W46: Feral, Failure To Go Balls Deep
Looking over the weekly laundry list I gave myself last week, I see that last week’s success inspired this week’s failures. Though I didn’t write a blog on the wapato, I did start one and I also went looking for some. That trip itself had the best kinds of feral failure. The failures that teach you how to do things better the next time around. The failures that may hurt a little because you didn’t get quite what you wanted, but you know better and more now than you did before.
I don’t know why, probably because I just heard/read about its importance to the lower Chinook Indians, but I’ve really wanted to forage for wapato lately. Shaun had directions from a friend on the location of a wapato patch 45 minutes from Portland. So Shaun, Penny Scout and I piled into Penny’s gas guzzling, loud-ass broken-muffler-sounding station wagon and drove to the spot.
The place had no official parking spot, just a turn around in the road. We parked there and saw a sign about illegal dumping. Of course, next to the sign we saw a large illegal dump site that had many peculiar things, such as DEAD ANIMALS!!! We saw many skeletons of deer, a rotten elk (maybe cow?) hide and legs, a rotten coyote (possibly killed by a farmer with poison/gun), all resting among beer bottles and tires. We dug through the more thoroughly clean bones and salvaged some for bone tools. I always feel like I should do something with animals bones to honor their lives, especially those animals that appear as victims of the road and or weird hunter/poachers.
On the opposite side of the street we found our main path blocked by a railroad track. Penny just ran across and disappeared but Shaun and I felt we should at least act a little more covertly about it so we snuck through some bushes down the road a bit. The sign about the speed of the trains appears very true. The trains barreled through at break neck speed, sending us running for our lives back the other way. Later we got up the muster to try again and find Penny, wherever she went… (she does this kind of thing all the time!)
To think that you can just walk into a giant marsh that you have never seen before and find some wapato during the winter when you can’t see where it grows… looks like a set up for failure. I read that you kick around in the muck and the wapato tubers float to the top. So… What the hell? I took off my shoes and waded out a bit into the water.
I have to admit that when it comes to the cold… I have a very low tolerance. I couldn’t stand in the water for very long without it feeling like needles poked every submerged inch of my flesh. So I gave up pretty quick. Shaun on the other hand waded out with seemingly no ill effects. He wandered around the marshy area for a bit kicking and feeling the mud. Soon we saw Penny Scout quite a distance from us and we made a few imitation crow calls until she saw us and came over.
Shaun theorized that the cattails and the grasses near the shore, in combination with the branches and debris from the trees that bordered the shore did not provide a good enough place for wapato to grow. To my astonishment he decided to put on his swim trunks so he could go balls deep. I watched in awe and made several attempts to wade back into the water, but the bite kept slowly seeping into my legs and I kept retreating to the shoreline. I noticed that the more I would walk in and out the longer it seemed I could keep my feet in the cold water.
I watched Shaun from the shore and soon he discovered a wapato tuber. After about an hour, he only had about a handful. Perhaps not the best spot, nor the best time of year to harvest it (generally sept-nov), but hey… We went there with no knowledge or know-how and still found some! I learned a few tricks about getting my legs and feet used to the cold water. Shaun learned an interesting kicking technique to get the tubers to rise from the mud to the surface of the water.
Our meager catch of the day…
As Shaun showed off his manly, balls-deep endurance to the cold water, Penny too, showed off her endurance to it. I began to feel like a total loser sitting on the shore making my brief jaunts into the water and back and into the water and back. Penny didn’t wade out as far as Shaun but decided to cut our losses by harvesting the obvious cattail rhizomes right there in front of us. This too, proved to feel rather impossible as the tall, dead grasses created a sort of impenetrable thatch that held the cattail safely under the water. Perhaps with the proper leverage from a digging stick or shovel we could have made off with quite a score. Unfortunately most of the sticks around had already experienced the rot of winter and fell apart at the first pump under the root. We ended up with a handful of rhizomes and a handful of baby cattail shoots just begining to make their way out of the water for the first time this year. We also nabbed a bunch of cattail heads for the soft down they provide. Penny and I want to make a quilt with the cattail down. Expect a blog about that sometime.
As we traveled back to the car I saw this scat on the road. Looks a little too weird for coyote… Looks more like a cat to me. I haven’t looked it up in the field guides yet. I don’t know what beaver scat looks like, but we also saw many beaver tracks nearby. I don’t know if a cougar would travel through that area… Any ideas/guesses before I narrow it down in the field guides?
Overall we failed to really harvest wapato in any substantial way. But I saw the trip as a total success. Now I know what we need in order to successfully harvest the wapato. We also learned about harvesting cattail and the need for the right tool. I also learned about expanding my comforts and nerves in my legs to withstand cold water. Not to mention the joy of smelling and hearing and experiencing a new wild place.
Aside from that adventure I spent most of this week in this room at my friend’s house, priming, spackling, sanding, chalking and painting for some cold, hard, desperately needed cash.
