Travel Blog

Knowing a few edible wild plants can make your next backpacking trip, or any trip into the wilderness, a lot more enjoyable. Eat Plants While You Are Hiking should be taken seriously to avoid eating the wrong plants that can be poisonous or make you sick.

You can pack lighter if you eat wild berries every morning for breakfast, for example, and leave your oatmeal behind. So push the bears out of the way and gorge yourself on blueberries. Less weight on your back always feels better.

You’ll also enjoy your backpacking more when you know you won’t be completely helpless when you lose your pack. Or if a raccoon empties it for you. You don’t have to be a survivalist to see the value of knowing which of the wild plants around you can be eaten.

Eat Plants While You Hike

I regularly eat dandelions, wild currants, pine nuts, and other edible wild plants. I ate hundreds of calories in wild raspberries during a break while hiking in the Colorado Rockies. During a kayak trip on Lake Superior, a friend and I spent half a day stopping at every little island to fill our stomachs with wild blueberries. We were almost out of food, so our foraging helped us get through the rest of the trip. Edible Berries

Here are just some of the wild berries my wife and I ate while hiking to Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park: Blueberries, Service Berries, Rose Hips, Blackberries, High Bush Cranberries, Strawberries,

Raspberries, Thimble berries, and Currants. Berries are the most convenient, calorie-rich, and nutritious of the edible wild plants out there. They are also the easiest to learn to identify.

Edible Wild Plants And Survival

If you travel in isolated wilderness areas, learning to identify a few edible wild plants can keep you safe, also. Someday you may be lost or injured, or a bear will push you out of the way to gorge himself on your freeze-dried meals. In a survival situation, food isn’t usually a priority (warmth and water are), but a pile of roasted cattail hearts will surely cheer you up and warm you, and they taste good.

Stay away from protected plants, of course, unless you are in an actual life-or-death situation. Also, don’t eat all the beautiful flowers or kill off the lilies by eating all the bulbs. Use common sense. If you aren’t sure if you’re doing harm, stick to eating wild berries.

Check out a few books on harvesting wild food. You don’t need to become a wilderness survival fanatic. You only need to learn to recognize a dozen high-calorie, abundant wild edible plants to be safer in the wilderness and enjoy it more. For more camping posts and about Eat Plants While You Hike, click here.

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