porcini bliss

I remember going to our family reunion each year and all the elders would remark at how much my sisters and I had grown, a few inches perhaps.  Nothing relative to the rate of a mushroom. We drove up to my porcini spot on Saturday to check on the progress of those adorable buttons we left behind a couple of days ago.  Not only had they grown into beautiful young adults, but they had company—all their brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, and maybe even a a few strangers.  In just a couple of hours, one in the rain, which meant hanging out under the canopy of trees longer than really necessary, we collected 15 pounds.  We also found about a pound of oyster mushrooms, so many butter boletes and slippery jacks that we left them behind, and a few aspen boletes.  Although we didn’t collect any, the amanita muscaria were also out in full force.  They are so gorgeous with their bright red caps and white polka dots, some still in egg form and others proudly opening up to show off their perfectly white gills.  I think we took more photos of those beauties than all other mushrooms combined!

That evening, we hunkered down in Butter with a fancy bottle of Wyoming wine, which was the only local wine available on our drive through the state, to clean our bounty. Evicting the occupants and undesirables is an important part of foraging for mushrooms, because one or two can quickly turn into a massive party, which means rotten mushrooms.  Cutting them out right away is essential. 

The next morning, we woke up to the sound of off road vehicles passing back and forth on the adjacent dirt road.  Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.  Maybe it was a sign that we needed to get up early to start hunting.  For breakfast, Andre chopped some fruit and berries, I grabbed a handful of nuts and seeds, and topped that goodness with a sprinkle of that dumpster oat bran we have grown to love.  Since we had just collected at my usual spots yesterday, we explored a new part of the mountain.  The hillsides were covered in raspberries, strawberries, and whortleberries, which we munched on while hiking. We also found a couple of red huckleberry bushes, at least that’s what I think they were, but since they weren’t quite ripe we left them behind.  A couple of hours later, our bags were full and the sky grew dark and heavy. Lightning had already started, thunder was crashing, so we made a beeline for the bus.  Eight more pounds of porcini, this time, debugged in the forest.

Andre wanted to see the Moffat tunnel, so in the pouring rain and hail we drove down the now river of a road and headed that way.  The lightning was spectacular, especially from the safety of Butter.  What should have taken maybe 5 minutes instead took more like 30 thanks to all the Aspen trees housing those shaggy-stemmed Aspen boletes.  Each time we spotted an orange cap, easy to see from the bus, one of us would jump out with our knife, run to the edge of the forest, and grab the goods (usually they have friends), then run back to the car, soaked but happy.  Using this car-hunting method, we probably picked 2-3 pounds before we decided not to look anymore.  At some point, you just have to stop… something we’re still learning.

Now, what do hunters who want to go back out again today do with nearly 30 pounds of various mushrooms?  What the restaurants don’t buy, we’ll dry… but it’s already 9:30 and those cuties are waiting.

diving in Saratoga

The weather driving through Wyoming was spectacular. The afternoon storms brought heavy, dark clouds, lightning, thunder, pelting rain, and rainbows that started on one side of the sky and ended far across the landscape.  It made for beautiful photos, but a long day in Butter since we kept stopping to watch the electric sky. 

We ended the drive at another hot springs in Saratoga, WY.  Now this is luxury – waking up to a pancake breakfast before a nice swim in the hot springs, driving through every color the land has to offer, and winding up in hot springs again. There are two pools of water, both quite large, and one is quite hot. They are owned by the city, gifted to Saratoga by the state with the requirement that they remain completely free and open to anyone.  The pools are even open 24 hours, never closing, not a single day of the year.

But, wait, there’s more.  First, we had the privilege of soaking with the town mayor, who was in the smaller pool when we arrived.  Having grown up in Saratoga, and having lived in WY all of his life, he was a wealth of knowledge. He suggested some camping spots in the national forest, told us the history of agriculture in WY, described the corporatization of food and farms in the state (hardly any small farms exist at this point, which is probably why I couldn’t find any local beef even though they’re a major beef-producing state), and discussed his views on fires, logging, and other social issues pertinent to their small town.

