What am I doing here? It’s sunny outside. Not a cloud in the sky. I live in one of the cloudiest places in the United States. When I went away to college I lived in a cloudy place too. I’m not complaining. It’s all I know. Just saying why am I on the computer? Why aren’t I outside? Is it because I can’t think of what I want to do out there and where I will go? Its so damn easy to stay inside when everything is handed to you. Food is in the fridge. Heat comes from a box in the basement. Water from the tap. Entertainment from the computer/tv/magazine. Exercise I just kind of ignore. I need it. My lower back hurts when I stay in bed too long. My upper back hurts when I study or type. Moving around is hard inside. Not enough space. Some people fix that with treadmills but I don’t have one. Yoga is good, 'nough room for that, but I need to move. I mean really move. I really should go outside. But I’m with Nick. Nick never wants to go outside until sunset. I prefer midday . I am a sunworshiper. I like it when the sun it brightest. Fuck sunset. I’ll have to go alone. But it’s harder that way. I need to get dressed. I need food. Maybe if I look at the map wall I’ll find somewhere I want to go. Yeah we have a map wall in the basement. I got it for Nick for his birthday. 15 topographic maps in a block. It’s pretty awesome. Or maybe I’ll look in my notebook at my “master list of things to do” and find something outdoorsy that strikes my fancy. I’m a compulsive list maker, once reformed, but back at it again. I could just step out and see what happens. Why do I need a plan? I don’t know. I just do. Control freak. I’ll wander once I’m out there. Change my mind at the last minute, but I need to WANT something, a tease, a reason, or I won’t go at all. Okay I’m going. For real this time. Bye.
Haha. Everyone needs something to inspire them to move. Ironically, these kinds of forums inspire me to do a lot of things I otherwise wouldn’t think of. Unfortunately, it’s still the fucking internet.
In case anyone is interested in what I actually ended up doing: Well first I took a shower and ate a snack and then I checked the weather…on the internet of course, not by actually going outside. I mean honestly that would just be SO MUCH harder. Accuweather told me it was 37 degrees and I was like damn! I have to start tapping maples. Now! The sap was running last Saturday when it was 32 but its been below freezing since then so no action. I know this because my dad tapped a tree back home and I was watching it. The sap was so sweet. I wasn’t expecting it to be. I remember tasting it before coming upon people’s buckets in the woods and it just tasting like water, but this stuff was sweet.
Now the problem is I’m at Nicks house and I don’t know which trees are sugar maples automatically, so I have to go looking for them. I can tell by the bark fairly easily which one is maple though sometimes the oaks look awfully similar. Also the maples are one of the few trees with an opposite branching pattern, but this can be deceptive since on the older branches most of them are broken, and on alternate trees sometimes they randomly end up almost opposite and you can’t tell the difference from far away. Then to tell the red maples from the sugar. I knew they were both on the hill because I remembered that much from before. There are slight differences is the bark but I don’t know them well enough to be sure.
The other thing is I don’t know how much it matters. According to Euell Gibbons all of the maples can make maple sugar and in his experiments he found that the sap yield and sugar content depended entirely on the tree and people could not tell the difference between different kinds of syrup in a taste test. Now I believe Euell but I’m thinking the sugar maple must generally have the best sugar or we would know. I mean the indians wouldn’t have preferred it for no good reason. So I’m still looking for the sugar maples and I can tell real easy if there is a low branch with some new growth. They have golden colored twigs with sharp buds and the red maples have red colored twigs with squater buds. But mostly there isn’t low growth. So I’m lying on my back in the snow looking through binoculars at branches way up in the air and I just really can’t tell. Except for on some of the red maples the buds are really opening up already and you can see them beginning to look like red maple flowers look. But I’m thinking lack of opening doesn’t mean it ain’t a red maple, maybe it’s just a slow tree.
Anyhow I found a few trees close to the house which were definitely sugar maples though they are small, probably less than a foot in diameter. There were a lot of maples farther up the hill and bigger too but harder tell them apart. So after hours of looking at trees. …I spent a lot of time looking at the buds and branching on all the types of trees (ash, aspen, oak mostly) through the binoculars just for kicks also Nick came out and asked what some trees were where he wants to improve the forage for game…I decided we’ll tap 3 smallish sugars up on the hill but close to the house and 1 big red maple right in the back yard.
Last year Nick bought two metal taps at the hardware store when we were thinking about doing birch beer that we never got around to using. We’ll use those and then make two more I’m thinking out of sumac stem. We’re going to drill the holes since it seems nicer though the primitive way which works just as well would be to make a gash (besides the taps wouldn’t work with the gash method). I’ll let you know how it works out.
