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Then I realized that the hassle of getting replacement filters without a vehicle, with dial-up internet service and with a household cash budget of $40 which also covers propane usage was just not worth doing. I visualized myself cutting old sheets into little circles before I would take three buses to a place in Hilo that carried the filters.

My motivation to simply wash the filter again and again was based on convenience. Ha!

That thought made me smile. In Tom Brown’s book The Grandfather, his “adopted” native American grandfather says in regard to the destructive lifestyle of the modern western white-man, “You are eating your grandchildren for the sake of convenience.” Well, isn’t this a surprising twist.

Originally it was my intentions that created this lifestyle I am living. At first my choices in each moment (in which I was aware that I was about to make a choice) were based on a commitment not to exploit others (including the earth and other lifeforms). This took awareness and discipline and struggle and guilt. But as my life began to transform into greater and greater simplicity, my choices became easier. The convenient choice became more and more the choice in alignment with my intention. Which is really good news because doing anything that relies on constant discipline has never been sustainable for me.

• green drink (katook, honey, ginger, lemongrass, mint, perennial cilantro, ice, water, lemon or lime w/ a quarter of the skin) blended
• malabar chestnut steamed and eaten out of the shell with a petit spoon
• steamed plantain with grated ginger (leave the skins on the plantains while you steam, remove skins and add fresh grated ginger)
• ripe (soft) bread fruit, steamed then mashed with coconut milk/cream, sprinkled with toasted coconut and topped with lilikoi
• steamed taro with coconut oil (or…shhh… butter)
• nourishing breakfast smoothie (goat’s milk yogurt, 2 raw eggs, coconut – hard meat, banana, honey, spices (cardamom, ginger, black pepper, vanilla, nutmeg), mac nuts, seasonal fruit (pineapple, mango, jak fruit…) (sometimes cacao) blended with ice
• refreshing smoothie: ice, water, available fruit (banana, jak fruit, lime), honey blended
• egg omelet with plantain and cheese (ideally goat’s cheese)
• pudding snack: ground cacao, mashed banana, black pepper, ground mac nuts
• kombucha “tea (black or green tea, crushed sugar cane and kombucha culture)” with lime and honey
• jak fruit seeds ground and added to anything (like pork or any starch)
• steamed moringa or steamed steamed edible hibiscus with pineapple or mango vinegar
• sauted veggies (eggplant and or wing, long, string beans), ocean water, with scrambled eggs added in the end
• steamed lima beans with ocean water
• pigeon pea dahl (onion, tumeric, ginger, chives, ocean water, hot pepper, cumin, corriander, coconut milk/cream, toasted mustard seeds)
• half TBS roasted coffee, half TBS cacao — both ground very fine, honey, crushed contents of 2 cardamom pods- all boiled together until it froths 3 times (makes one cup turkish coffee)
• bedtime drink: heated goat’s milk with honey, ground nutmeg and coconut cream
• ground pig, sage, chives, hot pepper, plantain or banana, sea water
• coconut water from green or brown nuts, also sprouted coconut right out of the shell
• sauce for plain stuff like steamed breadfruit or taro or greens: toasted mac nuts ground with chives, hot pepper, liquid (pineapple skin tea, or vinegar, or lime juice, or lemon grass tea, or coconut milk…), ocean water, spices- ginger, herbs like perennial cilantro, black pepper, toasted mustard seed (tastes like a tahini dressing)
• pork roast browned then cooked for hours with just ocean water, black pepper and goats milk
• breadfruit pancakes: steamed breadfruit (unripe) grated and added to anything in the fridge or from the land (spices, veggies, herbs, greens), made into paddies and cooked in coconut oil
• avocado eaten out of the skin with ocean water, vinegar or lime/lemon and hot and or black pepper
• pudding: avocado, cacao, honey.
• toasted and ground mac nuts with honey, ground cacao mixed together and rolled into balls, rolled in toasted coconut. refrigerate
• green papaya salad: garlic chives, hot pepers, shredded green papaya, long beans, lime juice, honey, mac nuts chopped, , ocean water, tamarind- all chopped with mortar and pestle until juicy
• heart of palm salad: palm heart from peach palm (clumping palm), garlic chives, pineapple vinegar, ocean water, black pepper, ginger, coconut shredded
• papaya with lime juice
• curried chayote (or hawaiian pumpkin or eggplant or okra): coconut milk/cream, hot peppers (lots of kinds mixed), garlic chives, ginger or galanga, cumin, black pepper, ocean water, cilantro.
• kim chee: asian cabbage and perennial greens, hot peppers, ocean water (fermented)
• pesto: cilantro, coconut oil, mac nuts, ocean salt, lemon/lime juice, pepper corns, garlic chives (if only we could grow garlic here!)
• guacamole- avocado, hot pepper, lime juice, tomatillo, chives, cilantro, black pepper, ocean water
• pineapple salsa- pineapple, chives, cilantro, lemon juice, hot peppers, (garlic)
• dried bean stew- dried beans,
• sweet potato salad
• banana ice cream- frozen bananas (or pineapples or jak fruit…) run through champion juicer w/coconut cream
• chocolate sauce- cacao, coconut cream, vanilla blended (add mac nuts)
• curried egg salad (we used to eat a lot of this)

future (or haven’t yet tried these recipes):

• lau lau (taro leaves and miscl stuffings (pumpkin, spices, maybe a protein like fish or pork) steamed)
• beet ginger kraut- grated beets, ginger grated, chives- fermented
• cold soup- chopped mint, papaya chunks, lime juice, w/pineapples blended as sauce
• tilapia fish cooked with lime (once our pond starts producing tilapia big enough)
• lime juice avocado banana ginger pineapple tea water blended dressing over fruit
• mac nut ground, lemon juice, ocean water, ginger, hot pepper. honey – blended dressing
• papaya, lime juice, toasted mustard seeds, black pepper, ocean water, blended dressing
• dehydrated fruits (my kingdom for a solar dehydrator that can handle this humidity!)

