kinds of bivouacking

these days we are mostly living outside. partially because we have been blessed with a rare coolness, and partially because when we are not blessed, the house inhales deeply of the hot air and doesn't let it out till the stars have long been out. this is, i think, an important part of being a human who seeks to identify with their animal insides. for while we can, of course, be sustained by the tiny altars everywhere inside our nests...

it is good to feel the wind move our hair, to smell what is bloom (here we have flax flowers, yarrow, chamomile, mint, indian paintbrush and burdock,) and to seek out a translation of what the magpies are always talking about when they take up a mighty racket in the groves. 

it is good also, i think, to share company with other things that spend only part of their days outside and to feel out how a living space is different than a loitering space. not a curbside, not a parking lot, not a food truck, not even parade-side bivouac. a living space outside demands that personal dimensions be honed and lined up. it seems like it is mostly a great dragging of shares and resettling of pots. but in the end, and it is a late end because August is almost here, it feels right. and then coming inside starts to feel wonky and slanted. and somehow that feels triumphant! if only for a short while.

asylum

 

 

The big canyon empties into the valley, blushing green and delirious in blossoming trees. The valley's confetti of glass and steel gives way to the refineries: endless loops and arcs of enamel and steam. Then the parched and decimated towns that have sprung from the leachwater and finally the stillness of another valley; this one less peopled and wrangled. 

Here the northeastern arm of the Great Salt Lake swings into the mouth of the Bear River and lays bare its throat of alkali fields, marshes, wetlands and grasses. There are 80,000 acres of carefully controlled wilderness here. Dikes and jetties corral the water up and down. In and out. It is marked asylum, safe haven, packaged respite.

In May, despite the broad heat, everything is still gold and dry from winter kill. Only the most slender green feet of the cattails have emerged, fresh and delicate and lost among the dead standing reeds from last summer. 

Leaving the highway is like shedding a rigid husk. Nebulous and stunned we move out of the car. A split second of aching and slamming silence and stillness. And then. Sound. Whirring and palpable sound. First from one broad streak of river and then everywhere, behind our foreheads, in our clothes. Sounds like gravel being shaken in a brass bell, electric sounds split open with water, shorting and roaring. Sweet musical sounds snagged on the nodding grass, fringed sound and hoops of sound. Mostly it is from unseen life. To stand in one place and move only your eyes you'd think it was the marsh plants themselves singing. Faeries among discarded plastic cups, shotgun shells, plastic cutlery. 

Birds abound- on purpose. With purpose. For this place lost among many thousand arid miles is an oasis for birds who live elsewhere. These birds stop through, eat, rest, surrender and move on. Sometimes they leave feathers and bones. Footprints. Mud cobbling. A few birds will stay on to breed and raise chicks, but eventually the magnet fibers thrill through their hollow bones and they move on with greater Purpose to wherever it is they Belong.

The names are beautiful, foreign. For desert dwellers all this water and taxonomy is otherwordly. Cinnamon teals. Yellow headed blackbirds. Cliff swallows. Great blue herons. White faced ibises. Canada geese. Plovers. Red necked stilts. American avocets.Great white pelicans.  Even the more familiar birds seem exotic here: magpies, common finches, gulls. Terns and sea birds rent the air and, like falling spades, part the water and dredge up carp like bread loaves. Scales shock against the sun.

The air is alive with birds and midges. Squinting into the horizon flocks and swoops of birds will tip into view, throw wide beams of light off their blinding plumage, then tip back, dissolve. Disappear. We arrived in the midst of a midge hatch. Cyclones and lunatic masses of mosquito-like insects rising from the cupped faces of clover.  These flies do not bite and tear. Not because they do not desire, but because they are made without jaws. The weight of them bends grass. Shivering and arcing columns of the bugs fringe the road like smoke signals. The noise, like warm hysteria, can be heard with the windows rolled up. Such a microcosm exploded.

Where the road spreads and stops a pavilion has been erected. Octagonal, fit with those plastic coated benches for addressing the marsh. But cliff swallows have taken over. Tiny birds, capable of lfying 46 miles per hour who spend eighty five percent of their furious lives in the air. The little mud gourds of nests have crept along the entire underside of the pavilion. Like soaring barnacles the swallows move in and out, calling and shifting, completely unafraid. The loudest sound we hard was the tap-tap of wings beating as we went to sit under the nests, not song, just air being shoved along. A moment of stillness, then the birds were back, bringing mouthfuls of mud and song to tack their nests together. The air was outrageous, disorienting, truly alive.

