Gorp

The paper sack hung from a bent brass hook between a coil of red bootlaces and three dented tin cups nested inside one another. Someone had written GORP across its front with a black marker that had bled into the fibers, the O gone slightly square. Under it sat a glass jar of peppermints, cloudy with fingerprints. Beside that, a stack of folded trail maps held down by a river stone.

Mara stood with one hand on the counter and looked at the sack as if it might explain itself.

The shop was not much more than a room cut into the side of the mountain road, with floorboards sloped enough that marbles would have rolled toward the stove in the back. The place smelled of canvas, coffee grounds, cedar dust, and something sweet and old from the barrel of molasses chews near the register. A fly worried the window. On the wall behind the counter hung fishing flies in a faded card, blister pads, pocketknives, a shelf of sunscreen with chalky caps. Everything looked useful. Nothing looked decorative except a string of trout vertebrae over the door, and that might have had a use too.

“You can take it down,” the man behind the counter said.

Mara glanced at him. He had the kind of face that seemed carved with a pocketknife and then left in a vest pocket for twenty years. His shirt cuffs were rolled twice. One thumbnail was split. He had been repairing a buckle when she came in; the small screwdriver still rested in the crease of his palm.

“I was trying to decide if it was a product or a warning.”

“It’s a sack with a word on it.” He tipped his chin toward the hook. “That part’s free.”

She reached up and lifted it. The bag was lighter than it looked, just brown paper folded over at the top and stapled shut, with a grease shadow near one bottom corner. Nothing on it besides the word.

“What is it?”

He set the buckle down. “Food.”

“That narrows it poorly.”

A corner of his mouth moved. “Trail mix, if you like store terms. Gorp, if you like useful ones.”

Mara turned the sack in her hands. “I don’t know if I like either one yet.”

“You headed up?”

She followed his glance to the pack by the door. It was new enough that the nylon still had a factory stiffness to it. A tag string clung to one zipper pull. Beside it leaned a pair of borrowed trekking poles with somebody else’s initials burned into the handles.

“Just overnight,” she said. “Maybe six miles in. Seven if I miss the turn and make a bad choice.”

“Plenty of room for bad choices up there.”

“I’m trying to limit them to one category at a time.”

“That’s shopping.”

He took the sack from her, pulled the staple free with a thumbnail, and opened the top. He did not hold it out. He sniffed it once, as if checking for treachery, then spilled a little into his hand and let it rattle back. Peanuts. Raisins. Pumpkin seeds. A few chocolate disks with their shine going soft in the room’s heat. A broken cashew. Something pale and curled that might have been coconut.

“Made this morning,” he said.

“By whom?”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “Me, unless the mice have improved.”

She leaned closer. The smell was nut oil and sugar and dusted salt, warmer and more honest than the sealed energy bars arranged by the register in glossy wrappers showing people mid-leap over impossible streams.

“I thought I was buying dinner things,” she said. “Dried noodles. Maybe a can of soup if I hated myself.”

“You can still hate yourself. I stock for all faiths.”

She laughed despite herself, then looked down at the list in her hand. It had started neat and become frantic halfway through. Water purification tablets, socks, lighter, oatmeal, coffee, bandage tape, ibuprofen, something cheerful. At the bottom, squeezed in different pen, was snacks? and after that three underlines.

“I’ve never done this before,” she said.

He nodded once. Not kind, not unkind. Just accepting new information.

“I mean I’ve walked places before,” she said. “I know how feet work. But not with a pack. Not with a sleeping bag. Not carrying what I need.”

“That explains the soup.”

“Soup’s food.”

“Soup’s ballast.”

He reached below the counter and brought up a dented aluminum bowl. Then he crouched and produced jars and bins from under the shelves with the slow accuracy of a man who knew his inventory by touch: roasted peanuts from a pickle crock, raisins in a square deli tub, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, a jar of chocolate pieces, toasted coconut, banana chips yellow as hazard paint, almonds, pretzel sticks in a paper sleeve, dried cherries kept in a mason jar with a lid that had lost its ring of rubber years ago. He arranged them in a half-circle on the scarred counter between them.

“This,” he said, tapping the empty bowl, “is your problem.”

“My problem is bigger than that bowl.”

“Not for today.”

Mara folded her list and tucked it in her back pocket. “I thought gorp came in a bag made by a company.”

He lifted one shoulder again. It seemed to serve him for several shades of opinion. “A lot of things come in bags made by a company. Doesn’t mean that’s where they begin.”

“So what is it exactly?”

