Christmas cheer

Merry Christmas!

Welcome, winter

It's the first of the month. Snow arrived gracefully, silently in Canton today. Then it melted. Downtown, the shops were lit up and the trees sparkled with Christmas lights. Welcome, winter in the North Country!

Good Story

The sun was beaming and I was going bonkers inside. I grabbed my book and walked over to SUNY Canton and made a perch in the grass. This fallen oak leaf lay on the trail with a good story to tell.

Higher, Colder, Wilder

Peter and I headed into the Adirondacks for a hike up Azure Mountain. It was our first time there and we were greeted by the breathtaking site full of snow. It was a winter wonderland; the mountain was alive and in transition. From fall into winter. The sound of melting snow dropping onto papered leaves activated the trail on our way up. Tiny rivulets of running water were trapped beneath ice, and the streams formed dark shadows of slipper movement on rock face. The bursts of water swam with hurried ambition, like eager sperm. On top of the mountain the sun sparkled over the tinseled birch tips.

In Wandering Home, Bill McKibben talks about the Adirondacks with neighborly familiarity and respect. Comparing the area to his other home in Vermont he notes that "the Adirondacks are higher, colder, and wilder - people have lived here for fewer centuries in fewer numbers, and have never been able to make farming work for long. And so, over time, huge chunks have been left to rewild themselves, till in places it approaches the primeval."

While driving home, we noticed a sign on a diner door within park limits. It read "This is no park. This is where we work, this is where we live." Surely we - the recreational visitors - were the clueless patrons they meant to inform. Yet weren't we - the recreational visitors - the customers who sustained their small business? The irony reminded me that the Adirondacks are a great wilderness preservation experiment unfolding right in our backyard. Once, the Adirondacks were heavily logged, but those very areas are rewilding now. It may not be pure, virgin, unspoiled forest, but its recycled wildness speaks the language of redemption.

Atop Arab

Wind hums a hollow song in my ears. I notice a low rustle, too. It’s the sound of tissue and paper and crackle. I look in its direction and see rust-orange leaves quaking with equal measures of terror and determination. I know that movement. I can feel it in my upper body. It’s the same quiver of my arms bent in a right angle, hanging from the pull-up bar in the Northfield Middle School gym. My seventh grade biceps thin, taut, shivering with fatigue. Ms. Steffen keeps a slow, growling tempo, “fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…” and I hear my Reeboks smack the vinyl mat beneath the bar. It’s the sound of defeat and relief.

The landing sensation brings me back to my surroundings. I’m glad to be here alone. No Presidential Fitness Exam. No competition at all. I’m lying on the summit of Arab Mountain, a 2,500 foot peak in the northwest pocket of the Adirondack Park in northern New York. The open, rocky clearing is hemmed in by mountain ash, whose exposed branches look tatty on this late October day. A few red spruce cluster together, obscuring a bare naked birch. I prop myself up with one elbow. My other hand acts as a visor to block the afternoon sun and bring focus to what’s below. I’m facing southwest. Mount Arab Lake and Eagle Crag Lake lick the valleys, leaving bright, irregular slurps on the landscape.

The sun is sinking slowly and I notice the shadows have shifted on the gray rock face all around me. They’re just a bit longer, darker.

I stand, stretch upward and take one last gaze at the smoky foothills and High Peaks in the distance. With my back to the setting sun I bound down the mountain. I cross rocky outcroppings, lichen-covered branches and a slurry of mudslides and muck. I’m following a gold snake. We’re both skirting the trail in an attempt to stay dry along the ledge.

My nose catches the dark smell of earth and rot. I spot a cascade of ruffled mushrooms on a fallen tree and note the ovate leaves nestled around it. “Yellow birch,” I guess out loud. The fungus looks like Hen of the Woods, but these edibles usually grow up around oak and maple. Gently tearing a few from the soft trunk, I cup a handful of the cool mushrooms. Their undersides are honey colored and spongy.

As I cross the paved road heading toward my car, four female pheasants edge quietly into the woods not far from the trailhead parking lot. When I start the engine the radio engages. North Country Public Radio’s fall fund drive pushes on and the hosts keep me company as I backtrack 62 to 3, 68 to 56. These strangers’ voices, like the bridges through Colton, the sharp curves in the highway and the houses that line Pierrepont’s only artery, are beginning to feel familiar.

Outside, inside

Fall in the North Country has been exceptionally wet. Outside our kitchen window, soggy maple leaves are puddled, muddled.

Inside, these gingersnaps are just the opposite. They crinkle, they crunch, they crisp and crack! In anticipation of our trip to France this summer, I've been tracking David Lebovitz's blog "living the sweet life in Paris." This is his recipe for gingersnaps, shared by his pals in the Chez Panisse kitchen.

