I’ve finally come down with a cold. There were times while I was building, when I was feeling worn down and completely soaked through with rain, that I thought that I was ripe to get hit with a bug. But lacking much contact with other people, dirty doorknobs etc. I was effectively in reverse-quarantine. Yet another benefit of rural living. (Just as, when a zombie contagion spreads, the conventional wisdom is to head away from major population centers.) Where that buffer falls down is when a dinner guest shows up to a 300 sq ft cabin with a monstrously fresh cold. One of the things that I love about being up here is that people don’t stand much on unnecessary social niceties. So it was unremarkable that when he ran out of toilet paper to wipe his nose with, he used the front of his tshirt instead. To be fair the host had also run out of toilet paper and was now using moss. She swears by tree moss, finding it far superior to even the plushest of toilet papers. It’s also perfect fodder for a composting toilet and around here it’s a truly sustainable option. Anyway, unsurprisingly, I’ve caught his cold.
When I was in rural Japan, one common home cold remedy was to warm some sake – rice wine – until it’s hot but not so hot that it cooks the raw egg that you drop into it. Then you burrow under the kotatsu, which is a low table on the tatami floor with a heater underneath and quilts that hang down from the sides to trap the heat. You throw back the drink (well, I guess you could sip it) then bake yourself under the kotatsu until cured. Works every time although sometimes you need to go through a few iterations of the treatment.
Lacking any of those materials, save the egg, I improvised my own northern BC version. I jammed my stove full of yellow cedar and got the cabin so hot that I had to strip down to my underwear. Then I poured myself a good serving of 12-year-old scotch (this, I sipped). The egg, I had for breakfast this morning. Didn’t cure my cold but it didn’t hurt much either. I’ll give it another try today.
Thanks, Masa