Second, on our late-night drive to Medicine Bow National Forest, we passed a closed grocery market and decided to take a quick peek in their dumpsters. We pulled out heaps of fresh produce, including three pounds of carrots, a pound of cabbage, a basket of tomatoes, several plums, a head of broccoli, a red pepper, and an onion.  We left so much more behind, including at least 10 pounds of potatoes (we have so many from our last dive) and at least another 6 or 7 pounds of cabbage.  I think I’ll write to the mayor about food waste in his town.  I’m sure there are hungry people in Saratoga. 

fire bread

I love to bake.  Alison calls me the queen of quick breads.  When it’s cold, rather than turning on the heat, I bake cookies.  They warm up the house and my belly.  Butter has a nice two-burner gas stove, but no oven, and in our haste to leave LA after working two festivals, grading and finals week, subleasing, and moving Andre out of his warehouse, my solar oven got put on the back burner.  Out on an evening sunset walk, I reminded Andre that I’d really like to have an oven, hoping to motivate him to help me with the project.  Minutes later, literally, he pulled a couple of discarded restaurant-sized tomato cans from a bin behind a pizzaria. Andre is quite the creative designer, but these cans were going to be transformed into an oven?  Indeed, they were.

I tossed together roughly a pound of rescued whole wheat pastry flour, a teaspoon of yeast that had been in my fridge for ages, a pinch of salt, a medley of seeds, and a little water.  Then, I let the little loaf rise for an hour, gave it a quick kneed, then a second shorter rise.  Andre prepared the fire, then seated the dough on the shelf of my new oven and sealed the lid before placing the can on the coals.  About 40 minutes later… the most beautiful bread I’ve ever baked.  Quite tasty, too!  Thankfully, we have lots more rescued flour, although I’m looking forward to trying out the acorn flour we’re working on.

morning at the springs

We have too many plums, so I told Andre I’d make pancakes with plum compote.  After a leisurely morning in bed, listening to the occasional train and the bubbling hot springs nearby, we dragged ourselves out and started chores—dishes from last night, evacuating maggots that had infested one of our lentinous ponderosas—constant work foraging is.  On our visit to Goose Lake, we chopped so much firewood that we threw a few pieces on top of Butter and are still hauling it around.  It seems silly when you think about it, but calories are hard to find in nature relative to the ease of finding the minute amount of extra diesel those couple of logs use. 

Andre depitted the plums while I made tea and batter. I finally figured out the perfect use for that oat bran we found during a dive last spring.  I checked email between flips, put on some music, plugged in our batteries to recharge, and even left the refrigerator door open slightly while grabbing the hemp milk for our tea… hmm… in just a matter of hours, electricity seems to have become something I don’t even think about using too much of.  All the mental resources devoted to conserving have been freed up to think about other things, after all, we are dealing with a limited pool of attentional resources.  It’s no wonder we see so much waste.  Here I am, an active environmentalist, connecting with nature, having no real schedule other than a few talks here and there, and when electricity doesn’t mean draining Butter’s battery, I just use it right up.  This is something I’ll have to give more thought to—vertical hierarchies that we’ve created to simplify our lives have left us feeling powerless; limited resources, cognitive limitations, make it challenging to juggle our immediate life and the things we need to do to ensure our continuation.

I saw a man walking out of his monstrosity of a motor home, a castle compared to Butter, with a Styrofoam cup of coffee.  No judgment, just taking it all in.  

Hot springing with the cowboys

Andre is cooking dinner, rice with garlic scapes and lentinous ponderosas sautéed in coconut oil, our new favorite mushroom—a favorite primarily because it was so plentiful. When thoroughly cooked to soften up its leathery texture, it’s actually quite tasty.  It is chewy (Andre says crunchy) and meaty. The cap is gorgeous, white, actually a bit of a golden colored from tanning in the sun even though they were rather fresh, with white, serrated gills.  They are called ponderosas because of their size, perhaps the largest mushroom I’ve ever found, especially given that they were just babies.  I wish I hadn’t filled up on tortilla chips on the ride here, but Zeke and Zoro’s sweet and spicy relish was so delicious and I was starving after a long day of hiking, but I enjoyed the little reminder of our time in Grass Valley with that crew.

