got there early, set up the burner, and started browning potatoes while the trail slowly filled with people.
They came in waves.
Backpacks. Trekking poles. Water bottles. The determined faces of people who had set alarms for an ungodly hour because somebody on the internet had told them the sunrise was worth it.
And there I was, standing beside the truck, turning potatoes.
There is a peculiar pleasure in watching a crowd arrive while you're cooking breakfast. You have already completed the important part of the morning. The others are still assembling themselves.
The potatoes browned.
The eggs scrambled.
Coffee happened.
Then came the hike.
At Endless Wall, I took it one step further.
I beat the crowds in.
Hiked.
Came back to the car.
And fired up the burner.
Tailgate brunch.
There is no law saying breakfast has to happen before the hike.
This is an important development.
Breakfast Anytime.
That's the idea.
The skillet doesn't care what time it is. The potatoes don't know whether the sun has just come up or has been beating down on the parking lot for five hours. Eggs have no opinion about brunch.
What changes is the experience.
After a hike, everything tastes better. The first hiss of butter hitting hot steel. The smell of potatoes browning in the open air. The little ritual of cracking eggs into that ridiculous half-bottle bowl.
You stand there in hiking clothes, dusty and hungry, surrounded by trees and cars and trail signs and whatever strange collection of people has gathered at the trailhead.
Then you eat.
And it's good.
Really good.
Not because it's fancy. Quite the opposite.
Because you've earned it.
Because you made it.
Because somewhere along the way, breakfast stopped being a meal you had to go find and became something you could carry with you.
A burner in the truck.
A skillet.
A cooler.
A knife.
Potatoes.
Eggs.
And a little time.
That's enough.
The hotel can keep its Fruit Loops.
-Benjamon Ardennes
Plan B:
Calling Upon Seneca
The plan was simple.
Two nights at Blowing Springs in the George Washington National Forest. A little wilderness. A little solitude. Perhaps a noble communion with nature, or at least the temporary illusion that I had escaped civilization without having to give up coffee.
I had expectations.
This was my first mistake.
Expectations are dangerous things in the national forest. They creep into your head during the drive, fueled by photographs, maps, and the vague promises of the human imagination. You picture yourself tucked beneath towering trees, your tent sitting in some cathedral of pine and rhododendron, birds singing in the distance while a cold mountain stream whispers nearby.
You do not picture an overgrown field.
But there it was.
Blowing Springs.
I arrived, parked the vehicle, and began the ancient ritual of evaluating a campsite with the intensity normally reserved for purchasing real estate or selecting a prison cell.
It wasn't terrible.
That was the problem.
Terrible would have been easy. A campsite full of garbage, broken glass, screaming children, or some guy operating a generator the size of a Buick would have made the decision for me.
Instead, Blowing Springs presented itself as an enormous, somewhat neglected field with a collection of campsites scattered around it like forgotten Monopoly properties.
The vegetation had clearly won several recent battles.
The place had the general atmosphere of a field that had been told it was going to become a campground but was later abandoned halfway through the conversation.
I walked around.
Ten minutes.
That's all I needed.
Ten minutes of inspecting the grounds, looking at the sites, imagining two nights there, and asking myself the most important question in camping:
Do I really want to sleep here?
The answer came quickly.
No.
Not even close.
This was not what I had pictured.
And so, standing there with my ten-minute tour completed, I did what any experienced traveler does when Plan A turns out to be a bad idea.
I invoked an old friend.
Seneca.
Not a philosopher.
Not the Roman statesman.
Seneca State Forest.
My old friend.
Less than an hour away.
The sort of friend you call when you've made a questionable decision and need somewhere civilized enough to save you from yourself.
I changed course.
The road unwound through the mountains, and with every mile the field at Blowing Springs became less relevant. There is a peculiar freedom in abandoning a bad plan. You can feel it physically. The tension drains away. The shoulders loosen. The windshield looks cleaner.
You stop thinking about what you should be doing and start thinking about what you're actually going to do.
And Seneca was looking good.
Very good.
Instead of a large, overgrown field divided into campsites, I would have a site tucked among rhododendron and pine.
Trees.
Actual trees.
The kind that make a campsite feel like a campsite instead of a parking arrangement with grass.
There would be trails.
Monday Lick.
Bikes.
A proper forest.
And, perhaps most importantly, showers.
Hot showers at the park office.
Now we're talking.
This is where wilderness and civilization reach their most useful compromise.
I don't require luxury in the woods. I'm perfectly happy sleeping on the ground, cooking on a tiny propane burner, and spending several days without encountering anything resembling a room-service menu.
But there are limits.
A shower is not luxury.
A shower is civilization's final diplomatic envoy.
After a day on the bike trails, covered in sweat, dust, and whatever mysterious substance the forest has decided to throw at you, the ability to walk into a shower and turn a handle is one of the great achievements of the human species.
So the decision was made.
Blowing Springs could keep its field.
I was going to Seneca.
And this, as it turned out, was not a retreat.
It was an upgrade.
There is a lesson here, although I distrust lessons and generally avoid them whenever possible.
Sometimes the best camping decisions are made by admitting that the place you planned to love isn't worth loving.
You can force it.
You can set up the tent.
You can convince yourself that the overgrown field has “character.”
You can sit in a folding chair and stare into the weeds while drinking a beer, insisting that this is exactly what you wanted.
Or you can pack up before you've even unpacked.
Call upon an old friend.
Drive into the mountains.
Find the rhododendron.
Find the pines.
Find the bike trails.
Find the showers.
And get on with the trip.
So goodbye, Blowing Springs.
No hard feelings.
You just weren't the place I thought you were.
Seneca, on the other hand, was waiting in the trees.
-Tanner H. Sampson