Snake Redux

Morning protocol is to make a cup of coffee and put away a few books. Then I needed to go out to the Jeep and get the ingredients for the sauce I'd left there, what with the snake. Put on some jeans, one must wear pants outdoors, and open the door, and that pesky rattlesnake is back, coiled exactly centered in my sight, three feet away. Shut the door and go roll a cigaret, a wee dram to deal with the shock. I had to be shed of it, but I had time and I watched it for a while, pulled up a stool and watched out the panes in the back door. Watching a snake is a very slow event. She moves, after a while, to the opposite end of the porch, coils up, and apparently goes to sleep. Six feet away now, the first drops of rain fall and she slides over to the edge of the porch, drops down to the ground and goes under the house. I don't like her being under the house, the fact that she likes the back porch. Following B's lead, I'll try and relocate her down in the wilderness area. If you know where a snake is, in the morning (before they achieve escape velocity) you can often just shovel them up and put them in a five-gallon bucket. They give new meaning to 'slow-starting'. Still, that dry rattle is not something you want to hear very often. I went out to the Jeep just as a fucking sheet of rain swept across the ridge and I was drenched in seconds, bad timing, but I got what I needed out of the car and made it back inside. Resurrect the sauce. B calls, to remind me it's Friday. Waiting for a call from my sister about my mother's condition, I'm in no shape to be social. Military brats are raised in a matriarchal society, 50% of the time Dad was gone, so Mom was the only given, and I think about her struggles with that. Arguably better that her Holiness Pentecostal upbringing. Never snakes, but often speaking in tongues and rolling in the aisles, which is only slightly removed from hearing Beverly Sills singing "Traviata". My parents were products of the depression, tenant farmer families scratching a bare living. The options were limited, the military or prison, or working in the produce section of the supermarket for your entire life, shining apples. I can make a strong case for digging clams and eating wild greens. Read more...

Vanishing Point

Perspective. On the one hand, the stump had lasted a long time. The butt round from a chestnut oak I'd cut 15 years ago. I'd rolled it over to the graveyard and seated it, and, all this time I've used it as a rest stop. I keep a bottle of water there. It's only, what, 400 feet from the house? And it was, finally, today, what is the word, unsittable. I need a new stump. People have told me this for years. A soap-box or a packing-crate. I have no designs on higher office. This is it, as far as I'm concerned: meatballs on egg noodles. B calls with some questions about cooking an enormous rack of pork ribs. A couple of his writer friends will be visiting, and he wants me to come down. Which I certainly will, if I can. B has great friends, unfailingly interesting, and conversation, good conversation, is one of the finer things. As I think about it later, it might be the most important thing. I've been blessed with a long line of bright friends, and some of them have been quite batty. As most of us must, I consider myself normal, it's the only guide-book you're given; I have a few other guide-books, hidden under the visor: a field guide for amputation, birthing babies in the back of moving cars, how to plug gaping wounds with spider-webs, but mostly we're at a loss. In just a hundred years everyone has forgotten how to do anything. I volunteered to bring the sauce for the ribs, and I needed a fast run into town to get a few things. The sauce (over 10 years old now) needs to be brightened, after a winter of inactivity, so I need a sweet onion, to liquify, some red wine, papaya nectar, mixed chili powders. I keep it under a layer of rendered pork fat that makes a tight seal during the off-season. I get everything I need, stop at the pub for a beer, and when I get home, I'm in a mindless state. Unload the Jeep, rain is coming, onto the edge of the porch; up the three steps, grabbing what I can carry and I'm at the back door, key in hand, when I hear the dry rattle that can only be a snake. A beautiful timber rattler, a female, coiled tight and ready to strike. Six or seven rattles. I put down my groceries and backed away. I actually made a sound, a sweek, nothing like a real snake to shake things up a bit. Read more...

Creature Comforts

I've slept under a great many overhangs, and I'm always paranoid the ceiling is going to fall. I can't wait to get out in the morning. Feet dangling over the edge, a strong cup of boiled coffee, gruel bubbling away, hey, this is pretty good. Sometimes I have a light blanket draped over my shoulders. Another place in Utah, a huge outcrop of chert, and there's a campsite there, that was used for hundreds of years. The flaked debris is ankle deep. A huge number of failed points. The last time I went back the roof had fallen on the campsite. Further up the canyon, where I had never been, there was a perfectly preserved single family dwelling, Cistern, grain bin, sleeping nooks, fire pits, and I spent the night there, listening to the wind. The next day, halfway across Nebraska, I could no longer sort fact from fiction. The corn was reminding me of sunflowers. It happens, as you get older, one thing reminds you of another. Fact is, I think, a fiction. I don't remember anything the same way twice. Bobby Blue singing on Beal Street, BB King playing back-up; I don't know who the drummer is, but he should be sainted. There's a trumpet solo that would almost make you believe there is a god, and then Mr. King does a break that is a pure transport. I shuffle over to the island and put together a bowl of rice, with sesame oil and soy sauce. Sit in the dark and listen to the blues. I meant to go into town, for the farmer's market, but I didn't need anything so I blew it off. I'd rather not leave the ridge; den up, lick my wounds, attend to apparent needs. That outside world, I can take it or leave it. Sometimes it amuses me. Another trip, I was driving across Kansas. Read more...

Under Watch

Perish the thought. I'm not generally paranoid. I'd been up all night, reading about the Donner Party, looking forward to a radio review, later in the day, of a new book on the subject. I wanted a nap, but I'd just fixed coffee, when there was knock on the door. Too early for anyone I know, and they hadn't shouted, when they got out of the vehicle. Power Company guy to change the meter, but the meter was just changed last winter. My first thought was that he was an undercover cop, because his right hand kept falling to where his pistol would be, and he was a little nervous. I ask him in, for coffee, to try and find out why someone would think I was doing anything illegal. He denies everything, but does allow that I live an odd life and some people might find it curious. I explain that I'm just an old guy living on a fixed income and no threat to anyone. Further, I added, it was fine if they (oh god, they, the other) wanted to look around, or bring in dogs and have them sniff my shit. My new meter transmits more data, but the truth is, there isn't any more data, because I'm in a blind spot. I realize, somewhere in his awe that there could be so many books in one place, how unplugged I am. This guy, 'Guy'' was his name, right there on his breast pocket, which I didn't believe for a heart-beat (when I'm traveling alone I always use the name Frank). Late in this exchange, I realize I looked like a madman. Up all night, unkempt, hair sticking out, beard flecked with last night's dinner, stained tee-shirt with the sleeves and neck cut out. BUT I'm in my own house, on my own property, and I don't expect to be disturbed, I want to put a sign, down at the bottom of the hill, that says 'This Is Not A Meth Lab', but I doubt it would do any good. It's assumed, if you're not scrambling for a foot-hold, you're an idiot. And I can do the whole idiot thing, it's not that difficult to be stupid. Read more...

Distant Cannon

The camping trailers are circling the State Forest, lots of horses on the bridal paths, small kids running between parked cars. The first Saturday of summer. There's a street fair that's closed down Second Street. I know the alleys now, and can skirt around almost anything; so I get to the library fine, do my business there, wander the stacks, smelling books all around me. Kroger is chaos, they're redoing the shelving, my internal map will have to be redrawn, but I find the things I need, despite the confusion. Small new potatoes at the farmer's market and I buy some, not knowing what I'm going to do with them. In the seafood aisle I think about the term 'wild-caught', then, later, about the terms 'organic' and 'free-range', and I'm lucky to get out of town without being questioned. The back way home, all the way up the creek to B's place, where he adds to the pile of reading matter. Life on the creek. Dictated by local weather. I got back home, watching the clouds, before the rolling thunder, stopped at the Diary Bar for a vanilla shake. It's as if I had this timed. I get back home, the bottom of the hill I shift into four-wheel drive, creep up the driveway, looking at flowers. And when I get to the top, the bottom drops out. A gully-washer. I waited for a lull, to get to the door, but was still drenched and dripped like a bird-dog. Strip, standing on a towel by the kitchen sink, dry off, then a fresh change of clothes. I'd left everything in the Jeep, except for what needed attention, put away butter and cheese, lined up four avocados, for their daily feel, to see in what order I would eat them. The thunder, in waves, is like distant cannon. Like listening to the first battle of Bull Run from a lawn chair in DC. As a check on population we let the young men kill each other, you really only need two or three males, so why not waste them, in the interest of science or something? Sleep it off. Read more...

Almost Funny

I had to laugh, listening to the news, Jared holding court. Trump and more bullshit than is to be believed, and I assume a certain amount. I've been listening to quite a few of our elected officials recently and they don't make any sense. I shouldn't be surprised. Learn to weld, at least it'll pay the bills. I roasted some Brussels sprouts and onions in the toaster oven, then separated the leaves of the sprouts and made an excellent sauce for fresh egg noodles. I'm currently using wild caught rolled anchovies with capers in olive oil and salt in almost everything. Even something as simple as beans on toast. Another day reading the Henley, I'd marked about 50 things I wanted to go back and study. Before the first world war, everything was done in house. There was an absolute fixation on getting out stains. I don't want to get into this, but I already have way too much information about getting rid of particular stains. I could do a call-in show, No Stain, No Gain, but that seems like a stretch. A serious quiet descends on the ridge, no wind, no bugs, no birds, rain moving in, for sure. The usual preparations, clean a bucket to harvest water, get out my head lamp, save everything, make a small pot of beans, cook some rice. Reading about a kind of transfer printing from 1900 and I want to try it. The Hectograph. A gelatin pad on which you make copies. The original must be writ in aniline dye, but you can actually pull 50 copies. Amazing. I'd never heard of the process before. I spend the rest of the afternoon reading about gelatine and hide glue. Read more...

Comfort Zone

Difficult to nail down. What it takes to be comfortable. If my feet aren't freezing and I can roll a cigaret, I'm in pretty good shape. I like the dark and quiet, so I chase that state through the seasons. Little things matter to me now. Adequate insulation. Isolation and uninterrupted periods of time. Remembering the Essex, I keep an interesting larder. Always, there should be within reach, 50 books. Time is an interval, a movable feast, so I don't pay it much mind. I do love the smell of bacon. Within arm's reach I keep a candle, a headlamp, extra batteries: draped over the back of the sofa I keep my bathrobe, and an extra, in case of a guest. I'm considering a wheeled chair, to access the dictionaries. It's nice to have a pot of beans and rice on the stove. I like to burn a piece of sassafras or juniper, with the stove door slightly open. Sometimes, in winter, when I've cranked the stove to bake cornbread, I love to open a window and breathe cold air. It's a matter of immersion. When I'm reading something that engages my attention, or writing, I'm not aware of outside influences, I sometimes let the fire go out or forget to eat. Something always takes my attention, the way water beads, or the way that wasps build a nest. I've been known to squat on the driveway and watch water go downhill. It gathers, then finds a way. Read more...