He took a metal scoop from the peanut crock and poured a measure into the bowl. They landed with a hard, dry clatter. “It’s what you can carry that still feels like eating.”

Another scoop, this one raisins. Soft thuds among the nuts.

“It’s what won’t sulk if it gets shaken.”

He pinched in sunflower seeds, then pumpkin seeds, dark green and flat as little tongues.

“It’s what survives being forgotten in a side pocket for half a day until you need it enough to stop being picky.”

The chocolate came next. Not many. He let them fall with care, as if the bowl had a budget.

“That’s not a definition,” Mara said.

“No. Definitions are indoor furniture.”

He looked up then to see if she would object to that. She didn’t. She was watching his hands.

A woman in paint-flecked overalls came in with a propane canister under one arm and a black dog at her heels. The bell over the door gave one tired clap. The dog walked directly to the stove and lay down in the path it had probably worn all season.

“You got any more of the small fuel?” the woman asked.

“Back crate,” the man said. “If Amos hasn’t ordered by moonlight again.”

“He only drinks after dark now?”

“He plans after dark. Drinking’s all-hours.”

The woman found the crate, inspected two canisters, and brought one up. She glanced at the bowl. “New hiker?”

“Visible, isn’t it,” Mara said.

The woman set the canister on the counter. She was somewhere near fifty, with forearms browned into leather and white paint in the lines of her knuckles. “Only to those who remember doing it badly.” She nodded at the bowl. “Don’t let him talk you into carob.”

“I don’t stock carob,” the man said, offended in a quiet way.

“Good. Means there’s still law.”

She paid, scratched the dog once behind one ear, and left with the canister bumping against her leg. The door shut. The room settled again.

Mara touched the rim of the bowl. “So that’s all it is? Nuts and raisins?”

“That’s most of what it is. Which is not the same as all.”

He slid the bowl toward her and nudged the almond jar. “Go on. Build a case.”

“A case?”

“For carrying your own food.”

She looked from jar to jar. “Is there a right answer?”

“If there were, people wouldn’t discuss it so much.”

“That sounds like there are many wrong ones.”

“Now you’re hiking.”

She took the scoop and added almonds. Too many, probably. Then some dried cherries, because they looked less resigned than raisins. A small handful of pretzel sticks because the salt called to her. When she reached for the banana chips, he made a small sound in his throat.

“No?”

“You can put them in. I won’t stop you.”

“That sounded like stopping.”

“It sounded like history.”

She withdrew her hand. “What did bananas do to you?”

“They survive. That’s not praise.” He leaned one hip against the counter. “Listen. You need four things from a trail handful. Fat, salt, sugar, and the feeling that you are not being punished. Miss one and you’ll notice before the day is done.”

“You make it sound medicinal.”

“It is medicinal. It just tastes better than cough syrup.”

Mara looked again at the shiny bars by the register. “Why not just buy those?”

“You can.”

“You disapprove.”

“I sell them,” he said. “Disapproval would be poor retail.”

“But.”

He picked up one of the bars, a wrapper the color of emergency equipment. He turned it over and handed it to her. The ingredient list was long enough to need two columns. There were things in it that sounded extracted, isolated, persuaded. Protein crisp. Chicory root fiber. Brown rice syrup. Natural flavors, which always made her feel less informed than before.

“Eat that at a desk,” he said. “Fine. Eat it on mile five with your shoulders starting to argue and your lunch two hours behind you, and maybe you’re still fine. But maybe what you want is a peanut, a raisin, another peanut, some salt, one piece of chocolate if you’ve been brave enough to save it. Something you can take in pieces. Something old enough not to need a paragraph.”

He took the bar back and returned it to its place among the others, squared to the edge of the display.

“And cheap,” Mara said.

“That too.”

She pulled her wallet halfway from her pocket, peered in, then shoved it back. He pretended not to notice.

“How cheap?”

He eyed the bowl. “Depends how sentimental you get around cherries.”

“I can be practical.”

“Most people can, right up to the good stuff.”

She lifted a dried cherry and bit it in half. Tart, sticky, better than practical. She dropped the remaining half into the bowl and reached for the peanuts.

“What does the word mean?” she asked. “Gorp.”

He rubbed a thumb along the edge of the counter where varnish had worn away. “Depends who you ask. There’s always someone eager to tell you it stands for good old raisins and peanuts.”

“Does it?”

“Only if you arrange history after the fact.”

“So it’s a lie.”

“It’s tidy. Tidy and true aren’t twins.”

