Not only does Packit Gourmet cook up delicious trail food, they make an impact that helps others enjoy the outdoors. We are honored to have them as a sponsor. Their generous support has extended far beyond the office for years, and the meals they provide do more than fill bellies in the backcountry – they facilitate connection.

Recently, Explore Austin Trip Leader Nora Young sat down with us to discuss the importance of mealtime in the outdoors.

What prompted you to join Explore Austin and become a Trip Leader and Mentor? 

Good question. Funny question for me, specifically, because I actually did an Outdoors Educator semester with National Outdoor Leadership School right after college because I felt lost. I knew I was passionate about the outdoors, but I had everyone else telling me to go get a nine-to-five and take the corporate America route. 

After I did that semester with NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) I was like, BOOM! Okay, I need to have some of this in my life but I didn’t know where to start so I picked up odds and ends jobs like raft guiding and things like that. One of my coworkers, Amber Bruner, who had been a trip leader with Explore Austin, contacted me as Explore Austin was looking for a female guide for a last-minute trip outside of Denver. 

She told them she had a friend who’s qualified, but lives out of state. Ultimately, they brought me on to that trip. The stars aligned because I knew I wanted to work with youth and be outside. Getting that phone call from Amber, being interviewed, and then getting on a plane and heading over to help these kids learn how to backpack was amazing.

Now, every year, I have a ticket to go visit friends at Explore Austin and feel incredibly fulfilled by helping youth get outside and do the things I love to do. 

We’ve always seen mealtime as sacred. What can you tell us about the impact of meal time on the Explorers and the trips?

Meal time is so important, especially when you’re on a trip in Arkansas and it’s been 95 degrees with 100% humidity. You are exhausted and you can’t even drink enough water to satiate how thirsty you are. It’s the end of the day and you’re helping people filter water and set up tents. Then, finally, the moment comes that you get to sit down, boil water and cook a meal for yourself. It ends up being the most relaxing part, but it’s also the most rewarding part of the day.

You’re just like, man, I conquered that trail! Now I get to sit and enjoy this fantastic meal!

With a lot of our groups, mealtime ends up being the time we chat about the day. We end up joking about silly stuff that happened on the trail, we talk about different roles in the group, and it’s just one of those really fun, casual community times that feels organic and laid-back.

It’s a time for Explorers to decompress from the day.

Mealtime helps facilitate reflection and growth- celebrating finishing up a big day, buttoning up camp for the evening, and taking time to breathe together. What’s that connection like?

What I love about that time is how organic the sense of community and conversation is. It’s different from facilitating campfire talks like Rose, Bud, Thorn. It’s a lot of laughing and jokes like “Oh, did you see who slipped in the river today?” or “You know, this funny thing happened” or “Hey, remember when I couldn’t get over this big log that fell over in the trail and you helped me over it?”

It’s similar to all those formal fireside chats we have after dinner, but it’s happening organically and they’re all excited to be talking about it.

So really, it’s this amazing sense of community. No one is ever left out. Everyone is helping. Someone is filtering water, someone is carrying the stove, someone is carrying the fuel. That engaged participation makes mealtime and the whole trip that much more rewarding for them. 

How have you seen the Summer Wilderness Trips make a deeper impact on the Explorers? What lights people up?

I had the privilege of being with the Lady Birds Group who started in 2021 with a trip to Colorado Bend State Park, then again this year on a backpacking trip in Arkansas. 

I watched them, for the very first time in their lives, learn how to cook on a stove in the backcountry, build a campsite and set up tents, backpack for two nights and go canoeing. We had pouring rain for the first night we got there and then the afternoon after that. We even had pouring rain in the middle of mountain biking! 

Watching them react to that rain with energy and spunk was incredible.

There were other things that were funny to me, too. Like on the first trip, I would remind Explorers to do things like filter water and make sure tents are ‘bombproofed’ before leaving camp. Then, all of a sudden this year, I hardly had to remind them of anything. They’ve grown in their skills over the Saturday Challenges to the point where they showed up to backpacking and absolutely crushed it. They knew how to set up their tents. If you reminded them, “Hey, let’s make sure the rain flies are nice and taught,” they knew exactly what that meant. The skills that we’ve delivered and the things that we’ve trained them on, they’re retaining and it’s very, very obvious that just one year of maturity and new Saturday Challenges really set them up for success in the backpacking section.

