The coolest made up animal ever made up

Writing for me is not a task, a chore, a verb. It is an animal inside my being and scurries and scatters, digs and climbs, uncovering emotions, burying thoughts. It lays dormant for hours, months, long winters of internal time. It wakes slowly, stirs, tries to find a way out here or there. I fight against it. External time has constraints. I feel compelled to keep the animal in stasis from guilt. There are things to be done. What things? It doesn’t matter. It’s the doing that matters. Do things. Do more things. Can’t writing be a thing that you do? No. Because. Or when acceptance has finally been come around to by force or pain, the animal scraping and digging fiercely for escape, for breath and the guilt of occupation has been won over there still remains stifling obligations. There is the subject matter to consider and the audience. You should apply yourself to writing about x or y or z not n! and may all social constructs forbid that your composition be addressed explicitly or implicitly to p or q. Much safer to broadcast to the set of m=[a, a+1,…h]. But it doesn’t take much to trace this back into the former guilt of a thing to be done. This is writing as a verb. A verb is not wrenching my insides out in the panic of a dark tomb.

The current dilemma is one of theme. Squalor. I question myself. Why do you choose the dismal? Or let me be more clear, why do you choose the dismal when your life is so obviously and clearly on the upswing? Is it healthy? What with this or that human think? What do you know of fetid existence really? What right do you have to speak towards such things?

I imagine the slant towards the miserable has something to do with the most recent selections in reading material. Whether up beat or beaten down the backdrop of my most recently visited fictional worlds have been painted in hues of grey, brown, poverty, sickness, pain and steely blue. I recognize also that the atmosphere of any selected story, place or occurrence trapped by the strokes of a pen will be colored intimately by the specific pile of words wrestled into the line of a sentence. A sewer filled with vagabonds and ruffians can be papered over with the warm and festive feel of a fair just as halls lined with gold and silver gilt can be transformed into a prison given the appropriate cadence and tense. The written word is dangerous and powerful.

However, my literary intake can only account for so much of the shift towards stagnant puddles in my mind. No, I have become convinced that the largest compulsion comes from the hours I’ve been awake, the flavors of the company I have spent my time with, and the shades and tones of the building in which most of my conscious time has played out. Nocturnal. Police. Emergency Center. Dispatch.

Over and again the questioning of my obligation to write or not write this or that phrase. By what right? I feel the claws sink deeper into the unprotected internal flesh.

I suppose that the best writers of fiction are in fact the best liars and they are the best liars because they approximate most accurately the elusive phantom of truth. So it goes.




I crack open the den. I write.

Opening Day (PA edition)

I stand atop a shipping container which is stacked on a shipping container that is in turn resting on another and another. And this stack is fastened to another of equal height beside it. We are 42 feet off the ground counting the concrete pad supporting the stack. But as our tower of seaworthy metal blocks is on a hillside, to the south the drop off puts us at something more like 64 feet. The tower is painted and industrial military shade of green to match it's purpose. Someday snipers may train in this very spot with a rifle much more powerful and accurate than my own. We are 3 sentinels guarding this tower from a theoretical onslaught of deer.

I stay at the East side of the stack. My focus is on a field that is visible for 300 yds before it dips and any deer disapear from view. In truth even in the open field they will be hard to spot because the brush in places is nearly 3 feet high, so too are the deer if they drop their heads. More than half of the field is encircled with a thin stand of timber marking property lines and parcel edges. Though only 10 feet wide in most spots it is enough to offer a deer the illusion of cover. I regularly check these potential avenues of travel especially considering that the deer have worn a path directly beneath my perch. in the north there is thick timber from which we expect our quarry to come. It is state land, publicly huntable and filled with rifle bearing men in orange who we hope will shift the deer in our direction. I occasionally look south at a triangle shaped bench along the hill. It is thick with brush but it in a deer pushed upwards my try to catch his breath before continuing to ascend.

My nephew, a year my younger, guards the western flank. His view is wider, more interesting, harder to manage. Straight west is flat for a piece with a line of rotting machinery at the edge of the trees. it then slopes slightly, crests and drops off at 400 yards. But along the shallow traverse there are dips which will hide a deer from sight. A few clumps of pines also dot this section. To the south his view drops off much more rapidly. The hill is steep and we are high so most of it is in view. And arm branching off from the peak is the tipping point of sight but it many places it is 300 yards away.

The bottom of the hill is marked by a dirt road running east-west. Beside it and on our side but mostly out of view from our perch is the 1000 yard range increasing west to east. It is marked at 100 yard intervals with mounds of dirt growing ever higher with distance from the targets. It was seeded with clover and grass after construction this summer and the part that is visible to me is a verdant green even now. Our tower is roughly between the 7 and 8 hundred yard mounds. On the other side of the road the terrain again rises, a low hill that happens also to split a creek and become an island in the process. This island is surrounded on 3 sides by swampy brush and timber and the far side is better than 1200 yards from me as the crow flies. The terrain rises again beyond the island, thick trees for a while then another "open" field with a strip of trees surrouding it, marking pipeline-east, property line-west, and crest of hill-south.

