The Point Of

Out early, for a saunter, stuck to the logging roads. No avoiding the ticks this year. When I got back home I stripped on the back porch, bagged my dockers and tee-shirt in a plastic bag for the laundromat, then wiped down with alcohol. No mushrooms on the walk. I didn't bring anything home, which is strange for me. I did sample the liquid in several oak galls, drilling a small hole with the tip of my knife and tasting the juice. The amniotic fluid for whatever particular bug, the sugars acting as anti-freeze. Had the thought that I could make a jelly, shade grown, organic, and oh so mysterious, that we'd market in beautiful hand-blown glass vials, making no claims but maybe starting a few rumors, and it would be very expensive. Ginseng season just opened and there are new regulations. Impossible to enforce, but regulations nonetheless. A root must be five years old, at least three prongs, and you have to replant seed where the plant came out. The buyers are state licensed, but this is a largely cash industry, in a place where there are few cash crops. Most everything is under the table. Early September and the squirrels are particularly stupid, Mackletree is covered with failed attempts to cross the road. I make a great squirrel hash with potatoes and mushroom gravy; toast, with red onion jam. Amusing myself, as much as anything. I'm a cheap date, a couple of hours walking the beach, harvesting some mussels, some home brew, I'm a happy camper. There were some very large green crickets tonight, attacking the window where my writing light shines. They were making terrible guttural sounds. I went out with my butterfly net and caught eight of them (if a number is below ten, you spell it out) and followed the usual preparation: take off the wings, snap off the feet, break the head backwards and the guts pull out. When the carcass is dried (a day in the sun or fifteen minutes in the toaster oven) then fried or grilled, it's 50 percent protein and .05 percent fat, unless you, as I do, dress them with butter. A nasty habit, but for years Marilyn made great goat butter and I ate a lot of it, I'm not ashamed to say that a pat of butter, on a saltine cracker, with a spoonful of tomato soup, might well be one of the cornerstones of life. Still, being a liberal, I wonder if I might not be part of an experiment. I couldn't actually open the photograph, but sent it to someone who could. It was a pile of bear shit with a Number 2 yellow pencil used as a size marker. A large pile of shit. I rest my case against bears, they just can't retract their claws, even a love-tap is serious. This particular bear is female I think, but she came across the river; usually only males swim across the river, looking to establish new domains. I reread all the information I have on black bears, then a bunch of bear recipes. They're supposed to have foul breath. A favorite way of storing them was to kill one in the late fall, skin it, eat the innards, then just hang it in a tree and cut off what you needed during the winter. I knew people that did this with elk in Colorado. I made great sugar-cured smoked elk hams for Jewish friends while I was there. And smoked trout, and a few smoked cheeses. I could have done that forever; I was good and turned a profit. Marilyn wanted something other, a different situation; I offered her free range, with an expense account, but she wanted the girls and everything that had been ours. I gave her all of it, even her lawyer was surprised. Fuck me for making such a mistake, I could be living in Detroit. A landlord.