Lost Page

A whole page gone. Hasn't happened to me in months. One of those black-outs that lasted two seconds. I was writing about transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, and that tribe, the Fore, in the New Guinea highlands, and the disease Kuru, which was passed on via ritual cannibalism. While I was fixing lunch I realized I had almost everything for making flounder filets rolled around crab meat. A trip to town tomorrow for the trimmings. I'll coat the roll-ups in ground nuts, maybe glazed carrots on the side. Spaced out, forgot to put the rain-water buckets outside and I'm low on wash water. I need to do dishes and I need to wash my hair. I haven't run out of rain water for several years, and it's stupid that I haven't kept up with it. Lesson learned. Also I have to get in touch with a couple of people about some projects around this place. Plenty of time as the jobs don't have to be done until mid-fall, and the guys will fit me in. Everything seems on track, except for the water fuckup, and I can always go down to B's and fill a couple of buckets. I need to bring my ozonated drinking water supply up to capacity. Then start on the pantry. When I get out in the winter, then get back home, I tend to just shove things wherever they'll fit, so I need to organize and check dates. Then I have to address the book issues, take a load to the Goodwill Bookstore, start a new stack of winter books to be read, shelve 50 or 100. And I have to recycle another couple hundred pounds of magazines, check on the library book sale, and get my license tag sticker. Dug out my old copy of Henley's Formulas and there are several pages of ink recipes, including a small-batch gall ink (1 quart) designed for household use. The 'housewife' was expected to make this, so I assume I can make it too. The Henley's is a wonderful book, and after a couple of days of rain, I've read/scanned through the whole thing. 10.000 recipes and formulas, and it has a great index, covers everything from getting out stains and making a dandruff shampoo, to storing cheese (smear the cut surface with butter) and the care of millstones. I'm not familiar with half of the ingredients. It's great reading that expresses a different view. When you had to do things for yourself. Now, nobody knows how to do anything. Read more...

Blue Collar

I don't own a tie, nor a white shirt. The only reason to own a white shirt is to prove you never get dirty. Ties are stupid, they allow an opponent to grab you around the neck, and unless you're very careful they often get in the food. Having reviewed a great many recipes, I'd decided to cut the oak galls in half and let them soak for a while, then let them mold, which was supposed to produce the darkest ink, so I was standing on the ground, working on the porch surface, cutting the galls in half with a knife Kim had sharpened and putting the pieces in a pot of water. Warm morning with a hot afternoon forecast, so I was dressed extremely casually, patched Dockers, with a rope belt, over a cut-off tee-shirt, a look that might be described as Key West beach bum. Listening to the bugs and the birds, cutting galls in half, with a sharp knife, feeling good about it all. Short of a radio host, more a lay preacher. I had the back door open and was playing some Grateful Dead quite loud so I didn't hear the car pulling up. A Deputy Sheriff and a guy in a suit. They're hesitant, because I'm flashing a knife. I get it right away, put down the knife, hold up a finger, go inside and turn off the music. We chatted for a while, the new detective checking me out. What does he see? When I finally get rid of them I can't remember what I was doing. A line of thought is actually a fairly delicate thing and it's easy to be interrupted. I was thinking about the tines of a fork, what they needed to do, how many of them there needed to be, and I'm interrupted. As if I didn't have enough to deal with. At heart I am a beach bum. The record is clear. More rain, I need to get to town. Read more...

Wind Voice

Went outside, smoke, and a cup of tea, sitting on the step, the wind murmuring in the trees. Mindlessness is helpful, merely listening. The library called, and they were holding the newest John Sanford for me. I pretty much dropped everything, made a quick list. A perfect diversion, and I know I'll read straight through, two or even one session, so I stopped at the store and got sliced roast beef and Swiss cheese. I like to roll these up in a cold tortilla, an amazingly tidy snack, and dip them in a mustard/horseradish sauce that makes me weep. Sweet pickles. A bottle of whiskey. We all have these habits, toast with butter and jam at breakfast, cucumber sandwiches at tea, port after dinner; life is a melange of habits. It's difficult to imagine a more perfect day. The crows come up from the lake, this time of year I only see them once a week, and I give them a couple of cooked mice. They're fat and raucous from eating the butt ends of hot dogs and buns, and they take French fries from my fingers, but this is not domestication, it's just a conversation. A few breaks, during the evening, to uncross my eyes, to look-up a few words, some outside air. In the gloaming, the wind had reduced to a moan, strangely like church music. Turned on the radio, to check the weather and local news, and got sucked, briefly, into the DC morass. Finished reading the Sanford, which was great fun, and the ending is nicely wrapped. Three in the morning and I'm hungry, so I minced up a potato, fried with some onion, chop the last slices of roast beef, and make a nice hash. I don't know if it's the same in the other services, but Navy people hate two things on the menu at mess: hash, and chipped beef with gravy. I always considered it a rare treat to eat on the base (wherever we were) or on a ship, because Mom never made these at home. I now make any number of hashes, and a chipped beef on instant mashed potatoes that is a perfect camping meal. The wind picks up, it sounds like a train in Kentucky. Read more...

More Oak

At the beginning of the end of the last glaciation, Ireland was connected to England, England was connected to Europe. As these land-bridges sank below the rising water, and they were heavily forested, they took their trees with them. They're mining those 1st growth oaks today, 90 feet to the first branch, as they're mining 1st growth cypress from rivers in the southern US. Trees that are thousands of years old. This leads to further research into the nature of rot. An added feature of the oak harvested from the Irish Channel is that it should be quite well fire-proofed. Salt. I'd love to see a board cut from those logs. I've seen the cypress, and it's quite beautiful. I used some of it, for a den in Colorado, at $24 a board foot, and it finished like a lush dream. A full cord of oak is around 23 million BTU's which is about the same as a hundred gallons of fuel oil. Thin splits of yew coppice, after soaking, made a good attachment for planks, and the first boats were (probably) stitched oak planks, just enough framing to hold it together. Still, it wasn't building ships that denuded the forests of Europe and England, it was the iron plow. Iron, generally, because it used so much wood, but the iron plow in particular, because trees got in the way of planting. A yearly row-crop, guaranteed income, looks pretty good when you've been making your own soap, washing with rainwater, and always run out of food in March. I've been collecting oak galls, toward making a small batch of ink. This has interested me for decades. I've made ink from soot, but it didn't actually penetrate the paper fibers, it sat on top and rubbed off. I got sidetracked into paper-making, wondering about fiber, and didn't think about ink for years, then this fascination with oak galls. You need a penetrant, a binder, and a coloring agent. This is usually iron sulfate, crushed oak galls, and sticky sap, diluted, everything held in suspension. You can substitute egg whites for the sticky sap. I don't even use ink anymore, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to know more about it. Read more...

Clever Disguise

I only look like an idiot. It works well for me. Kim said, before he went up to bed, that I was the only person he ever spent 12 hours talking with, but we share so much history, there are so many things to consider. This person, that person, the turn of the common consensus. He was already leaving when I got up, two more days for him to get to Montreal. It was great to talk with someone that understood the concept of failure as a good thing. Pictures on his phone of his recent brickwork. So elegant it boggles the mind. I was making coffee after he left, gathering plates from dinner, thinking about eccentricity. It's only eccentrics that fully engage my attention, and I know quite a few of them, a good regional spread because I (had) moved around a considerable amount. Kim and I talked about intelligence, both native and academic, we talked about problem solving and visualization, interestingly, we never got personal or political except for a brief conversation about global warming. Leftovers, so I didn't need to cook, rain again, so I didn't need to go outside and do anything, and since I'm not a TV or movie person, that meant I could just read. Some fiction (Annie Proulx), then back to Cannibalism. It takes me a day or two to recharge after a visitor, thinking about things. I require some slow days, what did Tom Rush sing? "Done lost my driving wheel." Still, it comes back to me, what I had been thinking about, how we disguise ourselves. The best lie is very close to the truth. Read more...

Time-Factored

I do have an old wind-up alarm clock, that I can set if I have to meet a plane, or make a deposition. It seems that I always live two hours from the nearest airport. Which means a three-hour trip, allowing for a flat tire, and two hours home, I just don't do it anymore. Visitors (two or three a year) either have four-wheel drive or park at the bottom of the hill and hike in, if they call from town, and it's possible, I'll drive down and get them. Repeat guests know my habits. Barnhart brings cheese and salami, TR brings fruit, Kim brings whiskey, because he has his one drink a year with me. If Kamiakin stops by it's usually to drop off an animal part. With B it's usually a book. Reading about third-world building techniques, rammed earth with just a small amount of cement, wattle and daub, stitched hides over lodge-pole pine, ice-blocks with a plaster of snow; and you have to marvel. A cave is good enough, you block off the entry and build a fire at the mouth. Maybe you make a corn-pone on a flat rock. I was so disappointed, reading fiction recently, about the mistakes made in how a particular building might be built. If you want to know how a structure is built, you go to the lumber yard. You bring doughnuts. Friday afternoon, when the guys are sweeping up debris, you break out cold beer. Don't make this stuff up, ask someone who knows. If a book is going to be a best-seller, spend a few hundred bucks and talk to a carpenter. Lee Child, who I enjoy reading, is terrible at this, the names are wrong, the techniques are wrong, drives me crazy. I got to town, and did my laundry, everything I own is clean, except for those things that are seldom washed (overalls, chore-coats, certain sacrificial clothes that end up ripped to tatters picking blackberries) and went to Kroger to get what I needed for the meals Kim will be here. We'll be dining well: Louisiana sausage, with roasted pepper and onions and a rice pilaf, one night; filet of beef, with sweet potatoes, and a big bowl of tomatoes and mozzarella with balsamic the other. JC had sent the new Bill Schutt book, Cannibalism, so it was difficult to attend to nominal chores, I kept taking breaks to go over and read the next chapter. I'd heated water, and then I needed to wash a sink full of dishes. Then I need to cook. Read more...

Rice Crust

Left-over rice, or any pasta, makes a fine breakfast cake; and I'm not adverse to piling on anything else that might be around and topping it with an egg. Fielded a phone call about how loading was carried through a crooked post. An interesting conversation. I told him to make an eight foot long miter box, establish (an arbitrary) 'top' to the log, so he could make parallel cuts. Then, this is the cool part, you stand the post up, brace it off. Whenever you harvest a potential post you usually leave both ends wild, too long, so you can cut them back. You establish the base cut. I do this with an electric chain-saw and I'm good at it. Then, using a plumb-bob, you determine that the center of the top bearing falls within the footprint of the base. Make the parallel cut. It's always worked for me. Several engineer friends have dubbed this dubious data, though building inspectors always approved them. An eight inch oak trunk is pretty stout. Under compression, wood is very strong. I read recently that someone is building a seven-story wood framed building, using various innovative wood products. Concrete has gotten expensive and we're running out of sand. China has used more sand in the last decade than the US had used in the last hundred years. If Trump has his way with The Wall, they'll be bringing in sand from a thousand miles away. That'd be a sweet contract to have. My first job in Colorado was replacing a building that had burned down, a three-story structure in a Historic Zone, mandated to be built in the manner of the original, 8x8 and 10x10 Ponderosa Pine. They did allow me to use brackets and lag bolts. It went together fairly quickly because I could mass-cut all the components, I'd hired someone to help me stand everything up, then hired a guy from the local tire store to use an air-gun to drive the bolts home. I'd retire to the local pub, because I couldn't stand the sound. This was in Ridgway (no 'e') and I went on to build several places there. As I think back on it, I built maybe ten houses, between Montrose and Telluride, in the ten years in western Colorado, one project a year; the rest of that time spent getting a goat dairy certified and running a ranch. I'd call this period Raw Milk, if I were to write about it, and it was glorious. During the separation and divorce, which takes forever in Colorado, I built two more houses in Utah, then put my books in storage and took on the Jefferson project, outside Winchester, Virginia. Get shed of all that. Wipe the slate clean. I loved sleeping in Tom's bedroom, spare, a rope bed with a straw mattress. Read more...