My brother is at an intersection of paths at the bottom of the hill. Treeline, creek, island corner and dirt road meet beside him and very near the 600 yard mark. He paces like a caged animal around the cable spool which is supposed to remain his home base. He covers all directions. Protected from our view and our rifles by a hump in the hill are 2 friends of my brother and father, Sam and Ross. One is on a cable spool above 1000 yards and the other on a spool above 200.

My father for his part walks between us like a commander checking on troops. He has a rifle, loaded, resting on the makeshift plywood table. But he would rather we shoot first. As we wait he points out orange dots and names them, describes the owner of each stand and the stand itself. Talks about how he knows them and the deer they are likely to take. Across the field from me is a party of 4 hunters. They take turns sitting 2 in a tree stand and 2 driving deer. They are shooting for meat and likely have doe tags. For them anything goes. Along the pipeline a party of 2, unknowns to us. Near the edge of the far trees tucked into a fox hole covered with tin is ---, barely visible. His friend sits in the middle of that far field. Every other year --- takes a trophy buck. He will hold out for glory until the final days of the season. His friend, we suspect, will shoot the first shootable deer.

Shooting light comes and goes without incident. By some design of the state, it is not yet light enough to see through a scope until 5 minutes after you are permited to fire. As it was we wait nearly 10 minutes before the first shot christens the season in earnest. It is followed by a volley from all directions and a lull. This patteren continues until an hour past lunch. Five to ten minutes of regular shooting from every which way and then silence for half an hour or more. It is as if the rifles are calling to one another from distance hillocks and checking in to maintain the pack formation.

The tree stand hunters have luck early, within the first hour of light they take something. We cannot tell from our vantage point if it was buck or doe but it never crossed within our line of sight so it probably doesn't matter much. Across the island, friend of --- makes a kill. This is unfortunate as the pair is old and the deer is far from a road. It takes them over a hour and a half working together to drag their beast up the hill and into the back of a faithful pick-up. They do not stay to fill another tag.

My brother takes a shot. It makes contact but does not kill. He calls to inform as he gears up for a hike through swamp. An hour later we here a shot from his supposed direction and half an hour past that we get another call. Among other things he is wet waste deep from the failure of a beaver dam he was crossing. His deer is now cooling in the creek while he seeks dry clothing. One of the pipeline brothers saw him and bored with his station wandered down to investigate. Obnoxious and unhelpful. Why the deer did not drop immeditately is beyond us all. The first shot was accurate, true and more than enough to end things quickly. Perhaps this deer found a methamphetamine stash this morning.

Kurt has a doe tag but wants to save it for a snow covered day. His plan is 5 buddies on the tower and a doe crossing the island at 1200 yards. The stuff of legends. He joins us for a while on the tower while his deer cools in the creek.

While he is hiking we see a buck too far away to shoot let alone count points. It is headed for Sam and his failure to shoot tells us that is was not legal. My father sees a doe come and go quickly. For a long time my nephew watches a buck, well within range. He is perhaps a year and a half old. The same age as the pair we took a few short months ago in Idaho and every bit bigger for having grown up here. He is a 5 point, 3 on one side including the brow tine and 2 on the other...no tine. For a man who has only 5 hours to shoot before he has to travel home, this is more than large enough to take and in most of the state it would be legal. However, on our side of the state, where deer grow larger faster, we are constrained to only shoot deer with more than 4 points on one side...or rather 3 points off the main beam and you can skip the brow tine (so goes the rule new this year). The buck pauses for him more than once as it makes it's way down the hill. Until next year good sir. I dare you to walk this way again.

Time comes and goes. My sister comes. She and my nephew go. They fix my father's tire before they head for Indiana and in turn have tire trouble of their own crossing Ohio. A pothole of epic proportions blows one tire and bends another rim. The police tell them "We know, we know. File a claim with the state." They are home in time for my sister to start her shift at 10pm.

We pack up and head home. There has been no volley for over an hour and we suspect there is no one left in the game lands to drive us deer. Rain fell in torrents throughout the morning and continued to pizzle down for the duration of our stay. We are cold, wet, hungry and unenthused.

At home we each scavenge in the fridge for food to heat. Top this off with a hot drink and spirits lift slightly. We reaquire wet gear from piles on the livingroom floor and step out of the house for round two. This time I mount my fathers tree stand in the field below our house. He circles behind and tries to drive deer my way. His first and second loops return nothing. His final kicks up a doe, shot in the back leg and limping. She puts some weight on it but not much. I burn with anger at whatever fool did this. If there is a chance that your hit will be half that bad you do not bother to flip off the safe. There is no honor in a wound like that, no respect in causing suffering. The goal is accurate and therefore quick and painless. I have no tag to exchange for her life as she limps up the hill as quickly as she can manage. She will bed down in the trees beside my uncles house and his boys are flush with doe tags. I will see them tonight and tell them where to go.

