“If you grab some groceries at the store, I’ll make dinner.” That’s my voice, sounding super chirpy and grateful that I don’t have to make a list, figure out what ingredients I need for a particular recipe, and wander aisles to find them. You see, I believe I can make a meal out of just about anything. 

Charlie, my person, likes to challenge this. He comes home with a basket as follows: 

• 2 pounds of barbecue pulled pork 
• 2 pounds of ground beef 
• 3 beets 
• 1 bunch cilantro 

“Were you craving these things or did you see a recipe you wanted me to try?” I naively asked. Had he not brought me some chocolate, the discussion may have digressed from there.  

 I believe when Charlie is dealing (groceries), the objective of the game is to see how few ingredients I can use to make something edible. It is exactly the opposite if I ask him to make dinner. That conversation goes like this: 

“Hey honey, I have all the ingredients for dinner, but I’m super busy writing a story about that time you bought beets. Can you throw the meal together? It’s Chicken Jalfrezi on a bed of saffron rice with blanched almonds—only you’ll have to blanch them because they were out at the store.” 

“Who is Blanche?” 

“The almonds.” 

“I thought we were having chicken.” 

“And use the coriander seeds—the mortar and pestle are on the sill.”  

The objective here is that I expose my future husband to as many exotic herbs, spices, kitchen tools, methods, and flavor combinations as possible. Mostly because I think it’s super hot when I see him walk out of the pantry with a food processor in his arms.  

I believe he’s onto me though, because he’s started offering to shop and cook a meal. He has discovered the secret ingredient to making anything amazing: butter.  

Because he’s marrying a nutritionist, he knows there must be some sort of vegetable presented. I’ll hover around the kitchen or subtly pass through, as though I’m on some alternative errand, just to have a peek at what vegetable is being prepared. When I see a spread of asparagus on a sheet, my blood pressure drops about fifteen points. Apparently I have some foundational belief that if I skip vegetables in a single meal, I’m just a diabetic cardiac event waiting to happen.  

By the time the meal is served, it’s too late for me to ask if the tri-tip was roasted in butter and how many cubes went on top of the asparagus. Because butter is a lubricant and the food is sliding so smoothly, so deliciously, into my gullet, I don’t even want to stop eating long enough to talk about how many calories my vegetable side actually contains. Instead, I clean my plate and use my fork to pick up little pieces of butter-soaked garlic from the sheet.  

At this rate, he’s going to win every time.  

Ammi Midstokke is a nutritionist and author living in North Idaho, where her solar-powered, straw bale cabin keeps her log-peeling and wood-chopping skills honed. Last month she wrote about the black hole of her ceaseless appetite for mostly cookies and cake. 

The post Challenges to the Cooking Partnership appeared first on Out There Venture.

Jess Fenton Roskelley, my husband and life partner for the past six years, passed away in a climbing accident on April 16 in Alberta, Canada. As the memories continue to flood my brain and push me to tears in waves of pain, I can’t help but notice that each memory circles back to a common denominator—that Jess was so much more than just a climber. Although he is probably best known for three things—being the son of famous mountaineer, John Roskelley; the youngest American to summit Everest in 2003; and one of the best alpine climbers in world—there is so much more that I want people to know about Jess.        

For starters, I’d like to focus on a sport that connected the two of us from the very beginning: fishing. Jess’s middle name comes from his grandfather, Fenton Samuel Roskelley, who was a writer for “The Spokesman-Review” and “Spokane Daily Chronicle” for over 60 years. Like his grandfather, Jess loved fishing, and it’s one of the many reasons I fell in love with him. I, too, grew up fishing with my grandfather, Charles Adams, which made it a very attractive quality in Jess. Some of my fondest memories as a little girl are the times I woke up at the crack of dawn to meet Grandpa Chuck for a day of fishing on the North Fork of the Clearwater River. We’d fish all day long and stop to pick huckleberries on the way home.

Jess and I got married on July 25, 2015, and we decided to postpone our honeymoon until we could save up some cash and make it our dream vacation. So, we went on a “minimoon” instead for five days after our wedding day. We packed up our pop-up camper, threw in a few of Fenton’s fly-fishing rods, and hit the road for Bozeman. Jess’s very best friend from high school, Tim, lived in Bozeman and had just bought a little fiberglass fishing boat, so he offered to be our Yellowstone River guide for the trip. Although I grew up to be quite the fisherwoman because of those times with Grandpa Chuck, I didn’t know a thing about fly fishing until this trip with Jess.

When we arrived in Bozeman, we popped the camper up on the side of the road outside of Tim’s house. Of course, we could have easily stayed IN Tim’s house, but we were a couple of newlyweds, high on love, and there was just something special about that little camper of ours; it was home to us. After we were settled in, we grabbed a couple beers and headed to the backyard, where Jess gave me my first casting lesson with a fly rod. I’m not going to lie; I was quite the natural from the get-go, and Jess was really impressed. Shout out to Grandpa Chuck for starting me out right!