Fluttersome

Butterflies high in the trees. I don't know where they go when it rains. It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow, before another couple of days of rain, so I might try and get to town to do the laundry. God knows everything is dirty, it's the air here, power plants along the river burning coal. The museum has a flat roof, though no flat roof is ever actually flat, they drain toward scuppers or pipes, and we had to go up there every couple of years, to scoop up particulate matter, to clear the drains. Upwind and a few miles from the river, the trees acting as filters, the ridge is somewhat better, but if I leave a bucket of rainwater sitting out for a extra day, there'll be some flecks of ash. Few things are completely clean. Quick trip to town, not enough time to do the laundry as another front is moving in. Get back home, just before the hard rain, and eat potato logs I got at the Qwik-Stop on the way out of town. These are very good with French mustard and hot sauce. Thunder and lightening, so I close down. Then take a nap, to the hammering on the roof. It's quite pleasant. Mickey Hart and those throat singers. When I wake it's so dark It's frightful, I can't see my hands, I can't see anything. I feel around for my slippers. I keep a candle at the edge of my desk, and a book of matches, and my headlamp, of course. Dead reckoning. When it's very dark, even a single candle provides quite a bit of light. In a total black-out there's no depth perception. If I'm being extravagant with light, I put another candle at the end of the island, that way I can avoid tripping over my own feet. Read more...

Total Green

It's a wall, completely surrounding me. I can't see 50 yards in any direction. The driveway is canopied, dark, in overcast light. There's a new flush of oak galls and they're very sweet, pink and creamed-colored, and I thought briefly about distilling, realized it would cost tens of thousands of dollars an ounce. The perfect mogul's drink. The snicker of rain on the roof, the blackberries will be happy, and the corn in the bottoms along Turkey Creek. I like walking those fields, after they've harrowed but before they plant, looking for arrowheads. A lot of bird-points, lovely little things. These bottoms have been hunted for thousands of years, grouse and turkey and deer, but they yield little trace. A few pieces of rock. This time of year, though, I have to say, you can't see a fucking thing. The green is complete, right from the ground up until it becomes sky. The darkest greens, holly, wild rhododendrons, some of the conifers, spatter the landscape; most of the greens are soft. Blue ranges wildly. Pollen and catkins cover the Jeep, it looks like an artifact. I'm trying to get the rest of the split wood inside and realize I need to pay someone to do this for me. I'm old and beaten down, I used my body hard for a lot of years, and I'm quite content, now, with rereading Proust and sipping tea. The good old days, when we plowed with mules and planted a market crop, like mining coal with a pick and shovel, for the most part are past. The rain sets in hard, drumming on the roof, so I check my black-out kit, spread a buffet of cheese and olives, set out the camp stove so I can cook Ramen. The bar is low here, I'm not going to freeze to death and I have plenty of food. It's pleasant, actually, the sense of isolation that weather imposes. No phone, no electricity, reading with a headlamp seems perfectly natural; yes, I couldn't get out to socialize, but what does that matter? I spent the evening reading about forks. Read more...

General Corruption

The lines are blurred, but almost everyone steals. Small change, usually, a roll of toilet paper, some push-pins. Madoff. They fired the head of Ford, but he'd earned 19 million last year. Don't get me started on Trump or Congress. I'd like to just close the door, the gate, and not listen to anything, but I like hearing the local news and weather, so I know what to expect. Being prepared is the name of the game. Being prepared, for me, means having beans and rice; I know entropy is on the rise, but I should be ok, in my lead suit and aluminum foil hat. I'd picked up the new John Lescroart novel at the library, so I buried my head in a book for a few hours and felt better. A bit more money in the bank than I thought, so I'd bought a Ridge Zinfandel, which I opened, then set aside to breathe while I made the veal roll-ups. Morel Duxelles with caramelized shallots. I have a pan I'd modified to fit in the toaster oven (raining again and I can't use the grill), a pat of butter on each and a little wine in the pan, maybe five minutes in the oven. There were six of them and I figured two meals, with the sauteed parsnips and dandelion salad. Par-boil the parsnips, then slice and fry in butter. I spent like two hours making this meal, mostly sitting at the island and reading, but paying attention to whatever I was cooking, and it was very good. I was trying to track down the actual method Incans used to freeze potatoes, so I was reading yet another book about potatoes. Say what you will, but when I'm fully engrossed, caramelizing parsnip spears or wondering about freeze-dried potatoes, well and truly in the moment, I don't care about anything else. Usually the bear just goes away, sometimes I throw a firecracker. Firecrackers have become my first line of defense. Dogs hate them, snakes hate them; my advice? Carry a Bic lighter and a few loose firecrackers if you're walking in the woods. You can't be too careful. Worse case scenario, a rabid coon. How contagious is that disease? It's a Tuesday in May, the canopy is almost complete. Read more...

Fog Rising

Mist fills the hollow, spills up over the ridge. Library called and they had a book for me, so I drove into town. Got a couple of other books, stopped at Kroger, some nice little thin-sliced veal remaindered. I'll stuff these with mushrooms and shallots and cook them on the grill, not today though, clouds building up, so I stopped for a shake at the dairy bar and beat it home. I hadn't gotten the Jeep unloaded when the rain started thundering down, violent, changing over to marble-sized hail. It got quite dark, the power flickered a few times, but I have oil lamps, candles, and my headlamp; and I've cooked some damn fine meals on a camp-stove. There were beautiful bunches of Dandelion greens at the store, so I bought a couple; one for a salad, with sliced sweet onions and cucumber, and another that I'll just cook like spinach, serve with butter, salt and pepper. Left-overs make mean omelets. Settles into a slow steady rain that finally puts me to sleep, and when I wake up, from a dream about chickens, it takes a few minutes to remember where I am. This ridge, this rainstorm, frogs, chirping through the rain. Mississippi John Hurt singing about Avalon, his home town. I bought some chickens, in Avalon, some promising small roosters, from a distant cousin, twice removed, trying to develop a free-range chicken that could live on hog droppings. Another of my failures, the pigs just ate the chickens. When pigs eat chickens there's nothing left; actually, when pigs eat anything there's nothing left. They're an extremely efficient disposal system. Every family in America could raise a pig on their household waste: like llamas, they like to shit in the same place, and they smell nice, if they can wallow in clean water. How did I get to pigs? Oh, right, the chickens, chickens from the dream. The dream was just a pastoral reminder. Chickens running about in the yard, maybe a dog, sleeping under the porch, a cat in the window; usually there are some herbs growing in pots on the window sill. Emily flits about, baking bread. She did most of the baking and made outlandish pastries out of left-over dough, almost pornographic. I love the image of wild sex, while Emily watches at the door. Read more...

Tuning Up

Sleeping in the theater, I had a blanket and pillow rolled up in a janitor's closet, was convenient. There was a Greek Diner around the corner, where I could get breakfast any time of the day or night, I wasn't drinking at all and we had a great source of Lebanese hash. I needed to be there, to turn on the lights and let the orchestra members in for rehearsal, then I'd go back to sleep, an audience of one, listening to the Boston Symphony tune up in my dreams. I loved this. The sound, the shape of the sound was incredible. I remember the first time, a Sunday afternoon, that Beverly Sills sang cue-to-cue (a technical rehearsal, sung at half-voice) for Traviata; Michael called back and told me the tuning was based on 440 cycles, from the first violin. An "A", but this was subject to some variation, perfect pitch being a somewhat relative term. Who knew? Michael said that oriental orchestral tuning was usually 448 cycles, still an "A" but with a edge. A violent storm moves in suddenly and I have to shut down. Mike has a drummer coming in to the college, a big deal, and he wants to bring him out for dinner, which might overlap with Kim's yearly visit on his way to the F1 race in Montreal, so I do need the new grill. Cooking for six is the same as cooking for eight. I usually cook for either two or four, eight is double four, so I end up with left-overs. Usually I can fold it into an omelet. If not I dry it, grinding it into a powder, mix with fruits and nuts. Call it dinner. Read more...

Predatory Lending

Dealing with debt. You can borrow $134,500 to get an undergraduate degree, and they've got you by the short hairs then. You're granted a cubicle and a house in the suburbs. Insider trading, because you're locked into the system. We could dance around the word slavery. You couldn't possibly be a slave if you have a summer cabin in the mountains, two jet-skies, a camper, a Bass boat with a foot controlled electric trolling motor, a Dodge Ram, all the trappings. Yet, of course. Young grape leaves don't need blanching, I made a batch of stuffed leaves, rice, chorizo, and caramelized onions, braised/steamed in white wine, that was exceptional. Use sticky rice, with a browned butter sauce. Even hardened poets weep. Later, I was rereading some vegetable recipes, and my thoughts were turned to grilling, because it's too warm to build a fire inside. I need a new grill, something I can set-up right outside the back door. In the past, I've usually fabricated grills out of found objects, sinks and refrigerator shelves, and I've built a few out of rock. I left a great grill in Colorado. I don't want to build another one, though I will if I need to, but I've seen a couple of Korean and Chinese units that could fill the bill. Plain Jane efficient wood/charcoal burners. To cook a brisket, you need 250 degrees for twenty hours, you need to be able to stoke the fire without moving the meat, you need to be able to control the air flow. And you have to stay awake, mostly. Also, I need to be able to roast vegetables off the heat, so the unit needs to be rectangular, to provide the space. Also, I have to get a drip pan below the meat because drippings are important to me. What we might call minimum design criteria. Desire paths indicate where we actually go: the outhouse, the garden, the woodshed. It only falls to reason. The Attach Of The Luna Moths, a short film I'd been working on for many years, was leaked to the press, and they seemed to think it was a metaphor. God bless their hearts. Read more...

