Dandelion Hunter: Foraging the Urban Wilderness
Although the apocalypse didn’t arrive on December 21 last year as predicted by fretful Mayan-calendar devotees, there are still plenty of reasons to have a fallback plan for securing your next meal. As the author of this autobiographical adventure in urban-wilderness foraging points out, hurricanes, tsunamis, and solar storms can strike without warning, triggering economic collapse and barren grocery shelves. In May 2009, Portland, Oregon, resident Lerner wanted to prove to herself that she could survive for a week strictly on plants growing in city parks and vacant lots; dumpster diving and community-garden raids were strictly off-limits. While her initial attempts to choke down burdock roots and dandelion greens failed, Lerner was determined to learn as much she could about the nutritional and medicinal value of local plant life by consulting journals and nutritional experts. This very readable, often amusing outcome of her research and experiments results in an uplifting story of contemporary self-sufficiency, as well as an inspiring guidebook that looks beyond farmer’s markets to the living food in our own backyards. --Carl Hays