We are thoroughly clean after a sunset swim in the hot springs with the cowboys.  Parked at the Fountain of Youth in Thermopolis, Wyoming, the perfect name for a place that boasts the largest hot springs in the world, we’re enjoying some luxuries of life—hot baths (my third bath of the day, even), cell phone service, internet, electricity, and great music (thanks Twyster).  We woke up next to a clear running creek with sunlight making its way into our upstairs bedroom.  I took a quick bath in the cold water to freshen up while Andre hung our bedding in the sun to air out.  We still had plenty of fruit that needed to be eaten from various harvests, so he made a big bowl of chopped fruit and berries and I sliced some cinnamon bread that we rescued from a bakery, and topped it with plum butter. We took our tea and breakfast on the road, stopping at different spots that looked good, in terms of the potential of mushrooms. 

The afternoon was spent hiking in Grand Teton National Park, a bit of an arduous and steep hike that we both needed, and poked around for mushrooms after our porcini surprise yesterday, and a second bath in the Two Oceans lake.  Later, we wandered about in the rain, watching storm clouds gift the earth and our private flower garden with droplets of water that made rainbows in the dark sky.  We didn’t run into any grizzlies today, but yesterday we saw two, probably grazing on the same berries I spent the afternoon munching on—grouse whortleberries, strawberries, and Utah honeysuckles.

On the drive to the springs, I hit a bird.  It was only the second animal I’ve ever hit, and when we pulled over to check the front end of Butter, I couldn’t bring myself to get out to see whether or not we were carrying its little black and gray body, so Andre gracious did.  We were.  For a good long while, I thought about its partner, calling for it later that evening, wondering why it wasn’t calling back, whether or not it had babies that needed food.  I’ve seen lots of roadkill on this trip, and it never occurred to me that those animals have a family somewhere.  They probably do, just like us.  The rainbow helped make the tears subside.

Tonight I am feeling thoroughly hiked out, full of mushrooms and life, hydrated, and slightly warm from the mixture of hot springs and a sip of huckleberry vodka.  My phone reminds me to name something I am grateful for each day, and tonight, I am grateful for this moment.

Bozeman, Part 2

I’m sitting at a turnoff near a river.  Andre just surprised me with a stop at a huge swimming hole, where we took a well-deserved leisurely swim to cool off after a long day of working the land.  We were tasked with clearing a space where starts from the greenhouse would be planted, which basically involved pulling weeds, many of which we would consider food—dandelion, with huge roots that we saved to make “coffee,” lambs quarter, thistle, and herbs such as mallow and chamomile, among others.  For the first hour I worked efficiently and quickly, with vigor, filling the compost bins with large handfuls of weeds that were already wilting from the heat of the morning sun. That pace was not long lasting, especially as the conversation started to flow and the morning sun moved overhead. In the garden, I met Laura, Josh’s girlfriend and the daughter of Bob and Vivian, the landowners, who came out to bottle feed the lambs.  They are down to three feeds per day. Josh said they used to require a feed once every four hours, which meant sleepless nights.  Josh is a really interesting young man, who I felt a real connection with right away.  He slightly resembles my little (not so little) brother, not in his physique but in his demeanor.  He is a beautiful man, raised in Chicago and moved to Bozeman with some friends to escape the Midwest (like me).  He seems quite at peace on the farm, peace that I experienced while pulling weeds in his garden, methodically and mindfully.  Later I learned we were the first co-op shoppers he’d invited to his farm, which felt really special.

After work, which ended around 1PM, Josh cracked open some beers and we brought him to Butter to share some of the goodies we’d been gifted, blackberry moonshine, some of the huckleberry vodka Andre bought in Clayton, and my elderberry cordial.  That’s when Bob joined us, and we spent the next hour or two chatting with him about political and social issues, the energy crisis, food and farming, and on, and on, and on. He offered to make margaritas if we stuck around for a couple of hours, the best in town apparently, so we pulled ourselves away and headed to the Madison River Brewery (David’s recommendation, and the Scotch Ale and Honey Rye were amazing, just like he said).

After our swim, we went back to Butter to towel off when Andre noticed that two of the duck eggs we were gifted had been broken. We cooked and devoured them atop the bread we rescued from Great Harvest last night on our Bozeman diving adventure.  When that wasn’t enough, we broke out the carrots and cheese that we found and bought, respectively.  I suppose we’re staying the night here again, rather than in the fairgrounds, with our new friends at the farm.  I’m looking forward to getting back there. 

