Month: October 2006

A Vagabond’s guide to kitchenware and dishwashing.

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Whether you are on the road, trail or home this is a simple system for cooking and cleaning that will save you time and water:

Cook dinner in pot
Eat heartily, out of the pot, with big spoon.
Lick spoon clean
Scrape out pot with spatula. Licking off the spatula as you go.
Fill pot with water
Heat
Pour hot water into Nalgene bottle and add instant coffee, hot chocolate, or tea.
Drink up.

Now your pot is clean and you didn’t have to waste any water or time to clean it.
I have gone 6 months without ever washing my pot. . Total mess kit weighs 6.80 ounces (193 grams)

Pot I have the MSR Titan Kettle. It weighs 3 oz (85 grams) without the lid. This pot cost a lot. You can find a small aluminum pot in discount stores that will be just as light for 3-4 dollars. Don’t look for the pot in the pot section, look for it in the section that has cheese graters and lemon juicers. I found a pot there that holds a liter of water, weighs 3.5 ounces and has a handle. It was called a chocolate melting pot, I think. For more pot options see this helpful page on pots: Zen Stoves- pot page.

Foil lid– Weighs .10 (2 grams) Makes a lighter weight lid then the one the pot came with. It can also be used as a pot holder to grab the hot handles with. Also handy to have if you need to funnel a seep into your water bottle. A piece of foil probably has hundreds of uses.

Spoon. My favorite spoon was a metal Chinese spoon that I got in Thailand, but it disappeared and I can’t find another in the US. Right now I’m using a polycarbonate spoon, it weighs .35 ounce(9 grams).

Bottle. The 16 oz nalgene wide mouth loop-top -polyethylene water bottle weighs 2.5 ounces (70 grams). The Nalgene bottle of course is also useful for carrying water, dipping cup for shallow water sources, a teapot, and a hot water bottle. I have kept warm on many cold nights with a nalgene bottle filled with hot water in my sleeping bag. It has never leaked. Eventually the Nalgene bottle gets pretty stained and sort of gross looking. Just fill with water and a little bleach and let it soak for a bit, add the spoon while you are at it. It will be clean in no time. The hard clear Nalgene lexan bottle doesn’t seem to stain, as badly, but it weighs an ounce more.

Spatula head. I find the smallest most flexible spatula I can, and take just the head off of it.  Here is one that also has a scraper on one side of  it.

P-38 can opener. Weighs .30 ounces (9 grams) Tie a piece of flagging tape through the hole so that it is not so easily lost.

Knife– weighs .75 ounce (21 grams) I pack the Swiss Army Classic Pocket Knife. Again, tie a piece of flagging tape through the eye so you don’t lose it. Besides a knife it also sports a pair of scissors- that are strong enough to cut my toe nails, a tweezers, tooth pick, file and screwdriver.

Mess kit:

Pot 3 oz (85 grams)

spoon .35 oz (9 grams)

piece of foil for lid .10 (2 grams)

Spatula head .25 (6 grams)

Nalgene 16 oz bottle 2.5 oz (71 grams)

Knife .75 (21 grams)

Total weight: 6.80 oz (192 grams)

Oasis of hell.

There was a trail angel that lived close to the Pacific Crest Trail in southern California. His house was where the hikers stopped to rest and get water through a particularly hot, dry stretch of the trail. When I got to his house, another hiker in his yard, told me that the man was taking a nap. His house was covered in homemade signs that said stuff like “I hate everyone equally.� Some of the signs I didn’t understand. At the bottom of every sign was his name.

Since I had been hiking at night to avoid the heat, I laid down in the shade of a tree and went to sleep.

I woke up to an old big man standing above me. He said, “Who the fuck are you?� I introduced myself and he said, “Well, you better go inside and sign the fucking guest book.� I went inside and he gruffly and with many obscenities explained that his well pump was broken so he couldn’t offer hikers a shower and ice water like he usually would. There was a tank of water that we could fill our bottles for drinking but no washing. He told us to just shit anywhere, but not where he would step in it. There was a turd in a newspaper outside his garage.

He asked us to pay him five dollars each for the shade and drinking water. We all paid, filled our water bottles and hiked on.

A month later, I heard, he shot himself.

The day I flew the coop.

free-bird.jpg In the winter of 77 I ran away.

I had skipped school the day before, spending the day at my favorite hangout- the downtown library.

I got a friend to write an excuse for me. My regular excuse writer was busy so I used an alternate. Instead of the customary “Please excuse Pat, she was not feeling well.  She decided to write, “Please excuse Pat, she had an ear infection. And then she signed it with my mother’s last name spelled wrong.

When my mother got home she asked me sarcastically, how my ear infection was. Then she got mad and said that she was tired of being nice about this.

I walked into my room, put on a warm sweater and coat. Then I left the house while my mother yelled, “you are not to leave this house!, or something like that. I said goodbye to my cat, and started walking. I didn’t know where I was going but a voice in my head said, “Keep walking, if you turn back now you will never get out.  I hitched a ride downtown and then decided to head south. My second ride was a guy in a pickup; I hopped in the back. I was riding in the back of his pickup with the wind in my face, it was dark and the city lights were shining. I was 15 and I was free. It’s a cliché but I really did feel like a bird released from its cage.