A sweep of dirt road clutches a central disc of wetlands in the center of the refuge. The rest cannot be entered by foot or on wheels. Twelve and a half miles is as much as you get to drive. It took us four and a half hours. We stopped every so often to let the midges alight on our elbows, to see pelicans knocks and bob against one another, to see herons spread wings wide as station wagons and heave themselves across still glass. The sun hit the water. Many little skies winked up from the ground. We rode a fine line of horizon, doubted how solid it was. Moved slowly so as not to slip out of time and place. We clutched each other every so often but didn't know why. We perched on the back of the car with a small sandwich in each hand and forgot to chew for long periods.

And then we re-entered the world. Returned to our clumsy bodies, moving hugely, anchored to the ground. We turned on the air conditioning, scanned the radio and then peered at each other with our brows drawn. Turned the radio off. Pointed our faces and our compass due north, tried to melt back into more familiar living world, the one bound to stillness, with decided gaping hole where bird song should be.

On the blades of cold

Deep cold, narrow days. Frost alive on all the trees as the mercury fails and shudders at the bottom of the thermometer. -9, -11, -12. The cold is alive and dynamic instead of passive and heavy. Going out and all the skin on your face lays tight and your eyes smart. How articulated all the planes feel as the cold primes and hums across them. And we? Head out into it. When we can tolerate (some of us better than others!)

We will sometimes bundle and arm ourselves and head into the trembling light. Getting to the top is no colder than being down low, only leaner and fiercer.

Sometimes this relentless cold and dark time makes me feel smothered. I am lucky to have been guided by serendipity to the deep thinking and light-oriented writings of May Sarton. From her 1973 Journal of a Solitude, she wonders about the nature of this closing-up as well...

     "I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let all the riches of a season, how without grief (it  seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep.....Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let is go."

                         -October 6th entry.

Such a mimicry, we could be so honored to get it even close to right. Those trees.

ungulates

at school we had a visitor. small for her size with great clouds of ether issuing from her nostrils and making all who saw her swoony and slow.

moose, despite their slowness and deliberate footing, often disrupt. partially because they are unpredictable- surprisingly agile, fierce, and fast; they will back slowly away when approached as often as charge.

as the earth moving machines and the newly relocated sift and rip at the moose's habitat, they are forced up, over and out of the small valleys and hills where they like it best. often when the weather begins to shift into cold and frost they will revisit old feeding grounds for food that has not yet frozen over. frequently they will shear and raze young cultivated shrubs and trees to sticks to the great dismay of their gardeners.

it is a hard balance we strike with them especially since moose, like most large and long living animals, are creatures of habit and will find a place they like and return again and again. when you see a moose in your yard,  see that wide fringed swoop of grass where he made his bed by the foxglove plant, under the window, you will see it again. and over again.

dogs do not disrupt them terribly. like monkshood and oleander, we have inadvertently (though only to a very small degree,) domesticated a living thing that poses danger to us. the moose become used to the small shouting animals that come out of buildings, to the strange, hard surfaces that loop the land, to the troublesome heaps of plastic and wood that are left out among the tender bushes to be knocked over while grazing, spilling cushions across the ground. and yet when people come out, waving arms and making all different kinds of noises, a moose, especially with a calf, will become rewired. now stiffening, now crackling and shivering, the side of fur and force will run at any living thing it assumes is a threat. they are diligent. they are fast. they are excellent swimmers.

and so from time to time there are stories about some poor soul, trampled and crushed beneath the dainty feet of a thundering ungulate, to their peril (but likely not because they were innocently strolling by.) this is unusual really. likely the consequence of someone getting too close, or not recognizing the change in the moose and running away pellmell when he should. (here is that gem of wisdom we are so often confused by in dealing with animals. from which do we flee and at which do we make lots of noise, wave our arms and stomp? as i am told by Someone Who Knows a Great Deal, a moose, being an omnivore without a predatory instinct, responds most positively in sticky situations to being left to her own devices. swiftly. yes, turn your back and run, for a moose has no "chase" circuitry; it does not seek a meal from you, but peace and quiet. (as, i am sure, we all do, most irritably, from time to time.)

and this is why, i think, that when a volunteer from school sought to rid of playground of our visitor by running out in her high heels and yelling, the moose was suddenly on her feet, head down aiming herself forward and charging. because no one really likes to be disrupted from a quiet morning with steam and light and bending grass and leaves falling slowly to the ground, by a yell and a stomp. moose or otherwise.

