Category: General

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)

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.

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

Reflections

Five years ago I sold my house in the city. I gave away or sold most of my processions and moved to a remote water access only cabin in BC. The cabin came furnished. It did come with a small mirror that I moved outside. I didn’t need reflections. I wanted to live as if I never had to look in a mirror or see myself reflected in others to know who I was.

The doorway to peace and clarity

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At the barter fair I met a woman selling San Pedro cactuses. She said they were a doorway to peace and clarity. She said if she didn’t hide her parallel reality, they (the folks in the current reality) would medicate her. I would guess her age to be somewhere between 50-60 years old. She was pretty in a mystical, peaceful way, with clear eyes that looked to the horizon.
I met her again at the buffalo burger stand. She told me not to hold a grudge against anyone then she started talking about the government and the revolutionary war and the English and something about gold. Then she finished her burger, smiled, and danced away to join the drumming circle.