I knew that the Golden Age was all about me,
and it was we who had been blind to it,
but that it had never passed away
from the world.
A.E., Candle of Vision
Why are we here?
I used to imagine, opening up in front of me for just a few moments, a time portal. Would I walk through it? Would I leave my home, my friends and family, the world I knew, all behind? Half the time, I would think, "yes." I was pretty depressed back then. I was living in civilization.
Then I discovered foraging. And pretty soon, foraging became a career. At first it was just about eating healthy and making money by teaching others how to do so. Now, fifteen years later, I see that foraging isn't just about food. It calls into question the entire course of human history.
Foraging is a time portal. It's two tickets to Paradise. It stands waiting across the Road of Progress. A good illustration of this is the 2007 BBC documentary, The Roadkill Chef.
Despite the name, The Roadkill Chef is about wild — not necessarily flattened — food. It stars veteran forager Fergus Drennan. Like Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, the premise of the program is, "let's try to get normal people to eat healthy food." In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the special inspired the series. After all, Drennan used to supply Oliver's restaurant with wild food. That's what he tries to get the good people of Sandwich, England to sample. And yes, that includes roadkill.
I once met a mushroom hunter named Hunsucker. Like Sandwich, that's his real name. I asked Hunsucker if he hunted anything else. He said with disdain, "I am a civilized hunter."
Roadkill is a form of "civilized" hunting. It's the gentler half of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, kept alive by "freegans," "opportunivores," and others living off the beaten path. Of course cars aren't gentle, but you can't blame a vulture for the carcass. That's why PETA gave Drennan an award for "ethical cuisine."
Drennan declares his challenge by posting flyers around town:
Fergus the Forager
invites you to dinner.
I am a wild man and I love wild food.
I have a dream.
I want to get you, the people of Sandwich,
thinking about what you eat, and through eating foraged food,
to get you back in touch with nature.
Fergus takes a poll, and everyone is pessimistic. One chef tells him, "people are lazy... and we're gonna end up as big as the Americans if we're not careful." Apparently "for the people of Sandwich, the idea of swapping roast beef for badger is a step too far." One woman says, "quite frankly, I'm frightened to death." Another says, "for God's sake, don't give me horse."
Drennan uses a key word in addressing this visceral aversion: taboo. Any food that's not "normal" is considered not only bizarre but dangerous, somehow wrong. "Bizarre Foods" and "Taboo" are two other TV shows about peculiar diets and other deviant practices. We may not be willing to try something new, but we sure like to watch!
Eventually, Drennan finds a chef willing to try roadkill. They set out in the morning, "before too many cars have run over it" (warning: this review contains "spoilers"; but then, so does the film). They soon find a fender-bent fowl that's not too foul. An hour later, their goose is cooked. The butchering is a bit graphic but doesn't last long.
The next day, Drennan asks people at a grocery why they eat the way they do. The answer is convenience and price. One packaged food aficionado sums it up with, "I can't be bothered."
Does wild food really does take longer to prepare than a TV dinner? To settle the matter, Drennan challenges a new, normal-yet-open-minded friend to a race. And the winner is... a tie. While Mr. Normal simply nukes his mac n' cheese for nine minutes, Drennan has to "work" the whole time. But then, let's consider how long would one have to work at a job to pay for a dinner like the one Drennan prepares:
In a restaurant, i.e., with the work done for you, a meal like Drennan's would cost you at least $15. To make $15 in nine minutes, you'd have to be making $100/hr. That means that unless you're making $100/hr at work — after taxes — you're better off "working" on cooking your dinner yourself. Similar conclusions were reached in the late 1920's by back-to-the-land advocate Ralph Borsodi. His School of Living still exists today.
When studying the economics of "self-catering," you also have to figure in the time it takes to gather the food, either in the woods or in the store (see a good discussion of that here). Shopping in Mother Nature's supermarket might take longer (see what I say about my outings here). But where would you rather spend your time? And if you enjoy cooking or being outside, then why would you be in a hurry in the first place?
Obviously, the reason we need fast food and cheap prices is so we can pay the bills. That's why we "can't be bothered." We have enough on our plates. And what are we mostly paying for? Usually rent. Hunter-gatherers don't pay rent. My friends at Wildroots pay less than $200 a year. Granted, they are sitting in a foot of snow as I write, but I pay twice that much a month. It's hard in here for a wimp!