Thus ends opening day. With rain, pain, and a twinge of sorrow. I shower immediately. I found a solitary deer tick on my hand and my mind has convinced me that I am covered in wee beasties. My dinner of leftovers is heart-warming, though I skip the stuffing, please pass the potatoes (and forgive the pun if you happened to pick it up). I sleep quickly, soundly and late. Tomorrow (now yesterday), according to weather forecasts, a horrible day for hunting.

Today I am in bed equally late. The world is shaddowed in full blowing blustering white and wind howls through cracks in the windows. This is supposed to stop in a few hours at which time I will gear up and remount the tree stand. But at the moment my thoughts wander to eggs, ham, coffee.

-Jn

Between a dumpster and a concrete place

I intended to write through breakfast. To my surprise, when I stopped it was past lunch. Unintended consequences of observation.

No dear reader, these words were not for public consumption. But this was more than reassuring as only last night I was considering my lack of inspiration among friends. Yes I have left my preferred canvas of aspen and tamarack at daybreak but apparently garbage trucks, smoking stylists, and exhaust fans on a grey drizzly day can be prepared in a manner worth of ink and paper.

So it goes. I do not want to do my homework.

-Jn

Montana, the sunrise state

My father by some unknown power managed to drive 11 hours straight through the night last night while I slept fitfully in the back of the truck. He turned the keys over to me shortly after 6 am local time, just east of Billings. This, my friends, presented me with a glorious treasure. A sapphire so blue that you stare into it until you lose your mind. A sunrise on a cloudless Montana morning. Pure, graceful beauty.

For a space between Billings proper and the outskirts of mention there is emptiness. No lights brighten the road. A few souls flew past to open some store for the future souls who need stores open before their 9-5s begin. A couple of truckers were also on the road. Likely team drivers who do not need to lie about sleep in a log book. My body had long since grown numb to the bumps and bustles of the road beneath the tires turning steadily homeward. In the darkness I might as well have been flying through space in a hover car, a rocket ship, the vehicle of the future. And there on the horizon out of the darkness is an alien constellation. Lights that would outshine the sun surrounded in clouds of mystery and wonder. Mist threading here and there between stacks and domes with a few torches, flames for dramatic effect. These brilliant gems, Montana People’s Power and Light, Conoco Phillips, and Exxon Mobil. A coal fired power plant churning all night to fuel a pair of refineries which not only burn but also process the midnight oil. An ethereal dream, wrapped in wisps of steam. This is the lifeblood of Montana. This is a steady stream of income for a populous. This is the beauty of production. But I can only hold the lights for a few moments. The darkness swallows even those lights whole as I churn eastward.

A first for me. A wolf hit by the car on the side of the road. “Good dog. It’s a little chilly at 17 degrees but I know you will be quite comfortable in that ditch.” There is a season for wolves in Montana as in Idaho. One state to the east, and my next destination, has no such privileges. The sun will crest the hills mere moments before I breech the state border but I do not know this yet.

I am flying quickly through the darkness as dotted lines tick under my tires. But there is a change in the inky black. I sense it. A Painter is on the prowl. Somewhere in the black, a black tipped tail twitches. The tawny lion, the dawn is hunting. Swiftly and silently it is coming, diligent to its purpose. So many fools wandering now are unaware of its coming. It will take them before they know it. But I am awake and keen to watch the sun approach.

The first signs of an as yet non-existent light come in the faint outline of what might be a horizon. If asked, even if hard pressed, both sky and land are as black as black can possibly be. But somewhere in the distance, where the edges of the earth reach toward the infinite, a black is slipping in to blue. The stars still shine with all the brilliance and honor the million year journey of light deserves. Punctuation marks across an otherwise immutable glass ceiling of darkness. No, the next shift toward a lighted heaven is hinted at on earth. Each pond, puddle, lake and lagoon is gathering up every stray ray of the infantile dawn and reflecting it to any being that will see. In the black on black the name for this color is shimmer. Crayola has yet to dissolve it into a 4 part formula in wax and I hope they never shall. Hiding in the havens of shimmer are small black forms in comfortable, irregular clumps. Waterfowl, hoteling. They are headed homeward south as I press towards the east. And then as at the ends of the world black shapes start to appear against the black earth, silhouettes on silhouettes. Here there are forms of beasts, cattle. There the forms of bales, hay.

And there to the east is a change in shade. Out of the blackness, the colors of the rainbow spread from ceiling to floor but in muted charcoal tones. These are not quite colors. There is a hint of yellow, perhaps green. But no it is just grey I suppose. Is that pink on the horizon? I think so, but no…it is only more grey. This continues for an odd hour or more. Black gives way to pale pastel in ever lightening washes of grey without becoming something of a complete color. No color you would stake a dollar on at any rate.

Somewhere in between the not quite indigo and essence of blue the stars wink out one by one. The almost shades of rainbow are drifting upwards, westwards around the dome. To one ill experienced with a nascent sun or more comfortable with the close of day this might seem to signal a new wave of brilliance, for is not a sun rise merely the opposite of a sunset? But this has never been the case. An aged day is cocky, flamboyant. Raging mad with sparks of color to highlight the insanity as the sun plunges towards another death. Purples intermingle with oranges and gold shines out with neon flare against preposterously pink clouds. And even as the sun struggles downwards it thrusts out final rays in hopes it will not be forgotten. But as an infant the day comes wrapped in layers tenderness. The soft shades of new skin. Pink lines the edges of the buttes for a time and you sense that the sun when it first appears must certainly be pink. Imagine the disappointment then when colors never actually appear. Pink slides softly out of existence, kissing the contours of the hills at your back before disappearing completely.

