Cogito Ergo Sum Formica

My parents have always had a garden. My mom cans and freezes a lot of food that they grow. As a kid I had often wondered why we spent so much time putting all of those vegetables away for the winter. My parents grew up during the depression era and know firsthand what it means to do without. I never thought much about this until just a few months ago. In watching the economy race towards the sewer, and having experienced a few days of not being able to get fuel, I started seeing the wisdom of keeping my gas tanks full and the wisdom of having a little bit extra in the pantry.

When you ask most people about they think about when they hear the word “survivalist”, they think about guys that dress up in camouflage clothing and go out and buy a bunch of guns, ammo, and pallets of survival foods that they will either never eat, or find that the food does not taste good (if they ever get around to eating it before it goes bad). There is nothing wrong with doing that if you are into that sort of thing, but it is just not for me. I have started thinking of myself more along the lines of being a “Prepper”. Preppers are families that just store more of what they would normally use anyway, but have enough to last for at least a few weeks if some local emergency hits their area. Emergencies do not have to be of the “End of the World as We Know It” scenarios that some people go nuts over. It could be just a couple of days without power, a snow storm that keeps you at home for a few days, or even a short term trucker's strike that keeps food away from the grocery stores for a week or so. In most cases if you are prepared for a short term small emergency, you are pretty much prepared for most larger, longer term emergencies as they all have many things in common.

Some time around 600 BC Aesop penned several fables that still hold just as much wisdom today as they did over 2600 year ago. I think of this one as a children's story written many years ago for adults of today:

The Ant and the Grasshopper

Once there lived an ant and a grasshopper in a grassy meadow.

All day long the ant would work hard, collecting grains of wheat from the farmer's field far away. She would hurry to the field every morning, as soon as it was light enough to see by, and toil back with a heavy grain of wheat balanced on her head. She would put the grain of wheat carefully away in her pantry, and then hurry back to the field for another one. All day long she would work, without stop or rest, scurrying back and forth from the field, collecting the grains of wheat and storing them carefully in her pantry.

The grasshopper would look at her and laugh. 'Why do you work so hard, dear ant?' he would say. 'Come, rest awhile, listen to my song. Summer is here, the days are long and bright. Why waste the sunshine in labor and toil?'

The ant would ignore him, and head bent, would just hurry to the field a little faster. This would make the grasshopper laugh even louder. 'What a silly little ant you are!' he would call after her. 'Come, come and dance with me! Forget about work! Enjoy the summer! Live a little!' And the grasshopper would hop away across the meadow, singing and dancing merrily.

Summer faded into autumn, and autumn turned into winter. The sun was hardly seen, and the days were short and gray, the nights long and dark. It became freezing cold, and snow began to fall.

The grasshopper didn't feel like singing any more. He was cold and hungry. He had nowhere to shelter from the snow, and nothing to eat. The meadow and the farmer's field were covered in snow, and there was no food to be had. 'Oh what shall I do? Where shall I go?' wailed the grasshopper. Just before starving to death he staggered to the ants' hill and saw that the ants had plenty to eat stored away.

Then the Grasshopper knew: It is best to prepare now for the days of necessity that might come in the future.

I'm starting to put a few extra supplies away for a rainy day, but I'm also thinking carefully about what I store away. I'm trying to "Store what I eat, and eat what I store", so that nothing will go to waste. I'm also trying to urge others to do the same so that they will also have enough to get by on if they happen to encounter one of life's little emergencies.

Cogito Ergo Sum Formica – I think therefore I am an ant.