Camping in high style with The Commander

You have not camped until you have camped with The Commander.

Not that I am complaining. I have eaten better on the camping trips with the Upside Down Canoe Club – the UDCC – than I ever did at home. (Beating Fluffernutters was not a big challenge.) I believe the UDCC was the first expedition to enjoy fresh artichokes on the Allagash and cherry cobbler from a Dutch oven.

Aging and feeble, we have pretty much forsaken wilderness camping for truck-and-cabin camping on the mighty St. Croix. Cooking on a Coleman stove in the wilderness has been replaced with a propane stove in the (comparatively) luxurious Loafer’s Lodge cabin, a stone’s throw from beautiful downtown Vanceboro. The cabin was complete with dishes, pots and pans. A lot of pots and pans.

The Commander was a new one on me. He is the latest member to join the UDCC. It is hard to recruit members when every expedition ends in near disaster. We have left tents, fishing poles, tackle boxes, a full T-Fal pot set, paddles, Coleman stoves, coolers and an (almost) full bottle of Black Velvet in most navigable rivers across the state.

But there he was, Saturday morning, manning the Loafer’s Lodge propane stove at the crack of dawn.

“Pancakes?” he asked.

I liked him already.

First of all, he had, somehow, miraculously prepared gourmet coffee in a complicated thermos contraption. He slowly and carefully showed me how to open, pour and close the magic device.

He is The Commander.

While I was wiping sleep (and a few spiders) from my eyes, The Commander reached into the already hot oven and pulled out some carefully warmed plates. One does not serve breakfast on “room temperature” crockery, he explained.

This was a radical departure from our customary, greasy paper plates.

Not only that. Listen. He also had heated the maple syrup by placing it in boiling water before anyone else woke up.

Then he made buttermilk pancakes from scratch with real buttermilk. It was before 7 a.m. Saturday, and for the first time in my 66-year life, I contemplated marriage with a man. As long as there was heated syrup involved.

Lunch was just as amazing. On Saturday it was grilled bagels with roast beef and very sharp cheddar cheese. On Sunday, it was grilled bagels with turkey and Swiss Lorraine cheese.

You have to match the cheese with the meat, he explained.

The Commander said he goes to his favorite supermarket and orders the exact amount of slices of each meat, depending on the number of campers. Then he demands the thickness of each slice. You must rule the deli section if you want a successful invasion – or camping trip – he explained patiently to his troops. He must have had five coolers for the weekend trip.

He is, after all, The Commander.

Unfortunately, he had the time to cook only one dinner, pork chops with Shake ‘n’ Bake in the propane oven. Perfect.

In a St. Croix riverside ceremony sometime Sunday afternoon after the turkey-Swiss Lorraine-grilled bagel sandwiches, we called for a change of command. Jefferson Phil, the former president of UDCC, was deposed in a bloodless coup.

I think I saw a tear in his eye, at least until he tasted that Swiss Lorraine. Even he voted for The Commander.

Now we have The Commander. He won’t give his name, but he claims to be a retired veteran of the U.S. Navy. We don’t care.

We have buttermilk pancakes. From scratch.

The king is dead. Long live the (buttermilk) King.

The Commander.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.