snack related revelations.

ok. so breakfast. it is one important thing that is truly rewarding in this stasis i have embodied. a kind of waking hibernation without much change in skeleton or skin. but with all the time that heaves and rolls from me it seems mornings stretch out most. swell and then pause, wait for me bang and jingle about in this little kitchen of mine. usually my extensive breakfasts are reserved for weekends. or at least for charming company, an excuse to wrangle the mismatched collection of coffee mugs. but. between the jam making endeavors, the ritual of morning nettles, the covered deck with the knee-high sunbeams and the gas stove, it seems like festivities need be kindled at least as often as possible. and i have some time.

lately their has been abundance of fresh eggs. i am sucker for this archetype of the idyll. partly it is their shape and diversity. partly is the relative ease of access to this little luxury. partly it is lining them up in the tea towel lined egg basket i have and cherish and knowing i can snatch up a few when the urge takes me. but actually i have never sought out an egg for the sake of eating an egg. usually i eat them because i understand they are complete proteins, whose amino acids and fat soluble vitamins are vital for a lady whose meat intake is rather low. but i am admittedly squeamish about an egg yolk that chases after the toast and potatoes on my plate and prefer them scrambled, boiled soft or puffed up with some tangle of vegetables.

except that i have been reading fannie farmer and, in a gentler echo, some of mark bittman who have only exultant praise for a phenomenon known as shirred eggs. read, whole eggs baked as custard in little butter ramekins and further tempered with the addition of some heavy cream, chopped herbs, buttered bread crumbs or caps of puffed melted cheese. the instructions are very straightforward, break an egg into a buttered ramekin, place in a pan with hot water poured to within an inch of the ramekin's top and bake at 300 for about 25 minutes until mostly set. which is fine. however, for the yolkaphobe i am the idea of dipping into a lovely custard only to find a slurry of yolky offal i was somewhat deterred. one fact is that i adore custard, so steps had to be taken. i longed for a shirred egg (what else in our lives, after all, can be shirred?) and so i took it upon myself to pursue a savory breakfast egg that would follow in shirry footsteps.

 thus

which is a wholly successful cross between a shirred egg and a creme caramel- minus of course the caramel part. it is an egg, a yolk, a cup of boiled milk steeped in bay and thyme, whisked with a blizzard of grated gruyere and chopped broccoli and baked in a waterbath. it was creamy and satiny like a proper creme caramel, but eggy and savory, as (i presume) a shirred egg would be. and it went marvelously with the previously mentioned oatmeal sandwich bread (thanks Kim Boyce! did i ever mention Good to the Grain? if you are unlucky enough to behind the times and know not of this exceptional treatise on contemporary baking with whole grains (esPECially if you are a kind of person who cannot take gluten comfortably) get ye here or here and check it out, it will change your life!) and the previously previously mentioned strawberry rhubarb jam. in addition to the stodgy and practical but hugely nutritious whome-made-whole-milk yogurt, superfood blueberries and sandy sprinkling of hemp and chia seeds. (if you need any persuasion on the goodness of hemp seeds, by the way, certainly read this and her blog in general which is good for all your bones.)

but, if you are not persuaded to shir-custard yourself self an egg please please read below on what new dimension of pleasure breakfast has recently (as of today) provided me.

this brings us to the chapter on Heber Valley Milk! (and circumnavigates to that brown compost looking sludge in the jar.) this  milk business is exciting for those Utahns along the Wasatch Front who have been seduced by the creamy magic raw milk promises but who otherwise had no intention of driving 60 miles to pick up a gallon a week. who, additionally, had no intention of attracting the attention of the law by forming secret (illegal) milk-coops that allowed the circulation of raw milk at a less cumbersome speed. now we have access to a perfectly legitimate dream milk business! $2.50 a gallon plus a deposit of $2.50 for the beautiful glass bottles which is waived upon return should you remember to bring your bottle back. it is of course best to drink your raw milk cold, or at least under 110 degrees to keep all the live cultures and heat-sensitive vitamins in tact but sometimes you need dream milk coffee and that happened to today!

dream milk coffee stems from an allegiance to this blog, who seemingly got the recipe it from here, and it ultimately came from here.