Nothing Further

Needing a plan I started a list. Way too much trash, recycling and Goodwill stuff for one or even two trips, so I have to break it down. What to take to town, what to bring back home. Strike up the band, it's another cycle. Make a list first, of back shelve items, toilet paper, a new grinder of black pepper, staple food stuffs though I'm well stocked with staples, I do need another box of push-pins. I have the laundry sorted out. I do a large laundry in the fall and in the spring, the rest of the year I do a single load every two weeks. I often dash underwear and socks in a butter churn. The house needs the moisture, so I never mind the drying lines in the kitchen, there's something old-country about it. B said it was spring break at the collage, so I need to go for a little dumpster diving and to get rid of some trash. In the country, trash accumulates, there aren't many ways of getting shed of old broken stuff. You burn what you can. Glossy, clay-filled paper, is awful stuff, on the other hand I started almost all of my fires last winter with cash register receipts and that seems pretty cool. I walk that narrow line between cool and stupid most of the time. The continuing snake saga. Sitting out on the back porch, last night, a slight coolness from the river and hollows. Then this morning there is a six foot, four inch skin casing of a male timber rattler, stretched across the back deck. Molting. It's quite delicate and beautiful. In an attempt at preservation I put it to soak in salted water then intend to stretch it out and 'fix' it with something, to try and preserve the color. Snakes are, amazingly, quite dry; and these molted skins generally turn to dust quickly. Ground rock and desiccated organic matter. That mote, that lodges in the corner of your eye? it's been around forever. Symmetry became the subject of the day. I looked at a great many leaves and some very small flowers. I thought about tractors, post 1954, and the phrase "apparent symmetry" came to mind, mostly a product of cowling. What covers the workings, what you actually see. Cars, planes, trains, flying insects and birds; with moving things balance comes into play. In the field, if you look closely, there is a lot of failure. Failure is the impetus for change, or success is the impetus for change, however you view that; I lean toward failure, until it becomes an excuse. Nothing succeeds like failure. Read more...

Scope

Anglo-Saxon for poet, from sceopen, to make. The house is creaking, drying, finally, in full sun. All morning I just drink coffee and watch the play of light. Birdsong. Dappled patterns, Bayou Light, sculling in close to the bank, gigging frogs as their eyes shine in reflection. Several hours had gone by and I was deep into reverie, in a state where background and foreground were diffused, when the sudden appearance of a shadow broke the plane, a red-tail hawk, circling the logging road. A lovely thing, she goes over twice, her shadow describing an arc across the ridge. Back inside, I'm reading straight through another volume of forgotten words. I mark some of them with a pencil dot. Small twigs and sticks, windfalls, gathered for kindling is called sprote-wood. Stoure is the cloud of dust stirred by the trample of feet. And I love thrum, for green and vigorous. I was using my yelf (dung-fork) just today. Black Cohosh shades out the competition, I was looking at a patch, 20 feet square, and nothing else grows there, the leaves completely cover the ground. Dave said that the price for the dried root is so low, that it doesn't pay to dig it. He still digs and dries Ginseng for which he says the market is good. I spent the day cross-referencing words and getting side-tracked, which is pretty normal for me. Surprised by nightfall. Looked up and it was dark. A hasty meal of beans on toast and tomatoes in balsamic. Read more...

Passing Strange

A night of weird sounds. First a tree fell in the forest. So much rain, the ground is so soft, another tree-tip pit opens for exploration. If I can find the damned thing, as my sense of direction, with wind and rain, is completely lost. I want to get out, to see the extent of flooding, not in any sense morbid, but just to see the actual map. The Boone Coleman heirs will be paid a lot of money for not raising soybeans. Then a severe thunder cell, wind and hard rain. Being pelted I thought, and I hadn't used or even thought the word 'pelt' for anything other than an animal skin with the fur attached, but I awoke with the word 'pelted' on my mind. To pelt, as to rage. Shakespeare, King Lear, "That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm." Then, in a lull, an argument at the compost pile. Sounds like cats and dogs to me and I don't want to get involved. I have to get up, any chance at sleep is lost, and I'd rather read than toss and turn. Any given time, I have three or four books waiting to be read. There's a book at the island, if I happen to eat there, there's a book (a small pile) on the stairs; I keep some books in the Jeep, and carry a book in my pocket; for years I kept an unabridged dictionary in the back seat. You can't be too careful, the scree slope, the slippery slope, two steps forward, one step back. Cha cha cha. I'm in a particularly good mood, which I attribute to not listening to the news, and I have the last of the cheese grits with cracklings, an egg on top, a piece of whole grain toast with marmalade, settle in with a book and a second cup of coffee. I'm reading everything I can find about Z, that earlier culture in the Amazon. I've always been suspect of dating things in the Americas. I'd been napping, and had the radio very low, so I couldn't understand what was being said, but they seemed to be talking about marrow extraction and how it was similar to the way marrow was extracted a hundred thousand years earlier. I make a mental note to pick up some marrow bones. I have a spoon that may actually be a marrow spoon. I love sharp greens and fried green tomatoes with this, English Cucumber sandwiches, something with a snap. I hardly ever skin anything anymore, potatoes and squash; potatoes especially, for the last year or so, have been especially good, because the skins fall off and brown as these delectable bits when I make fried potatoes. I admit to a penchant for fried potatoes. Read more...

Flash Floods

Just no place for the water to go. The flood-plain is flooded, the lakes and ponds are full, the new spill-way at Turkey Lake is getting its first real test, Turkey Creek in spate. Rain wakes me again but it's so dark with overcast I roll over and sleep for another hour. When it starts raining harder, I get up and make a full double espresso, put it in my insulated mug, ladle out my measure of cheese grits, settle in to read twenty pages of Thoreau. The radio was playing low, so I could monitor the weather. It's some mild state of emergency, road closures, low-land flooding. High and dry myself, I don't have to go anywhere, so I decided to make cracklings from a smoked jowl, both rotating my stock and providing fat for cooking other things. Cool enough for a fire so I start rendering the diced jowl. At the same time I started caramelizing onions and red peppers in a soup pot to make a dish of mixed greens (turnip, mustard, and spinach) that I wanted to serve on a bed of mashed potatoes. Champ, this is called, ends up being quite a fancy meal, with cracklings and crotons, a topping of cheese, browned on top. To be authentically Irish you need to drink buttermilk with this, but I cut right to the whiskey. A little pumpkin-seed oil, and thou, in the wilderness. Read a long article about impeachment. The word deranged comes to mind. I'm term-limited, we all are, and thank God. Listening to some Senators today I was struck with how they could say nothing. Fucking Beckett novel. Playing yourself in a movie about yourself, that sonorous baritone, the white shirts with starched collars, that brush of breast when the dental assistant is cleaning your teeth. Read more...

Comb Wash

Outside of Blanding, Utah, you follow the birds to where water might be. Simple geography. A box canyon with a small pool and the barest trickle could support a family. Two springs I know, one outside of Moab and the other on the line between Colorado and Utah south of Dove Creek could support a village. Water is the factor. Grow some corn and kill some rabbits, big-horn jerky and wild greens, it's not difficult to earn a living. You need oil or fat of one kind or another, cotton-seed or coconut; there were no milk animals in Mexico because avocados were twenty per-cent oil. Then the pig explosion, wild and domestic pigs and all that salt-pork. Assumes salt, a mineral we eat directly. I was curious about my consumption of salt and sugar, so I set up a study, completely free of any restraints. I use less then a pound of salt and less than four pounds of sugar a year. A pint of honey one scant teaspoon at a time in herbal tea. That damned Barnhart got me drinking expensive tea, also that expensive Polish salami, but to his credit he always brings whiskey when he walks in to solve a problem I've usually created for myself. His son is way too bright too soon, I think he's scheduled to graduate from college and high school at the same time. I say send the kid to Finland for a year, or someplace where you have to wash plates with sand. The salt study is tainted because I use salt-pork all the time, and a particular cod-fish cake, made from salted cod, is a favorite of mine. Samara called, to talk about Oregon, and I'm designing a house they could live in there, a simple pagoda with an overhang for an outdoor kitchen. Read more...

Outdoor Kitchens

Looking at pictures of remnants, and various reconstructions, of these outdoor kitchens, has occupied me for days. Laborious is a word I come away with. Hauling, fetching, lifting and cooking. Rude trestle tables on a covered back porch for the slaves, grits and buttermilk, then breakfast for 'the family', then preparing the huge mid-day meal. Reading recipes often becomes a sociological study. One thing I noticed was that salted pig fat was almost always mentioned. Also, that there was always a bread oven, off to the side of the firebox, and you had to turn the pan around, half-way through the hour it took to cook a loaf. Some of these kitchens, in early photographs, 1870 - 1880, are marvels of efficiency. I've cooked with a wood-fired stove for twenty years, and even mid-winter it can be a warm affair. I broke a personal rule and paid more than two dollars for an artichoke ($2.19) but it was perfect, medium-large, green and tight. I had stood and stared at them for so long that the attractive produce woman had come over and asked me if I was ok. I explained my problem and she said she'd never eaten one. I told her how to steam them, with four forks in a pan, and how to eat one, with browned butter and a total disregard for spatter. Back home the long way around so I could wash the undercarriage at the ford. Feeling out of alignment is often just mud in the wheel wells. So much water the flood plain near town is a vast inland sea. The Scioto is backed up coming into the Ohio and the Ohio is backed up flowing into the Mississippi. I heard on the radio that the levees are failing somewhere. I don't know where, exactly, because I've been experimenting with playing the news on the radio so low that the language sounds vaguely Russian. I can only pick out the occasional verb. Another game I play with the radio, is to fill a pause with the next word, and I'm correct a shocking number of times. Reading B's poems again today, so fecund and rich, his line breaks are almost commas and they drive the narrative flow. More rain, thunder, I'd better go. Hole up and read in the dark with my headlamp. Just another passing fancy. I would have finished Thoreau's journals in one winter if I hadn't stopped to read 20 volumes of Patrick O' Brian. Read more...

Spin Off

I lost something, or sent a fragment, a freak thunder cell I heard coming, and I was caught trying to save a few words, maybe punched an incorrect key. Don't know what's where. A sudden downpour that lasts for five minutes, darkness and quiet descend like a blanket, just the drip of tree-rain. The crows have left for their summer at the lake, leaving me with a bunch of mice in the freezer. I've never, however, thrown a mouse out into the back yard and had it not be gone the next day. Much cooler, so I built a fire, then baked an acorn squash, stuffed one half with sausage and the other with raspberries. I have so many very good vinegars right now, that my usual salad is tomatoes, onion and cucumber, in a smallish bowl, and I drink or sop the left-over liquid. On more formal occasions, I break the bread into pieces and use a fork. I can always be introduced as the country cousin. It's a clever disguise, and I don't have to fuck around with appearances. I started to wear black jeans and denim shirts when a couple of people died and I ended up with a bunch of black jeans and denim shirts. I've stayed the same size since high school, so I ended up with a lot of clothes when people gained weight. At Janitor College we lived on day-old bread and ketchup soup. We planted the commons in dandelion so we'd have both wine and bitter greens, and it was not uncommon for a professor to arrive in his bathrobe. Murray always taught Shit Flows Downhill, which was a great course, and usually showed up in his Roto-Rooter clothes with the name Frank on the pocket even though his name was David. A glorious day, and I needed some things (seasonal items), so I cleaned up and went to town. The real treat was coming home along the creek, the long way around. The wild mustard is beautiful, spread across the flood-plain. Read more...

