We Washed, We Ate, We Pooped

By Dennis Lantz

Where did you poop? What did you eat? How did you wash?

Those questions were asked by just about everyone we talked to that year. The answers were rather simple, but we did our best to elaborate. I’ll do so again… I changed the headline by reversing the order because… well, it doesn’t sound right to say we pooped, we ate, we washed.

5/20 - We carved out wood and hammered together a rough square box to put a toilet seat on. Mark and I both worked at this for some time, though if anyone asks I will say that Mark made it. Constructional masterpiece it is not. I think it will work fine once the legs get squared off.

5/21 - Back at the hogan we cut off the legs of the toilet perch and the monstrosity turned into a thing of beauty!  

6/8 - (with a visitor) We talked about all the things we had done… what we had eaten… made, etc. He used the shitter and thought it was awesome. It is awesome the first time because you are so aware of nature as you sit and do your work. Usually when you shit in the woods you are concerned with that action alone, but when you are using a traditional toilet seat you realize and experience more. It is good.

5/18/2020 – The toilet was one of the first stops whenever Mark and I gave tours to visitors. Not only did it answer one of the three common questions, it also allowed us to wax poetic about ‘taking care of business’ in the woods. There is nothing like sitting on a throne out in the open air, surrounded by hemlock, maples and pines. The birds perched on nearby limbs chirping their hearts out. I don’t think they were cheering us on. The wind was our vent fan; the scent of damp earth and rotting logs our Febreze.

I don’t think I ever took reading material with me. I might have, but too many senses were already involved which made it difficult to focus on a book or magazine. Mark occasionally took a book… probably a field guide to edible plants… or birds… or Pennsylvania Wildlife.

I wish I had a picture of our toilet. (That is the first time I have ever written that sentence…) The seat was recycled. It came from Helen’s bathroom in Ulster and it had a crack across the front in a rather concerning location. But we screwed to the base and wrapped the crack with tape. Ladies, we never left the seat up!

…

Eating is a different story. We ate every day, which means that there are numerous references to food. Luckily we didn’t have Facebook to show pictures of it all. Some boxes of macaroni, rice, oatmeal, a tub of peanut butter, some canned goods, peanuts, and a jar of honey went with us. Occasionally we raided the fridge at the house… well, I raided the fridge and shared with Mark.

We sampled a wide variety of plants… most of them considered weeds. Violets, burdock root, nettles, cattail shoots and heads, fiddlehead ferns, milkweed buds and flowers, dandelions and daylilies. We had hemlock needle tea, pineapple weed tea and nettle tea. But we were omnivores. Our meals were occasionally supplemented with woodchuck, squirrel, frog legs, sunfish and venison (from the freezer).

With few exceptions we cooked over wood fires. It was rare when we did not build one or two fires a day and we became quite adept at that woods skill. Birch bark, tinder, kindling from pencil-thin and bigger… and one match. I think we started some fires using a bow drill, but that might have been later. Mostly we used matches.

5/18 - Ate breakfast of oatmeal and honey and it was very filling and good.

Read a little bit about nettles and fern fiddleheads. Later we tried both of these. I only ate a small portion of fiddleheads, uncooked, and they tasted good. When they are larger they are supposed to be boiled, but these were small and tender. There are several types of ferns around here, but few bracken fern, which are the ones that are edible. I think another type of edible fern, the ostrich fern, is growing in the swamp to the west of here, but they have already filled out and opened up. Most of the ferns have. The nettles (which are wood nettle, not stinging nettle, though of course even the wood nettle  can sting very much) we simmered in just the water we used to rinse them and then we mixed in some wood sorrel. They taste a bit like spinach and are excellent. (Note: later we learned that if you boil them, the ‘tea’ from the juice is delicious!)

We then ate some macaroni with spaghetti sauce.

5/19 - We dug up some burdock root, then cooked fried rice with dandelion fritters. We also had rice and honey for supper. The darkness came upon us before we could boil the burdock root, so we decided that we would keep that for tomorrow.

5/20 - We ate macaroni with pepper for dinner. (Not peppers from the garden… black pepper the spice.) We added a bit too much pepper, but it was good. We also boiled the burdock root and it tasted a bit like potato, but better in my opinion. It seemed to me to be a mix between a regular potato and a sweet potato. Excellent! There is such a plethora of food sources that is not being appreciated. Give me nettles and burdock root any day over hot dogs or canned soup.