Compared to most people, the $350 a month I pay in rent is cheap. I wonder what Drennan pays. Two years after The Roadkill Chef, he had to abandon an attempt to eat exclusively wild food in order to pay the rent. I guess you can't have your carrion and eat it too. Time to join The Rent is Too Damn High Party.
One fellow fixated on fast food sums it up: "like a moth to a flame, you just can't help it." And we end up the same way. No, you can't beat the price — not counting your health. One out of three women and two out of three men in our store-bought society will get cancer by age 60, mostly due to diet. Factor in your eventual medical bills and that killer deal becomes just that.
In The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith points out that fast food includes nearly all cultivated food. The problem starts with agriculture. While perennial crops like fruit trees can take years to produce, field farming (which is what the word agriculture means) consists mainly of annual crops, particularly grains. We "just can't help it" because at both ends of the industry, from fast food to fast farming, even organic agriculture is just one big drug addiction. An addiction to what? To instant gratification. In this culture, convenience is king. No work; no wait.
But wait, there's more. The mainstay of agriculture is the carbohydrate: wheat, rice, corn, potatoes. Carbs, like sugar, are drugs too. They are literally a cheap high, for they affect the brain just like Prozac and similar anti-depressants (see here, here, and here). And what do we need anti-depressants for? Our civilized way of life!
In a life-satisfaction survey conducted in 2004, on a scale of 1 to 7, homeless people in Fresno scored 2.9. Slum dwellers in Calcutta scored 4.6. Topping the charts with an average score of 5.8 were Forbes magazine’s richest people in America. However, tied with the richest people in America were the Pennsylvania Amish, the Inuit of Northern Greenland, and the African Masai, who live without electricity or running water in huts made of dried cow dung (Diener & Seligman, "Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being"). So much for the American Dream. Clearly comfort and convenience don't add up to contentment.
When urged to settle down and work the land, Smohalla, founder of the Lakota Ghost Dance, said, "my young men will never work, for men who work cannot dream." He must have been talking about the Native American Dream. The Europeans' pursuit of happiness here had started at least 100 years before. That's when Ben Franklin said, "no European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies." By 1783, Michel Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur reported that "thousands of Europeans [have joined the] Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those Aborigines from choice having become European."
Surely a handful of savages succumbed to rum, sugar, and other costly comforts, but otherwise, why the flight from Progress? Fergus the Part-Time Forager explains. "Our lives today are so full of constraining regulations and laws and boundaries... to get out in the country is to get away from all that. You can just feel the simplicity of it. All those demands on you just fall away." Ask any forager in the world — "old" or "new" — and they'll tell you the same thing. We feast unpoliced.
Here's one more quote by another noble savage. You may not have the time or patience of an Aborigine to read it, but don't miss the last line:
I am greatly astonished that the French have so little cleverness, as they seem to exhibit in the matter of which thou hast just told me on their behalf, in the effort to persuade us to convert our poles, our barks, and our wigwam into those houses of stone and of wood which are tall and lofty, according to their account, as these trees. Very well!
But why now do men of five to six feet in height need houses which are sixty to eighty?... Hast thou as much ingenuity and cleverness as the Indians, who carry their houses and their wigwams with them so they may lodge wheresoever they please, independently of any seignior whatsoever?...
Thou sayest of us also that we are the most miserable and unhappy of all men, living without religion, without manners, without honour, without social order, and, in a word, without any rules, like the beasts in our woods and our forests, lacking bread, wine, and a thousand other comforts which thou hast in superfluity in Europe....I beg thee now to believe that, all miserable as we seem in thine eyes, we consider ourselves nevertheless much happier than thou in this, that we are very content with the little that we have; and believe also once for all, I pray, that thou deceivest thyself greatly if thou thinkest to persuade us that thy country is better than ours. For if France, as thou sayest, is a little terrestrial paradise, art thou sensible to leave it?...
Now tell me this one thing, if thou hast any sense: Which of these two is the wisest and happiest--he who labors without ceasing and only obtains, and that with great trouble, enough to live on, or he who rests in comfort and finds all that he needs in the pleasure of hunting and fishing?
Chrestien Le Clercq, 1691
Who says there's no free lunch? When you're a hunter-gatherer, it's not just the food that's wild and free.
For a humorous counterpoint to this discussion, see here. If you take all this seriously, however, it raises a provocative question: is it possible that the last 5,000 years of civilization, including and especially the rise of agriculture, has been, for the most part, one big mistake? This is not just an academic inquiry. Nearly all of us at some point ask ourselves, "why am I doing this?"
