Hunger Pains

During a lunch break

I'll start with what I feel. My eyes are swollen shut. The stillness of 5:00 AM is broken only by the sound of water hitting metal, and I surprised to find that my muscles haven’t woken up yet as it’s taking literally every ounce of my bodily strength to grip the handle of the water pump and press down. I can’t see what I’m doing but as soon as icy water begins soaking my sweatshirt I stop. Stumbling up the sloping granite through the blackness, I mindlessly grip the handle of the now seemingly 500 pound water-filled pot and somehow manage to make it to the top where our tarp is barely outlined. I set the pot down onto a tiny burner, let lighter fluid flow into the burner and light a match that flares up the first light of the morning. And now…I wait. Wait for the two-inch wide flame to bring two gallons of ice cold water to a boil. Wait for the sun while I pry my eyes open the rest of the way and hug my knees to my chest, looking across dark purple peaks heading towards the horizon. And all this for a few spoons of instant oatmeal.

            It’s our 34th day on the ridges of Yosemite, the last day of this beautiful insanity that has taken over each one of us. Why am I here? To save the planet, with five other high school students. To conserve nature. Or something along those lines. A few months ago when I had received my Student Conservation Association acceptance letter in the mail and found out I was going to Yosemite, I nearly ripped the paper to shreds in my excitement. I was going to be part of something bigger, something monumentally beautiful, something...I didn't know. Something besides 6 AM summer swim team or late night illegal fireworks. Something spectacular.  The first week was over in a blur; our job here is to remove illegal campsites around the park by shoveling out coal and trash, which means we never sleep in the same place for more than two nights. Hauling 65 pounds on each of our backs, the 14 mile treks to the next site across granite boulder fields proved to be challenging -- and when I say challenging, I of course mean pure physical agony. But the view of the park from 10,000 feet above the winding valley made it all worth it. That is, until now. We've been up here for four and half weeks now, and the word "insanity" barely covers what the last few days have been like. Grueling. Sickening. Empty. A week ago, it wasn't like this; a week ago we were sane, even happy. Until Tuesday, after we had laid down our shovels and started our lunch break. Adra, one of our leaders, had told us the bad news.

            “Alright, guys, it seems as if we’ve got a problem on our hands. You all know there’ve been forest fires for a while near the valley…but apparently they spread to the refrigeration unit. OUR refrigeration unit. Don’t shit a chicken but…well…the food we’ve got with us is gonna have to last us the rest of the week.”

            Hank, our assless-chaps-wearing resupply man, had just headed back down the 10,000 feet to the valley. Every few days, he would don his aviators and spurs, and ride a mule loaded with food to our next site. The days he came to resupply us, we would wait sick with anticipation and lack of food until we heard his whistling; it was like he was the ice cream truck driver and we were five year olds during the summer time (Sidenote: for me, the ice cream will always provoke me to sprint down the street flailing my arms like a crazy person as it did when I was little). Anyways, we would drop whatever we were holding and race to Hank, to our own personal Mother Theresa, and gorge ourselves with whatever we could get our hands on.

            So you can imagine that after receiving the news that we would have to make a few days worth of food, which was already a meager amount for that period of time, last a week – we were a bit upset.

            And now it’s the last day before we get down to the valley, to showers and soap and any foods we desire – and I think we have all gone a little crazy. I’ve been waiting for this pot of water to boil for half an hour and I think I have pneumonia and I can’t help but wonder…is this worth a few crappy spoonfuls of oatmeal? I tip the near empty bag of instant oats so they fall into one corner; there is about a cup left. I look over to the severely diminished pile of food – three corn tortillas, and half a cup of gorp. This is what we have to sustain eight of us for a nine mile hike down the rest of the way to the valley. And when the sun finally comes up, the temperature will rise and the sun will sap whatever energy we have out of us. At least we’re done working, because I think that all of us may have collapsed.

            This week has tested both our physical and mental strength. Not only am I constantly sapped of energy, but I feel an emptiness I’ve never experienced. We are constantly on edge with each other. I have never felt so hungry; I literally can think of nothing else. I've filled at least three pages of my journal with pictures of food, from a strawberry rhubarb pie to a whole turkey leg. What I wouldn’t give for a glass of cold milk...or an entire pork roast...or something besides nothing.

            The water’s finally boiling and the sun has begun casting rays of light across the top of the tarp. The pink tips of the misty peaks stretching out into the distance are breathtakingly beautiful – but I barely register this. I’ve barely been able to register anything for the last week except for my stomach. Adra and Alex, our leaders, are the first to roll out of their sleeping bags and join me under the tarp.

“Last day!” Adra says, forcing a smile. I can see her smile lines tattooed on her face even after she stops; dirt and coal dust from shoveling out fire rings have caked all of our faces, and the crevasses of her smile are white in comparison.