arrow poison

today, like a phoenix from ashes, rose the last glowing living thing from our flowerpots. monkshood (devil's helmet, leopard's bane, wolfsbane) is a beautiful plant, tall and leggy. fragile and wispy with delicate shadows and veins full of a most potent poison. pulling leaves without gloves will allow small amounts of poison to slowly soak through fingertips, ride up the arm and shake at the engine of the heart. any breaks in the skin and the sap will move all the more quickly, a fierce arrow with true aim. doses in any larger amounts will plunge us into death almost instantaneously and yet, when a weak sun rose and pierced frost and cold, these indigo petals are ones we keep close (at our door) and we know the Cold Dark is upon us when the last one sighs and tips out of life and into the bodies of its decaying brothers.

on light

 

the light is failing here. strange to find that this kind of dying, the annual kind, is a death of which we are not afraid. better words for what we are could be resolute, or stoic. knowing death is coming snaps close the fear blade. death now lets us savor light and time and warmth. we linger at windows, move our bodies into the beams that fall across the carpet. 

all summer the trees blow green and nimble against our wall of windows. the light they cast is either invisible or immaterial, for lingering against it is something we rarely do. but now as the light thickens, slows, tips in where before it streamed and blew, we are taken aback. while we sadden we are nevertheless flush with gold. weak but solid. we notice. we sit up with our nerves unfurled and trembling. how many more days will we have before the limbs are bare? before our own limbs are covered and kept from the sharp and the cold to wait for spring. and how, how can we be longing for such a thing already?

walks. soup.

with fall coming a new light approaches. a damp light, heavy and dense. when the dogs and i walk the land we cut through wind and light to make our way to high places. sometimes the feat is so great not even the warmth of the sun can settle our flapping breath or warm those places chilled and fearful from the work of simply putting one foot in front of the other. but there is certainly beauty abound.

the patina of a dying year. good for keeping secrets, planning adventures and conjuring up fierce hungers.
and when we are cold we go in for something hot.

this is potassium broth. a medley of many skins. roots, leaves. the protective and nourishing barriers between the earth and the things that nestle and thrive there. ayurvedic practitioners ask us to drink broths to restore the salt and water of our bodies. a kind of ocean kindling for our own secret seas. the most bolstering part of such mugfuls is perhaps that they come from such stoic and simple beginnings. and to nourish yourself on the minerally jackets of soil dwelling creatures seems the best way to part the veil of the year and enter in the decaying magic that autumn winks at us from our windows.

more scientifically, potassium broth (so called from the concoction of mineral-rich plant matter,) is a good and real source of electrolytes. frequently prescribed to the sick, the recovering, or those on the verge, potassium broth is a very bio-available way of replacing lost salts and fluids. those who are prone to cold would benefit from a knob of ginger here and perhaps a very small section of chili. parsnips and rutabagas add a sweetness for those in bitter places like heartbreak and overwork. and for the already overheated, serve this less than piping hot with something astringent and mild atop such as cilantro or mint leaves.

potassium broth (some percentages)
25% potato peelings
25% carrot peelings and whole chopped beets (with tails, not greens)
50% dark leafy greens (the tougher the better. think kale and turnip greens, not spinach. although this is fine and certainly better than lettuce.)
one leaf kombu or arame
sprinkling of celery seeds or Maine dulse sprinkles

cover all with water just to the chin, bring to a boil, turn down to low and simmer until the house swells and sighs and you can wait no longer for a cupful.

razzes

went berry picking here a few weeks ago.
strange and beautiful.
strange to drive for so many hours, out of the crowd, out of one valley and into another, out of density and familiarity, out of the grid. into the rural places of the southern valley. flats ribbed for stretches with rises, fields burnished gold, crispy brown, emerald green, the alive and the recently departed side by side. off the highway, out into roads built to loop pasturelands, the houses seemed to respond to maps already laid out for them. none of them asked for their own place, houses but up against irrigation ditches and manure banks. the fine new faux stucco, the cobbles glued up against plywood framing, stilts of gleaming white cement, and a dirt front yard. sometimes tricyles. sometimes car bodies. the strangest juxtapositions.
the raspberry patch comes up directly to the road in a neighborhood that slants up towards the hills that cup Utah Lake. manicured lawns across the street, speed boats and dirt bikes at tight and rigid rank.
the raspberry patch itself is beginning to succumb to the decent of fall. brown and blown vines drooping. everywhere collapsed fruit, languid wasps, the sticky carpet of leaves and berries and dust between the rows. but! here and there! the gleam. a jewel bright fistful of berries bobbing beneath dead cane. the time we spent looking. it was time spent foraging really. modern day gleaners with milk cartons tied to our waists, seeing what we could pick off of summer and keep greedily while the sun is
still high.

