When Food Became Gear: How Eating Shaped Outdoor Adventure

Food has long been one of our most essential pieces of outdoor gear. In this engaging presentation, explore how advances in food preservation helped reshape camping, mountaineering, polar travel and beyond, allowing adventurers to go farther, stay out longer, and push past seasonal and environmental limits. Tracing the evolution of outdoor food through military innovation, early expeditions, and postwar gear culture, this talk reveals how what we eat outside became just as specialized as tents, sleeping bags, and stoves, transforming the way we experience life outdoors. About our speaker: Martin Hogue teaches in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University and is a leading historian of camping culture. He is the author of Making Camp: A Visual History of Camping’s Most Essential Items and Activities and Thirtyfour Campgrounds.