The best and worst part of the trip was eating. Walking meant we wanted and even deserved more food than ever, yet we had the constraints of what we could carry, what would keep well in packs, could be prepared easily on our one burner and two pans, and what we could afford. On top of that we still wanted to have food that was produced with fairness and health in mind for all involved. Believe me, that narrows it down and we made plenty of compromises.

The best meals were lunches. I think because they were the most nutrient dense. Foods that are ready to eat, which also has a lot to offer your body and tastebuds, are heavier than foods that take some preparation, mainly hydration and heat. Breads, meats, cheeses, snacks. So, we sacrificed some extra weight for really good and quick lunch food. Sardines in a can, a loaf of sourdough bread, a salami, aged jack cheese. Days just coming out of a town meant more fresh foods like avocado or other fruit.

We ate oatmeal every single morning (we opted to forgo soaking, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be possible) . I would be sure to put the raisins or other dried fruit (A Sunkist medley was a particular treat) into the cold water along with sea salt to make sure it was tender and plump. Once the oatmeal was ready I would add a thick pad of cultured butter, raw honey, and sometimes peanut butter for a really dense start to the day. Instead of getting sick of this same meal, it was the one consistency in our life on the trail and I looked forward to it every morning. We would take our time to fill our bellies and drink a cup of tea before starting out.

Walking and sleeping on the ground and spending a month outside connected us to the natural world in a way we hadn’t experienced before. But we still carried civilization and modern life on our backs.  The experience of nature was closer than ever but it was still more of a shelter around us than our true environment. Everything we really needed we brought in from elsewhere. We drank water from the creeks, but always filtered. We picked out good flat spots to sleep, but always with a pad. We ate outside and cooked in the sand, but never ate food from the spot we settled. We had a few breakfasts with picked blackberries, some wild mint tea, snacked on salal berries while walking,  and we could have added wild nettles to our meals, but I was too uncertain.

Trail conversations often covered what we would eat if we hadn’t bought four days worth of food at the last town and hadn’t had full bellies from a roadside diner. Some backpackers who are out for weeks or months will use small game traps to eat fresh wild meat on the trail. I would be up for this approach and I am very excited to learn more about pack goats. Apparently a very pleasing companion, a good pack goat can carry some weight and provide fresh milk! Go out long enough and you could even have some fresh cheese. Willow-Witt Ranch knows all about it, learn more here.

We made do with what we know how to do, which is to buy the best food we can find for the money we have and make something good with it. A stay at Gospel Flat Farm in Bolinas provided us with garlic until we got to Port Orford Oregon and got more garden garlic from friends as well as some carrots for a fancier rice and beans. (Minute Brown Rice was a major winner in our book, not organic, and no Massa, but it met a need)

We had a little burner that used denatured alcohol to make a nice hot flame, but we would use a wood fire as much as we could, or sometimes as necessary when fuel got low. Every evening we would scope out a flat spot to cook, with as little wind as possible and plenty of little surfaces on which to set food and the cooking kit, and of course a rock or log on which to sit. Going up the coast meant a lot of beach camping and keeping stuff our of the sand was a big priority.

The best spots were campsites away from cars and roads that still had a nice set up for easier living, meaning really just a picnic table, and fire pit with a place for pots and a decent composting toilet. With the basics there, life on the trail was an absolute joy.

                          

Humans’ inclination to displace life’s challenges off of the body and onto a tool has shaped us from the beginning- most especially when it came to the challenge of eating.

Primatologist Richard Wrangham explains that the transition to cooking our food fundamentally shaped our bodies into what we are working with today, e.g. smaller mouths, smaller guts, punier teeth than apes. We have come to rely heavily on food processing (cooking, fermentation etc) for digestion.

So for better or for worse the human form was shaped in large part by processing our food, making digestion easier and leaving extra energy for thousands of years of other inventions, which are continuing to shape us in ways we don’t yet know. Which brings us to…the appendix!

The irony of the appendix is that it turns out to be much more functional to us than we thought, but may well be on its way out after all.

Scientists are continuing to find evidence that reveals the appendix as a useful organ, and not, as Charles Darwin assumed, just a remnant from past preference of plants. Studies from the last few years has show the appendix to be an evolved organ that houses good bacteria waiting to repopulate the gut after the system is flushed due to the presence of harmful microbes.