“Is this it?” Anna’s under the tarp and is examining the bag of oats.

“Uhhh-huh.” I remove the water from the flame as the rest of the group stumbles under the tarp, grabbing their dirt-covered plastic bowls. We fill our bowls with hot water, and Adra picks up the bag of oats. We are all watching the bag, anticipating the food that will slide down our throats in a few seconds and maybe stop the stabbing hunger for an hour or two. She scoops two spoonfuls into her bowl; the bag is handed around to each person, and we all watch each other like hawks, monitoring the amount each person is taking. Eventually it reaches Walter – and I watch as he reaches in after two scoops to take a third. I hate him. I HATE him. The bag passes to Anna but Patrick and Elaine are still glaring at Walter. I don’t care that I’ve lived with this person for five weeks. I don't care if he's hungry, I don't care if he's twice my size, I want to punch him in the face. I am going to punch him in the face. He is not entitled to those oats. I clench my fists until my dirt-filled nails cut my palms. I want stick my hand in his bowl and take back the oats. They’re not his. They should by mine. MINE -- and Elaine cracks. But she keeps it polite.

“Uh, Walter, we’ve all taken only two scoops – don’t you think you should save a little for the rest of the group?” Walter’s head snaps up.

“Elaine, I took just as much as everyone else, so why don't you just lay of my FUCKING back.” We all stiffen, and Tristan passes the bag to me. I take two spoonfuls and my stomach screams as I pass the bag to my right.
This has been each morning, every morning, for the last six days. And I think someone may end up being accidentally pushed over the edge of a cliff by nightfall. And right about now...I wouldn't be surprised if I was the one who did the pushing. And the scary thing is...I don't even know that I would regret it. This trip has been something spectacular; it's changed us all into wild beings, driven purely by ids and counting spoonfuls and the growling that comes from seemingly every part of our bodies. It's turned me into someone I wouldn't have recognized a few weeks ago. The hunger consumes me, and I hope that once we get down to the valley, we'll find our old selves.

"Culinary Holy Grail"...? (Parte Deux)

       The first half of Bourdain's book was, for me, in no way a chore to read...and this second half was just as interesting. His descriptive imagery really got the ball rolling at "Highway of Death"; his suspenseful depiction of Highway 1 made me absolutely terrified to ever even think about traveling on that road. Something small he mentioned after leaving the highway was during the section on the My Kanh Restaurant -- disturbing as it was that the customers actually picked dishes made from cute little animals that would then be slaughtered right then and there, I actually had an experience eating one of the animals he mentioned and had a similar reaction to his. While visiting Michigan a few years ago, my family and I had dinner with some friends and we were shocked to find out that we would be having frog for dinner. Frog legs, more specifically. The idea absolutely horrified me, and as I watched the legs being turned on the grill, I thought that there was no way I would ever, ever, ever touch those, let alone put them in my mouth. Eventually, I ended up trying them, because I didn't want to offend our friends by refusing to eat at all -- and they actually tasted pretty good! Like chicken...?
        The Vietnam section really intrigued me, mostly because of his descriptions of the "floating food vendors". The idea of lounging on a boat, drifting down a river, and sampling all kinds of colorfully displayed and delicious food from boats that came up alongside me...that sounded pretty snazzy. This was also the first time when I really got the feeling that Bourdain was truly content, really happy -- he ends the chapter with, "I like it here. I like it a lot." And I had the feeling that so would I, if I ever get the chance to visit this place.
        In the first half of the book, I guess I was reading with a different mindset than most of the class was; I was reading him as less of an authority figure and more of a guy having an experience. This time around I tried to read him as an authority figure, and I guess I was just ignorant in the first half of the book because he definitely is. One part that really exemplified this for me was when he played up his presumed authority in Tokyo, as he's describing Tsukiji and the wonderful seafood extravaganza they possess. Multiple times he tells us we have to "take his word for it", and that "there is nowhere else" to go besides this place. Here, I found myself taking his word for it, trusting him because he IS a well known chef; I found myself believing his reliability, a reliability that wasn't definite by any means, but that was created in my mind.
       One random thing I wondered about while reading this half of the book was whether or not I would be able to eat something and truly think it was good, if it had the foulest, dankest smell imaginable. We kind of talked about this in class, how some of us smell things before eating them because it almost enhances how good we think it tastes; Anthony Bourdain talks about eating the stinky durian fruit, a fruit that possesses a smell similar to that of a rotting corpse and molding cheese. However, he loved how it tasted. I wondered if I would be able to truly think something tasted wonderful, if it smelled like a dead body or worse; could I be able to truly distinguish between smell and taste, or do they always combine in my mind -- if I smelled rotting corpse, would that make the taste of it worse in turn, or would the taste not depend on the smell at all?
       Bourdain talks more about vegetarianism in this half of the book; I knew he disliked the idea of vegetarianism, but I thought, he is a cook, so this might just be for show and deep down he probably respects the idea of personal preference. This assumption of mine was incorrect as usual -- he literally hates vegetarianism, and downright loathes vegans. He actually compares vegetarianism to the "Safety and Ethics" people that are trying to make us healthy by taking the real food out of food (which obviously makes us more unhealthy). I found myself laughing out loud during the section when he dines with the groups of vegans -- his horror when describing the food was hilarious. But later he gets pretty livid when calling out the vegans on their lifestyle choices, portraying them as hypocritical, ignorant human beings. I could see where he was coming from, but I thought this part was maybe bit over the top...
       My overall opinion: the book was great, full of voice and wonderful descriptive imagery; and even though he comes off a bit insensitive at times, I did find myself liking Bourdain and his ability to make fun of himself and the situation. Also, I want to go everywhere that he described. Except maybe Pailin.

