With a grain of salt

Have you noticed when the salt in the shaker gets low it takes more effort to salt your food. A full shaker pours easily. Whether we have a tall glass shaker or short wooden one, we use it to make our food taste better with a grain of salt (pun intended).

In ancient time, salt was a precious commodity. That’s where the phrase “He’s worth his salt” comes from. The earliest found salt mine was in Hallstatt, Austria, where salt was mined in 5000 BC. Ancient China was among the earliest civilizations in the world with cultivation and trade in mined salt. When people discovered it improved the taste of their food, it could preserve food and it had healing properties, salt developed a trade value high above other commerce items.

We take our salt for granted, but those early extractions from the underground rock were not an easy task. When I visited the salt mine in Hallein, Austria, I gained great admiration for the miners and thankfulness for the salt on my table. This mine was discovered by the Celts in 600 BC. They dug about 300 meters into the mountain with crude, hand-carved sticks edged with some kind of metal. Rocks were brought outside. Miners separated the salt from the rock by pounding them by hand. What a difficult life it must have been. The miners lived in dirty caves, the work was strenuous and weather conditions were extreme. I can’t imagine what it was like to live through Alpine winters. As more metals were discovered and mechanisms were invented, the lives of the Salzburg (Salt town) citizens became more tolerable.

Our guide gave us white pants with a padded seat, a white coat with a hood and white footies for covering our shoes. This was traditional miner clothing protecting both miner and salt.

Red and white salt veins ran along the tunnel walls and everywhere you touched was salt. It made you want to stop and lick the rock walls. There was a musty, clean smell that reminded me of the dirt cellar under our house when I was a kid.

In later years, a large underground lake was used to soak the salt out of the rocks. Then the water was pumped to an outside building, where it sat evaporating and leaving behind the salt. Pretty clever.

A well-polished, steep wooden slide plummeted us 26 feet down to the next level. Ah, that’s the reason for the padded seat in our pants — no slivers. Next, a 100-foot-long wooden slide threw us into the lowest cavern. Our guide let us climb stairs to the top and sail down again and again. Wheee! That was more fun than any amusement park. However, I doubt the miners viewed it that way.

Saltiness is one of our basic human tastes. Wikipedia tells us that the scarcity and universal need for salt has led nations to go to war over it and used it to raise taxes. It’s an essential element for human health via its role as an electrolyte and osmotic solute. However, excessive salt consumption may increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension.

Recently, a local restaurant changed its salt shakers to black salt grinders to match the black pepper grinders. A white S and P mark the tops. The aesthetics are very nice but filling the salt grinder is a challenge — how do you know when the salt is getting low and how far to the top can it be filled and still allow the grinder to do its job? This has complicated the simple task of keeping the supply flowing. Those little salt crystals also leave their mark with a constant white fall-out onto the table which has to be cleaned up after each use.

Even Jesus used salt in his teaching. He told us we are the salt of the earth. What’s my salty flavor? Love, be kind, respect and encourage. Expect much, give much. I’m excited to have opportunities to pour a little salt into people’s lives. This kind of salt is never wasted nor needs someone to clean it up. It will always spice up someone’s life. Best of all, Jesus makes sure my salt shaker is always full.

Chase Hoseley is a freelance writer and retired kindergarten teacher who lives in Clarkston. She can be reached at shoseley8@gmail.com.