As The Crow Flies

1. Find a cheap ticket. I found my cheap tickets in the very tiny adds in the travel section of the Sunday paper.
2. Buy a travel guide for the country that you will be going to. Read it before you leave, paying particular attention to the “visas required” section, and pack it. I recommend Moon travel guides. 
3. Pack- Go light-under 20lbs. Make sure it will fit in the overhead so you don’t have to check anything. Clothes motto: wear one, wash one. (only 2 sets of clothes) There is often a very stingy weight limit for carry on, so it’s good idea to carry a very lightweight day pack to split your load up.
4. Go. Keep your self open to new adventures. Remember, whatever doesn’t kill you will make for a good story.

Once, in Malaysia, I camped on a deserted beach called Monkey Beach.  At dusk about 50 monkeys came out and played in the sand. I had a bag of peanuts; they all surrounded me and I fed them. Just as it was getting dark, six men with guns and machetes showed up. I spent a very stressful evening with them. One of them loaned me his machete to sleep with, because he said there were tigers in the area. In the morning, I hiked out and rented a room, exhausted from the stress of the night before.
Note: For good travel guides that list interesting places like this, that you won’t find in other travel books.  Go to http://www.moon.com/ .  They have the best travel guides, in my opinion, far better then  Lonely Planet guides.

On the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail), I once used the partial fuel canisters left in the hiker box to cook up some hard-boiled eggs to bring with me on the next section. I carried a bigger pot in those day, I filled it with hard-boiled eggs and then doled them out to myself along the way.

I don’t have a refrigerator at the cabin that I’m now living at but I find that the eggs last at least a month with out refrigeration. When researching refrigerating eggs on the internet, I learned that refrigeration of eggs is a North American thing and that in other countries they are stored on the shelf.

When in Java, I lived with a family that had a little open air store; they had a bowl of eggs sitting on the counter for sale. I was concerned about this bowl of eggs, day after day just sitting there, un-refrigerated in the hot Java weather. They told me that they had soaked them in hot salt water for a while to preserve them. I ate one. It tasted like a perfect hard-boiled egg that hadn’t been cooked too long. They said that if they didn’t sell in 2 weeks that they would bury them for a while and then try to sell them again.

Laen has this to say about it:

For an explanation of why this is, read: Science of Cooking : “Is it okay to leave eggs un-refrigerated?�.

It seems the reasoning is this:
* 1 in 20,000 eggs is infected with salmonella.
* Leaving an egg unfrigerated allows salmonella to multiply.
* Salmonella can be dangerous.

But then, you can also kill salmonella by cooking the egg enough.

So, you’re taking a teeny tiny risk by not refrigerating, but you can counter that risk by cooking the eggs enough to kill the bacteria.

Things are warming up here. It got up to 40 F (4.4 C)today, which is sort of sad because the snow is no longer fluffy. Everything is drippy. My porch looked wet this morning, when I went out to start the generator, but it was icy and I slipped and fell hard; my back hitting the corner of the step.  I left my slippers lay where they had flown, hobbled back inside, took some ibuprofen and went back to bed. I forget to live carefully, sometimes. Sometimes, I live as carelessly as someone can, who lives in the city and who has health insurance.

On the trail I try to live carefully; the consequences of an injury could be great. I find that I hike more carefully and balanced by myself then when hiking with others. Ray Jardine, in the Pacific Crest Trail handbook, recommends not hiking alone through the Sierras, so, I started hiking with two other hikers in Kennedy Meadows. The partnership didn’t last long; I didn’t like hiking at someone else’s pace. I did enjoy the camaraderie and having someone to camp with at night. I started hiking at my own pace and meeting up with them, now and then and camped with them for a few nights.

We were all hiking together when we came to a swollen stream of glacial melt. The first guy walked across and he pointed at a log as the best way to cross. I didn’t think about it, I just crossed there. The log rolled and trapped my foot under it. I was trapped in a gushing stream of glacial melt up to my ribcage, I was thinking that I may die there. One of the guys was able to lift the log off my foot and I scrambled out. The other guy said, “See, that is why we should all hike together�.

That was a joyous moment when that log was lifted off my foot and I was happy and grateful that he had been there, but the lesson is not that you shouldn’t hike alone but that sometimes logs roll and also that you need to find your own way and not let others lead you.

We all parted ways soon after and I was happily walking at my own pace again, aware and edgy like a creature in the wilderness should be.

Five years ago, I sold my house and all my stuff and bought a water access only cabin in coastal BC. I didn’t have a boat so I would pay a water taxi to drop me off and would tell him to come back and get me in a month or two. It would be easy to live off the land up there as there are lots of berries, mushrooms, edible plants and seafood to eat. The cabin came with a row boat and a crab trap. I bought a cheap fishing pole and some hooks and lures. There were muscles lying on the beach in front of my cabin. A ways up the inlet there were oysters and seaweed beds. It was a veritable Garden of Eden. However, I almost always ate the food I had brought with me instead of living off the land as I had dreamed of.

I decided to only bring up a very monotonous yet nutritional diet, thinking that I would tire of the monotony and go out and forage for food. However the two meals that I would make for myself proved to be so delicious and satisfying that I was always happy to eat them. They were:

Super oats.
Oatmeal, raisins, almonds, cinnamon, soy protein powder. (Even better with brown sugar) Cook the oatmeal and raisins with extra water so that when you add the soy protein powder it isn’t too dry.

Garlic fried rice.
Sauté a half to a whole head of garlic along with a lot of dried red peppers in oil, add cooked brown rice( let the rice sit for a bit uncovered so it dries out some) , add an egg to it all and stir it around until the egg is cooked. (Even better when sprinkled with seasoned gourmet rice vinegar.)

I love mornings. I’m usually awake by 5am, and love getting an early start but I also enjoy drinking hot beverages and appreciating the morning. This is my usual morning routine, on the trail.

From the comfort of my sleeping bag, I reach out of my tent, start my stove and heat up water to make a 16 oz nalgene bottle full of instant coffee. I put the bottle in my bag to warm me up while I eat my breakfast. Breakfast is usually cereal, nuts and powder milk mixed with water.

After I eat, I drink my coffee and enjoy the morning. Then I heat more water and make green tea in my nalgene bottle. While I drink that I look over the guide book pages for the day. Then using the same tea bag I make another nalgene bottle full of tea. When I finish that, I wash my face with the warm tea bag, and stow it in an outside mesh pocket of my pack until it is dry and can go in my ziplock garbage sack.

Then I leave the comfort of my bag, pack up (I can pack up in 2-4 minutes), and go. This way I start the day hydrated and with little or no water that I have to carry.

Note: If the days are blistering hot, the cool mornings can’t be wasted on sleeping, beverages, or breakfast. On those days, I pack up, grab a meal bar, and hike on.