Nice maple tapping. You must now go start a page on the wiki and call it Maple Tapping or something. Tell us what you know.
that totally rocks! I was thinking about making maple wine rather than going through the labor and energy intensive process of boiling it all down – let the yeast do the work! (and turn those Tony-fattening sugars into brain-cell killers! woohoo!)
Scout, how do I go to the wiki?
Snowflower
How do I go to the wiki? Go to rewild.info and click on “field guide button.” I’m going to find out how to add a link from the top of this site straight to the wiki, but I haven’t the foggiest idea how to do that kind of thing.
You sure can tap any kind of maple - for those of us in the PNW you can tap alders also. I make a binch of syrup last spring (this spring it didnt get cold enough) - just got the idea on a cold morning walk to the nettle patch in late Feb to hand drill a hole in a maple tree - and it gushed beautiful sweet sap! I also tapped a big willow by accident and mixed that in with my maple/alder syrup and cooked it down overnight. I envy you Penny w/ yr freezing nights.
Oh and for a tap i just jammed a plastic funnel into the hole i drilled into the tree - for tappers on a budget.
Update: We also tapped the tree with a hand drill. The sumac spiles work wonderfully. In fact the two expensive metal spiles were leaking more sap down the trunk so we replaced them with wooden ones. A taste test reveals the red is slightly less sweet than juice of the three sugars combined, but well worth tapping as it is our largest tree. We boiled the juice of one days tapping in a pan on the stove and ended up with about a half cup of wet creamy sugar. I’ll try to do an article with photos eventually.
I made maple wine once (didn’t tap the tree myself tho’). It turned out a bit like a sweet bourbon, pretty good actually. The thing to keep in mind w/ maple sugar is that it isn’t completely digestible by yeasts, which means that you’ll probably want to go ahead and boil it down a little bit, if only to avoid adding refined sugar. However you go about it, please post the result, I’d definitely be interested! 
Going back to the original subject of this post,I finally got off my lazy butt and set up an old canvas army tent and have slept out side the past two nights.
I have slept outside many times,but this winter I seem to have been somewhat reluctant to give up a little comfort.
I find myself also attached like a bad habit to the computer and easy junk food instead of working to cook something healthier to eat.
I have acres upon acres of forest to explore,yet I dont get out as often as I should. What is wrong with me? I used to want to explore every nook and cranny of the woods,and I seem to have lost some of that desire…
Why do I ask questions that I think I already know the answer to?
May be Id like to hear some other opinions…
I seem to have a habit of waking at sunrise when I sleep outside,
That is a favored part of my days… -Ofthewood
First off, nothing is wrong with you. At least not anything obvious, lol. I am in a kinda similar situation, being addicted to the computer, choosing easy poison food over healthy eating, and having access to lots of great land and not spending as much time on it as I think I should.
We are products of our environment, and our current environs say “Stay inside, play games, buy food that sucks”. Take a page from the current anti-smoking trends. They say that before you quit, you must change your attitudes about it.
I try to look at it like practicing music. I have to put in the hours of boredom and sweat, until one day i can do the scales and play what I want. i try to put in at least an hour every day playing around in the Primitive Camp behind the house, even if it is just cutting firewood or working on my sweatlodge. gotta pay your dues as they say.
A note on this subject:
Maybe this is obvious but I went camping for a few days and everything that is so hard at home was suddenly so easy while camping, and I don’t mean hardcore primtive either, I mean just sleeping in the car with a egg crate pad and 3 blankets and a pillow and eating lots of canned food and sweets and having books to read. Even with all of those comforts listening to the birds, being aware of the direction of the wind and the phase of the moon, working on primtive skills, and eating wild became so natural. In a house it is a struggle to do all those things even though I have all day. I have to make myself do it. Camping it would be a struggle not to do them. Even though there are benefits of practicing skills at home like quick access to materials and books and the internet for tricky problems, I tend to abuse that access. I’m definitely going to try to go out camping more. So I guess my tip is whatever works to get outside, don’t be afraid of not being “pure” by bringing some beer or a nice tent or whatever for comfort.
yeah whatever it takes…rewild!
Your only job in life is to eat, drink, defecate, and sleep.
And then, you don’t even have to be alive.
Even among “rewilders” it amazes me how people are sopped up in guilt complexes. “I don’t get enough exercise!” “I’m spending too much time doing civilized activity X and Y”. I consider this WAY OF THINKING/FEELING to be symtomatic of one of civilization’s ills - namely, our tendency to weigh ourselves against some sort of standard. It’s like being lorded over, even with values being supposedly contrary to the dominant culture. But we’re never good enough!
Ideally, I would choose not to live up to any standards at all. But I’m not as free from this conditioning as I’d like to be, either…