it entails grinding coffee roughly, covering it with cold filtered water and leaving it overnight to steep, then straning it, and drinking it cold with a cap of cold milk. such promises made are "smooth." "powerful." "zero bitterness." and "all the rage."  some suggested additives have been almond extract, agave or maple syrup. i have a hunch it would be great with a devilish ribbon of sweetened condensed milk or a maybe a thimbleful of kahlua. however, i had just returned from a blissful exchange with the Heber milkmaids and had every intention of drinking my coffee humbly, with that. thanks to some tiresome time spent at the dreaded Whole Foods waiting for groceries to be beeped i happened to be drawn into the ever-tempting and usually-quite-a-let-down Tips section in Cook's Illustrated for which i am a sucker. therein i found a way to at home, with no terrifying zaps in the microwave or investment in a costly espresso machine, render perfect milk foam. keep this under your hat but: if you heat your milk just until steaming in a heavy bottomed pot, pour it into a mason jar leaving an inch or two of headspace, screw on the lid and give it a ferocious shake and one good plunk on the counter you too can pour billowy clouds of milk into your coffee should you so desire. but! dream coffee? powerful? check. smooth? check. zero bitterness? check. (despite using Mtaro, a staunch Kenyan bean whose bitterness is the hallmark of devotion to some.)  totally delicious. also check. no one had mentioned that one, so i'll add it to my roster.

dream coffee (adapted from the sources mentioned above)
1/2 cup coffee, coarsely ground
1 1/2 cups cold water
milk
ice
optionally- kahlua, sweetened condense milk, small dribble of orange blossom water

mix coffee grounds and water minimally preferably in a jar or a french press coffee pot. cover and let rest at unrefirgerated overnight or at least ten hours. strain through cheesecloth/coffee filter/french press screen to collect the coffee concentrate. this is elixir is a bit stronger than espresso, so you use only a little for every glass. pour  a few inches over ice, fill the remaining to the top with milk. stir gently. swoon.

**ps
should you want to sweeten your dream coffee, beware that granulated sugar will provide only sandy, crispy dregs without much sweetening effect. better to use the suggested agave or maple syrup or to make a simple syrup (which is where you'd add the orange flower water should you want to be fancy) by dissolving one part sugar into one part water over medium heat until no crystals remain.

and with that, we are off on a walk.

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little altars everywhere. we are surely getting settled.

an actual epiphany.

we went walking early yesterday. it was a proper desert sunrise- heavy clouds with the crimped white edges, like molten metal, that promised soporific afternoon thunderstorms. red sand rolled everywhere with the tracks of birds, snakes, moose, rabbits, marmots...there was a buoyant coolness, one that was certain to sink and cloak the ground as soon as the sun razed the horizon. often these walks happen after a pot of coffee and stoop breakfast, so in some ways, this familiar winding trail felt new if only because the light was unfamiliar.

we were flanked with debris as we mounted the first rise. strangely localized, it littered only our immediate way, didn't flake like confetti in the fields or groves. here and there neatly shorn boughs off young aspen saplings, a fringe of crushed sage fronds, heady with scent, and the chunky paws off conifers. its precision was disarming until, of course, it registered that the trail maintenance crews must have forged ahead in the dimmer hours and neatened the scraggle and scruff of these manicured wild places. my heart fell a little- somehow a dimension of wholesomeness always present in these expeditions had been pared off; to think that everything was kept up with shear or blade and not because of the eager traveling of sandaled ladies or beasts.

but one thing the clipping crew had unlocked with their well intentioned savagery proved to be somewhat of a revelation: in the wake of the cuttings was an undeniably transcendent fragrance. its force and pungency stalled me to the very lobes of my heart. it rose and hovered, almost viscous in its presence and filled every of my eager cells with an electric snap. my hair stood on end, light rang behind my eyes. i reeled.  later i learned the tree was a subalpine fir.abies lasiocarpa. a common conifer after all, prevalent on all our walks, abutting neighborhood streets, lined up in the dull polished cultivated yards of most everyone here. and so it was not that the tree itself leached all common sense momentarily from me, but its intimate inner workings. all its blood vessels, secrets, histories, sleep, dreams and essences utterly exposed. what kind of dreams do trees have?