There's a classic song about the mod-life crisis. I first heard it twenty years ago. I'd convinced Princeton University to give me credit and financial aid for a self-styled degree in "Philosophy of Ecology." My goal was two-fold: one, to escape studying Western Philosophy; and two, to escape Princeton. I met both of these objectives by spending the first half of my senior year exploring the western states with The Audubon Expedition Institute, a.k.a., "The Bus."
For a stuck up city boy, sharing a motorcoach with twenty-four hippies and camping out every night was hard enough. To add insult to injury, I had to listen to folk music. I couldn't believe that people actually wrote songs about trains, and that even more people were happy to sing these songs. One of the few campfire favorites I could stand was "Night Rider's Lament," written in 1975. It's been recorded many times since, including by Nanci Griffith and Garth Brooks. It told me why I was putting up with the folkwagon and the freezing nights. I realized I'd be a poorer man if I'd never seen an eagle fly.
Chuang Tzu was fishing in the P'u River. The king of Ch'u sent two officials with the message, "I would like to offer you the administration of my realm."
Chuang Tzu, intent on his rod, did not turn his head. He said, "I hear that in Ch'u there is a sacred tortoise which has been dead for three thousand years. His Majesty keeps it wrapped up in a box at the top of the hall in the shrine of his ancestors. Would this tortoise rather be dead with its bones dressed and honored, or would it rather be alive and dragging its tail in the mud?"
"It would rather be alive and dragging its tail in the mud," said the two officials.
"Away with you! I'll drag my tail in the mud!"
The Chuang Tzu
Once, after a hard day's forage, two bears sat together in silence on a beautiful vista, watching the sun go down and feeling deeply grateful for life. After a while, a thought-provoking conversation began which turned to the topic of fame. The one bear said, "Did you hear about Rustam? He has become famous and travels from city to city in a golden cage. He performs to hundreds of people who laugh and applaud his carnival stunts."
The other bear thought for a few seconds, then started weeping.
Hafiz
Which do you choose? Back to find dining:
Drennan ups the ante by trying to convince teenagers to eat his "green eggs and ham." He speaks at a school assembly, and remarkably, in the presence of all the faculty, he pitches foraging as rebellion! He cooks a wild lunch for the whole school, starting with a very green nettle soup. To celebrate a pretty universal thumbs up, he kicks off a game of giant puffball "soccer." Throughout the video, Fergus gives off an air of youthful playfulness, and here it comes through unfettered. Again, feeding yourself is a big step toward being free.
Getting free, however, takes more unschooling than a school lunch. Freeing ourselves from this authority-based culture is something we mainly have to do from the inside out. This is what Nonviolent Communication is all about. It's a true rebellion. Because to answer questions like "why am I doing this?" or "what do I really want to be do?," you have to be in touch with your own needs. And to do that, you first have to feel your own feelings. They say depression is anger turned inward. Nobody rises up who can't even feel angry. Lucky for the rest of us, once you start feeling your feelings, you start caring more and more for everyone else, because compassion is natural:
Drennan turns his attention to finding roadkill for the feast. There's a touching scene where he finds a badger on the side of the road. Unfortunately, this one's too far gone to eat. He tells us sadly that badgers actually bury their dead. They even make a "crying sound" while doing it!
Fergus goes on to convince members of a local dieting support group to go foraging. Eating healthy food and getting exercise while doing it; what a concept! It reminds me of the saying about wood heat warming you twice: when you burn it and when you chop it. Less than a century ago, the idea of needing to "get exercise" would have been laughable to most Americans, as it probably is to most of the world today.
Drennan decides to take the group mushroom hunting. There's something inherently intriguing about watching people make their way through the woods. There's a sense of mystery if not danger. Let's face it: it's wilder in the wilderness. And yet the women point out how relaxing it is at the same time. "Therapeutic" is the word they use. And in fact, green light, which is what you see in the woods, is said to have this effect.
The group cooks outside on the beach, and it's just lovely: far nicer than eating indoors in a house or restaurant. This reminds me of my new approach to teaching wild foods. It involves not necessarily going to places with the most mushrooms but to beautiful places: to see waterfalls, swim, and camp out. I call it "putting context over content."
On that note, there's virtually no explicit information about foraging in the entire video, and I don't miss it! Our alienation from nature keeps me in business. In countries where foraging is a way of life, to watch an instructional video, to buy a so-called "field guide," or even to hire a teacher is unheard of. It would be like going to school to learn your vegetables. The simple, time-tested way to learn is by doing.
