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...