it is useless to try to fasten words to the smell. clumsy, foolhardy. it was yes, as you can likely imagine, wincingly piney. but also unlike the smell of other pines or firs. lemony, or like the smell of wet terra cotta. it was a smell i had no right to Name, no right even to smell. when trees die and topple, or when lightning sears the the water into steamy departure, a tree's death has a familiar smell. sweet, like rot. one to which we are accustomed as we walk through any place with shade and water. and when a tree is cut down and the pulsing coin of its stump throbs, that smell too, is different. a defeat smell, a cauterized smell, heated over by the friction of a blade. this smell was different, it was the exact, tangible smell of secrets which will forever crackle in the foreparts of my brain when i summon the word. this tree's very living sluices seeped into the air and poured. even the dogs lifted their noses, froze, arched their necks hungrily. i picked up a piece of the neatening that laid in the path. kept it. felt a kind of green spread of gravelly pins and needles echo in my bones. i looked up at the tree, as one might look into the eyes of a lover, searching for an answer as to why, exactly, those eyes made one's heart leap and gallop so fiercely. and the tree. sighed. it sighed upwards. it arched back and filled the spaces between its branches. it most certainly sighed, took in air (or is it the other way around?) and, as if on some sort of hugely rolling cosmic cue, a breeze was stirred from the lowlands. the trees boughs shuffled and straightened. if i had ears enough to tip forward, tip they would. the tree sighed. i looked up in a swoon, and the tree sighed at me. a kind of resinous romance.

the walk home is absent for me. a block of something white. i spent some time admiring the appendage of the tree i had laid among the little nesting trinkets i have recently been reassembling. it is a kind of reliquary, i suppose. something profound but utterly recognizable. that windowsill hums.

after recovering i tried to line up my thoughts like paperclips in a saucer. after all it was a matter of the optics, probably. the swimming light, the moving wind, the height and spread of the tree. not so mysteriously it only water and hydraulics that hold up plants. even the diminutive among their species excel at drawing water tightly into their cells so they might hold their heads high. conifers drink an especially astounding amount of water, even for their slightly smaller stature. it is because their growth is so slow, so dense. Annie Dillard seems to have pinpointed the awesome quantitative data on the exceptional strengths of plants:

"There's real power here. It is amazing that trees can turn gravel and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down on granite slab and start to swell, bud, and flower. Trees seem to do their feats so effortlessly. Ever year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts. Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day." --Pilgrim at Tinker Crink.

Every day! Unabashedly and for the benefit of no admiring audience. The sighing tree and I in a kind of camaraderie, in agreement about undertaking to live like that weasel. With quiet and ferocious purpose. To do potently for the sake of the task. I undertook to lapse tree-like into the most regal silence I could muster. Cloaked myself in it like crimson and ermine. Moved little, listened and watched openly, took every opportunity to sigh upward, straining with all my electrified cells to adhere to whatever daunting mechanism moved the wind through the pine's needles and changed everything with the smallest effort.

swindled

i took to the hills. drove off the solid heavy lines of the map onto the ticked faint ones and urged the Volvo down inclines that were perhaps not in her best interest. as i have said the snow mass is still unreal, even in mid July! we slushed along, with noses tuned to the smell catalog of a mountain on whose backside i have never set foot.

dogs are at their happiest when they see a cooler being heaved into a car, followed by their food bowls, bed and human sleeping bag. for them, despite a claim to color blindness, it is a visual equation for empty places. those without crosswalks at which they know to sit until they hear the walk signal chirp, or strange men with beards or bicycles (which terrify them completely.) they know also that if their beds and bowls are coming along with the cooler they will likely have an opportunity for long-term chases of any small boned things that scoot along under the sage and an opportunity to root their snouts in little freshets and creeks until, covered with mud, they will ignore the rule of no dirty dogs in the tent and pile onto the down and wool and made a muddy show of denning down for a night crushed with stars and pine winds.

the Volvo got us safe and sound down the sloping grades of Guardsman Pass and the map led us to a wide meadow, circled with singing aspen groves and not (surprisingly) cut up and slashed with the garish hieroglyphs of a ski resort in summer. we hauled all manner of heavy cumbersome things along when the sign told us the Volvo had to stay where she was and ended up finally in the quiet we had anticipated.

