I usually take some fruit with me on the trail, if it’s available. Fresh food is worth the weight to me. It’s power food.
I’m all about “leave no trace,” so I would have apple cores and orange rinds in my garbage sack. For awhile now I have been eating the apple cores. This winter I have discovered the joys of eating orange rinds. Orange rinds are tasty; I don’t why it took me so long to discover them.
OK Crow, orange peels are wonderful.
As what? Are telling us you just chew them up and eat them?
Yeah, chew them up and eat them. This winter I had a pile of orange peels laying next to me and I started to eat them, I thought, “Hey these are pretty good.” I have been eating my orange peels all winter.
I have a tangerine tree and I do as you do. When I hike, I peel the fruit and put the peels in my pocket. As I hike, I put some peel in my mouth and slowly eat it. If I am really hot and thirsty, I will eat it like an apple. Tangerine peel is much thinner, is easier to work with, and the peel is where most of the nutrients in the fruit are concentrated so “garbage”may be too strong of a word to describe peels. Over the years, I have gone from large amounts of freeze-dried food to small bits of fresh food, grains,seasonings and soups and even small amounts of well done stringy roast beef as a protein source.
I am also a devoted reader of your blog. You have some great ideas and stories. Hopefully so many devoted readers will not spook you away!
It would probably be a good idea to eat only organic, unwaxed orange peel: on ‘regular’ oranges, they spray a wax coating mixed with fungicides, after they scrub and wash off the *natural* wax coating…the parafin wax they spray on them may tend to gum up yor digestive tract, and the fungicides probably aren’t too great for health either 🙂
pardon my ignorance but why would you deem it necessary to carry an apple core instead of chucking it in the woods?
Your not supposed to leave trash, even biodegradable trash, on the trail. It attracts animals and it spoils the look of the woods. It’s part of the “Leave no trace” thing.
Now, I eat the apple core instead of carry it with me.
when you say “you’re not supposed to”, do you mean according to the rules of the trail, or do you mean as a good hiker, you shouldn’t do so.
i’m not trying to pick a fight, i’m just not an avid hiker so i’m just curious. i always assumed that if you had organic material, food, dishwater, human waste, etc., there would be no problem with getting rid of it on the trail if you did so in a manner that left no evidence of you having done it.
and i agree that an apple core, banana peel, etc. left on the trail would look bad. just wasn’t aware that if it was completely out of sight, leaving it there would be frowned upon.
Yep, even leaving biodegradable waste completely out of sight is frowned upon in Leave No Trace (LNT) camping. It attracts animals to the trail. If you pack it in, you should pack it out.
Human waste is usually okay, as long as as you bury it in a hole 6-8″ deep, and over 200 feet away from water. Some national parks even require that you pack that out, though.
Wikipedia on Leave No Trace camping
Cub scouts LNT summary.
BLM’s LNT page
Hey Andy,
It is probably a rule in some places and just good manners in others.
People don’t want to see it and it attracts animals and may make them sick.
Cool. Thanks for the response. The most backbacking I’ve done is 30-40 miles on the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Well, that’s not exactly true. That’s ALL I’ve done other than the occasional day hike here and there.
I have noticed that even animals (except us!) will eat orange peels. They just stay there and eventually turn black with mold or dry up.
Oops, I meant to say small animals will not eat…..
Just be sure that you wash those orange peels before eating them…even better, try to go organic if you’re going to eat the peels to avoid PESTICIDES!!! Non-organic apples can be particularly dangerous, because pesticides seep into the CORE, more so than the apple itself. So please don’t eat non-organic apple cores!