In 2000 I was a graduate student squeezing by on a scant stipend and I spent $50 on a pot. Fifty freaking dollars on a pot! Why would I do such a thing when I accounted for each and every dollar that was spent? Because I had an opportunity to rock climb the East Face of Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 49 and over 14,000 feet high! I had been learning technical rock climbing for over a year and was thrilled and intimidated to join an experienced group of climbers on this trip. I was fortunate to borrow the majority of my (non-cotton!) technical gear and a large pack from my friend Patty Rambert the “gym mom” and the only close friend of mine that has died by the hand of the mountain. The one piece of additional gear that we needed was a pot, and since I was already incredibly worried about my ability to carry such a heavy load under such trying conditions, a lightweight pot was a priority! My commitment to lightweight gear and the willingness to spend big money on small things has persisted through all these years, but is not the point of this post!
This little wonder pot is the focus of this Chautauqua.* Fast forward to 2019 and this little pot is still going strong! It represents so many aspects of my personality and priorities in life.
Travel. I have sustained myself with food prepared in this pot on the slopes of the mighty Mount Whitney and the Colorado Rockies. From Alaska through the Canadian Rockies to the Southern tip of Baja, Mexico. From the beaches of California all the way East to the Virginias. Two years ago this little pot even traveled all the way to New Zealand with me!
Repair things, make them last and less will end up in the landfills! At almost 20 years and hundreds of meals cooked I think I have gotten my money out of this little pot! During the New Zealand trip one of the little swinging handles went missing. It is incredibly difficult to handle and safely move about a pot with a single contact point/handle that swings in and out! For the remainder of the trip I just made it work. However, once I was home I was on a mission to fix my otherwise reliable little pot!
It took combing through multiple hardware stores before I found metal wire of the proper gauge. I was definitely worried about getting it all bent in the proper shape, mimicking the remaining handle. It was a magical moment when I found the perfect metal already bent to act as a stake of some sort. This meant I only had to add the two bends that would allow the handle to slide into the receptacles on the pot. The use of my landlord’s vice and the detailed work was done in an instant. A perfect fit! Then I just added some heat resistance tape that I already had on hand for biking applications and viola! it was as good as new. Two years later the new handle is still going like a champ.
As with many things that we choose to share in this social media driven world, this repair represents what I see as the best of me. It is always my desire to repair, reuse, recycle, and most importantly refuse material objects. Each time I throw out an old clothing item with holes in it instead of learning to darn, if nothing else just so I can say that I can darn!, it represents a failure to meet my ideals. I try to live a low impact, low materialism life and taking the time to repair this little wonder pot represents the version of me I most want to be. So I share this story as a reminder to myself to try and fix things and make do with what I have and perhaps to inspire you to try and do the same. Building and repairing things with one’s own hands is so rewarding. My parents are both wonderful role models in this regard. Someday if/when I decide to own property and live in one place, I hope to spend a lot more time on small repair tasks such as this.
Thank you little pot for lasting so long, joining me on so many adventures, and reinforcing important life lessons!
- The Chautauqua reference is multifaceted. It is at the forefront of my thoughts because I have been listening to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I only have a little over an hour of the book remaining to listen to, but my library loan ends soon and I think I am out of steam for it… The second aspect of the Chautauqau reference is that I have been communicating with my friend Brenda from high school and her parents owned a summer home next to the original Chautauqua Institute in New York and each summer a group of us would go spend several days there; we would swim in the lake, canoe to the Institute beach, and wander its hallowed grounds.