(excuse my lack of finesse in the realm of constructing an acceptable panoramic view...)

and were of course ready to eat some snacks out of paper packets (a few almonds twisted up in newspaper slips, a clutch of apricots, a wedge of Saint Andre that was coyly trying to talk me into eating its entirety before it melted and pooled) and a few bottles of Elephantino, lay around in minimal clothes, paint and read and snooze. we did all of these things. and then were interrupted by someone who, apparently, had more genuine claim to the grove than we. read: large cow moose and luminescent calf crashing through the bluebells to water. it was a lucky thing we were stranded on a rock. if a little humbling to be somewhat of a voyeurist spectacle- we all three being topless and in only our bathing suit bottoms...(although the dogs, to be fair, weren't wearing either bathing suit tops or bottoms.) a cow moose and her calf are a thing that strikes fear into me. not because moose are generally fearsome creatures (just monolitihic). but because the unpredictability of a moose, paired with the unbelievable speed at which you can suddenly be confronted all tucked around a mother's universal and manic protective aggression usually mean a person is stuck. especially when in a broad field with two small animals with sharp voices. we froze and i am grateful the dogs stayed, ears forward, tails puffed, but unmoving and quiet. the rest of the story is anticlimactic really. no there were no heroic shots snapped of the animal pair (a silly ingredient, usually, in those stories involving crushed wilderness enthusiasts who come too close and are too brazen in these situations.) nor was there a stampede of hooves paws and feet, barking or howling, blistered bones or narrow escapes. there was instead just a retreat, with head lowered, backpacks carefully and slowly pulled on, and quiet steps back out of the glade. thus we were unharmed. unharmed and surely swindled out of the abovementioned denning down. the wind was whippy and the celebratory atmosphere had really gone right out of everything. (please let me mention a better part of the Saint Andre was left sadly on the rock.) and so we beat it home, brazenly drinking Elephantino out of a water bottle on the bumpy ride back to the state managed highway and took up on the deck. it was a conciliatory evening, plied with pencils and paint, gin and tonics and some leftover snacks, but we slept inside in a heap of clean cotton and a rotary fan in the end. not much in the way of wild dreams to report.

however, there was a little walk-drawing progress, which is good enough.

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hard tack. of sorts.

living alone is a new kind of scarf to swathe my throat it. in some ways the freedoms are chrysallate; being coocooned in any quality of silence or din i cultivate, sleeping when my limbs are heavy, waking only when dogs stir or doves insist and emerging without the weight of anyone's daily plans or intentions. the cramped parts, though, are very cramped.

it is stifling to inspect a homely and spare refrigerator, to eye a jar of raw milk that isn't getting any emptier no matter how many slugs i gamely take, or slinking away from a compost pail that's somehow immediately full and sending up wavering constellations of fruit flies. when you learn to count on the appetite for space and substance of more than your own you immediately lose track of how much you take up. is it possible i've eaten only three eggs in the last week but have gone through, literally, four sticks of butter? apparently i've used less than a fourth of a roll of toilet paper? made only four pots of coffee? additionally, the new nest is paned with mirrors on all the closet doors and i can't help but see myself float through the small rooms looking everywhere for a purpose with which it populate my days.

my knees are  narrow, my ribs show paley beneath my collarbones, my jawbones shave off pares of quiet as i dry dishes. it seems, without some sort of supervision, i am becoming small, crackly and bouyant. it is good thing for so many dog bowls and empty marrow bones to moor me. but at any rate, it seems imperative that i anchor myself in the human world by amassing sustenance.

and so! the first Bread Day in the new nest came and i must say, eating a half loaf in under an hour will certainly make for a soporific kind of couch-based solidity.

an oaty sponge; studded with goji berry, sour cherry, hemp seeds, molasses

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kneaded smooth after a 30 minute autolyse, kissed and ready for the first proof

(**an esteemed associate of mine taught me that it is imperative the dough is smooched before it is set to pursue its puffy destiny. i think, probably, any bread success i have is due to her wisdom. unfortunately, my contribution in the form of introducing her to buckwheat was not as well-received.**)

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luxury filling: softened butter, brown sugar, himalayan salt, sprouted sunflower seeds.

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rolled, shaped, nestled in a little collar of crackly parchment for its last rise...

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...baked off and now the worst part: letting the loaf (resounding like a timpany) rest for two hours to set the crumb and develop a fragrant yeasty flavor...