This use has been hidden from us since increased use of sterilization, clean drinking water and non-threatening foodstuffs has meant that survival in an industrialized world may be possible without an appendix. In fact the presence of the appendix seems to do more harm than good in clean conditions as they are finding a relationship between the inflammation of the appendix, which leads to its removal, and the fact that it is under-used.

As explained by researcher William Parker, Ph.D. (more from him here)

“Several decades ago, scientists suggested that people in industrialized societies might have such a high rate of appendicitis because of the so-called “hygiene hypothesis,”…This hypothesis posits that people in “hygienic” societies have higher rates of allergy and perhaps autoimmune disease because they — and hence their immune systems — have not been as challenged during everyday life by the host of parasites or other disease-causing organisms commonly found in the environment. So when these immune systems are challenged, they can over-react….

This over-reactive immune system may lead to the inflammation associated with appendicitis and could lead to the obstruction of the intestines that causes acute appendicitis…Thus, our modern health care and sanitation practices may account not only for the lack of a need for an appendix in our society, but also for much of the problems caused by the appendix in our society.”

So, what should we do with our vermiform organ? Use it or lose it?  “The function of the appendix could be rendered obsolete by cultural changes…” says Parker. “[Such changes have] left our immune systems with too little work and too much time their hands – a recipe for trouble.”

Cooking our food fundamentally changed the human body, and increased sanitation of food and drink seems to be on the way to do the same. But to just accept the obsolescence of this functional organ as a part of our ongoing evolution seems flawed. We can’t guarantee current conditions (not to mention that most of the world doesn’t experience such conditions) and we still are just discovering the power of the microbes in our gut as fighters of all sorts of disease; it seems hasty to just discount the thing entirely, though we often do since the appendectomy is the most commonly performed emergency operation in the world.

So, we should put it to use right?  Parker  posits that we should start challenging our appendix and the immune system generally with the tasks they are supposed to tackle. A completely great idea! However, I think he is looking to the problem for the solution…”If modern medicine could figure out a way to do that,” Parker says “we would see far fewer cases of allergies, autoimmune disease, and appendicitis.”

I think this dilemma provides a lovely analogy to the situation currently faced by the whole human body. We have these perfectly useful systems, well-adapted to deal with challenges of daily life for the last 499,950 years, give or take. Modern society has taken it upon itself to relieve us of these challenges, only to find out that they are entirely necessary!

In the case of the gut, we might try trusting our microbes to deal with the challenges they are capable of facing. Instead, we should rely on modern medicine to bottle up and feed us those very challenges it helped us/told us to avoid?

I say, start with what we have and use it as its meant to be used. Drink raw milk, dig in the dirt, eat fermented food, even get sick! Resist the obsolescence of the human body and challenge it to its fullest extent.

In that spirit, after the challenge of a long trek on foot (and embarking on the challenge of marriage) and a long break from the blog, I look forward to recounting the adventures and the lessons, along with continued thoughts from home kitchen. No longer the itinerant one below (for now anyway).

                          

I haven’t the technology to share the photos yet, especially of our road meals. The night of day two we had a grand meal at a friends farm with fresh caught crab, home made sourdough bread, abundant greens with eggs from roaming chickens. For breakfast we had oats with fresh goats milk. This meal was probably the best we will have on the trip and reminded me how much better food from a home kitchen is. We haven’t even been able to soak oats, although we are still carrying our soaked/dried nuts, so we get some whole foods with some careful preparation. Even our food made on our feather-light alcohol stove is better than what we find in cafes around. Lots of sardines to and almonds dipped in honey!

Time to write and update is limited, and will be more fun with pictures, so hold tight until the last week of July.

Until then happy home-cooking, simple living, and enjoying the power of your feet to get you to beautiful places.

                          

We are trying to make sure to carry a manageable weight for five days but still get the nutrients we need from active food. One of the ways we are doing this is soaked and dried nuts. These have released their sprout inhibitors and made their nutrients more accessible and abundant to us. But then they are dried at a low enough temp to not be wet and not have had all the good stuff cooked out.

So hold tight until then and be well!

Also! Lots of sourdough activity happening around here to share, as well as thoughts about experimentation versus getting good at what you know and like.