by Nikki Rajala | Feb 4, 2018 | Featured
Your quiz for today: Is either wild plant edible? Make a guess for each of the choices below. Your answer could be one or the other — or neither or both! Glad I researched this — I would have made big mistakes by eating some of these. 1. Cattail or Blue flag iris/lily...
by Nikki Rajala | Feb 1, 2018 | Featured
Steve and Wendy Gessell lent me the “U.S. Army Survival Manual,” a wonderful read. It reminded me that people can live many days without food, if they have water. (Good — my fictional paddlers have plenty of fresh water at hand. But it won’t fill the paddlers’...
by Nikki Rajala | Jan 29, 2018 | Featured
Sumac berries infused in water tastes like lemonade! Diane and Robert Davis told me about this last spring. I had to wait until late summer before I could harvest the seed heads. (Amazing discovery: Even cutting them made my fingers taste tart!) Tip #1: Harvest the...
by Nikki Rajala | Jan 27, 2018 | Featured
(Spoiler alert) In “Treacherous Waters” Book 2 of The Chronicles of an Unlikely Voyageur, André and his canoe-mates run out of food and need to forage for spring edibles. In researching this, I learned lots of fun info and realize that, of course, other inquiring...
by Nikki Rajala | Nov 26, 2017 | Featured
The writings that have survived from fur traders are full of inventive spellings — like Lac Ouinipique or Ouisconstan. Can you guess where they are? There weren’t many literate people in the fur trade. Most voyageurs signed their contracts with an X. The clerks’...
by Nikki Rajala | Nov 22, 2017 | Featured
During my first Girl Scout canoe trip back in 1963, flipping our canoes and making the fewest number of passes across a portage (with only one girl carrying the canoe) was a source of great pride. We squashed loaves of white bread—that was before freeze-dried food—and...