Powerful Magic

B said that he too had been looking at the miniature Iris. There's a patch of them, at the top of the driveway, where I can look closely without bending over. Eye to eye, so to speak. Read more...

The Right Choice

I've seldom been trapped for more than a day or two. Once in Utah, once in Nevada, once on the Upper Cimarron in Colorado, and they all ended up being funny stories in which you made tea from muddy water. More rain, for several days, and the wall of green encloses. It's so beautiful, in hundreds of shades, I'm in thrall. I love winter, the contrast, the black-and-whiteness of it, the isolation, but I also love the greening of the hollows, the blackberries blooming, the trillium at the bottom of the driveway, the redbud and shad bush. The blackberries are amazing, they bloom, they set fruit, the yield depends on water, and right now it looks like a bumper crop. The snakes are another story, I've never seen so many. Next month, when the ridge-top finally dries, they'll move down to the hollows, but when I went to go to town earlier this week, there were two rattlesnakes between me and the Jeep. It was cool, mid-morning, and they were stretched out, soaking in sunlight. They can't hurt you at this point, they can lunge a few inches, but they have to be coiled to make a strike. Good timing, because one of them is a pregnant female, so I put them in a bucket and relocated them down in the State Forest. B drove up the hill, with a copy of his new collected poems, Occasional Cleavage, and we talked for a while. Of course he would like to have designed the book himself. He's a book designer (wearing several hats) and he likes ten point type. Doesn't mean he's not a nice person. Private jokes. I use more space, I like eleven point type on a twelve point slug, even though, when I'm writing, I enjoy the compression. I write in ten-point type. Compress everything as much as possible. Read more...

Inside Out

Saturated, steaming slightly, the understory is greening. The shadbush, the few remaining dogwoods; flowers littering Mackletree the last couple of miles to the house, it's so lovely and romantic I have to laugh. Mary Shelley was only nineteen when she wrote Frankenstein. Thunder storms moving in and out, sheets of rain. It's pleasant, the drumming, the trees sweeping in the wind. Mid-day I french-fry some sweet potatoes, and dip them in a pesto mayonnaise. Big winds, and sure enough, the power goes out; a full gale, Force 8, when small twigs (but not branches) are blown off trees. In open water, with a goodly fetch, this would be 37 knot winds with 18 foot waves. On the ridge it's like being battered by an invisible giant. Power flickers on and off and finally goes out for good. Routine. Headlamp, light a candle at the end of the island. Hole up, in my nest, and read. I think I might need a laptop and an extra battery next winter. Samara called and wants me to think about moving to Oregon, they'd give me a piece of land, I could build a cabin for myself, design and oversee the building of a small, self-contained, house for them. All of which is intellectually interesting, something to think about. Hot running water and electricity in the same place? I can only imagine. I barely scratch a living at the margin, but I'm good with that. Power seems to be restored, and as this is truly 'the country', the power company calls me, to make sure everything is ok. Having my computer off for a couple days provided hours for studying the trim-work in volumes of pictures of old houses, which leads to a study of kitchens, especially as they related to the placement and use of wood cook-stoves. My cook-stove, an Irish Stanley Waterford, allowed for safe installation close to a wall, but that was not the case for some of the monsters in these old houses. I lost track of time, imagining kitchens. Then started sketching a 900 sq. ft. house, full hip roof with a sleeping loft, that would lend itself to the materials and techniques I favor. Read more...

Out of Touch

A hanging garden on the canyon wall. Maidenhair ferns and Columbine. The pool at the bottom of the seep was ephemeral, but I collected enough water to make dinner and a cup of tea; later, ready to sleep, I rolled out my pad in a place where I had removed the rocks and looked at the amazing western sky. All of the stars. Turns out it's not a good idea to camp next to the only water supply for several square miles. It gets frisky. The next morning, after a breakfast of gruel, I look for a better sleeping spot because I know I'll be back. Found a ledge, with an overhang, a hundred yards away, and raked out the small mammal bones and rocks. Built a fire pit, then collected fire wood for the next time. Over the course of that summer and fall (I was building a house in Moab) I spent many weekends there. If I hiked in after work on Friday, I'd have three nights and two full days to explore, and be alone. When I got to work on Monday, not uncommon in Moab, I looked like I'd been dragged through mud-puddles; after work, I'd get a motel room, clean-up and shave, have a great meal at any one of several good restaurants. The entertainment part of the evening would be stopping by the sports bar to watch the German and Japanese tourists line-dancing in their newly purchased dusters, with boots, hats, and sometimes, spurs. Hard rain and the power goes out, it's so dark I can't see my hands. I hoped I'd saved the Utah story, which was merely a product of seeing some vividly green ferns growing out of the driveway bank. The memory is so striking because that spot, eight feet high and twelve feet wide, was at such odds with the environment. One of those indelible images. I set a high bar for what is beautiful. Read more...

Heavenly Meal

I took the day off and made morel risotto, a half batch actually; caramelized onion, morels, garlic, wine and chicken stock. Lots of butter and cheese. I'd gotten up at three, the cool of the night, to start a fire and cook, so I had risotto for breakfast. A gentle rain, settle with a cigaret and a wee dram of Irish. I have this new book from JC, How To Read Water, but I can only read a chapter at a sitting, because there's so much information. I'd read David Lewis, on the navigational techniques of Pacific islanders (which is an amazing thing) so I wasn't new to this subject, but there's so much more data now. Marcescence is that phenomenon by which some trees, especially Beech, hang on to dead leaves. This had interested me for years, so I finally took a magnifying glass and looked at the leaf attachments. Usually, in the fall, when a leaf, has died, the end of the leaf-stalk hardens over, as does the place where it grew on the branch and there's just a thread of dried connection, the next wind and it's gone. The Beech trees harden-over the entire connection. I have no idea why they do that. I think they might be protecting next year's bud. The miniature flowers are springing up, tiny violets the size of nail heads; you literally have to get down on all fours and examine these from a foot away. They're lovely little things. It's supposed to rain hard tonight, and I need a sponge bath and hair wash, so I prepare to harvest water. Filter and consolidate what I have in my five buckets, then clean the buckets and wipe them out with bleach, stack them near the back door. I'll need five gallons of water tomorrow, to do a few dishes, take a sponge bath, shampoo and rinse my hair twice, but this seems like a huge amount of water to me since I usually get by on a gallon a day. Mice are coming out of the woodwork, rattling pans and squeaking, I'd put out three traps and caught three mice in short order, put two in the freezer for the crows and left one out. I needed to know what they were eating so I could protect my foodstuffs and wanted to dissect one to see what was in his belly. Another problem I'd been thinking about was what the fuck were they drinking? where were they getting water? I'm very careful about not leaving any water, or liquid of any kind sitting out. The stomach contents reveal a lot of grass seed, which explains the moisture question, because they're out in the morning, licking dew, eating some grass, come in and sleep through the day, then get up at dark, and scamper around to drive me crazy. I have to find where they're getting in. Read more...

Green Haze

The buds on the poplars are opening, first visible as a faint haze against the sky. There are already a couple of red maples down in the hollow, and the Redbud are blooming; from my vantage it's all pretty spectacular. I was up late and had just settled on the back porch with a second cup of coffee when the State Forest guys arrived, to tell me they'd be marking the boundaries with yellow spray paint on trees. I tell them they can park up here, just pull off to the side. They came in for a cup of coffee. We had to go through the usual 'what are you doing here?' These seasonal park employees tend to be fairly smart: a break from getting a Master's Degree, working in the field, living in Mom and Dad's basement. Student debt. They both had the average, $30,000, in student debt, ten-year pay-back based on income. I can't imagine such a thing. I hate debt because it limits your scope of action. I can live in a cave, eat road kill and wild plants, but if you have a monthly debt that has to be paid, they own you. On the other hand you probably have running water. Hot running water I consider one of the great achievements of mankind. Morel duxelles on polenta are high on the list, with a dash of Dove Creek hot sauce, a piece of toast with good marmalade. In one day the maple outside my window is leafed, the blackberries are exploding. It's like being in a Disney movie. And the smells are so vivid and specific. Read more...

Mortling

Side-track on top of side-track. My original goal was to follow the old logging road down to the second flattish terrace. A good patch of morels there that I found out about as a reward for catching a coon dog and calling the owner. Until I moved here, this place was considered State Forest, and he'd often picked that patch. He passed it along to me. Local geography is always interesting. I had a pair of pig's ears I'd picked up for $1.38 in the varietal meat freezer at Kroger and I'd spent the morning reading recipes. Settled on a German dish, Pea Soup With Pig's Ears. I have to learn how to say that in German (Erbsensuppe mit Schweinsohren). I know schweinsohren is pig's ear, because I've read a lot of German recipes. I'd set out a book, The Better Use Of The World's Fauna For Food, and hiked down the logging road, found the Second Terrace, a lovely opening in the woods, and naturally, there were morels, and the promise of a large flush in just a few days. Back home, I sauteed some in butter, and had them on toast, while I read recipes for dog and cat and rat. A Swiss recipe for fox, Huchspfeffer, and a couple of recipes for making dog ham. I ate mountain lion once, it was stringy (an old animal) but tasted fine. Rabbit fetuses were considered 'non-meat' by the early Catholic Church, and could be eaten on Friday. All the pig's ear recipes started with the line "clean the ears well" just like turtle recipes all start with that same line. The pig ears from Kroger are quite clean. I cook them for an hour, cool them, skin them, and cut into bite size pieces, roll them in a highly seasoned flour and fry in olive oil, add the split peas, some chicken broth, chopped onions, a minced red pepper, some very hot chilies; make a stove-top corn cake I can fry on a hot-plate, then serve with butter and sorghum molasses. I feel I've risen above my humble beginnings, but in fact it's almost exactly the same, eating cornbread and beans, listening to the coon dogs bay. Read more...