As yet there is no sun but the sky is full light and it seems so too is the earth. From black on black into light on light, for all of creation is covered in snow. This color too is best described as shimmer and again it is dotted with dark forms. However, these are the black bodies of range cattle. The plod onward in whichever direction their whims take them. They graze, then they wander, then they pause to chew, and all the while they praise their Creator for their darkness as they soak up any light that reaches them. All heat is precious when the air hovers near single digits.

To my right I spy a pack of wolves. They are running in a line and like me they are pointed towards the east. This part of the country is much more open than the one I left 12 hours earlier. These wolves are in season and exposed. And so they are on the move. They are less than a handful of miles from the neighboring state where they are still protected and this is where they are bound with all haste. Their feet are faster than mine, but they are no match for the speed of my tires and they are out of sight in seconds. I catch a glimpse of a sentry prairie dog searching the new day for something to fear. His wish will be granted in 5 minutes or so when the wolves pass through his village.

I can see Wyoming’s welcome sign in the distance. Then suddenly I can see nothing but light. The sun has finally scaled the hills and is present in full glory. A ball of fire that cannot warm the day soon enough. Though momentarily blinded the sun has also revealed a danger I’d not paused to consider. The asphalt leading me eastward is coated in a shine of black ice. I ease off the accelerator and slow to what I consider a reasonable speed. I am passed frequently, but then I watch the hasty slide as they cross bridges at wrong angles and I am reassured that my pace is perfect. It will be another hour before I drift above 51 and then only once behind an ash truck. Miles tick off more slowly but also more safely and I am content. 

Bad Air, Bad dog

I will try very hard to explain the aura of the day.

The moon is waning but still above half. It’s setting about two hours past dawn and it’s mighty bright if the day is clear. Today on the way to my secret spot was no exception but clouds came in fast after I was settled. However, with the combination of the moonlight dispersing through the clouds and the first pre-dawn rays of sun doing likewise, shooting light came early. But if was as if the sun stopped rising shortly after I could see my crosshairs against the amber grass. It failed to get brighter than new morning for the duration I was in the woods. The yellows and golds which seem bright as they welcome the dawn became sickly, jaundiced tones as the hours progressed without a sun.

A few squirrels chattered from their trees, but too few. And why would they not come down? A few birds called but from the safety of heavy brush in the woods. Why all this hesitation? Only the crows were active and it seemed that they were out in force to compensate for the lack of other life. They purred, burbled, cackled and screeched above my head. Their wings a terrifying swoop with every beat, much more fitting of a pterodactyl than a bird of their size. They would not rest as if to taunt the other creatures, shut up against the day.

All I could think of was malaria – bad air. Yes. The air feels bad. Too thick. Too still. Too…I don’t know. I am missing something.  This like a febrile dream. Some unknown horror on the horizon. Tension at every turn for the something that is chasing you. But what thing? A think unknown. You turn to run but time slows and you cannot will your legs to run. It takes an eternity to move and inch and all the while the unknown is closing fast.

The clouds above scraping their bellies on the mountain tops, thinning to wisps that cascaded down a contour line or twelve in places but always, ever impenetrably thick. Enforcing, reinforcing, the anxiety of the air. Not even a breeze to stir the mood. No laughter of Aspen leaves as they caressed the tree one last time on their winter decent. Only the foreboding voices of large black birds criss-crossing the heights above my meadow.

My inner animal whimpered. Domesticated man had her hand on a rifle, with full knowledge of every single fifteen plus one rounds in her sidearm. But the deep neurons, the few still wired for the wilds were alarmed. I was naked and I knew it. Some sense that told all of God’s creatures to stay in their own thick brush or hole-in-tree equivalent of home with locked foors was lacking in my toolbox. Lost to my genetic line from years of breeding towards domestication or atrophied from want of need. Either way, when called upon it was not there.

There was a collective holding of breath. Waiting, waiting, waiting and though my nerves wound to match the strung bow tension of this mal air I could not name the aggressor. I could not determine if I, the great white hunter, should tremble at the unknown terror or perhaps this unnamable horror was my quarry and my heart should race instead for thrill. Over and over I tried to read the signs. The air. The clouds. The birds. The squirrels. The air. The squirrels. The clouds. The birds.
I heard the neighbors hound first, joined shortly after by our rent-a-dog, Cooper. What did they know that I did not which stretched their tension to finally snap?

East – A lone wolf howls.

This must be my antagonist I begin to unwind. But something is odd.

