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...