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Sea Kayaks Techniques Bulletin Board
Re: One final note on ditch kits
Posted By: Will In Response To: One final note on ditch kits (Robert N Pruden)
Date: Saturday, 11 December 2004, at 9:46 p.m.
Well Robert,
After you fend off the Polar Bears in the Arctic, look for scurvy grass, or consume the intestines of the caribou you kill. This is important, besides stupidty (see Franklin's Easy Tips for Touring the NorthWest Passage with 140 Friends) scurvy is the next big danger in the Arctic. Course you could bring along a few tabs of Vitamin C (don't take too much it'll lower your sperm count). South of the tree line, new spruce frond tea is a source of Vit C-don't overheat! cooling destroys the vitamins.
Also Reindeer moss is edible. Polarbear meat must be cooked-triconosis, PB liver -fatal dose of Vitamin A. Just about every other Arctic mamal is best et raw.And should you become lost (not that you would) all species of cactus are edible and a source of water. Taste varies. (I regularly have nopal and eggs-but it is de-thorned, peeled and soaked over night).
All scaled fish are edible. All insects are said in some sources to be edible, others not. Grasshoppers, grubs and crickets are you best bet. Scorpion is also OK. I guess the cooking breaks down the poison-the three I ate in China did me no harm.
Oh and of course the wild nettle (world wide-easily identifiable) is full of all sorts of good healthy things-make tea out of it, eat the leaves and stalks. The formic acid cooks right out and its supposed to be good for hayfever and allegeries. Careful picking! butsting wears off in about ten minutes-usually ten frantic minutes.
Don't eat snow in a jam-ice I read is less energy sapping. I wouldn't do either unless I had plenty of food to replace the energy lost. Though I've been told it doesn't work-it seems to for me, a blade of grass or a pebble in your mouth keeps it closed, keeps your mouth moist and doesn't waste water through mouth evaporation.
Always make sure you've got a vent hole in your igloo or snowcave.
Be careful with a lot of the wild & medicinal plant people-many of them will believe just about anything unless it comes from a credible source. And never forget Eule Gibbons "Ever Eat apine Tree?" died of liver cancer.William
: Quite often there are folks who know things about wild plants that have
: healing qualities. It would be useful for those to chirp in and share
: their knowledge with us. Such knowledge can help in an emergency
: situation. It is my plan to get a book on useful plants so that I can take
: advantage of such knowledge if and when I need to. For example, Sedge can
: be made into an edible porridge. The pioneers who settled in Western
: Canada used Sedge for a variety of purposes, food being one of them. I
: hope I get a ton of responses here, the info could prove to be
: life-saving.: Robert N Pruden
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