Li Younan was too excited to sleep all night. He never thought he would be so thrilled to hear a radio broadcast. In fact, this part of life didn’t always need to be recorded with a camera—it’s a relatively private enjoyment.
Although he could tune the crystal radio, the AM broadcast signal coverage was relatively limited due to the remote mountains around Chilco Lake, Canada.
In fact, he could only receive three channels: The first channel was the 570 frequency from Williams Lake, about 100 kilometers away.
Despite the distance, information revealed in the program showed that this channel had a broadcasting power of 1 kilowatt.
And after all, Chilco Lake was in the wild, without a complex electromagnetic environment, so the received signal was quite good.
The first channel that Li Younan heard playing "Wonderful Tonight" was this one.
This channel mainly broadcasted country music and local information, but most of the time it focused on playing music.
At least in the evening, there were no host programs.
The second channel was 730AM from Vancouver, mainly about hot news and sports programs.
Li Youlan listened for quite a long time.
One program was a live broadcast of a baseball match.
Although Li Younan didn’t quite understand baseball and didn’t know the star players mentioned by the host, he still listened with relish.
In such a lonely night, when it was quiet outside and the shelter was peaceful, the sound from the not-so-loud crystal radio speaker became noticeable.
Li Younan reminisced about reading "Robinson Crusoe" as a child, when he read about Robinson living on an island, building his own fortress, and having meat and bread to eat. He thought that life was really good.
So, as a child, he couldn’t understand why Robinson was so excited because of a savage and patiently taught the savage to speak.
It was at this moment he truly empathized—only after experiencing real solitude, one realizes the value of civilization and social interaction that everyone has.
Li Younan listened to the radio for a long time, until all three channels he could receive started playing music.
The wilderness night was quiet and long.
Li Younan dreamed a lot of things this night—chaotic dreams pieced together, the only common point being that within each fragmented dream, there were various friends and items from modern civilized society.
After a night passed, the next day was still a sunny day.
After September, rainfall became very rare, and after wind and snow from the last few days, the temperature slightly warmed up.
Li Younan planned to search near the lakeside again.
The reason for not heading towards the lake before was partly because the direction of the forest had various reasons compelling him to go—his majority of resources came from the forest.
And besides fish, the lakeside seemed to produce nothing.
On the other hand, it was because of Li Younan’s poor swimming skills—although he barely learned to swim after persistent practice, given his swimming level, paddling in the wild lake water was still difficult, not to mention the water in Chilco Lake was extremely cold, and swimming in it was definitely not a good idea.
But it must be said, the area near Chilco Lake had good things.
Li Younan carried bows, arrows, and a full set of weaponry, exploring slowly toward the flatter-looking southern side along the lake.
After walking only about 20 minutes, he spotted a waterbird.
Li Younan carefully approached the waterbird, and at the instant when the bird flapped its wings to fly, he raised his hand and shot it down with an arrow.
This way, he could change flavor with today’s meal.
He didn’t carry a basket today; instead, he brought a leather bag of about 5 liters capacity, strapped to his back.
This leather bag was made by Li Younan from leftover materials when making mattresses and recliners.
Compared to a basket, the leather bag couldn’t hold many items, but it was suitable for packing smaller items.
To be honest, the road near Chilco Lake wasn’t easy to walk.
Although it was much flatter than heading toward the forest, a big issue was that the lake shores had many small swamps, with dense aquatic plants that easily wet shoes.
Li Younan was already being very cautious, but still ended up with soaked pant legs.
Luckily, he wore waterproof boots today, so his socks were dry.
The program group provided several sets of trousers and clothes, as well as a total of 12 pairs of socks.
Li Younan had sacrificed a pair of socks to make filtering equipment, leaving him with only 11 pairs of socks.
To ensure cleanliness, he would wash and change socks and clothes, leaving him somewhat resigned—another round of washing pants when he returned.
Without washing powder, the toothpaste from the program group had some cleaning ingredients, but of course, Li Younan couldn’t use toothpaste to wash pants and clothes; it was too extravagant.
However, he had a solution, which was using wood ash.
Wood ash in the wilderness was truly multifunctional.
Besides being added to mud for building houses, it can also be used for washing clothes.
The main component of plant ash is potassium carbonate, which is alkaline and can break down the grease and dirt on clothes, similar to the principle of traditional soap for cleaning.
However, there is a proper method to use it; you can’t just add the plant ash directly into the laundry water.