So it was especially fun for me to see because I’ve never been with a group back to back like that, especially at the younger ages. It was apparent that these are skills that they’re going to take away with them for the rest of their life. 

What about from the emotional perspective?

What has always impressed me is that, no matter what the group dynamic is at the beginning of the trip, by the end of the trip, there’s no man left behind. They’re all giggling and having fun in the van coming back. We had two girls on this trip who had barely even met the rest of the group. They were almost brand new. They’d only been to a handful of Saturday Challenges and weren’t with us last year. By the end of the trip, you would have thought everyone had been hanging out for years! Like, since the first grade. It’s amazing to me how when kids this young are faced with the adversity of really hot weather, steep climbs, bugs and mosquito bites, they overcome with a positive reaction.

Sometimes this is hard. It’s easy to have thoughts like “This isn’t fun. What am I doing here?” but 95% of the time, they cope with it by leaning into a friend, supporting someone next to them, and taking out their frustrations by actually being more positive or overly helpful to someone else. When they see someone struggling, they know what that’s like and they go help. Usually that person who was struggling the first day or two or three is the person that’s being the best helper by day four or five or six or vice versa. That’s really fun to watch. It keeps me coming back.

What was your favorite Packit Gourmet meal to enjoy on your Summer Wilderness Trips? 

The Chicken Salad is amazing! You can put cold water or hot water into it so it can be your dinner one night and your lunch the next day. 

It’s the best gourmet lunch you’ll ever have on the trail! 

I’m usually a trail mix and bars only person but once I actually got into the Packit meals as a result of Explore Austin, I was like, oh my gosh, I could have a chicken wrap for lunch?! It’s my favorite one because it’s so fancy!

So you’re usually a bar and trail mix kind of person. A lot of people are like that, but what’s the best part about having Packit on the trail as an alternative?

Hands down, the best thing to me as a Trip Leader was the fact that you could bust out Packit Gourmet for lunch and you could see kids smashing wraps with beans or chicken salad and a wrap or eating chili.

When you’re working with adolescents in the backcountry, you’re usually looking around at every meal time to make sure everyone is drinking water and eating as much as they should be. The fact that Explorers can get a proper meal on a 30 minute lunch break is so awesome!

Plus, a hot meal at lunch. Like, who does that?!

By: Gemma Galvan

When the Explore Austin program was founded, my brother was one of the first children to participate. Every year he would come home from his Summer Wilderness Trips and talk nonstop about his outdoor adventures in Colorado. Year after year, I would listen to every word. He shared about the impossibly tall mountains he climbed and the treacherous rivers where he white-water rafted. The best part was when he described the landscape; he would say it was like a painting.

It will come as no surprise that I set off to Colorado as soon as I could. With $200 in my pocket, I drove sixteen hours in my friend’s old beat-up car. I had never driven in snow or put tire chains on a car, and I would soon learn how severely underdressed I was for the weather. But none of that crossed my mind. My only thought, at the time, was how I was finally going to see the place my brother had told me so much about.

I spent the first two days braving a dangerous winter storm on my adventure. Reaching down deep, I pushed my body farther than I could have imagined, climbing my first ever mountain. And I finally witnessed the picturesque landscape my brother had tried his best to convey to me. It was the most challenging but amazing thing I had ever done. I decided I wouldn’t stop there; I wanted to see what else I had in me.

We always talk about the rippling effects this organization has on the community. A drop is all it takes, right? Well, brace yourselves because here comes the wave. Explore Austin has changed my brother’s life and, in doing so, mine. My brother is an alumnus of Explore Austin. He has attended countless excursions and makes up part of its leadership as the organization’s youngest board member. Because of the love for nature my brother developed in Explore Austin, I overlooked Colorado Springs at the top of the city’s second-highest pike. I kayaked across the frozen water of Resurrection Bay in Alaska. I explored the ancient stone dwellings at Bandelier National Monument. I rode horseback along the shoreline of the Pacific Ocean.

Every time I returned from an adventure, I surveyed the challenging aspects of my life and thought, “I’ve trekked from Red Dot to the Rio Grande. How hard could this be?” I took that confidence with me when applying to my first company. I used the same courage to land my current position as a DevOps Sr. Team Lead at Accenture. It will be the same confidence and courage I will use to build my future with my soon-to-be husband. And I will be able to pass these traits on to my children someday.

Though it may not be obvious, I owe so much to Explore Austin. Its efforts echo further than you may ever be able to see. We are changing lives countless lives – one adventure at a time.