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9 | (continued) I can’t blame them for thinking I was a bit strange—I am a bit strange. What clearer evidence could there be than this account?
You may think that drawing water from a river that was so near would have been a snap, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t use the shore nearest to camp in the summer, because the access to it was too muddy in some places, too steep in others, uncleared throughout—also more trouble than it was worth. The route along the tractor lane and down the slope beside the railroad bridge was easily three times the distance, but it was firm, clear and graded all the way, which counts for a lot when you’ve got about seventy pounds of water in a slippery plastic bag over your shoulder. I can’t say whether it was malnutrition or advancing age, but I found that climb more difficult, more laborious for my heart and lungs, every time I did it. I suspect it was mostly due to a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, which contain several nutrients—principally enzymes and bioflavonoids— missing from the brand of multi-vitamins I took then. Their formula doesn’t compare to the one I take today —but still, no enzymes or bioflavonoids. I’ve never been careful about my diet—no doubt a lifelong rebellion against loving but overcompensating grandparents who compelled me to eat nutritious foods whether I liked them or not: soft-boiled eggs, spinach, broccoli, asparagus—the familiar list. And I didn’t need a scale to tell me that I lost weight in those nine months; I looked younger, but felt constantly hungry. Which is probably why, when I finally departed and moved into town, I began gorging myself until I had regained every pound I had lost in the woods. And then some.
After freeze-up, the shallows near the railroad bridge became solid ice, and impracticable for gathering water, so I had no choice but to break a hole in the ice nearer camp and stomp a rough trail down the slope, a route that avoided the thickets and seeps, which flow year-round. The bags, however, remained a problem. It isn’t easy to design a leakproof plastic bag that will carry several gallons of water, draped over a man’s shoulder, for perhaps a quarter-mile trudge, without bursting open. In fact, if I may judge from the samples I tested, it’s damned near impossible for less than fifty dollars. The study of wilderness technology will never be a national pastime, but putting myself where I was, for as long as I did, forced me to realize that nearly all failures of equipment have far less to do with the weakness of materials than the sheer mediocrity of design, or as Tolstoy might have put it, “Ignorance in action.” This is not merely “a problem that crops up in many fields,” as an Establishment apologist would call it—it is a plague of all nations, because those who are elevated to the role of designer seldom have an intimate familiarity with the ultimate use of the things they design. Cameras are certainly not designed by photographers, any more than shovels are designed by ditch-diggers. In every industry the sales departments have the last word, so whatever real knowledge a designer acquires would be useless to him in the long run. Even if he begins with a craving for integrity in his work, it soon gets ground away in the corporate machinery.
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When I first began heating the water, I was using a six-liter pot I’d had for some years just for boiling spaghetti, but it was much too small for filling my bathbag. It took forever to do the five gallons I needed for a full shower, so from one of Boss’s shops I liberated an ancient black pot of about twice the capacity, and I could then warm up the required amount in two fillings. It occurs to me only now that I could have saved a lot of time and firewood if that pot had had a lid, but for some reason I never thought of that at the time—minimal culinary training. The result, even after I scoured the pot, was that the water always carried the odor of wood-smoke—not unpleasant, especially from softwood, but it did get a little tiresome after four months or so.
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