no fine plans for the loot. thirteen pounds of berries, slowly slipping into juice and pulp. but we are undaunted. froze them up flat in the freezer to pull out on a dreary day in February where something bright and alive will stir us all from the deepest places.

humble foods for soothing a tired traveler

there has been homecoming, home leaving, home-getting-back-to and home-with-which-we-will-begin-to-visit-less-frequently. with the summer's whirlwind of social this-and-that, trips, house guests and the like our little pack over here hasn't had its usual high summer equation that combines panes of sunlight, shady patios, sighing aspen leaves, late breakfasts, quietude, painting and book reading to render that deeply nourishing summer sloth that we all look forward to and need.  it sometimes looks like this:

of course we've certainly had more than enough adventures and for that we are grateful and certainly more worldly and wise.

but sometimes we ache for simplicity, solitude and a lack of vagabondage.  and these kinds of times, when we awake late in the morning and spend time slowly pressing coffee and turning records on and off the turntable, the best kind of food is the very plain and the very soft.

these crispy little ingots were inspired by this (as i have previously said) but also from here where their funny little edges and accompanying explanation were the clincher in trying them out. (it's possible that i'm always a sucker for a bright and fierce young woman, living alone and trying to make her way through life through the filter of the kitchen. that seems an almost guaranteed methodology for revelation.)

 

the best part about these, for me at least, is the forgiving nature of this kind of potato cake. you start with a base of mashed potatoes, roll it about in egg and crumbs and fry it. very little can go wrong as the frying is not what cooks the potatoes (as this happy medium of just-right-temperature oil can sometimes evade a kitchen lady despite having her thermometer and somewhat sensitive stove dials). you can get fancy- or not. you could, say, fold in leftover bits of grilled salmon, preserved lemon and tarragon. or browned onions, flecks of cheddar cheese and a good coarse grinding of black pepper. you could more subtly spruce things up with a knifepoint of raw garlic and the finest veil of chopped herbs. ad nauseum. we went the route of digging up the strata of the vegetable bin to those growing things that were in direst need of metamorphosis. and it was a tasty, humble venture. especially with good, velvety scrambled eggs.

infinitely adaptable potato croquettes

(adapted from Nigel Slater's potato cakes with taleggio and chard (from Tender, Volume 1) and from Rachel Eats' potato croquettes)

1 pound potatoes

1/2 stick (4 T butter)

pinch salt

half bunch kale (stems removed)

1/3 - 1/2 cup taleggio, fontina or gouda finely diced

small milk bowl full of bread crumbs (to which you have added a grinding of pepper and a little salt)

small milk bowl into which you have broken 1 egg and whisked it slightly, maybe thinning it with water if it seems too thick)

oil for frying 

*bring a small pot of salted  water to boil

*while waiting scrub and quarter the potatoes

*when  boiling, plunge the kale into the water until bright green and tender, about five minutes. run under cool water to stop cooking, squeezing out water, chop finely and set aside

*boil the potatoes until quite tender

*pass them through a food mill or mash by hand with the butter and season with salt (pepper wouldn't hurt)

* into the potato mash stir the kale and the cheese. 

*form into little cakes using two large spoons, rest to cool on a parchment lined cookie sheet for about a half an hour (this is an important part, don't rush them!)

*bring a few inches of oil to temperature in a heavy bottomed stockpot or skillet. the optimal temperature for this is 350 but the general visual clue is a 'shimmer' on top of the oil. you can also put the tip of a wooden chopstick into the oil and if a myriad of bubbles form instantly around it that's the go-ahead.

*while the oil is heating dunk the cooled potato cakes into the egg and then into the seasoned bread crumbs

*fry the cakes until golden on each side, turning frequently. depending on the size of the cakes it should take about 3 - 5 minutes.

*drain briefly on kitchen paper or a paper bag

*eat at once!

*perhaps with an egg

treks

a jaunt up into the Wasatch wilds with mum the other day. thoughtful of our busy itinineraries these last few weeks the wildflowers have bided their time and waiting to burst into delirious bloom until now. (well...to be frank, the mountains and they're literal late blooming tendencies demand anyone who wishes to see wildflowers wait until late July at which point they are cut short only by the first killing frost or snowstorm. such a fleeting life up there.)

lovely views (if somewhat cut short by an abundance of flies) and much sun blinding and pounding over all.

more color than usual on the bridge of the nose and the cheeks which resulted in the thoughts below...