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et voila!

that is Survival Bread. and i think it really did wonders. such as sparking a plan to go out and sleep in the wild, necessitating a visual list of course

the tentative plan, barring any other unforeseen dog-sitting, reminder of desperate errands, or spontaneous sloth will i think look like this
 

 

and if i'm lucky, with enough survival bread and almond butter to way me and my pockets down, i won't be blown from the snowy saddle.

one thing is

some gentle turns in the new walk-drawings. like a pilot light kindled, seemingly all burners can be ignited from a single source. the roughage in some secret hopper seems to have been given a hard rap and loosened; all around a balmy light pours and lightens. it is a welcome herald for a certain homecoming, these days the brittle heartbones are strung with cobwebs.

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today's walk in killyon's canyon served to buffer the astonishment about our abundance of water this year. there is nothing like climbing up high to find a particularly satisfying crackly and windswept expanse only to be waste high in a fecund froth of growth. absolutely surreal to stand in a place usually so thirsty for dampness on a bed of shaggy lichen. the color rang like polished eggshells behind my eyes. plants that usually struggle to present a modest sprinkling of color have made dragging marks of color on all the hillsides, gone completely to seed and started anew. my bones felt spongy with a sympathetic greenness, i expected to leave a trail of moss and track tiny garlands of mushrooms into the jeep as i packed it up full of dogs and left in a dust devil of chokeweed and rabbitbrush blooms. rain in the forecast for this evening, who knows what color and enthusiasm will be wrung from the rocks when it's over this time.

alchemy

yesterday marked two weeks since the nettle tincture was bottled. (thankfully it was labeled, as it was a suspicious concoction, at any rate, to be swathed in a dingy tea towel and left in the bathroom to steep.)

straining the tincture is an easy task but a rather time consuming one as the nettles have undergone considerably metamorphosis during their exposure to the alcohol.

like most plants, the nettles' compounds are both fat and alcohol soluble. (this is why it is best to eat most vegetables, especially greens, with a considerable amount of fat (bacon, pancetta, butter, ghee, oil, etc.) thus making their fat-soluble compounds available to the body instead of functioning purely as roughage.) while heating the green matter in a fat source would certainly draw the medicinal properties out of the leaves more quickly, it would leave the mixture subject to rather quick oxidation and thus rancidity. this is a fine method of obtaining the medicinal compounds from the plants but would require the forager to consume it within three or four days after preparation. some plants in particular, like flaxseed, are of course harvested and processed to render their oils and these must be kept refrigerated as their molecules are heat-sensitive and not very stable (another reason never to cook with flaxseed oils or anything high in omega-6's or 3's.) however, since nettle is collected for its chemical compounds, the best way to extract and maintain a local source is by suspending it in alcohol which will keep for much longer.

the purpose of using an alcohol medium (known alternately as 'menstruum') is three-fold. firstly, the alcohol acts as a preservative, inhibiting the production of bacteria from decomposition of the plant material. secondly, it acts as an astringent, drawing the phytochemicals out of the plant. and lastly, because alcohol is able to pass through mucus membranes, to access the blood vessels close to the surface in the mouth, and to permeate the stomach lining, its role as carrier of the plant compounds is extremely efficient. however, because the alcohol acts to macerate the material, a considerable amount of alcohol remains in the plant fiber after being strained. therefore, it is important to give the tincture adequate time to drain, retaining as much of the liquid as possible.

jargon and chemistry aside, the process is really very simple and should encourage anyone interested in undertaking to experiment in herbal medicine to give it a try.

here are the basic steps to summarize:
1. harvest the material
2.decide whether you intend to make a fresh or dried tincture. a fresh tincture needs to be made soon after harvest to retain all the active compounds in the plant. a dried tincture needs to be completely dry before processing in order to prevent the formation of molds.
3. chop or pass the material through a food processor or spice mill.
4. cover the material with alcohol in a *clean* jar. fresh tincture ratios should be 1 part menstruum (grain alcohol, ethanol or brandy) to 1 part plant material. dried material ratios should be 1 part menstruum to 2 parts plant material for a comparable potency.
5. store the raw tincture out of light in a cool dry place for two weeks. (no need to store tincture in the refrigerator as the alcohol will prevent spoilage.) agitate this mixture every day or two for two weeks.
6. strain the tincture by pressing it through a few layers of cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer, press the back of a spoon or rest a heavy or weighted bowl in the strainer to press out as much liquid as possible.
7. store in an airtight, lightfast container. health food stores, co-ops,  and the dreaded whole foods sell blue glass vials in the cosmetic section which are best for storing alcohol tinctures. these minimize the exposure to uv light which will damage and weaken the tincture. they don't, however, keep all uv light out and should be stored in a dark place. if you don't have access to a source for these vials or prefer not to buy anything additional to crowd your medicine cabinet a simple application of duct tape, electrical tape, or light-fast paper can be taped around the jar with equal efficiency.

