The team woke at dawn and gathered outside, in the communal circle surrounded by all the yurts. They loaded their ammo into their rifles and headed out in search of japanese knotweed for the Hmong family’s feast in celebration of their daughter’s wedding. There had been sightings in recent days of Twinkies, pick-up driving militiamen intent on destroying the new communal living camps that had sprung up across the state. Better to be prepared.
They filled their bottles with filtered water gathered from the leaves of the acacia trees they had planted around their camp, and set out for the hills to the east. There were six of them, all branded with the red A for Artist that had been burned into their foreheads at the concentration camp shortly after Congress was dissolved.
They carried paper buckets made from the recycled grant applications that had been submitted to the funding organization, but rejected. They headed out on their journey, carrying earthworms in their pockets as a talisman. They traveled all day, collecting the knotweed as they wove their way through the hills and valleys, returning at dusk with their buckets full.
Shortly thereafter, having been welcomed back by the rest of the tribe, they began the processing of the plant. First task was to spit on the leaves, very generously, with all the saliva you could muster. After everyone had emptied their throats onto the plant matter, a big stick was brought out to stir it up. Then the leaves were placed on a big blanket and left to dry in the hot sun, no longer filtered by an ozone layer. Once the spit had been absorbed by the leaves, it was time to crush them into a paste, which was done by the dogs of the camp, all dressed in their Carhart doggiewear.
Last year, at this time, they had been harvesting silkworms in order to power their communal electricy-generating bicycle, which didn’t actually generate electricty, but was instead meant to be a way to show people what electricity feels like. Now the bike sat unused in a patch of weeds on the outskirts of the camp circle. They had moved on to basic survival techniques as determined by the recombitant obstacle matrix, a guide to post climate change survival that incorporated ancient knowledge with post-modern conceptual thinking. This was their guide, as the tribe moved forward in their quest for survival.
The teenagers of the camp also had their responsibilities and they too gathered in the camp circle a bit later in the morning, as they were not early risers. They had been out the evening before gathering juniper berries, and now it was their task to crush them all up in order to make the gin kombucha beverage that was to consumed by all the celebrants the following morning. There were no elders in the tribe, of course, as they had all been committed to nursing homes years earlier.
Once the knotweed had dried in the sun, the team set upon the dried stalks in order to shave them into thin noodles. The sauce was being made separately by another unit. Collecting the millions of box elder bug skeletons that littered the landscape into a bin made from the regenerated skin of an ancient wooly mammoth fossil, they filled it with water and put it over a low flame on the cooking fire. Once the bugs had been boiled down into a brown thick liquid, they added a couple tablespoons of the high fructose corn syrup that doted the landscape in litle puddles, as well as a bit of Oregon hops, the last bit that was left from that region since the oil containers tumbled into the Columbia River after the earthquake, destroying most of the vegetation.
Once the meal was done, the wedding ceremony was set to begin. The Hmong girl was marrying a young woman from Cajun Louisiana who had turned up in camp a few months earlier, half dead, after traversing the high plains on her own, scavenging for roots to eat and drinking whatever little water she could find. The ceremony was performed with proper ceremony and then the meal was served on trays made from discarded Black Lives Matter lawn signs that had been salvaged from the nearby landfill. After the meal and drinks, there was a little dancing around the fire and fun was had by all. Their spirits were rejuvenated and they fell asleep with some satisfaction and good feeling in their hearts.
THE MOSSY BOG 