My Laundry List for Week 47:
1. Finish Wapato Blog.
2. Work on the horticulture blog.
3. I don’t fucking know. I have little inspiration for particular things right now… Give me some ideas people! Tell me what you want to see me do! All I can think about right now involves finding work! Give me something to take my mind off that.
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Sounds like a winner.
all that foraging and you didn’t go home empty handed.
Thats a win.
Sounds like a jolly good foray into foraging.
Here are a couple new ideas that you may or may not have attempted already:
1. Study the local native culture (at least, from when they actually existed) and set out building a shelter in the manner that they would have during this time of year. If you can find enough info on it, try making a larger shelter than, say, a debris hut. 😉
2. Brain tan the hide of any roadkill that’s fresh enough
3. Learn to regulate body temperature, it will definitely help you tolerate the cold. I’ve read about such voluntary biological control before, I remember most vividly in a Tom Brown Jr. book where Grandfather taught them how to stay warm in the winter, even while submerged in water or running around naked in the snow. That might all be pseudo-science, might be some bona-fide ancient Chinese secrets, might be both, but it’s worth a try, eh?
“Tell me what you want to see me do!”
Wow, you’re not even kidding…
Have you got a web cam and some lingerie?
I think I have a brilliant plan to solve your cash flow problems.
😉
And on an only slightly more serious note, have you looked into the culture of sex in the local native tribes? Did they have monogamous “marriages”? How did they incorporate differently-gendered folks (or did they ostracize them)? Was there *really* such a clear division of labor (men hunted, women gathered) as the white male ethnographers present? Were there “manly women” and “womanly men”? Winter seems like a good time for indoor research and sex. Why not combine the two?
Hey Peter,
Yeah, I’ve worked on a few roadkill projects; a coon skin cap and some brain-tanned buckskin shorts. The people here lived in cedar lodges. Hardly an undertaking for one person. The thatched hut they slept under during the summer sounds more like something to do, but I have no weaving skills. The kind of muscle-body control that Tom talks about takes years as far as I can tell, not to mention a 90 year old apache shaman. If it were as easy as he says it is in his classes and books, more people would have those abilities. I think it just comes down to slowly acclimating my body by going in and out.
Hey Deanna,
You know actually I picked up a book the other day that had some random thing about the queer types in a local tribe… The problem was that it was so vague and prejudice sounding that I thought it was bullshit so I forgot about it. I haven’t read much nor would I know where to start, on a more modern understanding looking back and older anthropology or current elders stories of their elders… etc. I highly doubt they ostracized them… but the NW coast had a unique social system that many have wrongfully labeled as a hierarchy (as far as a comparison to civilization’s hierarchy). If you know of any books send the titles my way… And yes, Penny and I have a “secret” sex tape that will coincidentally be leaked to the internet two weeks before our reality TV show airs on cable. 😉
“…but I have no weaving skills.”
I know a small patch of woods, laden with Hazelnut, that tell otherwise…
As for body temperature/pulse control, the key is breath…after one unlocks the gate of the ***COLD*** mental shock…your mind must be still as the water, grasshopper…the third key, unfortunately, looks something like a 90-year-old Apache shaman. ;}
Could that scat come from some type of weasel?
Hey, it’s Peter.
Sorry to bring up Tom Brown again, but I believe it was in his book The Scout where he talked about making a friction fire by lashing a couple logs together, floating them on top of some water, and letting the waves do the work making friction between the logs and eventually creating a usable ember.
Now THAT would be somethin else if one could get it to work. Though I very much doubt it’d be very easy, and I imagine myself getting fairly pissed trying to figure it out. But if you attempted such an engineering feat, I’d love to hear about it. Unfortunately, I can’t do the same since all the water here is converted to a solid state. 😉
Many Native American tribes had no concept of ownership, or monogamy. Many times a visitor to a native tribe, would be offered things such as food, a place to sleep, stories, and someones partner. Sharing is a communal necessity, and was not limited to things that western culture deemed taboo, you have to remember you are talking about people who are gravely misrepresented in history as “savages”. I don’t remember where I read this, but I do not have an issue looking it up, and sighting it for you.
Hey Tony,
Can you tell me why you felt inspired to write that comment? I am well aware of the customs you have referenced… I just don’t see their relevance to this post. Can you explain?
Scout, I’m guessing Tony was responding to my comment wondering about the sexual culture of natives.
And Tony, yes I would be really interested to know the source of that info, if you happen across it again. I’m always looking for solid references for these conversations. The idea of offering a stranger someone’s partner still sounds like ownership to me. You can’t offer something that doesn’t belong to you, so if I offered my partner up to visiting friends (as much as he might like the idea) that still implies that my partner’s body is mine to offer. Feel free to leave a comment over on my blog (which is linked if you click on my name above) if it seems irrelevant to the post here.
Scout,
have you found any wapato in the PDX area yet? we’ve been out looking but no luck so far. we have found and dug quite a bit of camas, which we like more but need more data.
good luck!