Spirit Of Salt

The park near our house is heavily populated by oaks, and some time last fall I got a notion to harvest some of the acorns and do something with them.  After seeing oak chips packaged as a flavor addition for home brewing I decided to use them somehow as a component in a batch of beer.

Finally a year later I actually follow up on the idea.  While Jonah played in the playground sand I wandered in the shade of the big old trees, looking for acorns that appear whole and clean.  The park is also a squirrel metropolis, and I soon discovered I had stiff competition for this resource.  The volume of empty acorn caps around the trees was astonishing.  Most of the acorns left behind are damaged or rotten.  Maybe I left it too late.  Nevertheless, over a few days I collected a couple of handfuls of wholesome-seeming nuts.

As I carry out my inefficient harvest, I wonder about the gather-to-nutrition energy ratio on the nuts. I’m prone to survivalist contemplations.  Such considerations are a little closer to the surface in these days of financial instability and global warming.  But I’ve tended to dwell on the possibilities of life without civilization since I was a child, when I used to pore over a slim paperback on wilderness survival from my father’s library.  The contemplation was almost wholly theoretical. I read about wickiups, fire without matches, and handmade hunting spears with fascination but made little attempt to practice any of these skills in reality.  Who can imagine what a real social collapse would look like in the 21st century?  Negotiating black markets and rolling with the irrational punches of government interference seem more likely skills than the local wild nut harvest.  I keep my imaginary survivalism at arms length: dwelling too heavily on such considerations seems pathological.  Focus on paying the mortgage, keeping civilization limping along for now.  I make a mental note that one would probably be better off harvesting the squirrels.

The acorns went into a bowl to dry out.  This morning I took a glance at them and found nearly every one had sprouted one or two little holes, as neat and round as if they’d been made with a power drill.  At the bottom of the bowl a dozen or two suet-colored grubs wriggled.  Acorn weevil larvae, the internet informs me later.

I wonder what the protein content  on those is like.