Freakin Frozen!

First off, no regrets. My lovely wife and I are happy to be home. We were gone for most of 6 months and we are glad to be back.

That being said, I am officially not acclimating to the cold. It's freaking cold. Sunday night it was down into the single digits. Monday night it's supposed to be 3 degrees Fahrenheit. That's really not unheard of for early April in the Great North Woods. What has changed is me. I'm no longer used to the cold.

We plan on being home for the rest of the year, only heading south after the holidays. I'm hoping that by living through the fall I'll get somewhat used to the colder temperatures. One thing that does not work is going from sunny Florida back into winter conditions.

My lovely wife was talking to some of her elderly friends from church. In recent years they gave up being snowbirds and now spend winters up north. They are suffering and have not adapted to the cold at all.

One thing for sure, I'm going to have to get some more long pants, warm jackets, fuzzy socks and lots and lots of fleece.

After one more week of cold it is supposed to start warming up again. My suffering shouldn't last too much longer. I'm chomping at the bit to start on some outside projects, but they are going to wait until I can work outside without wearing mittens.

-Sixbears

Survival Food in the Cold North

This is the starving time of the year here in the Great North Woods. Picture life hundreds of years ago before food was easily transported around the globe. To survive a northern winter food grown in the summer would have to last until things started growing again. Sometimes harvests were poor and not enough was stored. There's not a lot of wild foods available in the early spring.

One readily available food is rock tripe. Rock_tripe Lichens that grow on rock don't sound very appetizing. To be honest, the best thing that can be said about the flavor is that they don't taste terrible. Kinda reminds me of eating dead leaves.

So what's the attraction? It's readily available and actually quite nutritions. There are records of arctic expeditions surviving on nothing else for months at a time. Beats starving to death.

Many years ago I did an experiment about this time of year in the western mountains of Maine. I tried to live off the land in the mountains. For three days my diet consisted of rock tripe, a little bit of edible moss, and spruce tea. The spruce tea was the high point flavor wise. It's also one of the few good sources of vitamin C in the winter time.

The rock tripe was collected from the rocks, cleaned, and double boiled. The first batch of water was poured off as rock tripe contains acids that help them eat rock. (sounds more appetizing all the time, doesn't it?)

Actually if it was finely chopped and added to a hearty soup you wouldn't mind the flavor at all. All by itself for days at a time it gets pretty boring. However, not nearly as boring as starving to death.

-Sixbears