Feral Failure: May 14th-20th ‘07

Monday, May 14th

 

 

Primtive dog bed.

I decided to head for the hills, literally. I drove to the top of a hill to go camping. I had a lot of errands to run so I didn’t arrive until late in the day. The first thing I did was fill this lightweight sleeping bag contraption I made with leaves. See, I took two twin sheets and folded them and duct taped them together to make two bags. I duct taped them because the sewing machine at home was out of thread and I wasn’t sure how to rethread it and because I thought I forgot to bring a needle and thread to hand sew them (I actually found it later). Anyway the tape held and was a lot faster than hand sewing. I put one sheet bag inside the other and I think I spent twenty or thirty minutes stuffing them full of leaves until it looked like a really long dog bed. Luckily I was in an oak-y area. The oak leaves don’t disintegrate over the winter as quickly as the maple leaves and are “fluffier” overall. I simply folded over the top a little bit so the leaves wouldn’t spill out. If I were to move camp I would dump these leaves out, roll everything up into a compact ball and refill at the next site.

Then I ate dinner which was leftover lunch that I brought with me from home. I didn’t bother to build a fire. I don’t like to deal with the smoke from outdoor fires. When I am wearing my contacts they shield my eyes so the smoke doesn’t sting but then I can’t tell when I am in the smoke and it kind of ruins the contacts. It seems to coat them with a greasy film or something and my eyes sting and burn when I try to put them in the next day so I have to give my eyes a few days of rest and sometimes I have to throw the contacts out and put in new ones which is costly when you camping all the time. I don’t know if other people have this problem. I figure that contact manufactures probably don’t take frequent campfire building into consideration. Contacts are a pain the ass in the wilderness for other reasons too. It’s virtually impossible to keep them clean. I rinse my hands thoroughly before taking them out and putting them in, but there’s always that pesky dirt under the fingernails that doesn’t dissolve until the saline solution hits it. But I don’t like wearing glasses either. I mean who does? Besides looking dorky, they slide down your nose, interfere with your peripheral vision, and get raindrops and condensation on them.

After dinner I went on a walk to some other campsites. This is a really popular forest road for camping. In fact if I had wanted to build a fire it would have been hard to find wood at the place I was staying. I like checking out places other people have camped not only to see what the attraction is, a nice stream, or good view, but what those people have left behind. This foray did not disappoint. I picked up a tarp in pristine condition and a folding camp chair that was less than perfect but still completely functional. I didn’t get much this time but rope and cordage are extremely common finds.

Tuesday, May 15th

The leaf-filled sleeping bag surpassed my expectations for warmth and comfort, though I think it could be improved. The main problem was keeping the leaves on top of me. Even though they were packed in there pretty well, they wanted to fall to either side of my body filling in the empty spaces around it. I think if I sewed the sheet bags together along the side seams so you had to fill each side separately they would stay in place better. Then instead of trying to keep the top folded over so they wouldn’t spill out and get all itchy on the neck I would put some buttons or Velcro at the top to help seal them in.

I was having a really hard time deciding what to do for the rest of the day. I kept changing my mind. It was excruciating. Finally I returned home and went to the swamp. It must have been the right thing to do because I saw an unbelievable amount of wildlife and I’m not talking from afar: three muskrats, groundhogs, dozens of geese and goslings, a giant snapping turtle, frogs, snakes, deer, a pileated woodpecker, a blue heron, and best of all two beavers that swam back and forth in front of me for about half an hour in a elegant water dance. And guess what else? I caught two fish! I probably could have caught more but I didn’t think I needed them. One of the reasons that I saw all these animals and probably the reason I was able to catch the fish is that I was there until late evening, sunset time. I’m not even sure what kind of fish they were though I would wager black crappie. I had this little artificial lure on my hook that I chose from the tackle box because it said for “panfish and crappie” on the container, otherwise I would have been lost. The first fish I caught I was like, “oh shit, now what I do?” I didn’t know the proper way to hold it to keep it from flopping around so I could unhook it and besides that I was a bit squeamish about touching it. I mean, it’s all slimy! and the fins are sharp! Luckily it flopped itself off the hook. I remembered that Nick said he bashed them on the head with a rock to kill them. I didn’t know if this was common practice but it seemed like the polite thing to do so I whacked it a few times with a stick. It had kind of a seizure and bled a bit and I felt really awful, but for comparison I didn’t whomp the second fish I got and that one kept flopping intermittently for a good half hour at least and scaring the crap out of me after I put it in the plastic bag I found .

I hadn’t eaten any dinner and I wanted to eat my fish, but there is no camping allowed in the swamp so I drove down the road and pulled off at this canoe launch. With semi-trucks roaring by and the security light from someone’s garage shining into the clearing it was not the most secluded place to camp, but it would do. Now how to cook a fish? I’d seen fish cooked in three ways. One was trout roasted on a stick over a fire with the skin on, but was it prepared any way before that? I didn’t know. A second was at Tracker School where they gave us each a flounder or something to cook over the coals in some foil and we were instructed to gut them and cut off the heads and maybe the fins too. I couldn’t really remember. Then there was the way I’d seen this sort of fish prepared which was to fillet it by slicing the meat away from skin and scales, but that seemed difficult and it was already dark outside. What if I just gutted the fish and then put it in a pan and cooked it and peeled the flesh from out of the skin? Bad idea. The scales and skin stuck to the pan and then got all over my fingers and all over the bits I was trying to eat. But other than that it was delicious! I was so happy I called Urban Scout to tell him about my success but his Mom said she’d just driven him back into town.

