How Three Words Entered the FME Lexicon
Good News River, Alaska · 2006
By Scott Miller · Forbes-Miller Expeditions
Somewhere around the second morning of our first Good News River trip, Jeff Pennick put his contact lenses in and discovered that breakfast wasn’t finished with him.
That was the morning “Note to Self” entered the Forbes-Miller Expeditions vocabulary. We have been finding reasons to use it ever since.
2006 Good News River
The first Good News River expedition. Four of the original five, with Jeff Pennick behind the camera. Equipment evaluation was ongoing. So was breakfast.
There were five of us: Charlie, the CSM, Dayton Berg, Jeff Pennick, and me—the original plank holders of FME. We had rented the rafts and assembled an assortment of equipment borrowed largely from our hunting and camping trips. We had fishing to look forward to, unfamiliar country around every bend, and several theories about what constituted suitable expedition gear.
Some of those theories would not survive the week.
The weather was doing the usual western coastal Alaska routine: rain, sunshine, more rain, and a little frost in the morning to provide variety. Autumn had that unmistakable smell in the air. There was something new to look at wherever the river took us, and enough fishing to remind us why we had come and not every splash in the creek was a fish flopping. It was an adventure in every sense of the word, including the sense in which you discover that something you packed was a terrible idea.
A shakedown trip
In my case, that something had three legs and no back.
I had brought a folding tripod chair. In my defense, I was packing light for flight and float. It folded neatly, occupied very little space, and weighed almost nothing. Unfortunately, I had given rather more consideration to carrying it than to sitting on it.
The chair performed beautifully right up until a man wanted to use it as a chair.
This was, in practical terms, a shakedown trip. We were finding out what worked, what needed improving, and what should have been left in the garage. By the next trip, we would own our rafts and have a considerably more informed shopping list. For now, we were still gathering evidence.
Jeff was about to make a contribution that required no additional equipment.
Now, Jeff is a great guy. He has a wonderfully dry sense of humor, likes things arranged properly, and was operating some distance outside his preferred camping conditions.
In my affectionate interpretation, Jeff’s ideal wilderness experience involves a cabin beside a lake, a roaring fireplace, good wine, and a nine o’clock wake-up call. He then strolls down to the shore to put a line in the water while somebody brings his coffee on a velvet pillow.
Jeff, The Legend!
Jeff Pennick on the Good News. Between meals, equipment reviews, and improvements to camp procedure, we also managed some fishing.
The pillow may be an exaggeration. The general level of service is not.
Our arrangements fell a little short. We had the water, certainly, but the cabin was missing, the fireplace was open to the weather, and anybody waiting for room service was likely to miss breakfast. Jeff had brought his sense of humor, though, and that proved more useful than several things the rest of us had packed.
Breakfast, with consequences
Camp meals were built around Mountain House, MREs, and a fairly enthusiastic selection of condiments. Tabasco, Tiger Sauce, and whatever else we had brought along gave us some influence over the proceedings. We might not have been able to change the weather, but we could at least make supper taste different from lunch.
Somewhere along the way, we also established the tradition of taking at least one posed Mountain House photograph on a trip. The fish got their portraits. Apparently, supper deserved one too. Hold the pouch where we can read it, keep the spoon in view, and try to look like someone whose dining arrangements have worked out.
That morning, Jeff had used Tabasco at breakfast. Later, when he went to put his eyes in, some of it was still on his fingers.
Contact lenses are not ordinarily a spectator activity. A man attends to his eyesight while everyone else gets on with the business of camp. On this occasion, however, a routine morning task became rather abruptly the most urgent matter at hand.
His eyes started burning, and he was trying to rinse them out. There is nothing enjoyable about pepper in your eyes; I have had that experience and feel no need to revisit it. The problem was miserable enough without the realization that he had administered it to himself.
Then, as he was recovering, Jeff delivered his assessment:
“Note to Self: wash hands before putting in contacts.”
That finished us.
It was the understatement. He had just managed to season his own eyeballs and was treating the matter like a small correction to tomorrow’s packing list. There was no elaborate explanation, no attempt to suggest that circumstances had conspired against him. Just a dry little memorandum addressed to the person responsible.
We about died laughing.