North – A coyote yips, howls. This is something I have never heard before on my mountain. Then in short order from the South East – another bachelor wolf.
Why had every canine around me come undone? What could they hear? Smell? Sense?
To the west, my answer. A wolf howls and is joined by another. Still more join in multi-toned chorus. Voices mounting and echoing as counter point as time stands still. Clarity washes over me with each wave of voice on voice. One wolf can silence a thicket of deer, but a pack unnerves every creature on a covey of mountains- including their own kind. Their solitary brethren fear them too.

They are getting closer, moving south and east, traveling thick timber. They are hunting.
That this act is natural is unmistakable. Much more so than my scent destroying chemical, high velocity with penetrating plastic tip for tough game, laboratory proven camouflage patterned presence between stump, rock and cedar.

The animals, the pack, the song, the swift sure motion of the unit towards a goal. It is also supremely beautiful. But it is a stark cold beauty, formidable, vain. A vertical traverse up an ice covered stretch of slope, gleaming white and blue. The chance of death much greater than that of success. It is the beauty of evolutionary success in action. Lithe bodies running through thick cover, seeking scent of prey. The beauty of staring into the end of a life.

A call breaks out across the trees. Ten bleats of a cow elk, steady and pronounced. I take this as a warning. No elk pursued directly could call out so clearly, so evenly. “They have arrived. You cannot hide. To the swift goes survival. You must run. Run!”

Close on the heels of this message comes a renewed cadence of ethereal howls. “Yes we are coming for you. We ARE the swift. We will outrun.”

Silence follows for some minutes. All creatures turn an ear to the chase. Their very lives depend on the death of some other life.

Another bleat. This a cry of agony, a cry for help that will not come. They will have hamstrung the elk. Back legs worthless it tumbles and they close in. It calls once more, shaky, fading. They will start at the stomach, then the back legs, a fury of blood and teeth, while the elk struggles to rise on front feet only. Loss of blood will bring on shock and the elk will cease to feel as light fades to darkness behind its eyes. But the peace of death will take an agonizingly long time to come. I strain to hear but there is no more.

The fever has broken. The mountain wakes stiffly, slowly, echoes of nightmare still clinging to consciousness. Now gingerly it fingers the idea of food, drink, something activity other than waiting out a horror in the clutches of a dream.



As darkness crept in beneath the shadow of the mountain, I heard the pack again. They were hunting. There are half grown pups to feed and they are hungry. This will continue until the elk move to another mountain and the wolves follow. I was thankful that I could shut the door behind me.

____________________________

Idaho is one of a few states with a wolf season and they are currently huntable. 3 wolves have been killed legally (read: that were reported instead of buried in the woods) near here recently. One attacked a female bow hunter and she shot it with her side arm. Another was tracking a hunter closely enough that when the man went to shoot he had to wait for the other hunter to turn or risk shooting him. A third was taken in Bonner's Ferry, 7 feet long, 200 lbs. In unit 4 IN TOWN a wolf attacked 2 horses. Hamstrung one and did enough damage before it was chased off that it had to be put down. The other was severely wounded but they think it will survive. It is a miracle we survived the domestication process.

Definition of terms

For them what live in cities and the otherwise uninitiated.

Feller Buncher (noun):

Opening Day

Opening day eve. A constant flurry of internal excitement. The uncontrollable drive to have every detail under control, down to the order in which the socks are placed on top of the other layers that will keep me out in the cold longer. Persons drift off towards dreams one by one but I remain awake long after I hit the sheets. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Opening day. Tomorrow, you’re only a few hours away.

Opening day morning. I fight my alarm for unconsciousness but I am defeated. Just as well. For the first time since I arrived on the ranch I am the first human awake and active. I try to be as obnoxiously active as possible. Even so the persons scattered around the kitchen remain sleeping until others wander in from their respective beds. Customized sandwiches come together with deli-quick efficiency. Hot breakfast and coffee were ready before my feet hit the floor as a result of last night’s obsessive compulsive ducks-in-a-row frenzy. Breakfast consumed with breakneck speed and those still sleeping roused abusively. Cheese laid gently by the face brings a sloppy dog tongue which cannot be ignored in the same way as my reminders about the minutes passing and the need to leave “like NOW”. All outward tasks accomplished I slip into my dressing room for my costume. Long-johns layer betwixt socks, shirts on shirts, pants on pants, hats on hats. Bending and twisting becomes a challenge and I begin to sweat. Over it all a pack. Riffle checked and strapped to my chariot. Time to go.

I could count the past hours of today on one hand were it not gloved. The nascent morning is crisp cold and the air feels close with humidity. It is inky black. The sky would be overflowing with galaxies of stars were it not cloaked in clouds. We ride strung together until we reach the trailhead, where we are spat out in various directions. Into the great darkness we are balls of fire, color, and noise, a roman candle rolling out light.

Our headlights can do little to dispel the thick darkness, but even as we race through a small sphere of vision, the surroundings cast in black and white from our feeble lights, the trails are still comfortably familiar to us. Like the back of the hand? But who really knows one hand from another? Like the lines on a lover’s face? Sadly I fear even that cliché fails to find meaning these days. No, we know these dirt and grass freeways like the streets of our youth. The sidewalks that lead to friends’ houses, the way to the park, the road to the convenience store for penny candy or ice cream which become stories passed to our children when we return there on some distant day. Long hours cutting fresh lanes and clearing old log roads have imprinted each twist, ditch and fallen tree into forever memory. These tracks have been paved by mixing fine mountain dust with our sweat, our blood. We regularly fight the wilds for these avenues to upward meadows, landscapes, views, and game. We know them intimately.

