Solarious - stumbling away from the grid

Well, back to the presses. Out in the wilderness, I had a lot of time to think about the importance of… water. Read up about the good ole frontier days and you’ll surely come across stories of unfortunate souls who trusted their senses to mother Nature and were in turn gravely mistaken. Water is so essential to life, it quickly beats out food as a survival determining factor.

In the mountains, I packed in water this time, but in the past have relied on purification at the source, when I knew such sources to exist year-round. If you are running from the grid, or even just remotely thinking that the world might be headed in a bad direction right now, it would do you well to know a bit about consuming water from nature.

There are, of course, several methods of purification from which to choose, and many devices too. Some opt to boil water, sterilizing it. In a warm sunny climate, you can do this with your solar cooker. Studies have shown that setting water out in the sun even for a few hours can effectively purify it for drinking. So set a windowshade around it and see how fast you can achieve the same effect.

Or you can buy a filtration device that fits onto a standard bottle, designed with campers in mind. While this option is quite effective, you will need to plan ahead and buy some. So don’t wait for doomsday to hit before relying on this tactic. A nice option is the Clear Brook Portable Water Filter Bottle.

Or you could go old-school and purify your water with iodine. Again, buy ahead. The thing to remember about iodine is that you need the kind sold at camping gear stores, not the kind sold in your local drugstore with a TOXIC tag on it. The pharmacist I spoke with couldn’t remember what the difference was, but the vehemance with which he said it convinced me that using the regular kind was not good at all. If you do this, your water will taste funny, or at least a little funnier than the other options. Use orange peels, tang, gatorade powder or something of the like to tint the water and make it tastier. If you’re surviving in the desert, opt for something that replaces electrolytes so you don’t get sick from salt loss in your sweat.

While we’re on that subject, try to minimize water loss by staying in the shade, wearing hats and other protective clothing, and putting on sunscreen of some sort. You WILL get dehydrated if you get overexposed to either heat or cold. Don’t eat snow or drink saltwater, smoke cigarettes, or eat lots of sugary candy.

Where do you find water when you don’t have any? Well, if you have the luxury of a nightfall, you can collect water from the condensation in the morning. Either use a tarp or something that will channel the water into a vessel. Some places recommend dragging your legs with heavy socks on in the morning to collect dew and wringing them out. You can also take advantage of plants’ natural process of emitting water at night by tying a plastic bag around a leafy tree branch overnight. Or you can use creeks, if they are flowing. You can also dig in creek beds that have recent looking covers of algae or places that are more lush than their surroundings. Usually there will be water below. Seek out root vegetables, coconuts, melons, fruits, and other foods that have a high water content. Just be sure to do a little taste test before eating the whole thing if you don’t already know what type of plant it is.

Of course, most of the time, we aren’t running headlong from civilization, we’re inching out there by enjoying what nature has to offer on our terms. When you’re hiking and packing in, bring foods that provide both water and nutrition. I like carrots, because they withstand the beating of being in a pack, they taste good and require no prep, and they retain moisture for a long time without rotting. But other good options are oranges, small apples, fruit cocktail cups, canned meat such as tuna, and things like grapes. Try growing what you will take, if you’re able to plan in advance, or tailor your garden to include such plants.

If you are implementing a hydro collection system for your home, the same principles as above apply. You simply amplify your design to work on a large scale and plan for optimal long-term placement of devices. You’ll either dig, collect, desalinate, divert, or pump your resources. And of course you can also generate power or heat from it! Think long and hard about the quality of water that you consume. Wars are fought over this very issue, and societies have fallen or disappeared in response to changes in water conditions. It is the very building block of life, and becoming self-sufficient in this department will be an enormous step away from the powers that dictate how you occupy your space on earth.