cheers.

minutiae

so a change. one of middle size. an array of paper cartons, a few broken glasses, spoons and single socks evaporated clean out of existence. new keys, new doors, new quiet.

fortunately, the walks will be the same. in fact, i've taken to them almost desperately now; stimulating the lymphatic system, putting weight on weight-bearing joints, canine sanity aside: these meditations have also undergone a change. of a more considerable size. in this one the role of moving is tipped slightly, put under light and glass. if there are going to be many tracks made on open land |marks, no?|, whose rhythm and weight vary |as line quality|, whose trajectories are honest, organic, and deliberate |and conceptually sound|, then, seemingly, they are drawings in their own right.


this is a kind of vast and dramatic unhinging. a hatching from a vessel that, for a long time, has been thwarted. baked down hard. brimming with stasis of many kinds. don't misunderstand- i don't mean i've come away with a vast stash of monochrome brilliance. nothing so dynamic as Reinhardt, nothing so resonant with intention as Rothko, nothing even as formally basic as Stella. just nothing. when previously things flowed more easily

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so now, with the above mentioned water jars, granola-leaking rucksack, occasional shears and sodden boxes of matches i am also equipped, when i step off the smooth road for the coarser one, with an unspoken box of implements of a different kind. granted, the problem remains that there is little, if anything, that can be pinned up, pointed to, smudged, talked at, flipped over, scrubbed with gesso, jabbed at with pencil butts and finally put to rest in a flat file. but the problem of finished product as it pertains to conceptual drive is an old one. usually though, with enough thought, the entire problem of 'making' can be distilled into a single, one-worded solution.
sometimes it is simple.
jam. dough. wool. bone. salad. haste.
other times more esoteric.
nomenclature. opacity. relentlessness.
and this time is neither simple nor esoteric but very literal.

catalogue.
as in the verb. read: reinforcements for the obsessive collection, recording, filing and labeling of everyday life. it is a kind of incoherent haze, suspiciously without angst.

and in honor of a recent poring over of the esteemed Anne Carson- a poet whose profundity stems directly from her electric ability to pin down all things powerful and omnipresent with the most concrete and apt nouns- the walk down into the draggy dusk of midsummer was a simple catalog of smells.

we know that smell is an infinite language and one to which humans have very little access. we know that most living things- especially, brilliantly so, plants- seek to emanate false smells with the direct intention of camouflage and deception. and we know, with streamers of longing as we lift our noses, that the thing that so enraptures us about smell is its simultaneous ability to confound our human urgings to name, by being at once fleeting and long lasting. we struggle to name smells for the simple reason that we cannot keep them for very long. and so it was, walking through a settling of light and a sifting of noise, trying to cull and record all the smells that registered.

at some points the links between a scent and its Name was easy: "anise," "mint," "verbena," "clove." and at other times it wasn't clear if the smell rang because the pheromones actually hung in the air or because they triggered that secret bulky olfactory nerve and were only smell memorie: "ice," "egg shell," "sleep." not surprisingly, with my eyes open, the signals blurred slightly and the words that came out to pin little flags on the smells were colors, "chartreuse," "dusk," "wine." it was a convoluted list, and it was a wandering list, but it was most especially a tangled list. for the list reflected not the simplified task of setting things to name, but, after re-reading it, the task of parsing out all the ways a mind could race after and pursue a single verb, like catalogue. what, i imainged, would be a streaming column of nouns ended up punctuated and peppered with questions, asterices, small drawings, ven diagrams, bits of plant, sample droplets of mossy water and a small tuft of headache behind one eye. but, because the walk ended before the cataloguing was over, i had much more of a handful of words than i anticipated. which is a welcomed bounty. which is a low foggy banner of relief. and which, as far as i can tell, makes this new drawing exercise infinitely promising.