The following days consisted of hours and hours of fishing, from the early morning dew until past the sunset when the bats came out over the water. We fished, laughed, and drank a few too many beers. It was perfect and was the start of many more fishing adventures together in our marriage. From that moment on, fly fishing became a part of nearly every one of our travels together. We rarely left for a trip without a couple of Fenton’s rods. I visited Jess on his climbing trip to Patagonia in December of 2015 where we fished ice-cold glacier run-off outside of El Chaltén. In spring of 2017, we traveled to Playa del Carmen for a wedding and booked a deep-sea fishing tour, where I caught a massive barracuda and Jess couldn’t catch anything but rockfish. He would tell you that I always seemed to find a way to outfish him, ha!

On our most recent vacation to Costa Rica, which would be our last trip together, we booked a deep-sea fishing tour on our final day. I reeled in a pompano and Jess caught a couple black tuna, which we took to a restaurant and had fresh ceviche made for us with homemade plantain chips and margaritas. We enjoyed our meal together on the beach as the sun was setting on our final night in Costa Rica. It was perfect and a memory I will hold onto forever. The climbing accident took place less than a month later.

I’ve realized there are commonalities between fishing and climbing. In fishing, the line is a common metaphor for attachment, partnership, trust, mutual connection, and faith. In climbing, the rope is also a common metaphor for these same ideals. In fishing, when a fish bites the hook, it signals the commencement of the hardest part of the fight, and from that moment, you have to fight harder than ever to close the deal. The same goes for climbing. When you reach the summit of a mountain, that doesn’t mean the climb is over. The hardest part of the fight is to keep strong and focused on the way down.

Our fishing excursions came full circle when Tim came to town to spend some time with me the week before Jess’s memorial service. He brought a gift—the fly-fishing rod that I used to catch my first fish on our minimoon. I plan to cast that rod into many rivers in the future, and I will hold Jess close wherever it takes me—although I’m not sure he’s the best luck when it comes to actually catching fish! /

Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Allison Roskelley has loved the outdoors since she locked into a pair of skis at the age of two. Her proudest accomplishment is paddling the first SUP descent of the Spokane River, covering 111 miles and 6 portages across 4 consecutive days. 

The post The Rope and the Line appeared first on Out There Venture.

What happens when four families—including eight adults and 10 children ages 1-11—go camping together over Memorial Day weekend? Fun, adventure, and lessons learned. Here are fundamental ideas that helped our trip succeed.

1. Plan a trip with like-minded families. My three girlfriends and I are all like-minded women—outdoorsy, non-makeup wearing women in the 38-42 age range; our children attend the same school; and we live within a half-mile radius of each other. Our children and husbands mesh well too.
2. Choose a kid-friendly campground and reserve campsites next to each other. Kid-friendly means lots of activities that children can easily walk to: a lake with a dock and small beach, hiking trails, meadow, etc. Reserve sites next to each other or across the road so it’s easy for kids to gather and play.
3. Keep expectations simple and plans easy. Every family was arriving to the campground at different times or days. We decided that Saturday would be the day to stay around our campground to swim, kayak, fish and hike.
4. Establish rules and boundaries for the children. Our group rules were: 1. No child can go to the lake without an adult; 2. You must wear a PFD whenever you’re on the dock, in the water, or in a kayak; 3. You cannot enter another family’s trailer or tent; 4. Tell an adult when you’re going somewhere else, whether it’s to another campsite or bathroom.
5. Be a village safety-net. Everyone kept their eyes on each other’s children and practiced fresh-air parenting—allowing kids to be independent (toddler excluded) and free to explore while hovering as needed to ensure safety and well-being, whether it was around the campfire, in the hammock, at the dock, or in a kayak.
6. Treat all the kids as if they were your own, and understand that no one’s children or marriage is perfect. Help each other as much as you can with child supervision and attending to needs (e.g., Band-Aids, applying sunscreen). Also, don’t take parenting so seriously that you can’t laugh at yourself. Give yourself a break: everyone’s child sometimes (or often) doesn’t listen to his/her parents, and all couples have their flashpoints and pet peeves with each other.
7. Plan only one shared meal as a group. For Saturday night we had a BYO food for campfire cooking (e.g., hot dogs) and side-dish potluck. For S’mores, each family contributed ingredients to the community table.
8. Bring supplies that can be shared. Hammock, water squirters, swim floaties, sand toys, glo-sticks, art supplies, stuffed animals, books, scooters, kayaks.
9. Decide which gear items are non-negotiable, and don’t over pack. With a toddler along, my friend Erin regretted not bringing their stroller. “I never got to sit down,” she says. For my family, our PFDs, Frisbee and art supplies are never left behind.
10. Plan easy, off-site excursions. At Heyburn State Park, this meant a quick scooter ride for the kids while parents walked along the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, followed by picnic lunch and swimming at the beach.
11. Be flexible, creative, and intentional about meaningful conversations and activities. Kids bonded over fascinating, yet simple experiences such as poking a dead catfish with a stick or spotting a muskrat. Around the campfire, we asked questions: Who can tell us a good joke? What is your favorite camping memory?
12. On check-out day, everyone keeps to their own schedule. Parents are busy packing-up and loading vehicles after breakfast. Our only official activity was to take group photos, because by then it felt like camping with a big extended family. 

Amy S. McCaffree is Special Section Editor and “Out There Kids” columnist. You can follow her on Facebook @AmyOutdoorsSpokane.

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