Wildness

This day shall go down in my personal history as the day William Cronon arrived and made an indelible impression on the way I think about wilderness... or wildness. Thoreau said "... in wildness is the preservation of the world." In Cronon's essay The Trouble with Wilderness (1996), he fears that humans' conception of what is and what isn't wild could destroy us. He begs us to rethink wilderness, particularly through an awareness of a "common middle ground" in the wild spaces we already revere, and also the backyard, the garden, the city.

"If wildness can stop being (just) out there and start being (also) in here, if it can start being as humane as it is natural, then perhaps we can get on with the unending task of struggling to live rightly in the world - not just in the garden, not just in the wilderness, but in the home that encompasses them both."

This blew my mind.

Cronon is making me look differently at my surroundings. My everyday walk from home to the ODY Library on the St. Lawrence University campus suddenly seems wild and mysterious as a hike in the back woods. Today I started collecting one fallen leaf from each tree I passed on my walk. Just as I might try to identify out there, so could I learn right here.

Grasse River

Leaves crunch underfoot as Peter and I walk across campus. Entering the wooded path just south of town, flecks of light surprise the damp ground and startle the dark canoe shack, our destination. With empty pockets (no cash, no bothersome phone) we push off into the river. Burnt maples and yellow birches hug the way, dropping leaves onto the still surface of the water.

Woodpecker, muskrat. They see us too, and they suspend activity to watch us glide by.

Water-logged leaves find their way to the easy current in the middle of the river. Pulled like sinew, they move together. Are they migrating, looking for a winter home like the five Canada Geese honking above us? I think their intentions are more like ours. Enjoying one last ride in the Grasse, absorbing the sun, hoarding the warmth of autumn.

Five on October First

Last weekend we celebrated our fifth anniversary. Here's what we did and saw...

Mapping

September has found me back in Minnesota... and with some time to spare. Yesterday, I headed north for my family's cabin. The cabin at Lake Inguadona is still new to us, so I'm still learning the area, its shapes, its contours.

"Mapping" the lake seemed like a step in recognizing and familiarizing, so I unfolded a regional map and made a little woodcut of Inguadona. Taking time to carve away its shoreline was an intentional gesture to pay attention to this new landscape. It was also repetitive, quiet, even meditative. A good activity for this rainy day.

Then while out on a walk I found this piece of bark in the very same shape as Inguadona. A perfect mate for the woodcut.

Harpers Falls

From an afternoon on the river...

My focus is interrupted by a visitor. A wiley and mischeivous insect, six legs, a slender body, antennae. She lands just inches from my left hand (she's about the size of my thumbnail bed) and observes the river with me. I stop to watch and she seems to notice my intrigue. Dramatically, even theatrically, she rubs her front legs together slowly as if plotting her next move. The fine hairs on her legs scratch like stubble. Then, with a quick and precisely articulated movement she lifts off and zips downstream into the afternoon glare on the river. I lift up, too, and find a slightly different perch, pulling my legs closer to my body and settling my bare feet into the rocks and small pebbles of the creek. As I lean back a hand lightly brushes my neck where my pigtails are pulled away. The fingers belong to a mass of foliage with arching, lanky copper stems topped with flat green phalanges. If I were ever to learn the names of these riverside plants, I think I would do best to memorize their silhouettes.

Internal Landscape

I just read Barry Lopez's "Story at Anaktuvuk Pass" and his description of two types of landscape (internal and external) made my imagination run wild.

"The [internal landscape] is a kind of projection within a person... deeply influenced by where on this earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature, the intricate history of one's life in the land, even a life in the city..."

If our interior is a reflection of our place, is there an aesthetic quality to this internal landscape? Even if it's deeply subconscious, I like to think that our homes - past and present - leave an imprint on our internal landscape.

I take pleasure

There's a crevice in my oak desk that catches my pencil when I draw. Rubbed with graphite it makes a long, tidy row.










I take pleasure in orderly crop rows, lines of young peas arching lyrically over a hill, tasseled corn tops like sentinels prepared for march. These patterns are marked deeply in me. They’re the aesthetic of my first 22 years.

Home was south-central Minnesota. At 19 I spent three months employed by the agricultural superhero of the Midwest. The Jolly Green Giant handed me a set of keys to a pick-up truck and a map of colossal proportions. I was sent out to collect writhing, fluttering specimens from a patchwork of fields that blanket the lower third of the state.

My job title was Pest Control Technician. On less aggrandizing terms, I was a lowly bug collector. I hunted corn borers, stink bugs and cutworms, then plucked them from their homes on the underside of cornstalks and pea shoots. With the glass jar beside me in the passenger seat, I rattled back over gravel roads, through sleepy townships and back to headquarters in Le Seuer, MN.

