I spent 22 years in the Army, in the Rangers and Special Forces. After I retired I built a business, sold it, and ran clinical operations at care facilities during the pandemic.

On paper things were going fine. I still felt like something had gone quiet. So I planned a Misogi, a Japanese tradition of self-purification and renewal: pick something hard enough that you are not sure you can finish it, and go do it.

I picked a solo trek through one of the toughest circuits in Patagonia.

I planned to carry everything in and out on my back. When I laid out the food, the problem was obvious. I would need more than my pack could hold.

Then I remembered pemmican: dried meat and rendered fat, made by Native nations across North America long before anyone sold a protein bar. I had just harvested an elk, so I made my own. The first batch was bad. I kept at it until I had something I wanted to eat every day.

It carried me the whole way. I never ran out of fuel.

When I got home, friends and family tried what was left. They asked for more. Then they asked where they could buy it.

BIVI is what that batch became: a beef pemmican bar we make ourselves, in house, in a commercial kitchen in Austin, Texas. Grass-fed beef, tallow, and ingredients you can read.

Real food works. I learned that the long way, on foot.