Li Younan previously demonstrated this process in a video: collect dry plant ash, use leftover sock fabric made into a filter to create an ash bag, immerse the ash bag in water for 10-15 minutes, allowing the alkaline substances to dissolve in the water without any ash particles getting into it.
Washing clothes with ash water can serve a similar purpose as soap.
Li Younan sighed slightly.
Although clothes can be cleaned this way, the hand-washing method is quite troublesome.
He really dislikes doing laundry. If he were to stay here long enough, he even has the idea of building a waterwheel by the stream near the waterfall, which could be used to make a drum washing machine.
Then he chuckled to himself, finding his ideas unbelievable—he’s getting lazier and lazier.
While thinking about this, he suddenly stepped into a hole.
Fortunately, with his remarkable physical fitness, Li Younan didn’t fall but quickly stabilized himself.
And in that moment when he looked down, his expression immediately brightened.
This is... Oh my God, I really found it!
Ahead lies a shallow swamp, sprouting numerous tall, cylindrical plants over a meter in height.
The long leaves, estimated to be several decimeters, possess serrated edges and somewhat resemble reeds, only much larger.
These plants bore slender seeds, and with a gentle touch from Li Younan’s hand, they fell off easily.
He eagerly gathered the seeds into his leather pouch—this is what he’s been longing for, North American wild rice.
Though it’s called wild rice, it’s not actually a type of rice.
In fact, these are sold in supermarkets back home at an astonishingly high price, over a hundred yuan per pound.
Most of the wild rice in domestic markets is imported ice lake wild rice from Canada.
Compared to regular rice, this wild rice is entirely black, long and slender, resembling black iron nails.
Some merchants market it as the caviar of rice.
As a chef, Li Younan isn’t gullibly buying into that notion.
Actually, wild rice was already used in ancient China, although in the past, it was called "Gu."
There is a vegetable called Zizania latifolia, a cultivated variety that, after infection with smut fungus, swells and can no longer produce seeds, which led to its substitution by crops like rice and wheat with higher yields in a certain dynasty.
Li Younan noticed that quite a few wild rice seeds had already fallen into the swamp, making him feel a bit distressed.
Nearby the shallow water is an abundance of rice plants, a significant carbohydrate source for the ancient Indians.
Finding such a patch of wild rice, Li Younan couldn’t help but admire his good luck—benefiting from the fact that it’s currently the wild rice harvest season; even if he arrived earlier, there wouldn’t have been any wild rice for him to gather.
Li Younan gathered all the wild rice around the shallow water, filling an entire leather pouch to capacity.
Actually, there’s more wild rice in the deep water of the lake; the plants there grow taller and thicker, yielding even more.
Historically, the indigenous peoples of North America primarily consumed wild rice from the deep waters.
But without an Indian canoe, Li Younan had no means to collect them, and could only watch anxiously.
However, after collecting this wild rice, a thought crossed Li Younan’s mind, causing a slight sigh—since he hasn’t obtained ultimate victory, it indicates that there must still be other competitors not yet eliminated.
Some of those competitors are likely facing food shortages, but now, as the wild rice season arrives, if others also find wild rice near the lakeshore, this tug-of-war will continue for a while longer.
Fortunately, wild rice, even near the lake, isn’t abundant, and Li Younan had to search for a long time before finding such a small patch of swamp where wild rice grows.
Even taking a step back, if some other competitors manage to find wild rice, relying solely on eating wild rice might let them last two to three weeks at most.
And when September’s window period passes, those who haven’t found it will miss it entirely.
The weather these few days has been decent, but who knows, it might snow again in a couple of days.
Li Younan collected the wild rice near the shallow water, not even caring that his pants got soaked up to his knees.
The ice-cold, biting lake water was indeed uncomfortable.
Thinking about this, he felt that even if other competitors found wild rice, collecting it wouldn’t be an easy task.
Younan had no intention of attempting to reach the wild rice in the deep waters, considering today’s harvest satisfactory; he switched on the camera, somewhat proudly displaying his bounty to the lens: "Guys, I estimate we’ve collected about 10 pounds of wild rice today."
"This pouch has a capacity of approximately 5 liters, just enough to store the wild rice from this area."
"With this much wild rice, if we consume 100 grams per day, it’s enough to last us 40 days! But of course, this is assuming it’s complemented with other foods—an average person eating only 200 grams of wild rice a day is far from enough."

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