Sitting around the campfire, a woman who had laid down in the woods to relax says she quickly forgot her troubles at home. I think of a poem I discovered many years ago. I was waiting on a flight so I took a walk in a garden. There, on a plaque, I found this inscription:
Sometimes a part of me gets lost
And I am all distraught
And can’t think why
My smallest undertaking goes amiss
And my day is spent feverishly
Doing things I had forgotten,
Redoing things I had done wrong,
While other things accumulate.But if some errand take me through the woods
All at once I know there is no hurry.
I sense the obscure, unhurried rhythm
Of growing things,
And I am whole again,
And go with quiet sureness to my work.Faith Johnson, "Woods Healing"
The last shot of the group, alone on the shore after sundown, in the darkness from a distance, is just beautiful. Some of the happiest times in my life have been times like these. What is the essence of those times? The feeling that nothing else and nowhere else matters.
Outdoor activities like foraging and camping out are a good part of the charm of the most famous series of wild foods books of the past fifty years, those by Euell Gibbons. These classics from the 60's include Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Stalking the Good Life. In them, Gibbons lives like a big Boy Scout. And in fact, Gibbons usually had to spend his time mostly with young people. The adults were too busy.
Years ago, in my youth, I remember working as a camp counselor, having weekends off, and having no desire to go anywhere else. You can have that same feeling just being with a loved one or when doing something you love, not necessarily outdoors. The important thing is being completely aware of and content with where you are. The appeal of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is this very “sense of place.”
For the past two years, Noma of Copenhagen has been voted the best restaurant in the world. What is Noma famous for? Its use of wild food. The Summer 2010 issue of Gastronomica has an interview with René Redzepi, chef-owner of Noma. He says,
We want our guests to experience the sensation of time and place. So many times when you eat out, you close your eyes and you could be anywhere in the world: Berlin, Sao Paulo, London. There is a huge uniformity in the world of modern restaurants. Our job is to show people that we're in the north of the world and the time of year that we're in.
Why is this "sensation of time and place" so important? Not because we need to buy local to save the earth. To "eat here now" is a spiritual practice, and having a sense of time and place means being present. You don't do it to help anyone else; you do it because it's the only way for YOU to be happy. What's the point of traveling if every place looks the same? What's the point of eating anything new if everything tastes the same?
I've only had two lucid dreams in my life that I can remember. A lucid dream is one in which you know you are dreaming. When I had the first one, I knew I was dreaming because I was sleeping in a foreign country at the time. It was my first trip to Cuba, and I was so aware of where I was that when I found myself somewhere else in the dream, I knew something was wrong.
Whenever we think we should be somewhere else, something is wrong. Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, teaches that modern man is always trying to get home — but never feels at home. Like Warren Grossman, author of Healed by the Earth, says in his latest book, Naturalbody, "to not feel at home is a cause of disease. It is a continual state of stress."
It may seem ironic to go camping in order to feel at home, but such is the plight of the civilized human. And the city's not all we need to leave behind. In my outings, I am increasingly incorporating "primitive" skills like starting fires without matches. Why bother? Because to be here now we might need to relinquish many of modern life's gadgets and other conveniences. That's when you really "get away from it all" because you don't take it all with you.
Faithful to our instructions, we lived like pilgrims and made no use of those contrivances which spring into existence in a world deluded by money, number, and time, and which drain life of its contents. Mechanical contrivances such as railways, watches, and the like came chiefly into this category.
Herman Hesse, The Journey to the East
What's the problem with labor-saving devices: cars, cell phones, ipods, matches, etc? For one, they
tend to set a pace of life that we can't keep up with. Let's say you give a turtle a ride in your new car. Do you think it will appreciate it? Do you think it has any idea what's going on? Your body doesn't either. From our diets to our devices, we are not evolved for life in the fast lane. The problem with "progress" is that it's gotten way ahead of us.
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.
Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of the C++ programming language
Struggling to keep up with the March of Progress, we also leave each other behind. We've invented machines to do work that our mind considers tedious, like processing wild food, weaving, and washing clothes. We call it drudgery, and women fought hard to be liberated from it. But what makes drudgery dull is isolation. This kind of work is meant to be shared, and it's just the sort of mindless activity people can do while hanging out, catching up, and really getting to know each other. I believe the loss of drudgery has unwoven the fabric of society. From TV to computers, our interactions with the world and with each other have become mediated; that's why it's called "media." We've gone from face look to Facebook. What we've supposedly gained in time — again, only to spend it working for The Man — we've lost in community. Divide and be conquered!