Enfleurage

The cold (actually room temperature) extraction of scent into oil. I had to reread Perfume to figure out the process. My only experiments previously in extracting oil had been in cold-pressing walnut oil, which were mostly a failure (I spent several days for a little over an ounce of usable product) but failure has always been a prod for me. I'd had Rush Welding make a shallow stainless steel pan, with turned-up edges, that fit into a book-binding press, I had some unbleached muslin, I had a surplus of bay leaves, plenty of olive oil, and I'd bought some large sheets of butcher paper because with the walnut oil I'd made a hell of a mess. I like to do something during the Easter Recess. You can easily extract bay leaf scent by just putting some in a jar of oil, then filtering, but I wanted a concentrate. I spread out newspaper (I get my newspaper from the recycling center) then butcher paper, then a square of muslin that's been soaked in olive oil, then layer leaves and fold, then let it sit at room temperature for six hours (in the stainless steel pan), then slowly squeeze the mass in the press. No idea what I'm going to do with this. It might be nice added to the oil used to fry mussels or some other seafood. Joel calls from Atlanta and he wants some dried morels, says that they're incredibly expensive on line, hundreds of dollars a pound, and he offers barter, books and rare cheeses. It's difficult for me to get a pound ahead but I assure him I'll try. Joel says it's greed, that prevents me from sharing. And I guess it's true, at least as far as morels are concerned. I've lived in this house for 17 years (a record for me) and probably seven of those years, as long as I limit myself to one mushroom meal a day, during the season, I've eaten them daily. Maybe forty or fifty days. The season ends for me when the rattlesnakes emerge. Nothing staunches my desire for morels more completely than coming within a few feet of a sunning rattlesnake. One patch, later than the others, a north facing area over near the graveyard, I seldom get to harvest, because there's a snake den in one of the graves. There's another patch, on the opposite ridge, that I don't get to that often, because it means a hike through serious tick country. B and I were cooking a whole leg of lamb for his clan, marinated in hot peppers and blackberry juice, a couple of years ago, and Jenny, the naturalist, had wandered off with one of the kids. When they came back, they had a huge bag of morels. But for my meager needs, a meal a day, I just harvest near the house. The season of plenty, asparagus gone wild, cat-tail shoots, and bitter tender greens. A vinaigrette with bay oil. Read more...

Out and About

Snow forecast for Friday night, Saturday morning, but I don't see how it could stick, nonetheless, I make a run to town and get a few things, a back-up bottle of sour mash, an artichoke, a piece of fish. As forecast a huge line of storms move in, I have to shut down, the power flickers on and off. Lateral and associative thoughts. Fits and starts. In the dark again, but the power comes back on when the worst of the rain is over, and I get back into my comfort zone. The blackberry canes are springing into leaf. Blackberries go from first leaf to ripe fruit more quickly than most plants. They have the whole invasive thing down to a fine art. When they clear my power-line easement, I watch it closely for a couple of years. The second year will be a bumper crop of berries (given enough rain, which there usually is) because blackberries (most berries) bear heavily on second year canes. On the Vineyard there was a wonderful glossy, wild, red raspberry, locally called wineberry, and it did make a great country wine, that grew thickly around an old graveyard called The Old Sailor's Burying Ground. I found some wooden tombstones there, dating from the 19th century, painted chestnut slabs, and the painted part still held some relief. You could do a rubbing and read most of it. I was looking at a rubbing today, Diana had sent me an actual rubbing of Emily's tombstone. "Called Back", and I was thinking about that, because I wanted to frame it, and change the art work in the house. I've been living in this world where looking at pictures of old tractors is at least as good as anything else. My current pin-up is a beautifully restored Ford 8N. Another photo that I want to change, is the one of four poets in front of an old John Deere. I've looked at it for several years at least twice a day ( two of the poets are dead) because it hangs over the kitchen sink. I've narrowed the replacement down to a couple of images and the jury is still out. I'm leaning toward something at least slightly humorous, but there's not much that's funny anymore. The wind is blowing a stiff breeze, before it, I'd be moving right along, beating back might not be so easy. Least resistance is to just run downwind. Wind is interesting, a day like today, you (I'm trying to engage the second person more often) take just a few steps off the ridge top, to the leeward, and it's completely calm. You could start a small fire and brew a cup of tea. Up top, the wind is howling. My place, of course, is at the very top, subject to every whim of weather. I seem to prefer it that way. At least I know what's going on. If you have hot running water and a thermostat it's easy to lose track of what's going on. We only inhabit these marginal areas for reasons we can't explain. Who is we? Read more...

Ordered Time

It takes a while to get out of the habit of waking at three AM to stoke the stove. You need to stay up, long enough to damp the stove back down, so I often get a wee dram and roll a smoke, and I keep doing that, even when there isn't a fire. Read what I had written the night before, take out a comma or add one. This morning the wind was moaning in the trees and I couldn't concentrate, so I dragged out some family issues to consider. I've always kept to myself, not so much a lone wolf as a mangy feral dog, and generally people leave me alone: dress down is my advice. No one pays any attention to the janitor. "Deft, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pin-ball." Another Tom. I had a can of premium crab meat that I had to break apart, and I stuffed four morels then ran them through the toaster oven to melt the cheese; these are so good I have to pinch myself to remember I'm poor. Actually, March, April, May, then again September, October, November, I save money, because I don't go to town and don't use any back-up heat or air-conditioning, so I can save for land taxes and vehicle insurance. This works for me, because I don't have any debt, also, I'm easily amused. I spent most of the day watching frog eggs, they move. Another Scandinavian TV show. I did take a break from watching the eggs to make a wonderful spread, something between a hash and a pate. I serve this on saltine crackers because they're neutral and cheap, but you could roll in up in Romaine leaves. I minced a shallot, browned it in butter, rough-minced half a pound of morels, added them and more butter (I use a lot of butter, this time of year) and sauteed everything for a while. It's great smeared on toast. With a coddled egg, egg yolk being the perfect sauce. and a couple of grinds of black pepper. In deep clover or high on the hog or something. Read Thoreau for several hours, and I'm almost halfway through, it might take me another year. After about volume four he stops sounding like an opinionated prick and gets into detail. There are pages cut out of the Journals, that became other books, when he went to Maine, when he went to Cape Cod, and I have to go back and read those books. I have a large collection of books about Cape Cod, history, geology, ship-building, feeding lobsters to pigs; I wrote a book about the place, it exists as a single manuscript copy, buried somewhere in the piles of paper. It's not very good. Lateral, and yet associative, I have to think about that. Usually I just roll up and go to sleep. Read more...

Hash

I can't defend myself, I just know my own limitations. I can't go to Florida, I couldn't deal with the people. A walk, in a lull, I sat on a stump and wept. This went on for a while, like one of those Scandinavian TV shows, all I can do is kick the can down the road. Load and attachment. Wedges and pegs. Self and other. Mostly what we construct is an elaborate fiction. That iconic first or third person. I had one last butternut squash that was still decent, several had rotted, so I made a cream soup, with powdered milk and dehydrated onions that was pretty good, a toasted cheese sandwich. There's a red-headed woodpecker that wants to build a nest in my eave, so I finally get out the extension ladder and spray some tobacco and hot pepper juice in and around the hole he's digging in the siding, teach his ass a lesson. Then I make a mac and cheese, fold in some caramelized onions and sautéed mushrooms, bake it until the breadcrumbs are toasted. JC heard about this on the radio and I had to try it. Excellent. A great winter recipe, hot, filling, and easy to put together from what's at hand. I make a note to buy more macaroni. B now has an entire set of topographic maps mounted on a wall, and I could look at it for hours. A vast system of drainage that carried off the water from the last glaciation. And it was a lot of water, land-bridges flooded, the entire geography changed. You couldn't walk to Australia anymore. In the old days, you used to be able to walk to Australia. Read more...

Nothing Obvious

I love the texture of morels, the mouth feel, and I like to stuff them, with crab meat and bread crumbs, enough cheese to hold things together, also a thick stew, chicken broth and caramelized onion, that I love for its extravagance, and I do a risotto with them that is sublime. Quick trip to town, a couple of perfume samples in the mail, two New Yorkers. I needed more butter. 70 degrees when it started raining again, I'd been to town and back, I'd collected enough morels for tomorrow, eaten very well, and settled in. That world, out there, doesn't interest me much. The best the new scents was Black (Bulgari) which is one of the best perfumes I've ever smelled. Later, I needed a snack, so I'd sautéed some sliced morels in salted butter, on toast, with an egg, and the smell of mushroom, browned butter and shallots. Shallots are perfect with morels, I find garlic to be too much, onions, also, too aggressive, but shallots are just right. I need to raise shallots as they are so god-damned expensive, but the smell, I thought, might be a nice masculine scent, mushrooms and a nice animalistic (civet?) top-note drying into a leathery musk. Bacon in the background. When it started raining hard, I shut down everything. All night long, with varying intensity, from patter to kettle drum. I got up, around three, made a cup of tea, sat in the dark, and remembered other storms. When the early morning news came on the radio, it was all about flooding and road closures, a Level Two flood alert, stay off the roads. Perfect. I'm prone to picking up odd books at the library sales, so I spent the day reading about killing man-eating tigers in India. These books, and there are many of them, British Service Officers always wrote their memoirs, are actually interesting to read. Bored to death, stationed in Borneo, some of them became decent observers. Identifying specific animals by their paw prints. Identifying certain plants. I love this stuff. My sister called and Mom is dying, we talk for a long time. Sis says there's no reason for me to come down, my brother and nephew are there, in from California, and she knows I deal with grief my own way. Physically, the trip would be too much for me, and I can barely imagine the emotional components, so I bite my tongue and decide to just stay on the ridge. Claim ignorance. The secret to a great macaroni salad is plain yogurt, you need that bite. Read more...

Staying Home

Rain on the roof, I don't have to be anywhere, I don't have to talk to anyone. A perfect day to examine my failures. Stare out at the middle distance and remember. It's certainly true that I'm lucky to be alive. That world, out there, is dangerous, falling debris, drunk drivers, and the occasional shifting of the earth. At the first sign of conflict, I retreat. Outside, for the air, the frogs, of course, and the bugs; there's a bird I haven't heard before, a high-pitched squeak, and a mocking bird that calls everything into question. When it starts raining again I have to go inside, the rain is so cold it sends goose-bumps up my arm. A fine day, examining the food inventory for a man-of-war, then frying some potatoes. Officers ate off plates, with proper implements; before the mast, everyone had their own wooden bowl and spoon. I took my lunch from home, during most of my schooling, a piece of cornbread, some leftovers, a couple of pieces of fried salt-pork, but I liked the crap they served in the cafeteria, I'd never had it before, chicken pot pie? tuna casserole? In Junior High, Key West, we had turtle burgers on Thursday. Decades later, I was making a nice turtle soup in Mississippi adapted from Marjorie Rawlings' recipe. There's a learning curve in there somewhere. I was thinking about a needle and thread, to stitch together the covering for a bone framed hut on the steppes of Russia. The needle was probably bone, the thread was probably gut, and the seam was probably water-proofed with pitch. Naval stores, I love that, a large and open set. Useful glues and sealants. Doping fabric. Wearing oilskins and wellies. Something I read yesterday, a quote by some movie executive saying that he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin makes he laugh again remembering it today. I needed to go to town, but I was out early and found the first morels of the year. Came immediately back indoors and had them sauteed in butter, on toast with an egg on top. I couldn't resist opening the last bottle of Frank's Family Farm's chardonnay, which, for a white wine, I found to be absolutely beautiful. Naturally, the trip to town was postponed (I need to study that word) and I went right back out and collected enough mushrooms for an omelet tomorrow. I left the rest to fill out for a day or two, praying that the damned turkeys don't find them. This year, I swear, I'll kill a turkey if they get into my patch again, and make it into a country pate with the mushrooms. It would be a magnificent pate, and costly for almost anyone other than me. A turkey, a pound of morels, half a pound of butter, pistachios, brandy, a pound of chicken livers. I don't have a decent scale, so I've never figured the numbers closely, but I end up with four or five pounds of product and I can compute what it costs me. If I added in labor, especially the clean-up, no one could afford this stuff. I can only afford it because I live in a cave and don't keep track of time, which allows some freedom of movement, also, of course, the turkey and morels are free. JC called, knowing my penchant for mushrooms, with a recipe she'd heard on the radio, Linda and Joel will call, keeping me updated on the cost of morels in Atlanta and St. Paul, prices I can only barely believe. I'm fairly obsessive, especially in the spring, coming out of hibernation: morels, wild asparagus, cat-tail shoots, and I use a lot of butter. Old house sites are almost always defined by beds of daffodils, there is almost always a feral orchard, and morels favor the roots of apple trees. Off to the traces. Read more...