5/22 - We took the .22 and went hunting. Just above the house is a regular squirrel haven so that is where we went. We saw a squirrel immediately, but I didn’t shoot. I have a silly superstition about shooting the first squirrel that I see. It is a strange, but harmless oddity. Mark shot a nice sized female woodchuck and I gutted it out. We brought it back to the hogan area. After we skinned it and cut it into smaller sections, we boiled it for a while and then fried it. Before frying we dipped it in flour and seasonings that consisted of pepper, salt and a special Cajun-like seasoning which I accidentally brought from the house. I didn’t know that it was in my bag, but decided to utilize it when we found it there. I “et” woodchuck! It was good… a bit chewy and stringy, but I would do it again. I hear the smaller ones are tender. This was not a small one. We went to the house and Mark called his folks. We had some chocolate cake and milk. Good dessert. Not necessary, but good.

Notes from later: I felt like a mountain man when we ate the woodchuck. When Mark shot it, it bolted down towards a hole in the weeds and it was in thick downed tree tops where Floyd H had taken some logs. I ran up on the top of fallen trees, once almost falling, and finished it off with my pocket knife. I am not sure if it was mortally wounded by the shot, probably was, but it might have escaped our ability to find it. After I found it, I yelled up to Mark, “It looks like we’re having woodchuck tonight!”

5/23 - We ate beans, nettles and garlic mustard greens and venison that I had gotten at the house. The food was delicious.

6/6 - … After exercising we bathed in the creek, doing shallow dives and splashing about. We cooked and ate the venison after brief snack of peanuts. Mark did a hilarious imitation of stalking and catching a sleeping beer from the creek. It went well with the deer meat.

6/9 - Late in the morning we took the .22 and went squirrel hunting above the house, way up near the top of the hill this time. I was beginning to think that we were too late or too early when a granddaddy squirrel poked up its head. I shot once and he did not move (and he didn’t fall). I shot again and he did not move. I was beginning to think it was a spirit squirrel or Geronimo reincarnated (can’t be killed by a gun). He leaped onto the side of a tree and my third shot ended his life. What makes this story almost funny is that I didn’t have the clip for the .22 which was at the house, so I was using it as a single shot. So firing three shots was already a long process. But even crazier is the fact that I didn’t have the extra shells. Mark had them in his pocket. After each shot I had to ask him for another shell… and he had to dig one out of his pocket. I kept whispering, “have you got another?”

I will smoke the pipe to the squirrel’s memory soon. I gave it a peaceful send-off (eventually) and it is well appreciated. I trust its spirit is even now among the glorious oaks and hemlocks running around with his ancestors.

Mark shot five large frogs in Hilliker’s pond so our meal consisted of fried frog legs (superb!) and a squirrel which we cooked on a spit and rotisserie, earth style. A nice cold beer complemented the meal.

Actually we had two beers because my cousin Kenny and his friend, Tim came down to visit for a brief while. We showed them the hogan, talked some good conversation about what was going on in our lives and parted. They brought a couple of beers and it was good.

Some had questioned our desire to learn because we eat so much store-bought food and canned goods, but out here, if there is to be any time for learning it is the only way. We spent most of this day on the hunt and the cooking.

5/18/2020 – I realize that some of these stories may sound savage. But they are nothing compared to the reality of human existence. I do not like to see animals suffer. I was taught to process and eat what I kill. There are dozens more references to eating in the journal. We had peanut butter and honey sandwiches. We ate potatoes out of a can (who knew they made such things). After our vision quest we shared a can of Chef Boyardee dinosaurs… cold. We had fish and potatoes cooked in clay. We stole cheese and pepperoni from the house. We went to town and got malted milkshakes. 

Perhaps someday when the journals are published in their entirety, you will see that we ate similar to what many campers eat… but better.

…

Washing in the woods without running water can be tedious. And when the only available water is bone-numbingly cold creek water, it made us hesitant to do so. But we did. I know on a couple occasions I showered at the house. But that didn’t happen often.

Many of my entries started like this:

– It was another good day. I woke and washed and then went to the flat to start digging up a garden plot… or to some other activity.

5/22 - We came back to the hogan area and washed our clothing in an old metal tub using creek water with Dove soap. We wrung and wrung until our hands were sore. Our hands were definitely clean and our clothing was acceptably clean. We hung it on the line. It is still there.

6/5 - Went to stream and did a Johnson pushup. That maneuver is named, of course, because Mark did them first. I copied him. One does a pushup so that the head and chest go into the creek and, of course, your arms are in the water too. It is a good way to wake up.

5/18/2020 – “I woke and did a Johnson pushup into the creek.” That phrase was written several times in my journal. Most times you actually did two pushups. The first was to get wet so you could lather with shampoo and soap… and the second to rinse. The water was usually quite cold.

There are a few references to showering at the house. I had to go up anyways, it seems rather foolish not to utilize a better system.

Until next time,

Read, Learn, Live

Violet