Tracker of Plants

Monday, April 23rd

 

 

Containers.

On Monday I spent some time cleaning out my car from my camping trip last week and continued to add to my everyday car survival kit and work on my survival cache project. This involved finding all the jars, bottles, Tupperware, and film canisters in the house for divvying up foods like flour, sugar, spices and soy sauce and transferring boxed foods like macaroni and cheese and instant potatoes into more waterproof containers.

Here is a list of what is in my car at the moment. Sounds like a lot, but it all fits. It is a station wagon so I can still put people in the backseat if I move everything into into the back or put down the seats and sleep in there if I move everything to the passenger seat and backseat foot areas.

Maps:

• map of Allegheny National Forest including forest road numbers
• map of McKean County
• Scandia, Cornplanter Bridge, Stickney and Bradford quadrangles

Tools:

• swiss army knife
• big and small screwdrivers
• trowel
• plastic bucket
• dandelion weeder (really not that useful)
• full sized shovel
• folding army shovel
• folding saw
• machete
• hatchet

Firestarting:

• bag of birchbark
• several lighters
• several boxes of matches
• magnesium keychain

Personal Care:

• contact solution
• contact case
• extra contacts
• comb
• condoms
• big bottle of advil
• toilet paper
• tampons
• Milk thistle tincture for pre-alcoholic binge/possible poisoning liver protectant

Water, Food, and Food Procurement and Preparation:

• various sized camping pots
• tin can with wire hanger
• bottles of water
• sugar, flour, oil, rice, salt and spices, bullion cubes, cinnamon, dried mushrooms, worcestershire sauce
• cans of beans, beef stew, riga sprats, spaghetti-Os, etc.
• sparkling grapejuice and no bake desserts for more refined occasions
• fishing line
• willow fish trap
• sunflower seeds and peanut butter for baiting traps

Clothing (changes seasonally):

• wool sweater
• wool hat
• bathing suit
• felted wool mittens (double as potholders)
• handkerchief
• rain coat

Roadkill Kit:

• garbage bags
• latex gloves

Herbal Tincture Kit:

• vodka
• ball jars
• scissors
• stale tobacco for offerings

Sleeping and Shelter:

• two old sleeping bags (comfortable down to 40 or so alone, one inside the other for extreme cold)
• one blanket (better than a sleeping bag to put on top for two people sleeping together)
• one full size egg crate camping mattress
• one shitty blue tarp with holes, smallish size
• one space blanket type tarp, also smallish
• small pillow

Useful Books (in plastic bin):

• Primitive Technology: A Book of Earth Skills, edited by David Westcott
• Participating in Nature by Thomas J. Elpel
• Tom Browns Jr.’s Field Guide to Wilderness Survival
• Tom Brown Jr.’s Field Guide to Living With the Earth
• Tracking and the Art of Seeing by Paul Rezendes
• Peterson’s Field Guide to Wildflowers: Northeastern and North-Central North America
• Billy Joe Tatums Wild Foods Field Guide and Cookbook
• Wild Vegetarian Cookbook by Steve Brill (These cookbooks aren’t so much for the wild as for Nick’s house where we like to cook. They require too many ingredients especially Brill’s because it’s all weird vegan stuff.)

Bag for Exploring:

• compass
• sheath knife
• hemp string
• matches and lighter
• cattail down and birchbark for tinder
• plastic grocery bags, if I expect to collect plants or mushrooms

Other:

• backpacking pack
• LED headlamp
• bag ‘o change
• corncob pipe
• Advanced Bird Language tapes
• pens and pencils
• thermometer (to see how well certain shelters, sleeping bags, and clothing do in specific temperatures)
• fine and medium knife sharpening stones
• handwarmers
• ropes of different lengths and widths
• ball of kite string
• gas siphoning hose
• duct tape and “gorilla” tape
• toilet paper

Tuesday, April 24th

Now how to cache the food? I did not and still don’t know much about the “proper” technique. When I first had the idea I thought I would just stuff some cans in a crack in the rocks, but then I worried what if someone finds them? People are always poking around in crevices looking for geocaches and animals. Also what about the porcupines? They love to chew on metal and they also love to live in rock crevices. Would they chew through my cans? Maybe I should bury the stuff. I thought I would just dig a hole and put the cans in there, but would they rust and if so how long before they rusted straight through? Plus as I developed the idea I soon knew I wanted to store more than cans of beans. Things like oil and spices and grains could turn bland and bitter wildcrafted foods into a much more appetizing meal. I was reminded of the Seneca who stored their corn in bark or coal burned barrels, or pits lined with bark, grasses or hemlock boughs. But would my food really stay dry and undisturbed that way? Or did the Indians have such vast quantities (they stored enough emergency food to last seven years) that it didn’t matter if the stuff on the edges of the pit got a little rotten or rodents and insects carried some of it away. It is certainly something to experiment with but for these particular caches I decided I would rather not chance it.