I didn’t return home again for almost 3 years and when I returned I had a 1 ½ year old child with me. My only regrets were that I didn’t run away sooner and that I didn’t have some gear.

My life doesn’t need to be easy or comfortable, as long as it’s mine and it’s interesting.

Pat’s guide to substandard living.

  • home sweet homeI wouldn’t own a car I couldn’t sleep in. I once lived quite well, out of my Subaru Justy. I moved the passenger seat up all the way and flipped the back of the seat forward then I put a piece of plywood to bridge the gap between the front seat and the back seat and then put a foam pad over it all and made a comfy bed. On the other side of the car, I put an ice chest to hold my food, which doubled as a side table to put my coffee cup on. I used a small canister backpacking stove to cook on. A five gallon bucket of water with a lid and a spigot went in the back. I had a large wooden bowl to use as a sink. In the little back side pocket I kept a led head lamp and a book. My clothes were kept in a bag in front on the passenger’s side. My towel was kept hanging over the water bucket.
  • Make your home beautiful. I covered the cooler with a colorful small rug and had a bright bedspread from Thailand on the bed. I had lots of pillows and plenty of covers to keep me warm. When I would head for my car at the end of the work day it felt as inviting as any home. Make your home someplace with a beautiful view; even if it’s just for a night; seek out beautiful places to park your car or live. Life is full when the view is good.
  • Keep your home tidy– Living in small places demands tidiness. A place for everything and everything in its place. If you don’t live by this adage your place will be cluttered and frustrating to live in. Just get in the habit of being tidy and clean up every day. Get rid of stuff you don’t need.
  • Bathing. When on the road if there was a town nearby the job, I would join the health club. It was a great to be able to wake up cold and head to the hot tub before work. After work I would take a long hot shower and lie in the sauna until closing. Bathing should be done daily even if it’s very cursory. For situations where you don’t have access to a shower or even running water you can keep yourself clean indefinitely with sponge baths, if done daily. If you wait until you are really dirty a sponge bath just doesn’t feel adequate. So the trick is to bathe daily and use very little soap. Read this old Mother Earth News article about bathing when you don’t have running water. Keep clean without running water
  • Toilet – (For more permanent dwellings.) For a toilet, I use a five gallon bucket with a toilet seat lid called a Luggable Loo I put some sawdust, bark, or duff in theb0000b15ak01-a1v1z4bjnvfjuk_scthumbzzz_.jpg bottom of the bucket and add a cup more after ever use. When it is full I dump it in a pile outside, cover with pine needles, dead vegetation, or straw. Then I rinse out the bucket and dump the water on top of the pile. I only need to empty it about once or twice a week. It is supposed to make good compost that is safe for food crops. I read about this method in the Humanure Handbook
  • Clothes washing– When on the road I would have 2 sets of clothes: My work clothes; my non-work clothes. Every day I wore the same work clothes then took a shower at the health club and changed into my nonwork clothes. At the end of the week I would change into my raingear and wash both sets at the laundry mat. When living in a more permanent situation as in my cabin, I use my bathing water to wash out my underwear and socks as needed. Once a week I bathe in an 11 gallon wash tub. After my bath I put my clothes in and let them soak overnight. Every once in a while I stomp on them like I was crushing grapes with my feet. In the morning I wring them out and hang them up to dry. I usually wear the same clothes all week.

Bears and murderers

In the woods at night anything can happen: in your mind. It’s what makes the telling of scary stories around the campfire so effectively scary. Once, when I was a kid, my mother lowered her voice around the campfire and told us about a vandal attacking the campground’s bathroom, the night before. It was really creepy when she told it.

Because it’s so easy for a mind to run to terrifying cliffs in the dark, in the woods, I try to keep my mind in check: the large animal outside my tent is a deer or an elk, not a bear. The scary guy wearing cotton clothes and carrying a large knife on his belt is not a killer, just a novice backpacker that doesn’t know what to wear or bring. Only thing is that sometimes the big animal is a bear and sometimes the scary guy is a murderer.

I arrived at a shelter on the Appalachian Trail about 8pm. There were two worried hikers at the picnic table. They motioned to an opened backpack in the shelter and said, “Checkout the reading material�. There were a bunch of books on survival and a camouflage bible. Whoever it was, he was packing a lot of weight. All his gear and food was left in the shelter. One of the hikers had found a bag of knives about ½ mile down the trail.

About 10 pm, we got out a map and figured out where the nearest road was. One of the hikers had a cell phone and called the police to report the abandoned backpack. About 1 am two sheriff deputies showed up. They looked through the back pack and found a note that said:

To whom it may concern, I have murdered my father and gone to the woods to live. I have had to abandon my mission and am returning to Chesapeake to do something that you will read about in the papers. Anyone is welcome to any of my gear.

I just want to die.

Shaun Cubage Age 16

One of the deputies looked around the dark deep woods and said “he could be hanging from one of these trees.�

The police took all the knives and the note and said that they would send someone for the rest of the gear in the morning.

A couple months later, curious about what they had found out about the mysterious backpack, I called the sheriff department and asked them what happened. They said the police went to the boy’s house. They knocked and when no one answered they broke in and found the father dead. Two days later the boy turned himself in.

A copy of the newspaper article