TOUR

[lumberjim]

We would go to sleep a few hours after dark, and I was always up with the sunrise, for some reason. Id get the fire rekindled, or relit, put water on for tea, or cowboy coffee if we had been lucky enough to score some on the latest food run. We usually had rice or fruit for breakfast. Food procurement was always an interesting event. Some of you will be put off by what is to follow, but it was an integral part of my experience, so I can’t really omit it, but I have saved it until the latter parts of this tale in order to keep it away from the focus of the story. It was important, but not all that important.

We “dumpster dove”. Yeah, I know. Gross, right? Well…..there are some that would disagree. I, personally was mildly appalled at the prospect when first I heard it discussed. Back in Shawnee, I think it was. Heather mentioned having done it before, and when I questioned the wisdom of the practice, she clarified, and rationalized for me. Heather saw it as a noble thing to do, rescuing the food from waste. We waste so much food in America. You see, dumpster diving is not a literal statement. There is no diving involved. You do not dive into the dumpster. Nor do you wade through gops of garbage and refuse as my initial mental images showed me. It is best done strategically. You get to know the practices of a grocery store or dunkin’ donuts or pizza hut, and hit the dumpster immediately after they dispose of their stale food. Pizza Hut in Silver city had a lunch buffet from 11a to 1p. We got there 3 times a week at 1:15pm. The boxes of pizza were piled neatly on top of the dumpster for us after the first or second time they saw us reach in and take them out. Nothing wrong with them at all, completely free, and yummy as yummy could be to 4 starving hippies living in a canyon.

I found a pile of busted up shopping carts behind a grocery store one day, and immediately saw the potential. A McGyver moment. We took a few of the panels of steel grids with us. The dumpsters behind the grocery stores were always picked over by indigenous po’ folk, so there was not much food to be found there. We did, however, get wind of a food bank, and took advantage of some very good and well meaning Christians’ repast. They gave us 5 or 6 frozen blocks of soup, some bread, and maybe a can or two of odd veggies from the most recent food drive. There was lots of God Blessing, and they only subjected us to about 15 or 20 minutes of “Jesus loves you, and will see you back onto the path”….They were nice, so we didn’t mind too much. Troll felt guilty about saying “God Bless You” in reply to their blessings on us.

Back in the canyon, we lugged the steel grates, the soup, and the boxes of pizza down to the camp. We wanted to offer some to Matthew, but he was not around. We gathered up the stones in our fire pit, and arranged them into a box with only 3 sides. After the first course of stones, we added the larger of the grates. Then more stones, mortared with mud from the river bottom. With the walls about knee high, we added another grate, carried the walls up again, and toped it with the third grate. This was covered by river rocks, mortared, and voila, we had ourselves an oven. Sorta. Not like we were going to be doing any baking, but it sure did warm that pizza up nicely. WE realized that the oven was great for cooking, but didn’t serve well to sit around and stay warm in the crisp cool nights, so we ended up encircling the back side of the oven with another, larger fire ring.