Bark-eaters

Before we left Seattle Stef gave us guidebook to the Adirondack Park. It made good reading during all the long hours in the moving truck. We learned that Adirondack takes its name from the Iroquois word ha-de-ron-dah which translates as bark-eater. It was an insult; a name for the Algonquins who lived in the region where the Iroquois travelled to hunt, fish and gather plants. So, our new local wilderness area was named after a late prehistoric slam. But you've got to give those Algonquins some credit; they were resourceful.

Today we took our first hike in the park. We started out in Wanakena and walked the flat path (a former railroad bed) to High Rock. We picnic-ed on the river and saw five canoes during our short lunch break. To our dismay, the wild blueberries we'd read about had already been found by some other resourceful hikers.

bag o' hearts

Today is February 2nd. This can only mean one thing. Actually it can mean a couple of things:

1. I am wearing red, and I will wear red, pink or purple every day of February until the 14th.

2. It is Groundhog's Day...not very important.

Last night the Valentine festivities began. I opened a bag of cherry juju hearts, cut out hundreds of hearts from red, pink and brown construction paper and set out my favorite valentine books, cards and other treasures. My girl, Sarah, and I brainstormed all the details of our "2nd grade Valentine party" which includes, but is not limited to:

-invitations that are to die for (photos to come...)

-heart garland hanging from the windows and chandelier

-a mobile of flying cupids (cupids found at AxMan and attached with fishing line)

-tomato cilantro soup (Orangette) with grilled cheese stamped with I <3>

As I sat at the table with a pile of pink and red paper scraps, my heart felt like tomato soup boiling over. I have my mom, dad and sister to thank for this nearly irrational love of the heart-holiday. It was always a time to express love and appreciation for each other, not a time to give red roses or boxes of waxy chocolate.

xoxo

That's Amore

For Annie, Ani and Ann... and their endless pizza-making quest.

Pizza Dough
Adapted from Jamie Oliver

1 3/4 c. white bread flour
1 1/2 c. fine semolina flour (or white bread flour, same as above)
1 tsp. fine sea salt
1/4 oz. active dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1 1/4 c. warm water

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Transfer to counter and knead for 10 minutes or mix in stand mixer with dough hook for 10 minutes. Form dough into a taut ball (pinching dough on the underside to create even pressure across the top of the ball). Sprinkle with flour, cover and let rest for 15 minutes. Divide into 6 equal pieces and form each piece into six taut balls. Cover and let rest for 15 minutes, or refrigerate for up to an hour. Pinch and pull balls until large enough to toss into large circles. Top sparingly with your favorite pizza toppings and bake in 450 degree oven for 6-8 minutes.

Nothin' Fancy (a guest appearance)

Wanting to stay more closely connected, my little sis Annie and I have started sharing recipes and little inspirations with each other... from her life in Minneapolis, MN and mine in Seattle, WA. Her last email to me was so delightful I thought I'd post it and try to start an ongoing conversation with her. Nothing else going on with Frank as my neighbor. Annie, you out there? Keep 'em coming...

1.12.2010

Well, my life has officially changed. After dinner last night I watched Julie and Julia. It is everything I love in one movie…I guess I’m not sure if that is a good thing or bad…My life can be summarized in a 123-minute movie? Either way, this is the pasta I enjoyed before my life changed. It was pretty tasty and used up the squash that has been hanging out in the vegetable bowl since before Christmas! I’m no Julia Child, but once and a while I give myself a pat-on-the-back after dinner.

Butternut Squash, Spinach and Lemon Pasta

Ingredients:
1 medium butternut squash, cubed

1 large onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 T fresh rosemary

5 cups torn spinach

Juice of ½ lemon

Dried whole-wheat pasta

Fresh Parmesan

Peel, quarter and cube squash. Cook in olive oil in a large soup-pot over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes, or until softened. Boil salted water for cooking pasta. Cook like you always do. Remove from pot and let sit in large bowl while sautéing onion. Add garlic and chopped rosemary (dried rosemary has nothing on fresh, so don’t even think about it) once onion has softened slightly. Add squash. Lastly, tear spinach into rough, edible pieces and mix into squash/onion mix. Squeeze the juice of ½ a lemon to finish and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook until flavors have mixed, about 7 minutes. Drain pasta, top with squash topping and parmesan cheese. Enjoy!

PS-I actually thought that I wouldn’t want to use the entire squash in the pasta (duh! Can you ever have too much squash?!), so I reserved half of it and cooked it in a covered baking dish with real apple cider, a pinch salt and oil for 25 minutes. I ended up putting it in the mix with the squash that I’d sautéed. It was deliciously sweet.