Bozeman

Yesterday we arrived in Bozeman, MT after a long and hot day of driving through the alpine desert of Idaho, then through big sky country.  It was a beautiful drive, from bottom to top we saw sage green plants, the occasional yellow or purple flower, golden then red rolling hills, gray craggy peaks, and finally, the wide open blue sky.  Not a tree in sight to block our way.  Our first stop in town was the local co-op to pick up a couple of supplies, treats that we have been looking forward to.  Andre made a beeline for the dairy section, where we met a lovely woman who helped us select a local hard goat cheese.  During our conversation, she pointed over to another employee who works on a farm, runs a CSA, and the co-op even sells some of his vegetables.  Not feeling the usual shyness and eager to talk with him, I ran right over after picking out a bottle of local wine.  I told him about our adventure just a bit and asked if he’d be interested in trading some greens for something we have, perhaps some mushrooms or homebrew.  He asked if we were interested in doing a work-share, coming to the farm to work a bit in exchange for fresh produce.  I was thrilled.  We’re going this morning, even though after our wildly successful dive last night we don’t really need any produce.

The farmer introduced us to another employee, a pretty regular dumpster diver who used to live in Santa Cruz where he fed hungry people rescued food and knows the local Bozeman scene.  He recommended the bakery across the street, a couple of markets, and, in a hushed voice, the co-op.  He told us about food waste at the co-op, how once in a while he rescues food from their dumpsters even though he knows that he is risking his job. Like me, he can’t stand to trash perfectly good food.  I get it.  I dive for philosophical reasons, not out of need.  I told him about the model at the Salem, OR store, where all of the employees get to take home the food that would otherwise be discarded.  A dream we share – wouldn’t it be amazing if we trusted each other so much that we didn’t feel the need to worry that giving food away would cause unnecessary waste.  Starting in childhood, we’re taught to fear others, stranger danger, breaking down our trust in the goodness of humanity.  The television, newspapers, billboards, media in general tells us that other humans are dangerous.  Shows like America’s Most Wanted, CSI, and headlines that read “'AK-47 Bandit' who shot Chino officer tied to three bank robberies “ (pulled from the LA Times today) remind us of the caution we should take when we leave the confines of our safe havens. 

We met a man, donning an American Legion hat, in the fairgrounds this morning where Andre and I slept last night.  Today begins the county fair here in Bozeman, with rides, funnel cakes, and gypsies.  We told him about the farmer we met and how excited we were to go to work this morning.  He chatted with us for a while then disappeared.  He came back a few minutes later with a gift—a banana and a granola bar.  He probably thought we were poor and hungry travelers, but maybe he was just being nice.  That’s most of humanity, folks—kind, generous, friendly, loving, caring—not at all dangerous.  A few bad apples… Don’t believe everything you read, hear, see, and most importantly, don’t believe everything you think.

plums, apricots, and berries = homebrews

Today we hit the motherload.  We stumbled upon what felt like an orchard filled with apricot trees, apples, plums of all colors, apples, elderberry (but only the flowers were ready, the fruits, when we found them weren’t quite black), service berry, and what I think was mulberry.  We also found blackberry bushes galore, which for the first time this trip were filled with ripe fruit.  I already made an elderberry flower cordial, soaking the flowers in everclear and water (basically vodka, but don’t say that to the Russians).  Andre isn’t in love, but maybe now that I’ve sweetened it in the honey jar he’ll like it more.  I think it’s pretty tasty, and most of all the color is a lovely golden green tint. 

He built a fire so I could start working on the sagebrush beer while I harvested dandelion greens for dinner. I think I’ll toss a few in the beer, too.  It makes a nice bitter, hops-like substitute, without the depressive effects of hops.  I heard that we can thank the catholic church for hops being ubiquitous in beer.  Once they prohibited alcohol production at home, and started doling out the booze themselves, they started adding hops to all of their brews.  Hops has known depressive effects, both psychologically and physically, perhaps most noticeable in sexual situations.  None of my brews have hops, just for the simple reason that I haven’t found it in nature, although I was given an opportunity to forage it from a friend’s garden but didn’t.  Dandelion does quite nicely.  Making beer on the fire is going to be a challenge, and lugging it around in Butter for the next two weeks might prove to be a real pain… we’ll see.