 

 

Some food to go in the caches.

My next thought was a big plastic container like the ones you might store winter clothing in during the summer. Would it be waterproof enough? Would rodents be able to chew their way through? Maybe I should look up survival caching on the internet. So I did. But only one resource I found covered what I was looking for: http://www.rogueturtle.com/articles/thecache.php This article suggested using PVC pipe and explained the process in enough detail that it looked like something I might be able to do. Yet I was a pretty intimidated. Going to the store to buy plumbing equipment, men asking me if I need help, those big towering aisles…Well, whether I used a pipe or some other container I would have to buy it because I didn’t have any big enough for everything in the house. I took all I wanted to bury at my first cache site and drove off to Lowe’s to look potential containers.

They had PVC pipes and caps. Thankfully in the four-inch size pipe they had 5 feet lengths (all the others came in 10 foot lengths. I suppose the longer pieces would be a better bargain but much more awkward for me to carry out of the store and get in the car.) I picked up one piece of pipe, to be cut in half at home, and four caps, in order to make two caches. But these pipes would never fit everything I had planned for this first cache, in an area I frequent more than others. I went to look at storage bins. The bins disappointed me. Their tops were flimsy and not tight fitting. The best were the kind with handles that locked around the lid, but they still did not seem watertight. I went to look at five gallon buckets. Ah ha! Much better. Thicker plastic, tight fitting lid, and less expensive, to boot. So I left the store with one pipe, four pipe caps, and the bucket and lid. The buckets and lids were sold separately and I put the lid on the bucket hoping they would see that price tag first and only charge me for the lid. Believe it or not it worked! It was the pipe caps that cost the most at $5.44 each. The five feet of pipe cost $7.63. With a $10 discount coupon I paid $20 for my purchases. Not bad, but you can bet I’m going to keep a closer eye out from now on for sources of free buckets and pipes.

 

 

Can you tell where the cache is buried?.

Next I drove straight to base camp to bury the goods. I used a folding army shovel to do the job. Didn’t run into any giant rocks which was good. I would estimate it took me ½ hour to dig a bucket-sized hole. I buried it so that the top would only be a few inches under the ground. To finish it off I spread out the extra soil, camouflaged the area with leaves and sticks, and marked the exact burial spot with the heaviest stone I could lift. Well, guess we will see how this works out. The web article says to put a desiccant in the container and that you can make one yourself by baking dry wall cubes in the oven, but frankly I didn’t want to spend the time or the money. Everything in the bucket is also in either a can, a metal tin or another plastic container so I hope that is good enough.

Wednesday, April 25th

I spent most of the day working on last week’s article! Trying not to take so long this week.

Thursday, April 26th

I put some more food in my car kit and sawed the pipe I bought in half with my folding saw. I was worried it was going to be difficult or bad for the blade to saw plastic but it was easy and I don’t think it did any damage. Other than that it was rainy and I felt crappy and watched TV.

Friday, April 27th

All morning I worked on my herbalism. Basically I had a bunch of stuff already made and I just bottled tinctures, strained vinegars and honeys, poured off oils, cleaned bottles, etc. Some time in the future I would like to share the information on how to make these things.

 

 

Osha tincture, echinachea root, vodka.

 

 

Willow bark vinegar. The plastic keeps the cap from rusting

 

 

Making press and seal licorice and peppermint teabags.

 

 

Handy dandy scale.

 

 

Drinking mugwort brew. Shouldn’t drink at 9am? Pshaw.

 

 

Chickweed for BCT (bacon, chickweed and tomato sandwich).

Saturday, April 28th

Didn’t do anything rewildish. The closest thing was dumpster diving at the college dorms. School just got out and as expected we saw tons of perfectly good stuff. I tend to go for everyday necessities such as food, containers, binders, notebooks rather than the flashy stuff like appliances and DVD players.

Sunday, April 29th

 

 

Festival goers.

 

 

Fried Leeks.

 

 

Bikers love leeks, you should too.

The last Sunday in April is always the Westline Leek Festival and I have been going to it since I was a child. Wild leeks are a fairly big deal around here. Next weekend there will be another festival in Bradford, known as Stinkfest and many churches and fire departments have leek dinners. I love that leeks are one wild food that people recognize, celebrate, and enjoy. I also just love leeks…and onions, and garlic and anything else in that family.