It's claimed that social media brings people together, and when people have been so thoroughly separated, to some extent it does. But it reminds me of when I first started learning about health food. I read about white flour: that is, flour that’s been refined and then "enriched." The author said, 'if you take a dollar from me and give me back 13 cents, I don't consider myself "enriched." '
As I've learned since, the truth is actually much worse. Most of what passes for vitamin supplements are toxic chemicals. Some, like Vitamin E, are even industrial waste products. The drugs that keep us going in this culture, whether carbs, coffee, computers or cocaine, are much the same. We need drudgery, not druggery!
John Ruskin said "there is hardly anything in the world that someone can't make a little worse and sell a little cheaper." From packaged, convenient food to packaged, convenient entertainment, the question I keep coming back to is this: is an "easier" life — one that's more comfortable and convenient— necessarily a better life? Ask yourself that question and the foundation of civilization begins to sag.
Cancer, heart disease, and diabetes all arose with civilization; in fact, they are known as "diseases of civilization." These three afflictions are the leading cause of death in our time (and it’s not just because we live longer because children are getting cancer and diabetes). If these diseases are caused by "progress," then focusing on finding cures for them is treating the symptom, not the cause. It's like punching a hole in your roof, managing to patch it up for a while, and congratulating yourself on the repair. The metaphor comes from taoist farmer Masanobu Fukuoka. His finest description of civilization, however, is hardly a metaphor at all: a man stays up late at night to invent something, ruining his eyesight, and what he's inventing are eyeglasses.
I grew up watching the TV show, I Love Lucy. Apparently, the history of civilization and I Love Lucy share the same basis. That basis is best expressed by the Indonesian phrase, neko-neko. It means, "one who has a creative idea which only makes things worse." Modern man — and by "modern" I mean the last 5,000 years — is like the sorcerer's apprentice, or a monkey trying to fix a computer with a wrench. We don't really know what we're doing, and anything we do is counter-productive anyway.
It's sobering to consider that most of what humans have done
in the past 5,000 years to improve upon nature has only served to wreck it. Mankind's foremost achievement has been agriculture, and few things have been more destructive to the health of humans or the earth (see e.g., The Vegetarian Myth or Richard Manning’s Against the Grain).
Check out this "back to the land" classic. That's what I call sticking your neko-neko out. Agriculture doesn't look like such a fine idea to me. How do you think this guy's back feels at the end of day? There but for the graze of God I go. Compare this to the previous scene above. Which one would you call "the good life?" Of course you can enslave animals, machines, or third world countries to do your dirty work, but then we're back to the same problem. You miss out on the very things that foster community and individual well-being: hunting, gathering, and all the "drudgery" of tribal subsistence living.
He who lives by the plowshare dies by it. "By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread," says God, "until you return to the ground" (Genesis 3:19). Was that a curse or just a prophecy? Agriculture is an Eden disorder, but it's not genetic. Returning to the ground means going back to the land. Going back to the land means going wild. And going wild means going back to The Garden all around us. Nobody's barring the door to that.
Last, when Spring its genial influence shed
And welcome thunders call them from their bed,
Large mushrooms enter. Ravish'd with their size,
"O Libya, keep thy grain!" Alledius cries,
"And bid they oxen to their stalls retreat,
Nor, while thou grow'st such mushrooms, think of wheat!"
Juvenal, Satires
The essence of contentment and the problem with "progress" was obvious at least 2,500 years ago, at the dawn of taoism. From the Tao Te Ching:
Let there be a country with few people.
Though they have machines that do the work of ten or a hundred, they never use them...
They have boats and carriages, but no one needs them.
They have armor and weapons, but no parades.
Instead of writing, they go back to using knotted cords.
They are happy with their food, pleased with their clothes,
satisfied with their homes.Though the next village is so close you can hear cocks crowing and dogs barking,
the people here grow old and die
without ever feeling any desire to visit.
This is not about beating our plowshares into digging sticks. There's no point in discarding our tools when we are the tool bag, so full of ourselves that we can't see past our noses — or in many cases, our frigging sticks. The issue is whether we long for greener pastures. Are we happy with what we have and where we are? Or are we building a time portal to get someplace else? Are we looking for gold in all the wrong places?
The word for what I'm talking about is rewilding. Rewilding has been defined as "the reversal of human domestication" (wiki). But rewilding is not rewinding. We don't wind back up where we started, for the way back is forward.
Rock-climber Bonnie Prudden says, "you can't turn back the clock, but you can wind it up again." The clock here is culture, not just agriculture. And what we're doing is picking up the pieces we've discarded, what we tilled out of our fields. And the stone that the farmer refused must be the head cornerstone. That stone is being present.
