News
Foraging in the Wilderness
Scott Wagar
02/05/2013
In Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild” he writes about a young college graduate by the name of Chris McCandless who after graduating from Emory College walked away from his immediate family, the majority of his personal belongings and started a two year journey that crisscrosses throughout America and eventually brought him to the Stampede Trail in Alaska where he was found dead in an abandoned bus he lived in for just over 100 days.
McCandless’ death has been a topic of discuss for over a decade with experts having a variety of explanations as to why he died. From accidental starvation or poisoning his death has been studied closely but with no real conclusion.
This past Tuesday, Dr. Chuck Lura, instructor of biology and botany at Dakota College at Bottineau, presented “Foraging in the Wild: Edible Plants - Safe and Unsafe” in association with DCB’s Campus Read and Krakauer’s book.
Lura spoke on the surroundings of McCandless, what he foraged and ate and his own conclusion to what McCandless possibly died from while in Alaska.
“One of the things that are important in the book was the sense of where McCandless was up in Alaska,” Lura said. “Jon Krakauer wrote in his book that it was a ‘boggy amalgam of muskeg, alder thickets and veins of sprawny spruce.’
Lura stated that the conditions McCandless decided to live in had little or no food value. He also pointed out that Krakauer’s book stated the food items McCandless lived on while in Alaska, which included a 10 pound bag of rice, rose hips, lingonberries, mushrooms, wild rhubarb, wild potatoes, along with meat from birds and squirrels.
Before going into the Alaskan wilderness, McCandless also purchased a plant manual, Pricilla Russell’s “Tanaina Plantlore/Dena’ina K’et’una: An Enthobotany of the Dena’ina Indians of Southcentral Alaska,” which Lura presented to the class.
Lura explained the different types of plants that McCandless’ foraged and ate. He also added that some experts feel that McCandless might have eaten the roots and seeds of the sweet pea, which are reported to be poisonous.
However, Lura stated that there is no chemical basis for toxicity in either the sweet pea or the wild potato.
Another theory is that McCandless ate moldy seeds from the wild potato, a mold called Rhizoctonia leguminicola. But, Lura stated R. leguminicola is not known to grow on the wild potato.
“Poisoned? It’s all speculative,” said Lura about McCandless’ death, who added in an interview with the Bottineau Courant that he believed McCandless died of starvation primarily from the land he decided to live on.
Lura also spent time in his presentation speaking on how to forage for edible plants in the wild, and what not to pick and eat. He stated by learning what is safe and unsafe to eat in wilderness plant life individuals can get out and enjoy the wilderness and what it has to offer in plants.