Scott with wild pig

Just the other day, we got two young female ducks from a friend, and one of them flew off and got lost in a real thick part of the woods east of our land. I felt sad about her plight, and went out calling and quacking after her. I was practically swimming in an ocean of vines and logs and brush for an hour or so. She must have froze with panic in this strange and foreign environment, because I was unable to get any sign of her. I gave up and began work on our house, when suddenly I heard her call. I rushed back, but she clammed up when she heard me coming. I waited for a time in the warm sun on a high log, to see if she might forget I was there and start calling again for her friend. I felt a connection to her fear and helplessness. I really wanted to rescue her and get her into our pond with her duck friends. I eventually gave up, though, and resumed my construction project.

Then I heard the sound of wild pigs arguing in the woods south of our place, and grabbed my rifle and headed out. For me, wild pigs are food. Over a few fences and along a major pig trail, I pretty quickly came within sight of them. At first just shivering bushes and branches. Gradually their numbers became apparent through the underbrush in the woods. Several, no, many, and most of them big ones. Maybe five adults, and two junior style oinklets. They were lumbering. It is often hard for me to determine the sizes of pigs in the woods. But some of these looked big.

I began to stalk.

The alpha male snorted and charged at a somewhat smaller rival. The rival fled, thought better, and challenged another more his own size. Two much younger ones followed their mother. Some others were milling about, rooting for grubs, wagging their tails, meandering across the forest as they foraged. They were quite unaware of me. I realized that I was stalking a family. I wondered, which member of their family will be missing tonight?

My heart was pounding. In fact, I could feel my whole self was pounding. Some of the larger males continued fighting back and forth, while making their grunting shrieks. It was hard to see who was doing what, exactly. Still pounding. I spent quite a while holding still, afraid they would see me and run away, or worse, run toward me. I have heard stories of hunters getting gored by their tusks.

For some time, I stood, my consciousness intensified, in a dreamy state, stunned at the awareness of me, crouching here, the hunter, and this herd, this family, the hunted.

Slowly, crawling closer to the herd, I tried to time my movements with their fights and snorts, to conceal my stick crackling steps. I want to get closer for a good shot, but I really don’t want to get closer. When I get close to big pigs, I often realize that much of me wants to flee these big black toothy hairy beasts. I keep making sure that I’m behind a tree for cover, and also to scramble up if things get scary. I sat there, behind a Hala tree, aiming for a long time. Aiming and aiming and waiting and waiting. Heart pounding, amazed at what I am doing, about to do. I keep aiming through the underbrush at these black creatures, waiting for a certain hit, following them with my sights, until at some moment, my finger knows to pull the trigger.

My eyes, my hands, my finger, my pounding heart must have been aiming at the biggest one. He lay down and screamed and screamed, like he was real mad and scared, but didn’t move. The other 5 or 6 or 7 pigs bolted, paused to look, and bolted again in various directions. As I approached, I shot him twice more in the head, remembering the shooters admonition, “anything worth shooting once is worth shooting twice” (It turns out the first shot went through the lung and spine) Once the others had disappeared, I walked up to him,(he was still convulsing) and thought, oh, goodness, he is much, much bigger than I am. With his black bristly hair, huge head, and bloody tusks, even dead he looked dangerous. I felt dwarfed, tiny, no match for this warrior.

Once he stopped spasming and sighed into death, I made to drag him home. I grabbed his “ankles” with both hands and gave a heave and he slid about a foot. The reality of his size just sunk in; this would be a long drag home. By the time I had hauled him 20 feet, my chest was heaving, and the ground was all scraped up from my slipping sliding feet. He is way too heavy. I sized him up again; he looked wide and long. I felt in my pocket to find a small, much too small, folding pocket knife. I looked around at the clouds of mosquitos all around us; then back at the pig. There’s no two ways about it, I’m going to have to dig in and reduce the weight.

A few minutes later I was elbow deep in blood and heart and hot intestines, kneeling on the carcass to keep it belly up. Down past the kidneys, slicing away all around the colon. Carefully feeling, cutting, feeling all around the diaphragm muscle below the lungs. Loosening the organs into one big slippery, hot mass. Tugging at the colon from the inside until it let go. Reaching up and slicing through the trachea and esophagus from the inside, until finally I could scoop this jumbo size, slimy snake of viscera out of his big body cavity and onto the ground. I stood up, smeared the warm blood from my hands and forearms onto my shirt and pants, and sized up the situation. Okay, I lightened my load by about 40 pounds of excess baggage. I Put my rifle over my shoulders, and gave another heave ho. Geez, it feels just as heavy. I’m guessing well over two hundred pounds at this point. I thought, if I leave him here, will some pigs come back and eat him? I just accepted my situation and dragged at the pace I was able. At a rate of about 2 to 3 feet per pull, I got the boar over rocks, roots, logs, branches and a small crevice, and into a clearing behind my neighbor’s land and walked home to get a cart.

After a skinning and butchering session with my friend Ian, the meat is now soaking in ocean water brine in our fridge. Next week, we’ll stuff most of it through our manual meat grinder, bag up the rest, and then into the freezer. Then, feast for three months and repeat.

By the way, the next morning the lost duck was in our pond, frolicking with the others.