My father and I are now alone on our chosen path. We are winding west-north-east-north-west but constantly climbing. Gaining ground heavenward and racing the earliest rays of sun. We turn a final left onto the long and rugged bench carved at the top of our meadow. The sun has not yet crested the eastern mountains but its light still sneaks our way by bouncing off the cover of clouds. We tuck our bright red horse beneath some small pines and separate, he to the east and I west. The refracted light is enough to define my path without artificial fire. We are late.

I am all down and stuffing heaped up against the cold. The success of my efforts is told in my sweat with each footstep but so also is the sound of myself, a foreign presence in these woods. It is impossible to step without snapping sticks, swishing grass, creaking slings and complaining buckles. I am a one man band disrupting the morning, a cacophony to all the ears of the forest. I give up on silence and focus instead on speed. The faster I arrive the sooner I can become soundless. I head towards the back corner of the meadow but stop short of my intended perch. There along the tree line, some ten feet above the trail, three high stumps as a fortress with a massive hemlock for a parapet at the rear. These stumps shall be my blind, my gun rest, my castle wall and the great reaching hemlock my throne.

I diligently remove all sticks and underbrush from my new fort. Twigs cannot snap when there are none. I adjust my layers for temperature and my body for the slow pivoting of head left to right, the imperceptible lifting of rifle when the time comes. I fidget restlessly after perfection of view, of angle, of body weight on roots for the first half hour. The sun is still long in approaching but my eyes no longer strain to see. My scope has more than enough light to paint me a pretty picture within the reticule. Crosshairs on rock, stump, tree. Yes, I have a good view of my corner of paradise. Now I take to the task of memorizing every shape in sight so that when the living shadows of the forest slide silently into view I will know that a change has come to my kingdom.

Squirrels chatter, woodpeckers drum, and crows call between mountain tops. The world would be in complete peace if not for the lumber operation proceeding at full feller-buncher speed somewhere below me and beyond my vision. Mechanical saws making me future meadows but disrupting my present quiet, my present chance at success. In time the shredding of trees becomes background noise, forgotten as one forgets the sound of traffic after living too long in the city. Into this pseudo-silence suddenly comes a sound of rushing., water pouring from heaven and being sifted through countless branches on the way to the ground. The clouds are moving towards me from the east. They are now over the meadow and coming quickly but I still have time.

I abandon my castle for something dryer. An ancient tree fell recently in a storm. Its roots pulled with it a ball of soil and left me with a perfect patch of dry. I maneuver into the sandy bowl and duck beneath my roof of roots, readjusting to new rocks beneath me. My rifle must now rest on my pack. Occasionally I bump a root with my head and cause a cascade of sand upon myself but not a raindrop reaches my person. I can still scan nearly the same stretch of open space and I am content in my new home. So satisfied it seems that I fall asleep for some unknown hours during which time the rain stops. I awake instantly to full alert but with no movement save the opening of my eyes. The squirrels changed cadence. I strained to see something brown as my thumb caressed the ridges on the safety. Ah, yes there is the brown walking along the trail, but it is a bipedal silhouette. At the edge of my vision my old man turns up into the woods for a new vantage point to finish out his morning. I elect to do the same, and I return to my previous accommodations. I find myself now fully conscious and again scanning with a slow pivot head.

The rain altered the strata of temperatures everywhere it fell which in turn rearranged the direction of the breeze. Every creek bottom was giving birth to clouds. Mist constantly gathered in the arms of stream-side trees. Over time the moisture would build into something of substance and break free from the bonds of the branches and began to ascend skyward following the tops of the trees toward the mountain summit. My head continued to swivel and I watched infant cloud after infant cloud forming and taking wing in every valley. Those clouds born of Grouse Creek at the foot of my mountain slowly found their way to and through my meadow as they sought the sky.

Now I see another cloud approaching from the southern slope of my meadow. It is full bodied above the trees but wispy mist near the ground. It fills in hollow spaces in front of my eyes. My landmarks blur and sounds become washed out and more distant. The cloud gives the allusion that stationary objects are moving. Do I see a deer? The scope confirms a stump. But outside of the cross-haired circle the stump seems to walk farther into the cloud and disappear. The temperature drops as the cloud thickens. I look down at my watch in hopes of confirming the current degrees but the watch only bothers to report the time of day. This is perhaps the fifth occasion I have sought the weather from my time keeping device. I swear I will not do it again. This is in fact prophetic.