The threat of a storm came as Andre and I were biking through the neighborhood.  We spent the day trying to identify and learn the plants that live here in the high alpine forest of northern Idaho.  I managed to feel certain about 3 new ones—globe penstemon, fleeceflower, arrowleaf groundsel.  None of them edible, although the seeds of the fleeceflower were said to be ground into flower and used by the Pez Nerce tribe, and the roots were boiled.  We didn’t try them, but perhaps we will.  In the meantime, I'll finish up an elderberry flower wine, the sagebrush and dandelion beer, and some plum moonshine... good trades for future encounters with humanity, not to mention yummy treats for us!

connecting with the corals

Yesterday morning, I woke up feeling so connected to the universe, to nature and beyond, that tears came. As I lay sobbing next to Andre, I tried to explain my experience, but I had trouble processing it and experiencing it at the same time, so I just gave up on the words.

We spent the scorching hot day driving across Oregon, seeking out high elevation hillsides. The view of Three Sisters, Mt. Washington, and Mt. Hood, was spectacular, and the snow covered peaks gave me hope for morels.  Just because there’s snow doesn’t mean it’s the right season, but hope is exciting so long as you’re not holding expectations that will lead to disappointment.  

Instead, all we found were some coral mushrooms, one large pink and one small yellow.  After keying out the pink one, which was difficult to do without a spore print, we decided not to eat it as it makes some folks cathartic.  The yellow coral, sautéed on the campfire in red wine and butter was spectacular, and followed a delicious whole wheat pasta drenched in pesto and served with a big bowl of steamed greens… all foraged or gifted.  Sitting by the fire, sipping red wine and nibbling dark chocolate, we pointed out constellations, watched satellites move across the sky, and enjoyed the plantain flowers dancing in the evening breeze under the dim light of the moon.  For a change, we slept out under the stars.  What luxury time is when it means nothing.

24 hours with the Chinook Barbarians

We just pulled out of the driveway and are heading for the coast, going north to Lincoln City, Butter heavier than when we arrived.  Some of our hippie Christmas gifts include elderberry wine, elderberry port, blackberry moonshine, lotion made with an assortment of flowers, dried and fresh toothache flowers that stimulate salivation (and other mucus membranes, ooh la la), dried persimmons, pesto, and many more friends than when we arrived - all of whom I hope will be in my life for a very long time. 

Hobo Lee drew a lovely map to his friend’s farm house and suggested we visit since we’d be in the hood. At first, I felt hesitant to go for a visit since we’d planned to drive to Lincoln City to visit with my girlfriend, and didn’t want to stay too long when we finally decided to go.  That hesitation disappeared when our beautiful farm hostess greeted us at the car and immediately guided us to the river for a quick dip, which after “fighting traffic” on the drive, brought a much needed sense of relief and coolness.  We joined her sweetheart who was already swimming, and Pepper, the farm dog.  They invited us to a potluck at the Magical Forest Farm, owned by a collective where 11 people currently reside.  They grow food for themselves, preserve it using various methods, and somehow make enough money doing who knows what in order to purchase what they cannot provide for themselves.  Many of them make beers, moonshine, but most of all, the make nice wine—elderberry, apple, dandelion, and even good ol’ grape. 

Upon arrival, we took a lovely walk over the grounds skirting along a well-maintained garden filled with zucchini, an assorted mix of greens, beans, peppers, and tomatoes, which our guide called small relative to hers.  Even with people who are so connected to their food, to the land on which it is grown, to each other and nature, there is dialect of war—mine is bigger than yours.  Competition, I suppose, can be healthy, but like the innate preference for sugar and fat, consumption is evolutionarily adaptive, so must be competition.  Perhaps it increases motivation.  Or, perhaps it’s just a function of the individualistic economic structures we’ve built in this country.  Something to PSYCHinfo…

The garden is where I met a really amazing woman, who, oddly enough, looks so much like me plus 25-30 years.  She arrived on the land sort of by chance 41 years ago, married a lovely man, and has been living happily ever since.  We talked about the root of our social dilemmas being our disconnection from the land and food, the premise of my book, about the influx of youth coming back to the land, some of whom have difficulty letting go of their city lives.  You see this in the form of monster trucks and unnecessary toys, essentially bringing mass consumption from the city to the forest.  We talked about how and why things, material or consumable goods, have come to be what we seek for happiness.  Shopping therapy – we’ve all done it. The problem with this as a long-term strategy for happiness, however, is that it brings fleeting happiness, temporary, and it’s certainly not financially sustainable.  We’ll always be trying to get the next fix of dopamine (with a smack on the bend of my arm), and it’s going to cost us.

