Contents of Gorp

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ashley calling from San Diego.

Hi, Ashley. Welcome to the show.

Hello, Ashley.

Hi, you guys. How are you?

All right.

Doing well.

What can we do for you?

Okay, so the other day I was getting ready to go on a little trip, and my roommate came home, and she saw a big bag of gorp sitting on the table. And I have no idea what gorp is. And so she continues to tell me, and she says it’s some sort of trail mix. And I wanted to know where that started from because I’m a big backpacker. I’m from the Midwest originally, and I’ve never heard this word.

You’ve never heard of gorp?

How interesting.

No.

So as far as you’re concerned, this is the kind of thing you have to sneak across the border with, put it in the wheel wells of your car.

Exactly.

It sounds like it.

Doesn’t it sound like the slang name for some illegal drug?

It does.

Gorp.

Yeah.

G-O-R-P, right?

Right.

Correct.

So, Ashley, did she have any kind of information to give you about the name?

No. You know what? She said her dad just always called it that. And she’s also from the Midwest. And she said she didn’t know where it came from either.

Well, we don’t know for sure. There’s an old word, gorp, that means to eat greedily. And I’m betting that that’s what it comes from. A lot of people will tell you that it’s an acronym for good old raisins and peanuts. But that’s hooey. It does not come from that. And I know we’re going to get emails from people going, but everyone tells you that. And you will find books and magazines and everybody saying that it does mean good old raisins and peanuts. But there’s a problem with that.

Tell me the problem.

The problem is that early recipes include like 15 other ingredients.

Yeah, yeah.

Like powdered milk and coconut and M&Ms and chocolate and other things and not just good old raisins and peanuts.

Oh.

So your acronym would be something like smergabubber.

That might sound better.

Yeah.

So did it originate in the Midwest? Is that a Midwest word?

It’s an American word. We know this for sure. So you’re less likely to find that people in the UK and Australia will know the term at all. It looks like it comes from the 1950s. Definitely we know by the 1960s it was fixed very firmly in the lexicon of this kind of explosion of hiking and hikers. A lot of the trails that we know and take for granted today really became well established in the 1960s. So we don’t know exactly where it came from, but it seems to come from within the community of hikers and not from a commercial outfit, not from any kind of food producer or any kind of brand name or anything like that.

Okay.

And so is it just another word for trail mix? Is it the same thing?

Well, I don’t want to bust open this debate, Martha, because people will argue for hours. It’s like arguing about barbecue. People will argue for hours about what constitutes gorp or what constitutes trail mix.

Well, I tell you, the place I came across gorp first was in a wonderful essay by John McPhee.

Yes.

It’s called Travels in Georgia, and he describes traveling through Georgia with biologists who are analyzing roadkill and sometimes eating it.

Mm—

And the first line of this whole essay is, I asked for the gorp. And then he later describes the gorp as soybeans, sunflower seeds, oats, pretzels, wheat checks, raisins, and kelp.

Wow, that’s far from the gorp I know.

Yeah.

I’ve got a couple other recipes here. Dry cereal, powdered milk, sugar, raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg. And another one is grape nuts, sugar, powdered milk, cinnamon, and raisins with hot water. And you serve it like a cereal.

Oh, really?

And that’s their gorp.

All right.

Well, Ashley, what do you take on the trail?

Well, I usually just have like the peanuts and the M&Ms and the raisins. They’re just my typical trail mix.

Well, I tell you what, we’ll ask our listeners what their version of gorp is. I’m hoping we hear from a lot of fellow hikers.

Okay, great.

Thank you, guys.

Thanks for calling, Ashley.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Gorp.

Well, what’s your gorp?

Let us know. 877-929-9673 or send your answers in email to words@waywordradio.org.