Click Here to See Geoff Lawton’s Dead Sea Restoration Project

This EXCELLENT presentation gives you a nice video overview of a successful xeriscaping and land restoration project carried out in the Dead Sea area of Jordan. You can actually watch the progression from desert to a lush canopy of green and edible foods. And to see that the salt levels of the soil dropped so dramatically is quite a convincing argument to try it yourself. Geoff Lawton and his team are genius to have done this. If you are considering doing your lawn with drought-friendly plants, or in converting waste-space to something much more beautiful while restoring the natural balance of the soil, please check out this site!

Here is SoCal, the Salton Sea is a popular tourist destination, as it is a similar environment to the Dead Sea. In fact, like the Dead Sea, the Salton Sea is getting saltier every year as its water evaporates. Given the hot temperatures (there is a reason that all the spas of Palm Springs are so popular!), there is a lot of sandy desert for every patch of green. Do you live there? Try this and send us pictures!

I’ll admit it - I’m addicted to the web. Putting in around 50 hours a week, it’s more than a full-time job! So when I see way that I can help the planet without even getting up from the computer, it’s a big deal. Here are a few “goodies” from the internet that I’ve come across lately. None require more than a minute or two to make a real contribution to a world-saving cause.

First up, Friends Green. This Google replacement allows you to run a search using Google technology. The bonus? For every search you run through their site, they make a donation to saving the rainforest. There aren’t a ton of features, like with Google, but if you know “Search engine speak”, you should still be able to find everything you need. Including a piece of pristine rainforest when you need one.

Next, email. Planet Save has been providing planet-friendly email accounts for years. Their service is reliable and fast, and every time you send an email, they donate to a worthy cause. Their site is also a storehouse for environmental news and activism opportunities.

Want to donate to someone in need? Here are four sites that let you do it (for free!) with the click of a button. Visit each often, or if you use iGoogle, get a widget that places all four links together for easy access here: . Poverty Fighters even lets you count clicks toward your college alma mater, keeping tabs on the most philanthropic school out there.

Hunger Site
Hunger Fighters
Por Los Chicos
Poverty Fighters

Finally, when trying to cut down on your carbon consumption, it can be hard to tell when you’re making progress. Enter The Carbon Diet. This site lets you create a profile and enter your daily carbon expenses, based on the carbon “accounts” you set up (these are the sources of your carbon emissions). It will then make a nice “diet chart” for you, showing your progress. You can even compete with your friends to see who makes the biggest cuts. Kind of like Weight Watchers for greenies.

So next time you think, I’m too _______ to do anything right now, you can jump online, make a quick contribution to the greater good, and get back to your excuses.

Stuck in a rut trying to motivate yourself toward a greener life? Here’s an animation that you should see. Greenpeace - The Journey of Trash . Just click on the link above to view it.

If you want to help the world out in some tangible way TODAY, just take a look in your trash can. See a lot of plastic? Remember that these days, recycling companies are able to take many more types of plastics than even a few years ago. According to one site I visited recently, there is enough dissolved plastic in our oceans to place a saran wrap thickness of it over the surface of every ocean on earth. And most of that is in little tiny bits, which sea animals easily mistake for plankton and other small prey. If, as recent studies have shown, you absorb plastic chemicals into your body when drinking from plastic containers (see this USA Today article for starters), then imagine what eating a fish who’s spent his life dining on plastics might do. Scary thought. Every piece of trash that you recycle is one less that can find its way out to sea. As it stands now, there are areas of the ocean so think with floating trash that shipping boats can’t even pass through them, so they route their ships around them, using more fuel.

When I first heard about the “North Pacific Gyre” as the largest water landfill on earth is called, it seemed impossible. Why not just load it up on ships and haul it back to port for proper(ish) burial? But the problem is, we put so much INTO the ocean every year, even with dredging, we’d hardly be able to keep up. So do yourself, and the planet, a favor today. Make a commitment to put ONE LESS PIECE of non-biodegradable trash into your trash can, whether you find another use for it, you buy a product with less packaging, or you take another look at what might be recyclable in your can. One. How hard is that? Do that every day for a month (okay baby steppers, start with a week), imagine how happy the fish (and the people in Alaska, Russia and Japan!) will be. That’s reason enough for me!