At dinner, one of the nice hippies told me about a mushroom growing down the driveway, and eagerly guided me over to his find. Having seen nothing of its kind, I immediately thought “shaggy parasol.”  From out in the forest, a man shouted, Agaricus Augustos.  It smelled of anise, had chocolate brown gills and spores, and a yellow-staining shingled cap with a smooth yellow-staining stem.  What a beauty.  I couldn’t wait to show Andre.  This began our foray for its friends, but no others were found, so we walked back to the party just in time for dessert—chocolate cake frosted with chocolate icing and sprinkled the edible flowers, two berry pies, banana bread, and more wine.  The musicians were still playing, kids were running around like a wild pack of dogs, and every conversation sounded full and deep.

We went home and headed straight for bed, having kept the farmers up past their usual bedtime. In the morning, the heat of the sun forced us to rush out of the bus, so I started in on preparing breakfast—frittata with fresh eggs, potatoes from Herbie, onion, garlic, and greens from Johan, and shredded cheddar cheese from Ram. Andre toasted some fresh, dense bread that our hosts got as a trade and loaded it with jam I made from rescued blueberries and Valencia orange slices foraged from campus, and we rang the bell to signify to the farmers that food was ready.  I love feeding people, especially when my efforts are appreciated, and even more especially when I’ve got such fresh ingredients.

This brings us back to the start of my story, hippie Christmas.  I can’t wait to try the moonshine.

logging in Oregon (alternatively, toilet paper in America)

We woke up to the sound of transport trucks zooming past the turnout that we slept in last night. He counted three by the time I woke up to hear my first. Andre told me they were loggers; fellow foragers in some strange way, harvesting logs like Andre and I do for our evening campfires. After breakfast, a medley of rescued and foraged dried fruits (blue and blackberries, raisins, and coconut) topped with our delicious granola, we biked up the hill in the direction of the trucks. The coastal forest was dense and rich and decomposing, covered in moss, ferns, foxgloves and hedge nettle, and slimy snails and slugs. After a few miles, biking through patches of sun and moist crisp air, we reached the site of destruction. Two men, one clearly the boss, greeted us with the same hesitant smile as the farmers we encountered.  Like the farmers, they quickly warmed up to Andre’s friendly curiosity. Bossman answered all of our questions.  He told us that they are thinning, a job offered by the U.S. National Forest Service that goes to the highest bidder. This particular job is a 5-year project, and the contractor who won the bid hired the contractor to whom we were speaking. He told us that they are currently running two trucks, and that each truck carries out 8 loads of felled trees a day, with about 50 or so trees stacked high on the truck. Right now, they are not running at full capacity.  He said once the yarder comes, a system that acts as sort of a conveyor belt for felled trees, they will be able to haul twice that amount. They can only work for 6 months a year, from June to December, when they are required to break so that the marbler bird can reproduce. On the ride down, I calculated what that means… they’re hauling out at least 104,000 trees every year in this site alone, and more than 200,000 when they are operating at full capacity. He told us that because of “strict” regulations (200,000 trees a year doesn’t sound so strict to me), they have to plant as many trees as they take, but it’s hard to believe that actually happens.

After chatting up Bossman for 15 minutes or so, we hopped back on our bikes and rode to an area of the forest that had not yet been cut. Compared to the skeleton of a forest we just left, this patch was lush, the floor blanketed by thick moss that depressed 4 or 5 inches with each step down, bouncing back easily as I walked along. From beneath the moss, mushrooms sprung up next to rotting logs. The sound of logging equipment filled the air as we walked carefully around the hairy trees and large ferns, a constant reminder of what was happening just a hillside away, what would soon be happening here.

And for what do we need all this wood?  Well, 90% of all paper pulp is made from wood, and production of paper accounts for about 35% of all felled trees.  Only about 16% of the trees cut each year were planted for paper production, 9% comes from old growth forests, and the remaining comes from second- or third-generation forests. We use paper for all sorts of stuff, about 30% of it gets used for packaging, much of which gets trashed immediately after the point-of-purchase. The average American office worker uses about 500 disposable cups every year.  Writing in a coffee shop just outside of Salem, Andre and I are drinking out of ceramic mugs that we brought in from the car, a habit I formed years ago in an effort to curb my own consumption and waste.  The average American also uses about 50 pounds of toilet paper each year, roughly 50% more than the average of other western countries or Japan. Given that 1 tree produces about 100 pounds of toilet paper, and there are almost 3.1 billion of us, roughly 153,502,775 trees are felled annually just so we can wipe our asses! 

