Salt Water

Beside that. One sliding foot at a time. I always kept an old pot, hidden in the bushes, so I could cook barnacles in sea water, clams and mussels, oysters. I'd carry a couple of potatoes in my pocket, and an old army blanket, a knife, a Bic lighter. In the butt of the knife was thirty feet of monofilament and several small hooks. I always have a book, since I was five (family stories), and my kit got larger when I started camping out of my truck, growing to include an unabridged dictionary. A great walk today, down into the hollow behind B's cabin. Collected watercress and several different mushrooms; salad later, bitter greens and ripe cheese, with mushrooms on toast. I was reading recipes that cooked things in sea water. Dubious anymore, but they made good reading. Then I read a long piece about the Lockerbie bombing. I truly never know what I'll be reading tomorrow. I'm skirting around a book on field amputation, Civil war period, that Judy sent me years ago, a horrific text; a shattered foot, cut it off, infected hand, cut it off, medical treatment tended toward the brutal. Illustrations and some of those early photographs. Instead I pulled an old Time-Life book out of the stack of books-waiting-to-be-read, Good Will and library sales, Canyons And Mesas, excellent pictures and decent text. Some of the area discussed I know quite well, I lived there, hiked around, knew some of the same watering holes. And the San Juan mountains, god, it was beautiful. Cut-Throat trout cooked on willow twigs, by then I carried a lemon in my pocket. And a baby food jar of bacon fat. Baby food jars, early on, were more or less resealable, bacon fat is usually a solid, a safe method of transport. In Utah I sometimes kept bacon fat in those very large hypodermic needles you use on cows. It was kind of flashy, actually, to whip out a syringe, and lubricate a skillet before you fried an egg. My system is so crude now, I have a ten-inch skillet that I fry the bacon in, and I keep the skillet in the oven, the fucking mice keep me ever alert, and use a spoonful or fry more, depending on my needs. Now that I have to start using the stove again I need to address the bacon fat issue. The brine for salted beef or pork, after curing, was 12 or 13 percent; four years at sea, the biscuit was mostly meal worms. The good news is that worms are 50% protein.