Nick and I got to the festival around noon. Drinking is a big part of the festival and I did not have my driver license. (My younger sister stole it!) So I was branded with a green marker. Just call me XPennyScoutX. Nah, that didn’t stop me. I just had Nick buy me the trademark drink, a bloody mary with a leek in it. We bought some fried leeks, leek dip, and leek bread for lunch. You could also buy items such as a “Greek leek dog,” leek and potato soup, and more.

 

 

Nick’s dad with a trout.

Soon after that we met Nick’s dad and some of his friends for a little trout fishing. I didn’t have my fishing license either but they let me reel in a few. I had never used a fly rod before. Nick’s dad is an excellent fisherman so we were bound to catch ‘em, unfortunately it was a “delayed harvest artificial lure only” area and this time of year we weren’t allowed to keep any of the catches. Had there not been so many witnesses Nick and I might have taken them anyway…

After fishing it was back to the leek fest. This time I poured some vodka from my tincture making kit in the back of my car into a plastic water bottle. Uh oh. By the time we left the festival to set up for the night I was pretty tipsy and by the time we got down our camping spot I was, shall we say, wasted. Last year for the festival we had built a sweat lodge and wigwam frame out of beech saplings down on this island and covered the shelter with waxed canvas army tarps. They are expensive and heavy to carry but incredibly long-lasting, surprisingly waterproof, and blend in much better and make less noise than a modern tarp. Anyway we brought back the same tarps but found our frame was brittle and falling apart. Nick said I should cut down some new saplings to fix it while he tried to fish for out dinner. I fell on my face and tried to explain that might not be such a good idea based on my condition but he said, “Think of it as a survival drill. Just pretend you have hypothermia”
“Okay,” I agreed.

So I managed to fell a sapling for the shelter and even take off a few side branches, and get my jeans wet up to my knees in the process. Nick came back. He didn’t get any fish before losing his fly, a “green weenie”. He suggested we leave the shelter for the time being and go on a walk. I followed him down to a wet sandy area with some green plants growing out of it. They looked like cattails so we started digging ferociously at the roots and collected a good pile. They seemed kinda weird but I chalked it up to the sandy soil.

 

 

The shoots in question .

 

 

Playing in the sand? Or praying I can stand?.

 

 

Not cattail roots.

We went back to the campsite and I volunteered to start a fire while Nick cleaned the roots. But when he brought them back all clean I could see that they didn’t look anything like cattail roots. They were hard and pink and nubbly, and upon tasting they left a bit of a burning in the throat. Okay. We decided we had better not eat them and had some food from the car instead.

As for the wigwam my tree didn’t do much good but Nick fixed the tarps up and made a shelter that would do. Sometime during the middle of the night it began to rain. We had to adjust one of the tarps to cover our feet but amazingly we stayed warm and dry. Nick deemed it the “shittiest shelter I have been in that actually worked.”

 

 

Home sweet home.

 

 

I found this buck skull in the morning.

Summary

Successes

• Continued to work on cache system, the first of last week’s two personal goals.
• Continued to work on car kit the second of last week’s two personal goals. (I kind of cheated because when I wrote those goals it was already Wednesday and I had already worked on both of those things, so there was no possibility of failing!)
• Did the herbalism thing.
• Shelter??!
• Learned a little bit about fly fishing.
• Didn’t spend so long writing this up.

.

Failures

 

 

• Did not work on any failure club projects (stone axe, trap, or hot rocks)
• Plant misidentification. Cattail is a common plant and I am a so-called “expert”. Never think you know it all. Also DON’T DRINK AND DIG!

Reflections

Apparently I succeeded more than I failed this week (failed at being a failure?). You could chalk it up to not trying nearly as many projects as last week, but I’m not sure if that is because I concentrated on one thing, or just didn’t do as many “wild” things altogether. I thought about working on one of the FFC projects many times during the week when I didn’t have anything else to do, but I just didn’t feel like it. In fact during those times I didn’t really feel like doing anything, I was tired, and depressed and had trouble thinking clearly. I hate it when I get like that, but I don’t know what to do about it. Start a Sad Scavengers support group? Forlorn Feralizers?

Failure Club Goals for the week of April 30-May 6th:

(choose one or more)

• Boil a cup of tea with hot rocks
• Coal burn a bowl
• Pine needle basketry

Personal Goals

• Hide one of the pipe caches
• Explore for new rock outcroppings

Questions

• Am I going about this caching business in the right way?
• What are those roots (rhizomes)? Not daylily or daffodil. My first guess is iris.
  • I’m going to guess iris, too, based on the flat profile of the sprouts ala the Cattail/Observations:

    Iris and daffodil are bitter to taste

    Scatter the calamus to sweeten your place

    Iris grows flat when you look from the side

    Cattail grows round from the ground when they’re spied

    –WildeRix

Good Luck My Failures!!!