I watch a bold squirrel leave the forest edge on my right. He bounds to a tree in the pasture and calls to any who care to listen. He scampers to a pile of leftover logs and weaves around and through the whole heap. Not finding any treasure he returns to the forest edge now to my left and circles a stump. He hears something that I cannot and stops half way round so that all I can see is his tail. It twitches nervously. So too does my thumb on the safety. Does he see brown? He cannot tell from his current position so he tops the stump for a clearer view. What he sees is alarms him greatly. He shouts a warning to his fellows and disappears into a pile of brush. The safety is off and my index finger is resting on the trigger guard. I am breathing more rapidly than I desire. I allow my conscious to take control of the pace of respiration and I strain my eyes for brown.

My index slides back up the side of my rifle and the switch is pulled back to safe. I see the alarming brown but it is a weary and overdressed biped with rifle over shoulder slung. I maintain my pose. My father walks along the trail searching for a familiar face among the trees. When a tree blocks his view I turn my head to catch him on the other side. He walks directly below me staring upward still unseeing. I move my head to look down. Now he sees. He is shocked. He laughs. He is cold, damp, bored. The loggers are too loud, too close. We will hunt again later.

We now walk the bench toward the east. I continue to scan all parts of the meadow for anything moving. My father stops walking. Does he see something? Ah yes, our 4-wheeler buried in brush. I’d walked right past it. We repack our red mule and turn towards home. Down we wind through the logging operation, past the beaver dam, through the muddy ruts left by 18-wheelers loaded with logs, below the low clouds.

We are the last of the hunting party to return. We are apparently the only two smart enough to stay out of the rain so that we stay warm.

I remove my costume and tuck it into a chest for another hour of the day. There are now men draped in seats around the cabin still variously camouflaged in what they never got around to removing. They are bored, tired and becoming reacquainted with warmth. They are all of them falling asleep wherever they’ve landed. I meander to the kitchen and fix myself a second breakfast. It is still early. Some folks in town are only seeking breakfast one.

What to do between hunt and hunt? I think I will sit down to write…

Ah yes and now the call from my father. It is time to think about a fresh ascent. Appropriate too because I am finished with composition…and it has started again to rain.

Dark comes soon and wet

It is raining.

That is both a profound statement and an understatement.

There have been times this week where I have stood in the rain for half an hour without getting damp. You could see the rain leaving the clouds but by the time the drops neared terra firma the greedy air had robbed them almost entirely of themselves. And those lucky few who managed to keep themselves together long enough to fall the whole way down found themselves evaporated moments after they hit. It would rain for an hour without the ground becoming damp. But today the clouds seem to have forced every molecule of wet from their silver linings and the starving air seems to have gorged itself enough to finally be sated. On more than one occasion it was raining hard enough on the tin roof that I could not hear myself think. It was like one sustained roll of thunder. At these times I found myself as Noah in an ark. Outside the windows all that could be seen was water coming down. There was no barn across the yard. There was no yard. I meant what I said initially.

It is RAINING.

It rains very seldom here in the summer. Once spring skips merrily on making way for long days filled with Sol you may only get a few showers until Fall crashes in with frosts and golden aspen trees. And so, true to tradition, this Summer has been quite dry and as always, fears of fires run as wildly through the minds of the locals as they would race through the tops of the tinder-dry tree tops.

There was a fire about an hour away from here burning when we got here a few weeks ago. Hundreds of acres and millions of trees burning. Left to burn. So go the national forests when they are not leased for regular timber harvest, fuel removal and management. A heritage of hundred year old trees turned to smoke. Their ghosts gathering at the edges of the horizon in one final burst of beauty. Sunsets beyond the imagination as the thickened air gives perspective and depth to the sun slipping below the mountains beyond the mountains. This could perhaps be considered lasting beauty traded for temporary beauty and it is I suppose true. Except that I had never seen the ancient trees or sat beneath their shade and I will forever hold the sunset in my memory. And forests have always caught fire and always replanted themselves. I suppose that the Birthday Fire of Bonner's Ferry has finally burned itself out but my only basis for this thought is that the air has been less hazy.

The timber on our nearer mountains is managed. Most of it is national forests leased to this or that timber company. Companies are told how much they can take or how much they must leave and parcels are cut in patchwork fashion to maintain habitat and promote healthy regrowth. Several years ago a few large parcels were cleared out. Few trees were left standing save proud tall and healthy tamaracks. These sentinels are the genetically strong, spreading the seeds of the next generation. In 5 or 10 years they too will be cut but they will have left a heritage of wee western larch trees behind. In the mean time the cleared spaces have become meadows filled with huckleberry bushes and bear grass. Places for deer and bear alike to graze in preparation for the hard winter to come. Places for my family and I to wait along the forest fringes, to fill our freezer in preparation for the hard winter to come.

