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  • From: <eureka AT hctc.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Primitive Technology Living
  • Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:37:24 -0500

Once, about a decade ago, when traveling in New Mexico, a friend set me up to meet and spend the day with a woman who would teach me about their edible plants. I was expecting to meet another botanist. I drove to a remote wilderness location, and the woman met me there on foot. She was only a few years older than me, thin, and covered with spider bites.

I followed her down into the canyon where she was living in a cave. It was actually more like a small grotto, where she had dug out a grave shaped hole and filled it with cattail fluff to sleep in. She had made her home here for two decades and raised two "love" children, one grown and gone, the other making his home somewhere up the next creek. She had learned everything she knew from a rather generic book on the edible plants of north America. The only time she'd gotten sick was from ergot poisoning, and that put her in the hospital. I did not ask how she got there, imagining the woman crawling out of the canyon and onto the highway for help. I spent an entire day "grazing" with her, taking notes and photographs. At the days end we got into a hot spring and a large snake slithered out between our feet. By that point I felt so one with nature, neither of us reacted and it went on its way. I often wonder if I went back if she would still be there, if I could find her.

There's a certain satisfaction when completing a backpacking wilderness trek, but then I have some rather high technology gadgets like a whisperlite stove, water purifier, goretex jacket, mountain tent etc., but it always feels so good to get back to the comforts of home. I think of myself as the hardy, outdoor type, but I've never started a fire from scratch or called a cave my home. It would be an interesting experiment for those of us with land to try it sometime for a while. I would undoubtedly be covered in fire ant bites.

--Sage
Way Out in Texas




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