Toilet paper use is relatively new cultural phenomenon.  I remember my mom telling us stories of how she and her sister wiped with Sears Roebuck catalogs in the outhouse on their family farm. In fact, the first product designed specifically for wiping our derrieres were sheets of manila hemp that were infused with aloe, which were invented in 1857 by Joseph Gayetty. He claimed that his medicinal sheets prevented hemorrhoids, and was so pleased with his invention that had his name printed on every sheet.

His success was limited, however, because like my mom and her sisters, Americans used the catalog. After all, why pay for something that came for free in the mail? Eventually, fancy hotels and drugstores started carrying the product, soon made by the Scott Brothers, but because our culture is so terribly embarrassed by bodily functions, people wouldn’t buy the stuff. According to Dave Praeger, author of "Poop Culture: How America Is Shaped by Its Grossest National Product,” even the Scott brothers were too ashamed to take credit for their innovation until several years after they started production. “No one wanted to ask for it by name," says Praeger, like the modern-day condom or vaginal cream. By 1930, Hakle, a German company, began using the slogan, "Ask for a roll of Hakle and you won't have to say toilet paper!"

How, in just 80 years did we go from complete rejection to using 50% more than other western countries?  Toilet paper is just an example of how much we consume and waste in this country relative to others.  In fact, no one produces more trash than the U.S (insert reality TV joke here); we are just 5% of the world’s population and we generate 40% of the world’s waste.  Out here in the forest, the fact that waste is a manmade concept has never been more apparent.  Nature has no landfills, after all. Plants grow with the help of nutrients in the soil, animals eat the plants, then insects and bacteria eat and decompose the animal dung and animal remains. Finally, the decomposed waste nourishes the soil, and the soil helps plants grow. A perfect, closed-loop system… nature seems to be ahead of the game here – all the green builders and designers are talking about closed-loop systems and she’s been at it forever.  Hmm. 

on time

The only reason I know what day it is today, is because we went to town yesterday.  It’s amazing how time seems so meaningless out here. We rise with the sun and go to bed with the stars.  What day it is carries little importance.  We need clocks because, first, we are slaves to our jobs, second, we are so disconnected from each other and ourselves that we have to make plans in order to fit each other in (we even have to make time for ourselves), and, third, we seek comfort in a vertical hierarchy.  Clocks are the man, the authority.  Just like my telephone tells me to name something that I am grateful for each day with an alarm that I cleverly set years ago in response to a series of studies showing that expressing daily gratitude results in increased happiness, clocks tell us what to do, or rather, when to do what we “need” to do.

It happens to be the 4^th of July, our day of independence from the tyranny of the Brits.  Today, however, I am celebrating my independence from the tyranny of time.   

Foraging with family!

Driving Butter on windy, steep mountain roads isn’t trivial, but I’m getting better.  This morning, after a nice leisurely breakfast, we left camp and headed north in hopes of finding better mushroom territory.  A truck started following me, and got a little too close for my comfort.  I slowed down hoping they would pass, and when they didn’t, Andre made a remark that maybe their breaks weren’t working, which made me even more anxious. When they started honking, I nearly broke into tears.  Finally, they pulled up beside me.  There were Ram and Camila, and Sam was driving.  Running into them here, in the middle of the national forest, was really a spectacular coincidence.  They were on their way to the general store on a stopover heading to a wedding up north. After I calmed down, got lots of apologetic hugs and laughs, we jumped into the truck and drove to the general store, but it was closed on Mondays.  Still, we were gifted with our fourth forage—a triad of hospice nurses on vacation and some young guys offered us hamburgers with mustard, freshly cooked the night before, salami, cheese, and crackers, and some beer to wash it all down.  Finally, real food, which was followed by a handful of dandelion greens to satisfy our vitamin needs.  Bitter, already going to seed, I passed them around like medicine.  Even Sam ate some.