Literary Feasts

Phone was out so I couldn't send last night. So beautiful outside. I postpone my search for a particular book of food writing (I remember buying it off the remaindered table at Back Of Beyond Books in Moab, Utah) the title of which I don't remember, but I do remember color and size. I'm sure I can find it later. Fix a quick breakfast of egg and mushrooms on toast, then head out. I stick to the old logging roads, and carry a walking stick as a nod toward rattlesnake protection. A few morels, but mostly I examined the new growth on everything in the under-story. It's incredible right now, with the recent rains, the rate at which things are growing. Barnhart was correct, a cream of asparagus soup, with morels, is very good. There are several variations on this. The last couple of years before the divorce, in western Colorado, the girls and I picked hundreds of pounds of wild asparagus. We carried aioli in little holsters, and ate the sun-warmed spears raw. I made a lot of creamed soups because we had our own dairy. It's a nice walk, and I go east instead of west, I almost knew where I was, not surprising. Come back to the ridge a long way around. If I disturb someone's dogs, I'm libel to get shot, so I go downwind and silent. When I get back to the ridge, there has been nary a bark, I'm invisible, I can escape Beagles. I'd have to click it up a notch, to go head to head with a Blue-Tick Hound. I find the book, it only takes a couple of hours, and I have some spare time, as it happens, and I just read for several hours. Great meals that appeared in pieces of writing, from Jim Harrison to A. J. Liebling. What a glorious afternoon. B comes over, for conversation and a wee dram. He thinks I should read the Golden Eagle piece first, and I know exactly which piece he means (which is passing strange, as there are thousands of pages) and I agree. He argues, strongly, that I shouldn't explain myself, that any explanation diminishes what I'm saying. I write so slowly, a process of distillation in which almost everything is left out, teasing a thread, that I lose track of time. After B leaves, I read a few pages, and realize sense is a relative term. Read, for instance, might mean either red or reed. Depth of field becomes an issue. I slip so easily into the middle-ground. A Hereford on pasture, a chicken waiting to be fried; two ducks go into a bar. No, wait. A duck and a priest go into a bar, a goose and a papal scribe, two crows and a dead mouse. From midnight until six in the morning you'll almost never be disturbed, so it's a good time to write. If a Whip-O-Will comes around, just go outside, naked, and blow off a few rounds of bird-shot.