Emily Vikre - Camp Cocktails: Easy, Fun, and Delicious Drinks for the Great Outdoors

EASY, FUN & DELICIOUS DRINKS FOR THE GREAT OUTDOORS

EMILY VIKRE

This had better not turn into a goddamn expedition

Our family lore is filled with stories of, shall we say, character-building camping trips. Three-day trips in the pelting rain with nothing but roasted soy nuts to eat; weekends of climbing, sleeping on the wall, and eating only carrots and saltines; March ski camping trips that we thought would be warmer than they were (and so whole nights were spent sleepless, doing jumping jacks to get the circulation going again). The most memorable was a middle school trip, canoeing in the Boundary Waters with my parents and my two younger brothers. I say canoeing, but as I recall, much of the trip was long portages or dragging the canoe through swamps too shallow to paddle through but too boggy to walk through easily. We crossed the top of a beaver dam, using it as a bridge, and my brothers and my scrawny, gangly legs kept being swallowed by gaps in the beavers handiwork and gashed by sharp stick ends. The kicker wasnt even the questionable route we were taking, thoughit was that my parents had recently started us all on a macrobiotic diet and, as such, we didnt have real chocolate with us. We were forced to eat carob. Our neighbor, Sherry, when she first heard this story, laughed and said, Oh yeah! We have a term for that in our family. We call them goddamn expeditions.

Now, its not that my parents were bad at camping. Its that my dad believes in the sanctity of suffering. He probably wouldnt describe it as such, but its obvious from watching him over the years that he takes a certain amount of pride in physical and mental strain, a sense that it purifies you and makes you a better person. It may be a Nordic thing. I know some of it has rubbed off on me because I catch myself in arguments with my husband, Joel, firmly telling him that some unnecessarily uncomfortable thing is good for us. His retort: Well, this had better not turn into a goddamn expedition.

As I grew older, particularly after I moved to the East Coast, I learned that you could have a different approach to camping. I made friends who did things such as bring ingredients for Suzanne Goins chorizo-pork burgers and a bottle of Bordeaux on a sea kayaking adventure; another who packed an eight-person tent and a queen-size blow-up mattress in her trunk just for herself when she went car camping; and others who rented tiny log huts in New Hampshire so we could stash an abundance of food and drink there, allowing us to climb up and ski down mountains by day, then feast at night. Escaping to the wilderness can be about pushing your physical and mental boundaries, but it can also be a celebration of the wild abundance of being alive on this gorgeous Earth, about the luxury of a slower pace and being fully present to yourself, your campmates, and your surroundings. And to me, there are few things quite as celebratory and convivial as a good cocktail.

Soon after I got into cocktails, my husband and I decided to leave our jobs in public health on the East Coast, move back to the northern shores of Lake Superior, and start a distillery, where we would make craft spirits that were a celebration of terroir, of the woods and water and culture of the area. Fun idea, right? It truly has been, although Ill also admit that entrepreneurship is its own kind of expedition. Two years in, a change in the laws allowed us to open a cocktail room at our distillerythat is to say, a bar where we could serve the spirits that we make. We went for it, and I began a deep dive into craft cocktails, history, cocktail technique, and ingredients, including making some of my own new syrups and liqueurs with locally foraged plants (youll find recipes for some of these in !).

Somewhere along the way, I became the go-to person for planning and providing drinks for gatherings of all sorts, at our home, at weddings, at birthday parties, and even in the woods. And let me tell you, once you discover how amazing a craft cocktail tastes in the backwoodsor just outside on a back porch if you cant make it to the woodsyoull never want to go back to a plain old can of beer or flask of straight whiskey. That, in a nutshell, is the premise for this book. There is something about the balance and harmony of a good cocktail that mirrors the balance and harmony of nature. And the combination of the two, when the sun is at that golden angle, or the stars are a thick cascade across the sky, or youre by a crackling fire after a chilly day of hiking, can be transcendent.