He took up the scoop again and added more peanuts to bring the whole thing into balance. “People like words to justify themselves. Most trail words don’t. They get used because they’re handy in the mouth and hard to mistake. Gorp sounds like something you can eat from your hand while walking. You say it once and everybody knows it isn’t custard.”

Mara said it under her breath. “Gorp.”

“There. It lands where it needs to.”

“You’re telling me nobody knows?”

“I’m telling you whoever first said it was probably busy. Hungry, too.”

He folded the top of the paper sack flat and pressed the crease with the side of his thumb. “A lot of mountain language starts like that. Somebody needing to say a thing fast enough for it to matter. If the word sticks, it stays. If it doesn’t, it goes down the slope with everything else.”

On the shelf by the maps, a little battery radio muttered static and one line of fiddle before losing courage. The fly found the peppermint jar again. Outside, tires hissed over gravel on the road, then passed.

Mara looked into the bowl. The ingredients had settled into one another. What had seemed miscellaneous in separate jars had turned coherent the minute it shared a container. She stirred it with her fingertips. Her nails came away salted.

“Did people always make this?”

“People have always carried food. This particular version? Near enough. Hunters. Camp crews. Scouts. Parents trying to keep children from mutiny. Anything that can sit in a pocket and answer a bad hour gets invented over and over.”

He bent to the shelf below the counter and brought up another container, this one with sesame sticks lacquered orange with spice. “Those are too loud for some folks. For some folks that’s the point.”

She smiled. “You really have opinions.”

“I have seen enough failed mixtures to earn a few.”

“What counts as failure?”

He dropped a couple sesame sticks in, as if to demonstrate moderation. “Too sweet and you’re sick of yourself by noon. Too virtuous and you start eyeing other people’s lunches. Too crumbly and your pocket turns into bird feed. Too precious and you don’t eat it when you should because you’re saving it for a better time, then get home with it untouched and mean.”

That landed close enough to home that she said nothing.

He looked at her pack by the door. “Who told you to take the hike?”

“No one told me.” She reached for the pumpkin seeds, added a little more. “A friend mentioned the lake. Said it was easy.”

“Friend coming?”

“She had to work.”

“And you came anyway.”

Mara shrugged. “I bought the permit before she canceled.”

“That’s one reason.”

She scraped a drift of sunflower seeds back toward the center of the bowl. “Another reason is I’m tired of hearing myself say I should do things.”

He nodded, but his eyes had already gone to the paper bag. It was enough. He didn’t dig.

At the far end of the counter stood a scale with a shallow metal pan, its enamel chipped to gray steel at the edges. He set the bowl on it. The needle trembled, then steadied.

“You need enough for this afternoon, tomorrow morning, and the walk out,” he said. “Assuming you also take breakfast and something with shape for supper.”

“Shape?”

“Food that knows what meal it belongs to.”

“You really hate soup.”

“On your back? Yes.”

He tipped the bowl and let the mix slide into the paper sack in a dry rush. A few raisins stuck to the metal and had to be coaxed loose with his finger. He folded the top once, twice, then reached for a small strip of blue painter’s tape and sealed it there. On the tape he wrote M with a pencil stub.

“That’s me,” Mara said.

“Unless another customer objects.”

He set the sack aside and lifted her list off the counter where she’d left it near the register. “What else have you got.”

They moved through it item by item. Oatmeal. Fine. Coffee. He raised an eyebrow until she added instant packets instead of the pound bag she’d picked up. Water purification tablets, yes, though he told her where the spring ran clean by the switchback and where not to trust anything that looked innocent. He swapped her canned soup for a packet of noodles and a waxed round of hard cheese. He steered her away from a cast-iron skillet she had only touched out of longing. He sold her two apples after pressing each thumb into them for firmness.

“What about jerky?” she asked.

“If you want jerky, buy jerky.”

“Can it go in the gorp?”

He considered. “It can. Then you have a different conversation.”

“With whom?”

“With your mouth, mainly.”

She laughed again. The room had changed. Or she had. The pile of needed things had stopped looking like evidence and become a shape she could imagine carrying.

He rang up the items on a register older than either of them. Each key gave a stubborn, mechanical chunk under his fingers. She watched the numbers rise. He saw her watching and plucked the dried cherries off the tally without mentioning it.

“That’s not all in there,” she said.

“It is today.”

“I can pay for cherries.”

“Then buy another handful after the hike and tell me if you learned anything.”

He bagged the other supplies in a paper sack broader and stiffer than the one marked GORP. Her little bag he left separate. That seemed intentional. He placed it on top of the folded map she’d chosen, as if it belonged there more naturally than the compass did.

