… then, surely, you must be drinking your dishwater. Andrew at Washington Trail Association wonders:
Do you drink your dishwater?
Camp cookingI’ve just recently learned of this practice. A coworker told me about a trip she’d taken on the Hoh River Trail. She mentioned that one of her hiking partners insisted that everyone drink their dishwater after cleaning up.
Mind you, they hadn’t used suds, and they’d scraped away most of the rice and beans detritus. And this enforcer did offer to drink everyone else’s water if they refused.
But to me, it seemed a bit extreme.
I kinda/sorta think throwing a few crumbs to the local bugs and rodentia is a payback for putting up with my presence in the outback. I realize if everybody does this, nature’s balance will be destroyed (the contrarian in me thinks that if nature can grow pine trees out from between cracks in a granite cliff, it can survive campsite crumbs. I understand this is incorrect thinking and I’ll struggle overcome the urge to possess such thoughts.)
Hot tea is a good grease-cutting substitute for dish soap, and a teabag makes an effective dish scrubee. The liquid that’s left in your cook pot after that is a little weird, but I haven’t found it unpalatable. You do have to make sure to boil the water.
And for short trips, Wag Bags really aren’t so bad to deal with.
Ok, now you’re just scaring people away from camping.
That’s another whole blog post: are people being guilted out of going outdoors by the constant drumbeat of “man’s inhumanity to nature” that fills every TV show that has anything to do with wild places?
Who wants to be the one who killed Bambi’s mom?
But if everyone hauls out all the biodegradable detritus left from camping aren’t we depriving the area’s plants and animals of food.
As we eat the plants and animals and don’t return anything to the land, soon the only place left with nutrients will be the dumps and the graveyards.
–The above was written tounge in cheek, but it uses the same level of logic as the person who drinks the dishwater.
I prefer to use a cat hole and dump my dishwater into a hole (both far from any water source) and anyone who thinks that’s bad ecological practice is an uninformed idiot.
dropkick wrote: “I prefer to use a cat hole and dump my dishwater into a hole (both far from any water source) and anyone who thinks that’s bad ecological practice is an uninformed idiot.”
That’s also an acceptable LNT practice, as long as you’ve strained the solids out of the dishwater and bagged them to pack out. If you bury any significant amount of leftover food, another creature is likely to dig it up.
One the CDT in New Mexico we became accustomed to drinking our dishwater simply because water was scarce. When you’ve carried that ounce of water on your back for twenty miles, and you’re thirsty, that dishwater actually becomes appealing. It’s just an efficient way to stay hydrated and not waste calories!