The Environmental Atheist

I had a wonderful, sunny Sunday afternoon with my boy this weekend. I wanted to pick up a large load of compost down at the city landfill in Delta for for our patio vegetable garden. Lovely stuff, by the way. It's black and fragrant and smells like fine pipe tobacco.

While we were down there, we took a detour to Deas Island. I really enjoy exploring some of the many natural set-asides in the Lower Mainland. I hadn't been to Deas Island before and expected it to be a bit like the Reifel Sanctuary, a short jaunt further down the river and part of the same estuary. It was a little more developed as a park though, but that wasn't a disappointment.

I've been looking for opportunities to take some baby-steps into rewilding and primitive skills. My early goals are botanical in nature. On a few outings in the last few months, I set out to identify species of plants. That's been going well, but the real brass ring is to be able to identify the edible ones. Last weekend Ollie and I stumbled upon a little trail while we were watching planes land at the airport - not very primitive, I know, but for the entertainment value, technology sucks us in. On the trail, we ended up picking a pocket full of old rose hips that seemed to remain usable long after they ripened on the bush. I have yet to determine if they can be made into anything. With spring now here, the place is exploding with new opportunities.

Lucky for me, Deas Island has at least two species that are harvestable this early in the season. There are literally fields of horsetail poking out of the humus and rotten leaves. We only managed to find a few small patches with the edible spore heads, but I think I have enough to make a nice side dish some time soon. I may have missed the prime opportunity, now that the infertile, tree-like stalks have appeared.

I thought myself lucky to identify one species of edible plant, when what should I stumble upon but a large patch of new stinging nettles bursting out of the ground right beside the path. This is the plant that I had been most curious about. To think that something covered in poisonous spikes would be good to eat! I didn't have gloves with me, so I used a piece of paper to protect my hand and put them into one of the garbage bags I was going to use for the compost. I didn't make a big dent in the patch by a long shot. I did get enough for a taste, though. I think I'll come back in a few weeks to get more.

I decided to cook it up as soon as I got home. I've read different preparation instructions. One person says to parboil it for 30 seconds. Another says to boil for 2 minutes. I left it in for a minute. I thought that would be enough, but Cindy said that some of the remaining spikes gave her a few problems. I think that was due more with leaving some of the stalks in with the leaves than with under-cooking. Ah well. Live and learn.

The final dish, wilted greens with a dollop of butter, reminded me of cooked spinach. I served it with steamed carrots as a side dish. I would definitely have it again. Next time I might use it in a pasta dish, on pizza, or in a lasagne as it is so similar to spinach. I'm really happy to have broken that barrier of trepidation that comes with any new skill. Berry season will see me canning like mad. When we were picking the rose hips earlier, Ollie kept saying that we were picking blueberries, like Sal and Little Bear in the Robert McCloskey story Blueberries for Sal. Berry season will be so much fun for all of us.

As a postscript to this adventure, I'd like to make a few observations. In recent news, observations of chimpanzees suggest that females may have been responsible for bringing weapons into the hunt. Other archaeological evidence points to female homonids being key players in what was once thought to be a strictly male activity. Based on that, and my little foraging adventure, I have a feeling that pre-agricultural domestic life was not as sexually segregated as we might assume. It's also becoming clear that the introduction of agriculture into our civilization, whatever the reason may have been, probably may not have been to make life easier - at least not for the individual or single family.

Several things about the pre-agricultural lifestyle became apparent as I was collecting this food from the wild. First, it was amazingly simple. I can't predict that it would always be that way, but if you know what you're looking for and where to find it, there's no reason why you should go hungry during the fertile seasons (winter just requires a little planning). That may be a bit of a bold statement, but it's just a first impression.


Second, we generally assume that gathering food from plants was primarily a female activity. I will neither support nor refute that. There is no reason why men could not have joined with women to forage. That said, taking care of children and foraging seem to go well together. My having to keep an eye on a toddler made very little impact on my productivity. If anything, it slowed me down enough to notice more things about my surroundings. I might not have noticed the nettles if I wasn't hanging around waiting for him to catch up to me. Our pace, and the day as a whole, was downright leisurely.

Labels: freeganism, projects, rewilding