The burning eyes were not the funny part. Jeff finding exactly the right sentence afterward was. He had given us a way to acknowledge an unfortunate decision without spending half an hour explaining why it had seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.
Among that group, this was going to save a considerable amount of conversation.
The phrase took hold immediately. Nobody had to announce that we were adopting it. The next occasion came along, someone said it, and the rest of us knew exactly what was meant. It helped that fresh material was readily available.
More field notes
My tripod chair, for instance, had not improved with familiarity. It remained painfully uncomfortable and eventually added falling over to its list of features.
There is very little dignity in discovering that your camp furniture has a learning curve. A chair ought to let a man relax without requiring him to remain actively involved in keeping the arrangement upright.
Note to Self: purchase a better chair for the next trip.
The Mountain House Portrait
Somewhere along the way, we also established the tradition of taking at least one posed Mountain House photograph on a trip. The fish got their portraits. Apparently, supper deserved one too. Hold the pouch where we can read it, keep the spoon in view, and try to look like someone whose dining arrangements have worked out. And I am sitting on that damned three-legged chair!
I still maintain that packing light was a reasonable objective. I had simply pursued it past the point where my backside was willing to support the policy.
Then there was the backup water filter, a hand-pump MSR that took forever to produce a gallon of water. “Forever” is not a technical measurement, and I would not expect the manufacturer to accept it as one. It is, however, an accurate description of how the operator felt while everybody else got on with the evening.
Water duty became something we settled by roshambo: rock, paper, scissors.
The winner could relax. The loser became the water department.
It says something about a piece of equipment when the most important part of using it is arranging for someone else to have the turn. We needed drinking water, and the filter did the job, but it gave a man ample time to consider alternatives while pumping.
Note to Self: find a better arrangement before the next trip.
“The loser became the water department.”
Jeff on water duty. An entire river at our feet. Drinking water available in installments.
One trip was sufficient. We found a gravity-fed system we could fill, hang, and leave to flow while we attended to something else. Nobody had to crouch over it conducting an endurance trial. Nobody had to lose a hand game before supper.
Gravity, which had been such a bastard about the chair, was finally making itself useful.
Over time, “Note to Self” expanded beyond equipment. It covered packing decisions, camp routines, meals that deserved another appearance, and meals that had been given every opportunity to redeem themselves and had declined.
Occasionally, it applied to people.
Someone can be excellent company for dinner without being the right companion for several days in a raft. Different expectations become easier to notice when everybody is wet and there is nowhere else to go. A few conclusions about future invitation lists were reached that way.
Those particular notes are probably best left out of print.
None of us was exempt. That was part of what made the phrase work. It was difficult to get too superior about someone else’s mistake while sitting on a chair you had to balance, or while carefully avoiding eye contact with the fellow still pumping your drinking water. Sooner or later, everybody supplied a lesson.
What stayed with us
For all the laughter, we were learning things worth knowing. We learned which equipment suited the way we traveled, where saving weight made sense, and where a little extra comfort was worth carrying. We learned what made camp run better and which decisions needed another look before we set off again.
We were also learning how to travel together.
A trip has plenty of room for good fishing and beautiful country. It also has room for cold mornings, wet equipment, chores, and plans that turn out to have been more attractive from home. Having people around who can find something to laugh about afterward makes those moments considerably easier to carry.
Jeff did that with one sentence. He was uncomfortable, had every reason to be annoyed, and still found a line that the rest of us would remember for years.
These days, “Note to Self” follows us back into the garage. Somebody picks up an old piece of gear, and before long we are discussing where it went, what happened, and whether it deserved to go again. A man may remember the happy moment he bought something. His companions are often available to remind him of the less happy moment he used it.
“Note to Self.”
And there we are again: five men on the Good News, rented rafts, autumn in the air, and a collection of equipment being subjected to an increasingly honest review. I can hear Jeff’s delivery and the laughter that followed. The traffic outside the garage fades a little, and the river gets another turn.
We have changed plenty since that first trip. We bought our own rafts, improved the water arrangements, and developed much firmer opinions about camp seating. Some things earned their place. Others earned a story and an early retirement.
The phrase has required no improvement. It weighs nothing, takes up no room, and still does exactly what we need it to do.
Which is more than I can say for that damned chair.
The CSM and Charlie. The conversations between the miles were part of the journey, too.
