That said, I finally managed to get out for a quick mid-week survival outing last night. I learned from previous outings that each attempt at advancement demands a FOCUSED micro-goal, stripped of the utopian ideal to get it all, right now. Last night I focused on food.
I'm relatively comfortable with building a shelter and surviving the night, and with building a fire using primitive methods. But I'm so lost when it comes to food sources that I suck even as a hunter with a firearm.
Last night I went out with: my Army ruck packed with sleep system (waterproof shell with 2 embedded sleeping bags), tarp, cook pot, lighters, headlamp, a .22 rifle, and a couple other useful items, but no food. The plan was to eat whatever I could find and/or shoot, and boil water for hydration.
I set up camp at a shallow pond in the lowlands south of Mount Norwottuck. I figured plant food is a guarantee, while game is uncertain, so within the first 30 minutes I collected a quart of wintergreen berries and an armload of cattail roots.
This is my first time harvesting cattail roots in a primitive situation. It's more challenging than it seems. I had to remove boots socks, roll up pants and sleeves, and wade into the frigid pond. There, I muscled up roots by grasping the cattail plants at the base below the surface of the water and vigorously wiggling and pulling them upward. There may be a more efficient way, but I was able to accumulate a decent amount of horizontal roots in 10 minutes or so.
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| Roasting the roots and boiling hemlock needle tea |
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| The cleaned roots |
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| The removed plants |
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| A decent collection |
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| Wintergreen populations tend to fruit more next to water |
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| Peel the swampy exterior, and chew the starchy core |
From there, I cut the rotting plants off the roots and cleaned and trimmed them in the pond water. I brought my collection back to camp and set off to find some squirrel, porcupine, or whatever else I might legally harvest.
An unexpected obstacle to hunting and foraging is finding your way back to camp once you're done exploring. I paid close attention to terrain features and kept track of distance using my pace count (about 70 paces for 100 meters).
Sadly, I only saw one squirrel on my trek, and it was a wildly difficult shot. No luck. I headed back to camp after the sun set.
I quickly built a fire and collected a pot full of pond water. I added to it a handful of hemlock bows and got it boiling. 10 minutes later I had 2 quarts of delicious hemlock needle tea.
During that time I burned off the rootless on my cattail stash, and began roasting the roots. I found I could easily peel off the charred outer layer and munch on the starchy interior. It's a bit weird, but you have to chew the fibrous core until you've ingested all the starch, then spit out the mass of fiber. More delicious than it sounds, I promise. I went from hungry to stuffed over the 45 minutes of roasting and eating. I didn't even want my dessert of wintergreen berries after (who can resist a quart of toothpaste??).
I finished off my tea and reclined, staring up at the canopy and contemplating my life. Eventually I set up my sleep system and enjoyed a solid night's sleep on a soft pad of forest litter. Wintergreen berries for breakfast, and then I packed up and hiked out.
It wasn't a mind blowing advancement of skills, but hey, I primitively harvested a wild source of starch and got full on it. All for the first time. I can add it to the toolkit.
