Brunswick stew stirs up funds for MST project

Adam Smith was stirring the pot on Valentine’s Day.

No, not causing trouble on a day set aside to show love.

Smith was stirring a pair of 15-gallon black pots Saturday at Camp Clearwater filled to the brim with Brunswick stew and chicken and pastry.

Cups of the concoctions were being sold to raise money for the Mountains-to-Sea Trail campaign. The event was part of Trail Festival Weekend held at various Bladen County locations.

“I can’t tell you the whole recipe because then it wouldn’t be unique,” said Smith about his Brunswick stew that included a bit of Cayenne pepper for a little kick. “It’s like the Appalachia one-pot meal. You just start with the base ingredient and keep adding ingredients until the meal is complete. It takes about four hours.”

The Mountains-to-Sea Trail is an ongoing project to build a hiking trail that covers the state from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Outer Banks. Almost 700 miles of trail are open. A combination of trail and connecting roads covers 1,175 miles across the state. The MST project plans to convert the connecting roads into trails.

Two conversion areas of priority are in Bladen County — the three lakes of Jones, White and Singletary and the Cape Fear River levee near Kelly. The organization has received approval to construct a 185-foot trail bridge across Turnbull Creek in Bladen Lakes State Forest.

“As a society we have gotten away from outdoor activity exercise for the most part,” said Smith, who is the manager of Camp Clearwater in White Lake. “Most people see exercise as a monthly gym membership and a treadmill, but the folks that are pushing and operating and funding the Mountain-to-Sea Trail have a really unique way for anybody in North Carolina to be able to have easy access to a marked safe trail that they can get into nature and can actually exercise. I think that’s really important.”

White Lake’s Carl deAndrade is on the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail board.

“I know Carl and Diane deAndrade from White Lake Marine,” Smith said. “It’s just a good bunch of folks that do this whole operation. I don’t have any problem at all helping them fund something that’s very important.”

As for Smith’s tasty Brunswick stew, its popularity came about by necessity rather than desire. Camp Clearwater had planned an event and all of the food trucks expected to attend cancelled. Smith showed up with 15 gallons of Brunswick stew and “the people just went crazy,” he said. “It turns out I actually know how to cook it quite well.”

Other events held during Saturday’s Trail Festival Weekend included a story walk and reproductions of North Carolina’s founding documents at Jones Lake State Park, a guided hike at Singletary Lake, a scavenger hunt on the White Lake path and a concert by the Sea-Cruz Band at Lu Mil Vineyard.

For information about the Mountains-to-Sea Trail program, visit mountainstoseatrail.org.