|
|
Re: history questions: meat, siberian land bridge, horses in th
johnel@ix.netcom.com
Mon, 16 Dec 96 06:17:55 GMT
On 12/15/96 11:03PM, in message <592hll$ba8@nnrp1.news.primenet.com>,
jimamy@primenet.com wrote:
> johnel@ix.netcom.com wrote:
>
> >While living in Meeteetsee, Wyoming (everyone knows where THAT is, right?)
> and
> >after having been a vegetarian for two years, I worked on a ranch feeding 60
> >lb. bales of hay to the cattle, after stacking 30 or 40 bales on the
> ranchers
> >pickup, sometimes in 40-below-zero weather. Yeehah! No lack of protein
> there!!
> >
> >(Must have been all those soybeans...)
> >
> >;]
> >
> >John
>
> After hiking three weeks in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and
> living only off the plants I identified as edible from two books I brought
> in with me, I managed to climb, with my eighty pound pack from the
> confluance of the Selway and Clearwater up to the Montana border near El
> Capitan. I was so weak and spending so much time in search of food and
> spending so much time eating it that I had no strenght to climb out to
> Gardiner peak and back to "civilization." I then knew why herbivors spend
> so much time eating with their face in the grass. I also knew why my
> vegitarian freinds spend so much time eating so much more so much more
> often. I almost died. I then shot a little ground squirrel, about the
> size of my fist. I ate him and within fifteen minutes I felt like super
> man. I climbed right up to Gardiner Peak, back down to the Selway and
> out with no problem. I knew then and there that the life of an omnivor
> free's up so much more time for so much more in the way of creative and
> physical energy. I also knew why lions, wolves and scavengers like
> buzzards just lay around for a weak after a big meal. Eating meat which
> has been generated by another animal that spends all its time eating is
> cost effective and time efficient.
>
> I'll buck bales with you in Meeteetse, Bondurant, Kaycee, Greybull or
> wherever. No storebought food. Just what you get from the land and just
> what I get from the land. You eat vegitarian, I'll eat omnivourous and
> I'll be bucken bales and feeding by sleigh long into the winter after your
> dead and frozen on the ground.
>
Yeah, that's what they said in Wyoming then, too. The rancher I worked for
mused at one time that he didn't think a vegetarian would be able to work like
he & I did... and since I was working for a cattle-rancher, I didn't think it
prudent to advise him that I hadn't eaten any meat in quite a while... job
security, you know :)
If you want to live off the land, survival-style, yes, you'll have a tough
time. Personally, I don't advocate a pure vegetarian diet, but through
combining grains, legumes, seeds, and nuts, you can get a very high quality
protein, especially if you don't mind supplementing with the occasional cheese
or milk. It takes a little knowledge and some sources, but eating less meat and
more of that other stuff I mentioned does most of us a world of good.
All you really needed to be able to pack yourself out of that valley was a good
peanut-butter-on-whole-wheat sandwich!
BTW, it wouldn't hurt to do as the Indians did when they killed for food: tell
the spirit of the departed animal they were sorry, and grateful...
John
|