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Two cups of whole wheat flour. Two-and-a-half teaspoons baking powder … or should it be three? A quarter cup whole powdered milk, from the 50-pound bag we kept in the frozen porch. Two or three cups of Bisquik.

Of course I wasn’t actually measuring stuff; no time for that kind of finesse. I dumped everything into a sifter, sifted so violently that a cloud of flour spread from under the lid to filter down across the table. Then I did it again. And again, making three or four pounds of dry bannock mix before stopping to make a quick pancake … just to test it, I told myself.

The cake puffed up in the frying pan, light, sweet and fluffy but more substantial than anything from a straight mix. Dab on some butter, slop on the chokecherry syrup: Yummy! Back to the sifter. How much bannock could we eat during four or five weeks on the trail? A lot, I knew that.

“On the Goodnight trail, on the Lovin’ Trail,” I warbled along with a Chris LeDoux tape. “The old home is lonesome to-night …”

Julie had left that evening for a two-hour run to the first cabin out our trapline, leaving me to finish up gathering supplies for a summer horse trip. She’d cut firewood for a couple days before I joined her with the snow machine. In the next week we’d layout provisions at our various camps we’d be passing through, not just for our summer trek but also advancing supplies for trapping the following winter.

We’d be taking the horses through one tent camp site and three of our four line cabins, passing through some camps twice as our summer route looped out and back. I counted nine pick-up points, some of which needed two days of supplies, others requiring six-days-plus-two-days-plus-one (maybe two) days-off, plus some extra in case of delays, forest fires or floods that could dramatically alter our plans.

With two old horses heading out to the road system for retirement and two new ones yet to be purchased returning with us, plus some summer trapline camp work to do, not to mention endless miles of trailless brush to whack through, burned-over forests and glacial rivers and treeless domes to cross, the trek promised plenty of challenges. I remembered farrier Jim Jennings’ words before we took a similar trek some years ago: “You guys are gluttons for punishment!”

Horseshoes and nails to two cabins. Salt for the horses. Bug dope, lots of it, everywhere. We’d use it on ourselves, the three horses and two dogs daily, even more often when frequent river crossings washed it off. Extra socks and a pair of shoes, because the last time Julie and I did this both our shoes fell apart after the first two weeks of a six-week trek. After a couple hundred miles of bogs and quicksand and cobbles and brush, we had arrived home wearing one pair of sneakers held together with string and shoo goo, and one pair of leaky rubber boots scavenged from one of the cabins.

AA batteries for the camera, GPS and radio. Chain saw gas and oil to the cabin that needed some roof repair and a wood shed replaced. Tin for the two sites where supplies would be cached from a cable suspended between two trees, to discourage bears from climbing the trees. In addition to feed, a canoe and paddles needed hauling out to one spot not accessible from our trail, if we found time to break out the 15 snowy river miles and didn’t run into an impassable flood along the way.

I didn’t even want to contemplate what we’d do if we couldn’t get that cache out … three days of pushing through dense alders and willows along the river bank, with the horses lugging nearly two weeks’ supplies instead of just three, to allow for time going out beyond that site as well as time returning. Ugh.

Five pounds of Bisquik and four pounds of whole-wheat flour later, Chris LeDoux was repeating his songs and I had enough bannock mix for each drop point. All we’d have to do was add water (and maybe dried berries or nuts or canned Vienna sausages) and cook the thick dough in a frying pan over the coals, flipping once before topping with butter and jam for a filling lunch or dessert.

I had pages and pages of notes and lists to coordinate. During my last trip down the trapline r d listed what supplies each cabin was low on. I had a master list from our last long summer trek four years ago, two pages noting how long I expected the food from each site to last, and a list of trail food for each place (plus a couple pages of “Things to do Differently Next Time!).  Cocoa mix, milk, instant oatmeal, five-minute oatmeal, cold cereal, homemade granola. Dried vegetables and berries we had harvested the previous summer, and store-bought dried fruits and nuts. Summer sausage and cheese, crackers and Jell-O and chocolate, cans of meat, instant potatoes, rice, and ramen noodles.

We didn’t have enough instant potatoes, or instant oatmeal. Maybe a friend could bring some out before I left; if not we’d do without. One of our neighbors was organizing a charter. I called the feed store; could they deliver 10 bags of Horse Chow 200 by, um, tomorrow noon? Maybe. The feed is denser than the Horse Chow 100 we had on hand. If it didn’t make the flight, we’d not only have to settle for the less-nutritious stuff (which meant a bigger load, which meant a slower trip with more walking and less riding for us) but we’d also be paying for that part of the flight hauling nothing but air.

How much feed would the horses need? Would we find much forage in early June? Julie wanted to bring two dogs, I wanted three. All would need to eat, but how much?  I made a new coupling rope for connecting a second pack horse to the lead one, and an extra cotton lead rope so we could trade out en route. Even new ones could disintegrate in a month of daily use being wet and ripped through brush and dead spruce snags.

I had been sorting and listing, checking off and boxing or bagging for four days. I had a dog in heat that needed to be bred, I had to make reservations to go to Kotzebue to look at a couple Icelandic horses for sale there, and find out if Linden Transport could fly them to Fairbanks if we ended up getting them. Three horses and two mostly-grown pups needed exercise, and I had to haul in a couple loads of water before I headed out (not to mention finishing a story for the Sunday paper).

Gradually the food and supplies spread across the floor consolidated into boxes and sacks. I still had to get together gas and oil, feed, and emergency gear for my snow machine run, but at least the end was in sight.

I was mightily looking forward to leaving “The old home lonesome.” Meantime … maybe I’ll just have myself another bannock.