[pct-l] Thru hike Survival style

[mkwart at gci.net]

When people lived off the land they lived in groups so they could 
process the food in an efficient manner. If you kill a big animal how 
will you process all the meat? You can't wait around until all the meat 
dries. Acorns were a staple food for some of the indigenous people who 
lived near the PCT. But they take a long time to process--drying, 
husking, grinding and leeching the tannins out.

I just have to laugh at modern sensibility--the myth of the strong 
independent person living off the land, void of community. Communities 
were what allowed people to live off the land. Jon Krakauer wrote the 
book "Into the Wild" about a misguided soul who thought he could exist 
without community. He didn't have the traditional ecological knowledge 
gotten from elders and was a lone maverick who thought he could achieve 
some kind of existential "purity". We live in a different kind of 
community now--especially on the PCT --living off the land for hikers 
means packing your own food, being grateful for trail magic, accepting 
the gifts of trail angels, and helping each other out on the trail.

Well--this touches a soap box topic for me so I'll quit. I have been 
backpacking since 1971 and worked and lived in backwoods areas for 30 
years, so I'm not a city person.
--Fireweed