Mushroom Season

Mind-numbing rains. Safe, on the ridge, from flooding, and it's made for the best mushroom year since I've been here. B said he'd found some Chanterelles, so I went out looking. Before I left, I sliced a couple of Boletus and put them in the dehydrator; and not fifty feet away, I found a nice stand of Cantharellus Cibarius and went right back home to fry some in butter and serve them on toast. I have so many choice mushrooms, that I decide to make a stew. Thin slice some baby potatoes and carrots, cook them chicken stock with a large sliced onion, then add a pound or more of various mushrooms, pan-fried in butter with copious salt and pepper. I serve this with a spoon-full of sour cream and dry toast that I dip in the broth. It's way beyond good, into the nether-reaches of taste experience. I like vegetables that are earthy, turnips and parsnips, and other things, cat-tail roots and wild asparagus, but this is the best vegetarian stew I've ever made. Most of the day rereading Chandler Burr's book "The Emperor Of Scent", which turned me on to Luca Turin years ago; then Sara got me Turin's book on perfumes. For years I was ordering little sample vials of various scents that he mentioned in "Perfumes: The Guide". Threatens rain all day, but never does. Much thunder in the distance. The power went out, briefly, but the relays worked and it was right back on. The relays try and reset the transformers right away, think of it as a large circuit breaker; but if there's real damage to something, an actual person has to go out and fix it. If he doesn't have the correct part on his truck he has to go back to the garage/depot and get whatever it is. So the problem is fixed in either a minute, or one-to-four hours; if someone takes out a telephone pole, on a Saturday, it won't be fixed until Monday morning. I have a long history with power outages. My old friend Joel, The Wittgenstein Plumber, called from Atlanta, he's not in good health, failed kidneys, but he sounded pretty good and laughs the same. Sent me into a spiral of thinking about the past, which is not a train of thought I ride very often. I'd rather talk about the mating habits of frogs than go to any reunion of any sort. I thought about the ten years on Cape Cod, 1968 to 1978, before the move to the The Vineyard, and it was a glorious and expansive period. Actually I first went to the Cape in 1964, but just for the summers, when we'd do ten shows in ten weeks; but in 1968 I started spending time alone. It's a whole different kettle of fish. Now I can't imagine not being alone.