Becoming Wild Part 1

“Becoming Wild” is the name of a book written by Primitive Living Expert Nikki Van Schyndel. For over a year, she and a friend gave up essentially all modern conveniences and lived a completely primitive life in the Broughtons. After her sojourn in the wilderness, Nikki built a cabin near Echo Bay and now hosts eco adventures.

We signed on for a day trip with Nikki and arrived at Pierre’s Echo Bay the day before in time for Pierre’s Monday night barbecued roast beef extravaganza. Deb, Kim and Daria hiked over to Billy Proctor’s Museum and stopped by to say Hi to Nikki.

Billy is a legend up this way and has hunted, trapped and fished up here for almost all of his 80 plus years. This is a shot of an authentic turn of the century loggers cabin that Billy built from a single cedar log.

This is a shot of Nikki’s cabin overlooking Echo bay.

While visiting, Deb got tips on preparing seaweed for a facial from Nikki so it was also spa day back at the boat. The seaweed is first rinsed and placed in a pot of fresh water.

It is then boiled and the seaweed is removed from the pot.

After the girls, it was Steve’s turn (yes – I did it too) The process starts by putting a towel over your head and steaming you face over the pot the seaweed was boiled in for 10 minutes. Basically, is smelled like dead fish. (And this is supposed to be enjoyable – people actually pay for this?)

After the smelly steaming, the nodules on the seaweed are crushed and the goop is applied to the face. The only thing good I can say about it was that it wasn’t green. The most pleasant part of the process was washing the goop off.

We all had glowing faces as we headed off for our roast beef dinner.

The next morning after the fog lifted, Nikki picked us up for our adventure. We traveled in Nikki’s small skiff from Echo Bay to the upper end of bond sound where we prepared a lunch of wild edibles that we harvested.

I do not recall all the names of the things we harvested but it included wild mint, a plant that tasted like coriander, sea asparagus, and something like a wild spinach. It was amazing how many wild edibles were available just along the beach area. We also learned that Old Man’s Beard is a natural antibiotic and a number of other plants were antibacterials and anti fungals.

The plants we harvested were coarsely chopped and other items were added.

This included dried bull kelp, sun dried salmon, wild berries and rice.

The blue water bottle was used to make sun brewed mint tea.

As Nikki was preparing things, Kim and Daria cooled off in the ocean. It was our hottest day yet at 85 degrees.

The view up Bond Sound was lovely.

In true primitive fashion, we gathered cedar wood for a cooking fire. Nikki started the file with her fire bow.

A small ember is created from the friction and that is used to start a small nest of cedar tinder.

Once the tinder is burning, small pieces of wood are added to build the fire.

The meal is then cooked over the fire in a cast iron skillet. It is appropriately served in clam shells with smaller shells used as spoons.

And I must admit, it was delicious.

After lunch, we planned to walk the river that feeds into Bond Sound in the hopes of seeing wildlife including bears. The river was lovely and already had substantial numbers of pink salmon entering to spawn.

More about all that in my next post.