Frostling

Any fruit or bud injured by the cold is a frostling. Nice word. D called, with the agriculture report, and we talked about greenhouse construction. In Mississippi I listened to the farmer's report on the radio in the morning while I had breakfast (I ate large breakfasts then), Marilyn would be out milking, and after Samara was born, I'd get her up and feed her milk her Mom had expressed for the occasion, and consider which of the chores I'd do first. More fencing, change some gates around, so that we could direct animals into certain places. Reclaiming an overgrown farm is an interesting project. We were bartering our excess for whatever we needed, and I was usually building a barn or a house for someone, to provide some cash. A satisfying and extremely physical life. I'd put on some oats to cook, in the little crock pot, and the house smelled wonderful; when I got up to pee, about 4 AM, I decided to have a bowl of the oats, with butter and maple syrup. A bit chilly, so I turn on my electric lap robe and settle in to watch the dawn. Basho:

Slowly spring
is taking shape:
moon and plum

In and out of town fairly quickly, and feeling a little flush, bought a couple of treats, pistachio nuts, some frozen egg-rolls that D had said were quite good, a bottle of zinfandel. Indulgence. Stopped at the pub for a pint and there was a new waitress. She was a bit bewildered that the entire staff knew me and stopped to chat. I caught enough ESPN, without sound, to see who was in the sweet sixteen. Took my leave and drove home the long way around. Coming up the creek, right now, is spectacular, all the various plants at slightly different stages of development. Small birds peck at the buds, to release the sugars, the bats are back. I stopped at the ford and drove back and forth through the shallow water to clean off the road-salt, a spring ritual. The ford is a beautiful place, a shelf of dark gray shale, that breaks into a couple of lovely water-falls down stream. The creek is wide and shallow, the banks are dense with undergrowth, I always stop, in the middle, and smoke a cigaret, just the sound of flowing water. The closer you listen, the more there is, bugs, birds, and the tail-end of a coal-train in Kentucky. Read more...

On Cooking

I'm not a purist but my cooking does follow a certain seasonal drift. More a product of economics and method than convenience. Case in point, I no longer raise acorn squash or pumpkins, because I get them for free from the various fall displays. They call me, to haul away vegetables before they rot; rotten fruit and vegetables are a pain in the ass. I gardened on the ridge (in raised beds) until the deer ate everything for two years in a row, now I frequent the Farmer's Market, during season, which is actually less expensive, and I get some socializing to boot. If I need to propagate a particular seed, Ronnie will plant me a row. In my current heirloom collection are two pea-beans that I've never seen anywhere. Both, I think, are African, and I've kept them for thirty years. Any given market day (they fold-up shop at noon) I'll be given enough tomatoes to eat several tomato sandwiches and make a sauce for later. And Ronnie grows sweet potatoes. The word potato comes from the Quechua (Incan) papa, more or less the staff of life, where you couldn't grow anything else. They invented freeze-drying 5,000 years ago, discovering that potatoes left out to freeze at night, then smashed and dried in the noon-day sun would keep very well, could be ground to make bread. Starch and sugar. I'd made a note to try and make sense of that. I make a nice potato bread, using the lees of fermentation as the yeast, not a loaf you'd want to take to a future mother-in-law, but a bread I find useful for sopping the corners of a skillet. I use trenchers at most of my dinners, swirling the last piece of bread to gather the last bit of goodness, and I'm sure I look like the hillbilly I actually am. Where I was raised it was perfectly acceptable to use your fingers to use the last bit of biscuit to sop the last of the gravy. I was reading about table manners and got side-tracked by an interesting article, Ketchup And The Collective Unconscious, which is mostly about flavoring bland food. Read a history of the hamburger, another essay on ketchup, some Roman recipes. Split some kindling, examined some buds. The crows were giving me a raft of shit, just being raucous for the hell of it, so I gave them a couple of mice. I wanted a break from stew, and Jerome had brought me these incredible Moroccan sardines, a six pack from Costco; fried some salt-pork, minced it, rough chop the sardines (ingredients are fish, olive oil, and salt), into the pork fat, serve on noddles. If there had been any left-over, I would have had it for breakfast tomorrow, with eggs. I need to study the whole world of egg substitutes, and dried eggs, egg preservation in general, not because I want a substitute, but because I might not be able to get out and I want/need them for cornbread and morel omelets.

New buds, Verbena,
and small birds pecking
at the sweet dark core
Read more...

Scroggy Hollows

Spring, at last, comes in with a cold rain. I can't listen to the Trump news, so between showers I sit out on the back deck and listen to the frogs fuck. I made a small casserole, from the leftover mussels, buttered a small dish, a layer of mussels, breadcrumbs, and the strained liquid, served on top of the leftover smashed potatoes. Scroggy was a pet word of Sir Walter Scott, for tangled underbrush. The local peaches and plums are all lost, D called, with an agricultural update, but the apples seem to be fine, unless we get another freeze. The pent and flow of water jumped the grader ditch and the driveway is a mess, the ruts washed out, in several places the outer rut has broken through, carrying roadbed into the hollow. Decision time, as to whether I pay for a quick fix, or pay a few thousand dollars for a serious upgrade. I have to think about that, and in the meantime I use four-wheel low more than I ever have in my life. Batty Tom was one of the nine bells in the wonderful book, The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers, and I'm feeling increasingly like Batty Tom, or Tom a' Bedlam, or Peeping Tom. In the afternoon I made a beef stew, and because I don't know how many more times I'll have a fully heated stove, I manage to take hours. Dice the meat (a flank steak) brown it in pork fat, caramelize onions and red peppers, roast potatoes and turnips and carrots, a broth of chicken stock, in which I dissolve a couple anchovies and add a dollop of tomato paste. Mix it all together, pull it off the heat, and let it simmer, over night, in the waning heat of the stove. I do this with lamb too. The daffadils and the crocuses are lovely, suddenly color after months of black and white, and the stew is a grace note. Life is good: I have dry wood inside, I have a pot of food, books, tobacco, a bottle of single-malt, the moon rising above the ridge. Who could want for anything more? Read more...

Dufus Redux

Thinking about that boundary between want and need. I have an internal argument about comfort, yes, I would like a thermostat, yes, I would like hot running water, but they aren't actually necessary. I wanted to go to town, I always enjoy talking with the staff at the pub after St. Patrick's Day. The day of the year for them, long hours and good tips, and there are always a few good stories. Too many people and the music was loud, so I just went to Kroger and got what I needed. Plus a three-pound mesh bag of mussels, a bottle of white wine, and a loaf of French bread to make garlic toast. St. Patrick, an immigrant, taught faith and love; but there are no snakes in Ireland because it was completely glaciated. Coming home, along the river, I was struck with how the hollows are outwash channels. The scale of it, the amount of water from melting glaciers. When I finally do get home, after a slow trip up the creek, I make a side dish of smashed potatoes and steam the mussels in wine. A transport of tastes. I love shellfish, and during the 12 or 13 years on the Cape and Vineyard I harvested all I wanted for free. Site-specific diet. When Marilyn and I moved to Mississippi, we traded seafood for the whole range of dairy and game, plus a world-class garden and the best pork I've ever eaten. Pigs raised on whey, peanuts, and sweet potatoes. Peanuts and sweet potatoes both make great high protein hay that we fed to the goats. Later, in Colorado, we bartered butter and cheese, and made part of our living from selling "first" milk to people raising exotic animals. Since we were the only suppliers in the area we could charge whatever we wanted, ditto with the fresh goat cheese and an ice-cream that was 24% butterfat. Sometimes I almost miss those days, but it was so much work. After the girls were born, I'd build a house a year, so we'd have some actual money, to buy flour and coffee, and work the farm or ranch, dig post holes, string wire, burn the horns off goats and castrate useless males. Read more...

Night Noise

Something four-legged walking in the frozen leaves. Probably the bob-cat. I was sitting in the dark, thinking about an attachment problem, and there was a noise outside. A finite number of critters it could be, so I listen closely for a few minutes, then flip on the outside floods and catch the cat, a deer in the head-lamps, for a couple of seconds before it slinks away. It's a male, I think, in beautiful winter coat, a female would be pendulous, this time of year. Within a couple of acres I know where he lives, that gusset of land, a triangle, between the driveway and the ridge, bordered, at its base, by the power-line easement. My wildlife refuge and ginseng farm. It's two or three acres, the boundaries are so crooked it's hard to tell, either a very large or a very small space. It's densely populated because I don't let anyone roam around in there, and it provides me with a great deal of entertainment. The last time someone asked me what I did with my time, I asked them if they'd ever watched a fox eat an apple. The natural world, books, my habit of writing, cooking and eating, take up most of my time; certainly, if I had a TV and cable (which I can't afford) I'd watch cooking shows, soccer games, the history channel; also, implication is, I'd have high-speed internet, and I could reference things more quickly. Which is handy, but not necessary. More snow, I knew this was coming, I could tell from the ring around the moon. St. Patrick's Day starts with snow, then sleet, then rain, ground fog in the trees. A quiet day with no wind. A long slow breakfast, hash, shirred eggs, and toast; coffee at my desk while I finish reading some book reviews. Late afternoon it gets dark early and rains harder, and I just retreat into my nest; a little thunder so I save everything, but I stay open in my writing program. Yesterday and today I find I'm reading about people I've never heard of, I don't even know what they do. One thing is that they make way too much money, a pristine 1938 comic, first appearance of Superman, went for 3 plus million, a Paul Revere personal bell, to call a servant, you can't imagine. It's sounding serious, I'd better go. Read more...