"Culinary Holy Grail"...?

        Before "A Cook's Tour", I'd never read anything by Anthony Bourdain, let alone seen one of his cooking shows -- I knew literally nothing about him, and in this book the voice he uses really lets the reader get to know who he is. I don't know if this book is necessarily what I would look to to actually find the "perfect meal", seeing as it is merely the search for this meal according to Bourdain alone; his point is that what makes a perfect meal is the experience and feelings that went with it. His perfect meal could very well be just another decent plate of food for us, it could mean absolutely nothing and we'd never remember it -- but to him, it would mean something completely different. This trip isn't just about finding the "perfect meal", if that even exists, but it's also a memoir of self-discovery through travel and food.
        He really hooked me in at the introduction, and I think that the general consensus is that he's either a huge jerk, or a hilarious genius. I think I've gotten past the jerk-ish qualities; I can deal with a reasonable amount of snarkiness and I don't think he goes over the top. It just adds to the humor most of the time, and his brutal honesty keeps the mood light in situations that may have been less than desirable. One thing that I connected with was in the beginning, when he states his innocent, childlike desire for the places he'll visit to be exactly like they're depicted in the movies. Rather than be informed about what the reality of the place is, he'd rather just go with his imagined sense of it, and in this way his viewpoint is changed at almost every place he experiences.
        I'm not really sure if he's writing this novel for himself, his family, or the world in general as an audience; I'm leaning more towards the idea that he's writing it for us, whoever chooses to read this book, because he describes food to us in ways that we can understand it. When he uses the foreign word for something, he'll take time to tell us that it is "an amazing soup of bread, stock, fresh cumin, bits of pork, and blood". I think that one of the parts of the book that held real raw emotion was the chapter with his brother in France, as they tried to, in a sense, find their father. In this section, the way I saw him completely changed -- he seemed much more vulnerable and innocent than in other sections. I also really liked how he separated himself from TV, and anything else that made him look like he was just doing this for the public eye or for money. He kept describing how much he hated posing for those cheesy, deep-in-thought scenes and having to repeatedly backtrack and re-do scenes of him entering restaurants. I liked the sections telling us why we "don't want to be television", and the one part when he actually questions whether or not he should describe the beauty of San Sebastian to us  -- he then responds, "Nah, I'll leave that to Lonely Planet or Fodor's". He's clearly trying throughout the book so far to really separate himself from the media, to make this book less of a generic tour guide and more of a look into his real, raw personal experience and trek of self-discovery.

Food Traditions...Treasured or Threatened?

My "Create Your Own Adventure": http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/video/2010/apr/01/india-coffee-house-kerala

                    For my Adventure piece, I decided to go with something a little more foreign to me. Although Indian cuisine is and always has been a personal favorite of mine, I realized that the extent to which I had experienced it was limited only to a few locally owned and chain restaurants within a five mile radius of my house...so I began perusing sites for more information on traditions and customs of Indian culture and food, hoping to gain some insight into a culture I have grown to love and still seemed to know nothing about. Although this clip is short, about two and a half minutes, it actually really resonated with me; the theme of tradition in terms of food -- the way it's served, where it's served, who makes it, and what's available on a daily basis -- is familiar to me, and I thought that many others had probably also felt these kinds of attachments to certain foods and the environments we've experienced them in. The video mentions that although the coffee house was established in the 1950's, everything -- even the starched uniforms and signs on the walls -- have remained the same. Although change and progress in the food industry can often be beneficial and desired, certain traditions and customs in food that are irreplaceable to people of a community can be lost in the fast-paced and always changing food industry of today's society.