the list

oil

cinnamon

paint thinner

sarparilla

lemon balm

spruce

gin

sawdust

empty rooms

rot

mint

ice

strawberry jam boiling on the stove

chlorine

burgundy

wood plank

wool

sulphur

peach

paint drying on withered apples

oregano

charteuse

vanilla

spun sugar

egg shell

dusty screen

dung

flesh

swimming pools

algae

scum

lettuce

apple

honey

paper

flat ground

paper

burned wheat

paste wax

myrrh

flight

soreness

sleep

quietude

pastry

brine

nervousness

sandalwood

the smallest seeing

one thing is, i don't really care for the fourth of july. i don't care for the ration of forest fires, sprinkled among the state's statistics, that are started by careless fireworks enthusiasts. i don't care to tip my glass over every time i'm startled by bottle rockets going off right outside the window, beginning in the morning and ending sometime near midnight. i'm made uneasy in the supermarkets where a lofty quantity of pale hotdogs and square, pre-pressed hamburgers are sold for a questionably low price. i'm irritated and saddened to stay up with a houseful of trembling dogs whose panic is breathed out in steam enough to fog mirrors. and, lastly, i am of the opinion that there are many other, lovely ways to champion the beauty of high summer that are subtle and more intimate.

having found, surprisingly, an abundance of sweet, fresh figs at the market i happily plied the larder with a stock of pickled figs, a recipe i was eager to try.

steeped in apple cider vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices, the figs were pungent and briny and took on a jolt of fire-cracker like spice that seemed appropriate for the evening (despite a kitchen carpeted with dogs, curled up tight, ears flat, tails limp.)

as we climbed into yesterday's evening walk we were startled to notice, in the course of about twelve hours, that the thimbleberry thickets had seemingly sought to parallel the evening's surfeit of noise and flash and reached out all their blooms at once. these are large, somewhat drowsy plants. their leaves as wide as dinner plates, they will offer up a small, soft berry roughly the same color and shape as a raspberry but with more minute seeds and a shocking amount of sweetness. the ratio of berries to foliage is sometimes silly seeming, with a modicum of fruit in relationship to the size and vivacity of leaves and stem.

inspired by the tiny phenomenon (this universal signal plants give one another which always fascinates me,) i undertook to focus on the minutiae of the walk even though the trail was neither new nor furnished with breathtaking vistas.

if you concentrate all your effort on seeing small spaces you are guaranteed access to parallel universes. often i think of Annie Dillard and her keen eyes, cultivated to noticing, most importantly, the often unseen and unheard of phenomenon as she walks the land.


"...there is muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of the wind. on a sunny day, sun's energy on a square acre of land or pond can equal 4500 horsepower. these "horses" heave in every direction, like slaves building pyramids, and fashion, from the bottom up, a new and sturdy world..."--Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Some of us took the challenge to invoke minutiae a little more seriously than others...

but in the end, the effort took on a kind of magnetism, informing the rest of the day's adventures and even sleep, it seemed, was compromised on many smaller dreams to make up a whole pane of dark dwelling.

(*fig. 2: as of this morning, the official results of my first date with rhubarb were in. check plus.)

** My pickled fig recipe was adapted from Andrea Reusing (in her new Cooking in the Moment), who adapted it from Edith Calhoun.

yields approximately 5 half-pint jars

1 cup apple cider vinegar
2 cups sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon whole allspice berries
1/2 teaspoon whole cloves
5 cardamom pods
8 black peppercorns

Bring the vinegar, 1 cup sugar, salt and spices to a simmer. Add the figs and simmer over low for about 10 minutes, ensuring the sugar and salt are dissolved. Cool and refrigerate over night.
The following day, add the remaining sugar, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes until the figs are slightly reduced in size, tender and fragrant. Cool and store in sterilized jars in the refrigerator for up to a month.
Seemingly, bay leaf, coriander seeds or mustard seeds would be a welcome addition in place of the cardamom and/or pepper.

asphalt pilgrims

it is uncommon for a desert to lack light. but here we are, cloaked in a damp kind of low shade. it is not surprising for these things to happen for those who live on the coasts, or who live in the Eastern parts of the country. but here we rely on the light; it is a pouring that informs time, change, ritual, sleep, exploration. without it we are disoriented, torpid; we seek to be low to the ground. we are suspicious. it is, maybe, because the wide open spaces are so inexhaustible that the thought of cloud cover enough to keep the whole stretch of day snuffed and diffused is mind boggling.