Just Rewards

The devil is in the contents. The moon is large, just on the wane, and quite by accident, the orientation of the house and the location of the windows allows me to see it through almost the complete swing. Reading Thoreau, and he's such an opinionated dandy, the pencil business, living on Emerson's land for free, family dinner on Sunday, and the maid did his laundry, but his absolute love of nature is a wonderful thing. Passion, I think is key, B's reading another biography of Grant, and he gave me a ten minute compressed history that was brilliant. Snow clouds move in, a haze around the sun, and the forecast is for rain (it's 35 degrees) turning to snow tonight, then again tomorrow. Pleased that I followed my own advice and went to town Saturday. I made a nice onion soup, because I needed to use up a bag of onions that were beginning to sprout. The sprouts are fine to eat, I use them like scallions in stir-fry, but I'd thought about onion soup, on toast, with grated cheese, and made a double serving, After an hour tramping around outside, it was very good, with toasted cornbread slathered in butter. A good fire in the stove, this batch of white oak split butts burn like coal, and the house is warm when the cold rains start. And it is a cold rain, almost solid, a nascent ice storm, so I gather my kit within arm's reach of my desk, and settle in with a good book, several good books, actually, stacked in a new pile, but I'm currently reading a history of the potato. There's some light fiction in the pile, Dad's collection of Nero Wolfe novels, some noir crap, a few baseball books. I finish eating the apple pie and think about what I might eat tomorrow. Sausage with peppers and onions on egg noodles. It's supposed to be cold for several days, so I think about starting a soup, or another pot of beans and rice. When the wind starts moaning and the rain has turned to sleet and snow, I close down, wrap in a blanket, and listen to ice pellets hit the metal roof. I have to get up and stoke the stove, just before dawn, and I can see there's a covering of snow. Later, as dawn progresses, the landscape is beautiful. Tree snow in waves. A small amount of green, visible against the white, and I don't know what bush it is. I tie a strip of plastic on one of them, so I can ask B next time he's up. The young leaves haven't been killed by the cold, and there are dozens of other buds in various stages. Evolved for survival. You have to admire that. I made a bean soup, leave it on a trivet, off the heat, to barely simmer all night. Read more...

Not Signed-On

The path is obvious if you look closely. One spring in Colorado there was rain and the desert erupted in flowers. The mesa behind the house, the beginning of the Uncompahgre plateau, was right out the back door, and I could achieve the top following deer trails. I have to laugh, remembering myself then. Somewhat more stupid than I am now, but I still follow game trails, just to see where they lead. The desert in flower is an amazing sight. Twice, that I remember vividly, once in western Colorado and once in Utah, I was completely overwhelmed. I got to town, though I had to overcome enormous inertia to leave the house, and I'm glad I did because the remainder bins at Kroger were full. I actually bought an apple pie because it was so lovely and cheap. I love apple pie for breakfast. Also some sausages, some potato salad, and a few more of the breakfast burritos that my daughter said were fine. On the way home I stopped at B's for a cup of coffee and conversation, he made an argument that I should just stay on the ridge, improve the driveway, upgrade the water system, hire help when needed. It's a solid argument, because I don't want to move, the ridge is sublime, all the aspects of nature. Down along the river there's a definite blush of green. Still, it's cold in the house when I get home, so I build a fire and use the electric lap-robe. JC had send a review of a new book on cannibalism that I want to read and B passed along London Reviews, plus loaned me about 150 pages of Stephen Ellis's work. Stephen is one of the finest writers in the language. Loose pages, with cover and back boards and a big paper-clamp holding them together. I read a fair number of manuscripts, my own included, and I use a shallow cardboard box that holds two piles, but I have to have my kit around me, some snacks, maybe a nip bottle of whiskey, fill the tobacco pouch and check the papers, stoke the fire, then I can get down to business. Sometimes I kill the breaker on the fridge and unplug the phone. Tonight, down in the teens, no wind, it's extremely quiet. The house is buttoned-up. I read Stephen for several hours. Read more...

Weeping Willows

Green, I swear to god, those willows on the south side of the river road. So elegant. I did the yearly rake of certain spots, just to shove aside leaves from a few places where I expect morels. Walked down the logging road, examining signs of spring. One thing I notice is the color change, the various pinks that emerge. It's surprising to examine a square yard closely. Under the leaves (it would be interesting to monitor temperatures above and below the leaves) there are dozens of shoots of various plants. They're all sweet. Sugar is the anti-freeze. A side-bar is that when I try to be completely transparent I become more opaque. A product of learning the jargon of a particular discipline, or the patois of a certain region. I had just been thinking about TR (I knew it was Spring Break) when he called. Coming out tomorrow to record. I spent a few hours reading over some things, trying to find the natural voice. It's easiest to find if I'm sitting in my chair, with a drink and a cigaret. I gave a nice reading at Penn Erie standing, but I generally read better sitting, with a drink, most places you can't smoke. Stopping for a sip or a toke is like adding punctuation. Extends the moment. A portage to the next body of water. When Ry Cooder plays Bach the devil is in retreat. I mention that because I took a nap and woke up hungry, and I usually turn on the radio to see what late night treasures I might hear, and it was Cooder, playing some blistering blues. Bless my good luck. TR arrived, loaded with freight and equipment, water, booze, fruit, and high tech recording gear. Sets up, I get a drink, roll a smoke, and we record for a few hours. First thing TR says is that he can't believe how quiet it is, perfect for his purposes. A technical wizard, he sets everything up so I can sit in my chair, have a drink and a smoke while we work. We redo a couple of things. He seems satisfied, but we arrange to do another session in Barnhart's studio. He has a fairly clear idea of what he wants (it's his Master's Degree after all) and I'm not invested, except for wanting to speak cleanly. We chat, while I roll another smoke between pieces, then I read some pages he wants me to read. I stick in a couple of pages I like. It's an enjoyable experience, being taken seriously. Heavy rain moving in, I'd better go. After TR left I ate fruit, cheese, and Wheat Thins with a dollop of French mustard for a long time. He'd brought quite a bit of fruit, plums, grapes, apples, bananas, oranges. The way I eat oranges is interesting, the way I learned in Florida. You always carried one of those specific tools, a long thin-bladed pocket knife with which you cut a smallish hole in the stem end, then wallowed around to break the membranes. You suck out all of the juice, then, when it's squashed and quite dry, you split the orange carcass open and scrape off all the pulp with your teeth. My favorite orange for this was called "Possum Brown" which was a favorite juice orange when I was a kid, those thick-skinned California oranges don't work very well, they split and make a mess. Read more...

Rolling Thunder

Rain before dawn, settling in steady, thick overcast, no light to speak of. Loki and his bowling ball, the thunder starts, then some lightning. I make a mug of tea and a pot of rice, sometimes the sheets of rain are very loud. Local flooding, they're already saying; of course there will be local flooding, look at the fucking map. Frozen ground and added water. But I am more than fine, I have a hundred books I want to reread, a hundred I've never read before and enough food to feed a small army. I'm good. I had to shut down, as the mother of all storm fronts moved in. Several hours of crazy intense rain, lightning all around, thunder shaking the house. Spectacular display. I fear the driveway is taking a hit. It's amazing how violent one of these storms can be. I got up and gathered my kit around me but never did lose power. It was difficult to read so I looked at pictures, prehistoric art, then Modigliani's last nudes, then study the Laretto Staircase again. Around six, still dark, it rains HARD; I know the drainage in my immediate area, know where there will be flooding, know that it drains quickly. Even when I do lose power, and then the phone, I still have my little camp stove, so I can make oatmeal and brew a cup of tea. 60 degrees, and I don't want to build a fire in the stove. Spent the day reading about tides, tidal bores, and nodes, where there aren't any tides. I have to resort to the headlamp often, because the overcast is so thick. Power was out for 12-15 hours, and now the phone is out, so I can't send. Snow again in the forecast, so I make a list. The driveway took a beating, and Mackletree, through the forest, was strewn with branches. Not much standing water in the hills, but Turkey Creek was running spate, and all of the low farm land is flooded. I didn't need much in town, but sampled a couple of beers and ate a bowl of potato soup. Picked up some fried potato logs and a milkshake on my way out of town and stopped at the lake. I was thinking about tremendous amplification through resonance, the failure of some bridges, the walls of Jerico, The Grateful Dead playing at Redrock. The noise of the spillway is overwhelming, you feel it in your feet, so I didn't notice a young couple, walking up to see. He was German and she was French and they were traveling about, having attended a wedding in Columbus. We hit it off, talking about various aspects of the natural world. I told them I lived only a few miles away and they should come up for a bottle of wine and some supper. Surprisingly, they agreed, and they had a rental Jeep that could handle the driveway. They were shocked by the driveway, and then by where and how I lived. Fritz said that the driveway reminded him of the goat-path to his Grandmother's house. Marie asked about the organizational system for the books. I made them a crackling and cheese omelet that would raise the dead and we drank a very good old-vines zinfandel. I wished them well, on their tour of America. Phone is still out, now in the third day, but it's only bothersome because people will think I died. Which isn't that different from that I had died. Secluded site, a recluse, who's to know? Barnhart's mother would ask him, several people might call B, I'd be found, either alive or dead. In the meantime it's gotten cold again, so I build a fire and get out the electric lap-robe; when the oven's hot I make a Key Lime pie and eat half of it. A little snow, falling slowly. It's so lovely, I have to stop what I'm doing and just watch. The phone, irritatingly, rings off and on, no dial tone, so they must be working on the various connections, I finally have to unplug the damned thing. Totally involved in a history of Ohio geology. At some point I got out the Raven map, Landforms And Drainages Of The United States, which I have to unroll on the floor and weight down with rocks, and I'm on my knees, with a magnifying glass, examining the Ohio basin. This fascination with maps goes way back, family trips when I was a kid, maps were free at gas stations. A map isn't the terrain, still, they are endlessly fascinating and often quite beautiful. And maps are text, like music is, or paintings. Tonight I was listening (again) to this Finnish Opera, wondering how music could so directly affect our emotion. It has to do with mediation, or the lack of, and expectation. The Christian church charts this drift, less and less mediation until you end up with a hermit in a cave. No pope, no Archbishop of Canterbury, not even a preacher, just a tinny voice in the back of your head arguing good and evil. I'd noticed a blush of green, not when I looked at it directly, but out of the corner of my eye. I think it's the Virginia Creeper, whatever that vine. The blackberries are beginning to stir. Daffodils, down by the river, I was shocked. The bamboo has grown a foot. Pines are shooting out their candles. It occurs to me that I should look for artichokes at Kroger. When they're cheap, I like to buy an armload, and eat them twice a day. Right now I'm enjoying avocados because they were suddenly 59 cents, the bright green ones, smallish but perfect for me. I bought the ones that were rock hard as avocados ripen after they're picked, and I've been eating the softest one every day. Mostly just lime juice and a little hot sauce, sometimes I make an open-face with cheddar and avocado. I'd been reading so much about burial ornament that I decided to make a primitive "bow drill" and try to drill a hole in something. This attempt took all of a day. I had a long leather shoestring I'd saved from a dead pair of work-boots, and a short walk produced a bow of oak branch. There are two main problems: holding the top of the drill bit, and stabilizing the piece that is being drilled. We've been drilling holes in shells and rocks for a long time, and I assumed I could learn how. You need a rock with a concavity, for the hold-down rock, not hard to find, and for holding the work any triangle will hold a piece, with a couple of pins. In just a few hours I manage a hole. A little bleep from the phone tells me it's re-connected. I'd better go send. Read more...