Homestead mailing list

[<eureka AT hctc.net>]

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