The Wild Food Year: A Tale From the Wilderness

In late August 2018 eight adventurers (including yours truly) set out to spend a year in the Minnesota Wilderness, harvesting all our own food, using canoes and snowshoes as our only modes of transportation, and building Queer Feminist community together in the wild.  At least that was the plan... the project lasted about 10 weeks.  We were beset with a number of setbacks, from a poor rice crop to the coldest and rainiest autumn the locals could remember, to floodstage waters on the rivers we were paddling up, to a very early Whitefish spawn that started much earlier than we had planned for.  Despite these setbacks, our team successfully ate a nutritious and abundant wild diet for the whole time we were together, and were in a pretty good position to meet our food goals for the year.  However, by the time we got to whitefish camp, exhaustion was high, morale was low, and we were realizing that creating queer feminist community in the wild requires a lot of skill and wisdom on behalf of all parties, not just a few of the members.   We made a consensus decision to disperse to other projects on November 6, 2018.  I'm transitioning from this group to a winter of hunting, writing, and planning an alternative 2-3 month canoe adventure that will start next May, building upon the lessons from this project.

The tale of our venture is told below in handwritten, scanned letters that I wrote to the world while I was on the expedition.  Enjoy!

​THE COMPLETE LETTERS:

Wild Rice and Community Building: Aug 31-Sept 9, 2018

Rice Processing & First Days of Paddling: Sept 11-Oct 3, 2018

Rain & Cold & No Bear Fat, Oh My!: Oct 4-14, 2018

Does, Cold Toes, and Beaver Feet: Oct 15-29, 2018

A Personal Truth & A Hard Group Decision: Oct 30-Nov 8, 2018

Many thanks to April Judd for receiving these letters and sending them out to the world.  

​~Murphy