there is no rain- only the shocking tendrils of the smell of ambient water. we brace ourselves, let our skin lift slightly from our bones with the expectation of being sprinkled by rain. none comes. if you clamber high enough and stay your feet against wind, you can see that the sky dips and smudges towards other horizons, evidence that water is downward sighing somewhere. enough thirst of any kind (mind, body, bone, brain) kindles exasperation. you can combat it by reaching past your arms and waiting or you can put your ear to the ground and source the refuge of deep drinking elsewhere.


Toll canyon is a refuge of many kinds. for those trapped in suburbia it offers refuge from the grinding sound of perpetual highway traffic, for those of domesticated four legs it is a tonic for long naps and close quarters, for the wilder creatures (those displaced and divested of pure homestretches and tender greens) it provides shade, quiet and water. all kinds of living things manage to share this deep place despite its proximity to bulldozers, mobile home park spaces, five car garages and those tiny mechanisms installed to emit sounds terrifying to deer, elk and other garden-browsing creatures. in fact, the proximity to the lives of others requires the pilgrim to plod down the long and exquisitely manicured driveways of private homeowners, lambasted by barking dogs and eyed suspiciously by the gardening help. it is a feat of bravery to reach the head of the trail looking likely suspect: uncombed, slicked in spf, brandishing water jars, leaving trails of granola from a backpack that's seen better days...

but! after proceeding down a slight grade, here and there paved and tufted with eager penstemon, milk vetch, lupine and wild rose the road and the hillcuts give way (with relief) to a narrow canyon fringed with conifers, buffered with trembling aspen groves and grooved everywhere with moving water.

it is often a startlingly still place. this is likely because, due to small claims of private ownership, menacing (if unfounded) signs and that dreadful approach, few people venture into the canyon from its midpoint, choosing instead to access it  lower down the Big canyon. usually, it is hard to pinpoint the direction from which bird calls reach come, so tucked away in the steep branches are they. butterflies are attracted to the bluebells and the flax flowers and they serve as a kind of wobbling yellow atmosphere at shoulder height as one walks along. but birds and butterflies aside, water muffles both ambient sound and movement and it is more like swimming among coral formations than like tracking along forest trails. this pleasant kind of disorientation anchors me in the familiar natural world in an unusual way. here, i am mostly guided along by smell and the sensation of plants and breezes moving across my bare arms rather than by sight and sound. resplendent in blooms, buttercup, wild raspberry and young willows emit such a potent fragrance it is as if you can smell their burgeoning.

i wonder if this is how dogs move through the world: with their noses aloft, eyes closed to a slit, rushing at full speed through bracken and bush.

i am most cheered by the bravery of the wild strawberry. everywhere, it seems, the sprawling spiderlike leaves, with their red trailing stems, punctuate the topography of the little canyon. bright and modest, the little five petal flowers nod agreeably as the little winds jag and bloom in the canyon.

so? jam. and also because it is time to confront my relationship with rhubarb. that is, to cultivate a relationship with rhubarb. specifically. to me, its rigid red stalks are reminiscent of celery or chard, with their minerally woodiness and ungamely strings. but i was fortunate to be served something rhubarby, warm and baked in butter that immediately kindled excitement, and was further spurred on by a rather stoic pile of the stalks at last weekend's market.

somewhat overwhelmed by the esteemed Christine Ferber's recipe for strawberry rhubarb preserve (from her famous Mes Confitures) and put off by Alice Waters' adaptation in her Chez Panisse cookbooks, both of which call for a process involving three days of boiling, simmering, cooling, I took to Liana Krissoff's recipe (from her new, articulate, beautifully photographed, deliciously composed Canning for a New Generation which I can't recommend enough!) and am pleased to report that her traditional one-day escapade had glorious results.also, my clothes smell delicious, as a result of stove-vigilance.

it is humble thing, to melt down the complications of a plant's life. it is less humble to drag it across a thick piece of warm bread, velvety with a cloaking of soft butter. this gesture- toast and jam - heralds the integrity of those things that bloom in the uncomplicated bastions of quiet and shade, and who can find a refuge in the most unlikely of places.