Food Foraging and Our Forgotten Bioregional Educations: What we don’t even know we don’t know
In the spirit of Thor and Liv Heyerdahl’s ‘Back to Nature’ adventure almost a hundred years earlier, I embraced my time in Marquesas as a chance to live a little closer to the Source. The relatively low populations and highly fertile soil make for lots of nature’s edibles to be foraged with permission from the […]
and I thought I was Tough…
Reunited in the neighboring valley, we brought ashore some fish we’d caught for Mami Faatiarau, Maoni, and Georgina–the woman with whom they were staying. The goat and the puppy had come along too! They’d just returned from a morning of foraging in the mountains with a sac full of mangos, and were pulling a steaming […]
Quiet heros in the forgotten valley.
Mami Faatiarau is 79 years old. She lives in an isolated valley in the Marquesas Islands. Only a walking path connects this valley to the main village, but she doesn’t want to move to the more populated valley like the rest of her family. She and Maoni, her disabled adoptive son prefer to stay in […]
Fenua Enata: Where’d everybody go?
There is nothing like laying eyes on new land after a long, tough passage at sea. The remote, uninhabited bay was an ideal place to dry out, rest, and re-organize Swell. Over the week that followed, we set foot on solid land to stretch our legs and explore the jungle-covered valley. To our great delight, […]
Airborne Popcorn and Free Showers at the Aquatic Rodeo: Passage Part 3
The fourth night was sleepless again. I rose constantly to check the wind direction—still ENE!!?!? Swell bashed into the waves more than I’d have liked, but we really needed to make some distance. If the weather panned out as now predicted, there were howling easterlies on the way. If we didn’t make it before they […]