Wednesday, May 16th

I was pretty depressed, I didn’t do anything rewild-y.

Thursday, May 17th

I was still depressed, but in the evening while I watched TV I began to sew a new and bigger and better coil basket than the first one with my semi-dried daffodil leaves.

Friday, May 18th

In the morning I watched the birds in the yard and tried to identify some I didn’t know. Later I went to the swamp to work on my super-secret swamp project. I also went fishing in the same spot as before but didn’t get any bites, maybe because it was a bad time of day, about 4:00.

Saturday, May 19th

 

 

Unicorn pond snail we’ll call it for now.

At 9:00 I met my friend Paul to go fishing. His parents raise horses and their house had to have electricity put in when they bought it because it used to belong to the Amish. The property also has this great pond. It was a nice morning, sunny, and warmer than either or us expected but a bit windy. The red-winged blackbirds must have had a nest nearby because they were mightily pissed at our presence. We saw a turtle and evidence of a muskrat den. We spotted lots of bass but none would bite. We tried plastic lures, worms, and snails. No luck.

When Paul first mentioned that snails were good bait I was confused. “Small snails or big snails?” I said. Then he showed me in the pond. Big snails.

“I didn’t know there were snails like this in ponds like this.”

“Yeah I didn’t either. Maybe the Amish introduced them.”

The pond was full of them. I could stand in one spot and collect five or ten without moving. I smashed some open for bait and what did I find inside the shell? Baby snails! Perfectly formed little baby snails with shells and all inside of the big snail. I can’t say I every really imagined how snails were born but I definitely would not have imagined it to be like this! I told Paul that I liked using the snails for bait better because they didn’t writhe around and indicate that they don’t like being hooked like a worm does. After a few hours passed with no success I said, “Why don’t we try to eat the snails?” So I got a pot from the car, Paul lit up the charcoal grill, we set the snails on to boil and popped open some cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. But there wasn’t enough charcoal left to get the water to boil. I said I would take the snails home to cook and let him know how everything turned out.

I came to the end of Paul’s dirt road and I was facing another dirt road that my friend Brent lives on. It occurred to me that Brent was supposed to be home. He has a job installing floating covers inside oil tanks that has him traveling around the country for weeks at a time and only occasionally returning home for a few days off. I called Brent on my cell phone and said, “Hey I’m just down the road and I was thinking about stopping by…but if you aren’t prepared for guests that’s okay.”
“Give me 10 or 15 minutes to take a shower. You can wait downstairs if you want.”
“That’s okay. I’ll just go on a little walk.”
So I parked the car, eyed the snail pot, and decided to bring it, and started walking to his house. But it was too close, not a 15 minute walk. I saw three deer standing in a clearing and took a detour down a dirt track leading into the woods. I spotted some abandoned tires and thought, “Ah ha! Just what I’ve been looking for.” I’d been wanting to try my hand at making some tire sandals for the summer but hadn’t come across any tires lately even though they seem to be everywhere when you don’t want one. I chose a big one. Have you ever tried to get water out of a tire? It’s hard. It just rolls around and around and you can’t get it to come out. I had to splash it out by flipping the tire over and over and slamming it into the ground, getting myself all muddy in the process.

I showed up at Brent’s house sans tire (I’d come back for it later) but with snail pot in hand. “I brought you a surprise.”
“What is it?”
I showed him the snails.
“Oh.”
I explained they weren’t really a present, but would he mind if I finished cooking them there? I think at this point I was already refilling the pot with water and authoritatively turning on the gas stove, so he could hardly disagree. We got caught up on each other’s lives and in about ten or fifteen minutes I checked the snails. The one slid out of its shell as I picked it up so I figured it was about done. Now what part to eat? They consisted of a tough clam-like foot and a gushy squishy body with some sort of organs and digestive system and what appeared to be eggs. Since the body seemed to have a gritty intestine running through it I decided to only eat the “foot”. Chewy. Still a little gritty. Not bad. I ate a few more before Brent would try one. I would never suggest such a thing but I think he felt his manhood would be compromised if he didn’t. He said it tasted like al dente pasta.

I hypothesized that because of what I had heard about slugs and other such creatures perhaps the snail would be best if it were starved for a while to let that grit pass out of it’s system. Despite their “not as bad as I thought they were going to be” reviews we needed something else to eat for lunch. I was rooting for this three-years-past-the-expiration-date macaroni and cheese we found in the cabinet when Brent remembered there might be some walleye in the freezer he could fry up for us. Okay, if you insist…mmm, it was good. Before leaving I promised Brent I would get some more snails and try the starving thing and if it worked I would cook them up for him in butter and garlic. Yum.

