Forager+AL

This New Yorker article is about Euell Theophilus Gibbons and his ability to forage and survive off the land. Some of the famous food consists of dandelion delicacies and the ability to distinguish between mushrooms that may be poisonous and the ones that look similar, but are fine to eat. Gibbons intimacy towards mushrooms is really drawing that fine line that Mcphee referred to as, “Gibbons’ interest in wild food suggests but does not actually approach madness.” Euell wrote a book on edible plants in North America from the Rio Grande to the Arctic Circle. This article written in the New Yorker by John Mcphee is all about the survival diet consisting of food found on the land and a six day trip in November on the Susquehanna River by canoe. Before the trip Euell Gibbons and John Mcphee picked a small bucket of persimmons, a mound of walnuts and set off with his hammer as a utensil and no market food, not even a fishing rod or a gun. One part of this article was the comment that Gibbons made about a survival trip like this can really bring a new way of living into focus, and shows “the earliest beginnings of human gastronomy.” One part that interested me was as the conscientious forager, he only takes what will grow back and he won’t eat anything that destroys the plant. This is the environmentalist in John Mcphee writing this for sure, he loves to point out the difference between just pretending to be in touch with nature and one with nature. He also admits that he will never conquer nature. But give and take of the resources and only take what helps nature replenish. If you were really on top of getting the most vitamins, than it would be worth it for most individuals that tend to a garden to leave the weeds and pull the vegetables they have been looking after. The weeds have more vitamins in other words. During the evenings is when Gibbon’s begins to give out all his secrets; the severe poverty that his family had to endure when he was young, his father abandoned them to find work and his mother took sick. That left the four children to feed themselves. This is where the secrets of foraging surfaced out of need for survival. During the 1930’s Gibbons went from being a “ding, which is the hobo word for bum.” Having a love affair with a communist and playing the part himself Gibbons soon realized she didn’t love him, and he got tired of, “living with Karl Marx.” This meant moving around and in this journey he held down many jobs the ranged from ship building, working as an attendant in a mental hospital and hunting wild pig. Then he decided to go back to school at age thirty six where he met his wife Freda Fryer and they soon decided together to join the Quaker Meetings.
 * The Forager **