As my friend Michelle Bush tells me, to freely receive that which is freely given is to close the circle of creation. That is why we're here. Pascal said there's a God-shaped hole in each of us, one that no amount of entertainment or accomplishments or consumer goods can fill. Ain't no mountain high enough. That hole is The Whole, and The Whole is what God is. God is right in front of you, in every moment. Being present means seeing the present as just that: as a gift from God. Whatever presents itself is a gift. Your life is never a mistake. Even civilization has not been a mistake. Like the song says, "these are the good old days."
To regain this wholeness now — today — is the work of religion. That's what the word means. There is only one Whole, one Universe, so there is only one religion. That religion has been called "The Perennial Philosophy." It's not annual culture but permaculture. It lasts. Being in touch with God is not just a peak experience, a drug high, a fleeting orgasm, a trip someplace else. Rather, if you seek ye first that kingdom on earth,
a "mystical union" with the entire world may be established. The feeling of ecstasy or bliss associated with this union, while perhaps more gentle and less dramatic than that associated with falling in love, is nonetheless much more stable and lasting and ultimately satisfying... The heights are not suddenly glimpsed and lost again; they are attained forever.
M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
When you're in love with life itself, there's nowhere else you'd rather be. There's nothing to do but enjoy. The world is your playground, your Garden of Eden once again.
That's all well and good, but does it put food on the table?
With only three days to go, Drennan hasn't found any roadkill for the feast. Here we come face to face with the essence of the hunter-gatherer vs. agricultural way of life: uncertainty vs. predictability. Drennan ponders whether not knowing what you're going to eat the next day is exciting or nerve-wracking. This again is a profoundly religious question. Jesus taught,
Do not worry about your life, about what you will eat or drink... Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Foraging is a profoundly religious way of life. Not necessarily a Christian one, but a lifestyle that trusts in "God," i.e., in the universe, in Life. It's been said that the most important question we have to answer is, is the universe friendly? In other words, is life a dangerous predicament or a fun adventure? Perhaps the best answer, as Drennan describes his challenge, is "a bit of both."
Another day goes by, and Drennan still hasn't found any fresh road kill. Not that he's praying for it (in contrast, see minute 2:30 of another great documentary here). Finally, Fergus spots a good-looking, albeit flat, rat. But that's going too far, even for Drennan. Not for some people I know!
Drennan recruits a "possum posse" to help scour the roads. One of the most important lessons about living off the land, despite images of the reclusive trapper or the secretive mushroom hunter, is that successful foraging is a communal enterprise. Twenty eyes are better than two. That's another reason why the most ancient cultures are tribal.
The teamwork quickly pays off. Several causeway casualties are collected. Still, tension builds toward the final climax, the big event. One skeptic puts the issue in familiar terms. Are wild food and roadkill "fit for human consumption?" Fergus has a health inspector address the street meat. He vetoes the badger but leaves the rest to Drennan's discretion. Let the diner beware!
Note that fully cooking food sterilizes it. That's what pasteurization does. Any bacteria or parasites are killed, no matter how long your cadaver has been kissing the pavement. I actually think bacteria and parasites are good for you, but that’s a whole other can of worms. In any case, when you eat off the road more traveled, pollutants are another concern.
Finally, it's dinner time, and the first course goes over fairly well. One woman says it "tastes a bit like spinach rolled in mud." I can imagine that. Wild greens can have strong, earthy flavors, the vegetable equivalent of gamey meat. After all, this food is wild, not tame.
Wild meat can also be tough. One bloke speculates that this is because it's been hit by a car too many times. I'm with this reporter who thinks a good pounding would tenderize it!
Another diner darts her first bite of roadkill into her mouth quickly — so she doesn't barf first. The verdict? Not only does it stay down, but she likes it! Tasting is believing.
Even as they enjoy their feast, the guests wonder why they should believe that foraged food is safe. Why should they trust a man they just met? They assume that it's safer to trust the establishment: people they've never met. The larger question once again is, do we trust civilization or nature? Which do you choose?
It's an open question. If you want to be told what to do, then the answer is obvious. But like the Buddha said, "three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." If you want to see for yourself, you might want to experience a wild foods dinner like Drennan's, which was unanimously pronounced to be "eye-opening." What more can you ask for, a time portal?
We all know home when we see it. And it's been there all along.
Alan Muskat is co-founder of The REAL Center and founder of No Taste Like Home