When I got home later I looked up snails on the internet to try and find some more information (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/05/05/urbananimal.DTL). First I found out that many species are hermaphroditic and that while they can’t impregnate themselves they can impregnate each other during sex. I found that the common garden snail, the one with the round shell, found in this country as well as Europe, is the kind that is commonly served as escargot. One site did recommend feeding these types of snails a diet of cornmeal to clean out their digestive tract before serving. I couldn’t really figure out what kind of snail mine was or if people commonly ate other types of snails.

Also on Saturday I was invited to a birthday camping party for my friend Greg. I was kind of hoping it would start early and be an all day thing but things didn’t get rolling until about 7. I was worried that it would be boisterous affair and I wasn’t in the mood to stay up all night, or retire to my bed early like a loser only to be awakened by noisy, drunken shouting and laughing. Luckily that fear never materialized. It was pretty low key. When I arrived only Greg and Brian were there and we spent the first hour gathering and breaking firewood. After dark some more people trickled in. I think the party had nine guests at its height. Different people contributed pizza mountain pie materials, veggie dogs, corndogs, cheese and crackers, store bought and homemade beer, and wine…I contributed one sweet potato, a stick of butter, and for Greg a no-bake Oreo cake that I assembled in the car from my trunk-o-food. Around midnight it started to rain and people began to leave. It hadn’t looked like rain and the weather only predicted a small chance in the early morning so no one had brought tents. After sticking it out by the fire for another hour or so with no sign of things letting up even the heartiest souls decided to call it a night and head home. Except for me. I just jumped in the back of my car and went to sleep.

Sunday, May 20th

 

 

Violet juice.

I was super tired from not sleeping long enough the night before so I was spacey and lazy all day until the evening when I started writing this article.

Also on a day I don’t remember I picked a bowl full of violet flowers. I wanted to make a purple violet syrup but I made the mistake of thinking that if I put the violets in the blender first the “purple” would come out better when I boiled them. Well the violets still had their sepals on so they turned into a green mush and that I didn’t get around to boiling until the next day. It created this beautiful blue-green liquid. The picture doesn’t do it justice. I strained it into a glass and tried to drink it but couldn’t get it all down because it was so mucilaginous (slimy). I’m sure it was good for me (Susun Weed expounds on violets in her book Healing Wise and especially favors them for dissolving breast cancer) but I ended up pouring it down the sink.

Summary

Recap from Last Week

Failure Club Goals for the week of May 7th-13th: (choose one or more)

• finish something you’ve been working on, (you can define finished)

Personal Goals

• finish something I’ve been working on

This Week:

Successes

• I caught two fish and cooked them over a campfire and ate them. I don’t think you can get much more finished than that. Yay for me!
• Experimented with leaf bed
• Ate snails

Failures

• Catching fish at Paul’s
• Trouble making decisions
• Violet syrup

Reflections

So this week people enter into the picture. I admit I was skeptical, but in the end I was proven wrong. When I suggested to Paul that we eat the snails I thought he would brush me off. I thought he might laugh and say, “yeah we should,” never really meaning it, but he was game from the get go. And while Brent was a little more reserved he tried the snail and even thought it was decent. I don’t want to make my friends rewild. I don’t have some secret agenda to convert them because that just feels dirty to me. But being excited about something and sharing it with them was actually fun! And that’s the kind of secret agenda I can get behind.

The camping wasn’t what I feared but it wasn’t awesome either. I would like to go camping with some people for real. I wouldn’t mind so much if the drinking part came at the end of a long day of hiking or fishing or foraging but I’m not much for camping where you show up at sundown, and sit around the fire drinking beer and pass out on the cold hard ground in the wee hours of the morning leaving as soon as you wake up. I mean that’s better than sitting around the bar drinking beer and passing out on the sidewalk or in some stranger’s bed and leaving as soon as you wake up, but it’s still kind of lame. A one-night stand with the land you might call it. I want a deeper relationship. I’m pretty sure my friends will be up for some more in-depth camping if they can find the time. If not, at least they pick up their trash and as far as this particular night goes it was valuable in the sense that I got to catch up on the all gossip I’ve been missing out on. I found out who’s shacked up, broken up, knocked up, and dopin’ up.

I am a week late posting this project failure article as we speak. That is because as you may recall I started work on Monday the 21st. Now I work four ten-hour days a week, when you throw in driving to and from work, eating, and sleeping that leaves very little time for anything else. Yes I have three-day weekends, but I need some time just to relax and even if I keep doing projects I won’t have much time to write about them. Writing these articles is supposed to be fun not a chore so, sorry to say it folks, but the weekly Project Failure articles will have to be discontinued for now. However, I hope to get in articles on individual topics from time to time. Perhaps I’ll even start my own blog and post old materials until I have time to do some new stuff. Until then, keep on failing!

Thanks Urban Scout!

Questions

• What kind of snail is that? Where did it come from?
• Any fishing tips?
• Any way to prepare the panfish without filleting?
• I cut off the fish’s heads but it seemed like that was wasting good meat. Is there a better way? What about eating parts of the head like the eyeballs?
• Am I lame for always camping out of my car? (Don’t answer that).

Good Luck My Failures!!!