She picked it up and weighed it in her hand. Light enough to dismiss. Heavy enough to matter after miles, maybe. The paper was already taking a faint bloom of oil.

“So the point is portability,” she said. “That’s the definition you trust.”

“The point is use.”

He came out from behind the counter for the first time, carrying her pack by one shoulder strap. Up close he was taller than she had thought. He set the pack on the counter, loosened a side pocket with two fingers, and slid the gorp bag in.

“Not buried,” he said. “If you have to unpack half your life to get to food, you wait too long.”

She adjusted the strap automatically after him, making sure the bag wouldn’t jump out. “How long is too long?”

“When you start bargaining. I’ll eat at the next turn. I’ll eat at the lake. I’ll eat when I’m in a prettier mood.” He cinched the pocket and tugged once. “Eat before noble thoughts set in.”

“You should print that on the sack.”

“I like people to think I’m less opinionated than I am.”

The bell over the door clapped again. Two boys came in all knees and wet hair, smelling of creek water and cold stone. One made directly for the freezer chest in back where ice cream bars lived among bags of frozen peas. The other stopped at the counter and pointed at the open jars.

“You making trail mix?” he asked.

“Looks that way,” the shopkeeper said.

The boy looked at Mara with frank curiosity, then at the little bag in her side pocket. “You want more chocolate than that.”

“Do I.”

He nodded with gravity. “The trick is you think you don’t, but then later you do.”

His friend called from the freezer chest, “They got the kind with the almonds.”

“Life turns generous,” the boy said, and trotted off.

Mara watched them go. “He may be right.”

“He is often right in very small areas.”

She slung the pack upright and threaded her arms into the straps. The weight brought her forward for a second until she found where to stand under it. The shopkeeper watched without fussing. When she’d settled it, he reached over and tightened one load-lifter strap half an inch. The pack came closer to her shoulders.

“There.”

“Thanks.”

“You know where the trailhead is?”

She held up the folded map.

“That wasn’t the question.”

She smiled. “I know where the trailhead is.”

“And the turn to the lake?”

“There’s an old fir with a lightning scar. Cross the log bridge and keep left where the path pretends to split but only one side gets used.”

He looked at her for a beat. “You do listen.”

“Only when cornered.”

He picked up the brass hook’s empty swing where the sample sack had been hanging and steadied it with one finger until it stopped moving. Then he hung another brown paper bag there from beneath the counter. This one already had GORP written across it, same black marker, same square O. Ready for whoever came in next needing a name for a handful.

Mara put cash on the counter. He counted out change into her palm: quarters cool from the till, a dime, two nickels. She pocketed them and took the map.

At the door she stopped. The trout vertebrae above it clicked softly when the frame shifted.

“One more thing,” she said. “If good old raisins and peanuts isn’t really where the word comes from, why does everyone keep saying it?”

He had gone back to the buckle repair. He fit the screwdriver to the slot, not looking up yet.

“Because people enjoy a story they can remember with their mouths full.”

Then he glanced at her.

“And because raisins and peanuts have kept a lot of people from becoming somebody else’s problem.”

Outside, the road bent around the shoulder of the mountain and dropped toward the river. The gas pump out front wore a cardboard bag over its nozzle. A rack of postcards turned on one complaining bearing in the doorway breeze: black bear, waterfall, fire lookout, mule deer in winter brush. Across the road, a ditch carried clear water over stone polished the color of old bones.

Mara stepped off the porch boards and felt the pack settle into a second, less theoretical weight. In the side pocket, the little paper sack made a dry sound against her water bottle. She stood a moment with one hand on the strap, not delaying exactly, just taking the measure of what had changed. She had come in looking for food as a category, one more item to purchase before she could start. She was leaving with something more specific and less important-seeming than that, a mixed bag tucked where her hand could find it without thought.

Down the road, a trail sign showed only a white hiker icon and a mileage number someone had shot at with birdshot years ago. She walked toward it, gravel crunching, and after a dozen steps she reached into the side pocket, pulled out the bag, and opened the folded top.

The first handful was mostly peanuts and seeds. One raisin, one chocolate piece already beginning to soften. She ate while walking. Salt first, then the dense, plain richness of the nuts, then the raisin blooming dark and sweet at the end. The chocolate smeared against her thumb before it gave way.

Not a treat. Not only that.

By the time she reached the sign, she had folded the top closed again and put the bag back where it belonged. Behind her, the shop door opened and shut. Ahead, the path left the road and narrowed between alder and stone, asking the old question in the ordinary way: what can you carry, and what will carry you a little farther when your own reasons begin to thin.

She went in with the answer rustling at her side.