Over this now fading summer another timber company has been working to clear new parcels in the land above us. Men and machines travel daily into what should be wilderness. Whenever traffic increases on our humble dirt road so do the rumors. There is little else to discuss. No one wishes to think of fire and how can one talk about the weather when there is only always sun? Rumor has it that this particular company bought out the leases of another timber company that went bankrupt a few years back. And according to rumor that this company has also gone bankrupt. They are however, under rumor and perhaps something otherwise legally binding, required to continue to cut timber on the parcels. And rumor also suggests that the lease on the timber is up at the end of the year and they do not wish to renew it. So they are taking as much as they are permitted as fast as they can at which time they will leave the mountain. I've heard pieces of this story from more than a handful of people and not everything lines up into logic. But no matter. I can say with confidence that there are at least 9 machines scattered around the mountain and that is a lot of iron for an operation of this size. It is also a tremendous amount of diesel fuel to keep the feller-bunchers happily felling and bunching. And as the trees are cut, trimmed and stacked, they are as quickly shifted onto the humble backs of timber trucks and whisked away towards some good purpose in mill of some western state. The world will be kept long in telephone poles, toilet paper and pellet fuel. Log homes and cedar chests will be built as strongholds against rust and the moth that destroys. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

But for the present residents of the unpaved portion of rapid lightning road, we are spared the ashes and instead given a double portion of dust. The fragile soil of our mountain is really not so much soil as very well packed, talcum powder fine tan fragments of still older mountains. Shallow rooted grass holds the mountain together in any place where the roots of a tree cannot. And where there are trails or timber roads there is no grass. Rocks unfortunately have no roots to hold silt in place. Daily the timber trucks rattle quickly and empty up the winding trails and plod slowly and heavily down, each journey removing some tonnage of timber but also a tonnage of dust. It shakes off on corners and sprays up on trees such that by the time the truck reaches town it is presentable. A brush here, another there and the company logo is legible again. But on the trails behind our cabin the dust rests deceptively, pretending to be a solid floor when it is actually rather like 6 inches of air. And as we traverse the mountain seeking adrenaline through speed we find ourselves sliding sideways in unexpected places or falling in to holes that had not been there before.

Each resident recognizes that these parcels which are now ugly dusty wounds on our mountain will heal quickly into moose filled meadows in a year or so. And this is perfect timing because the existing open spaces are becoming less open. One can scarcely see a bull moose let alone a black bear. But even with the promises of greatness waiting for us in a few short months we complain ardently because it gives us something more interesting to talk about than the weather. Our cabin is a good distance from the road but this dust is pervasive and mobile. It has nary any substance to cause it to settle. It defies gravity and lands where it chooses. Everything I can see is cloaked in a thin powder. Wipe it clean and it will be covered again tomorrow.

But we've found ourselves in a bit of a hard place. You see this time of year we always pray earnestly and ardently for rain. Rain without lightning. Rain until snow can put the threat of fires to bed beneath a downy white blanket for a few months. But this year it seems our prayers are more timid. We are still as desperate as ever for rain but conscious of the fact that nothing is holding our mountain in place. I am afraid that in the morning I will look out and see a valley where once there was a peak...or I may find that I have been washed past the Pack River General Store in all the way in to town. The saying goes that everyone lives downstream. Perhaps tomorrow I will too.

-Jn

Something about a bear

I am in the woods as I write this. It's after 6 and light will fade soon. This is hunting that isn't real hunting. In a blind made from stumps and old logs, the stream at my back. My 270 rests across my legs, 4 shells, one in the chamber, safe on.

I am not watching. This our primary predator sense. My most accustomed, most comfortable sense. At this place, in this time, it is no useful. The world is awash with various shades of green, staggered, layered, a phalanx of trees around a meadow. Infant trees sheltered here, racing to meet the heights of their fathers. The only punctuation in color comes in hues of brown. Straight, tall sky seeking brown of long straight and now laid down brown. The brown which is purposed to hold the greens in place from leaves to needles to mistletoe moss. until there is no longer life to hold. And carpeting the floor in the pungent yellow-brown shades of autumn are the fronds of ferns kissed by frost on an eve earlier this week. But there is no movement to speak of save the breeze twitching branches. No visual sign of animal life except the occasional bird. Eyes are not useful in this hour.

Instead I have my ears. Behind me the water mercurial as it passes over rocks and branches, yet rhythmic and constant. A backdrop on which all other sound is splashed. Behind me left and distant, the persistant thump of far away hammers at our cabin and at piercing intervals the small dog howls. He is tied on my account. Round about me from within the impenetrable green, the forest crackles with life. Small squirrels chatter one to another. They break sticks and rustle brush as they scamper, sounding far larger than their diminuative size. A flicker or more have called nearby. They've also drummed out dinner on failing trees. A yellow jacket went as quickly as he came behind me. And I've heard several quads traversing different trails on the mountain. And always the swift running flow at my back which I must cross to return home.

Light is fading and will continue quickly now. There have been no birds for some minutes and the squirrels, I sense, have turned in for the night. There is plenty of light here in the open but within the ranks of forest if is approaching full dark. The air has picked up a moist chill and I am thankful for my hat and gloves.

I am waiting for the lumbering carelessness of a bear, wandering from and to anlong this well worn train. A large noise in the darkness to proceed a large dark form. An instant to readjust, loose the safe, and take aim. But color is draining out of the forest now with the passing light. I am running out of moments as the world slips into black and white. Today it seems will not feature a bear. Only solitude in a place of beauty.

-Jn

(Transcribed from my field notebook.)

Again we come to mid-July

The red line in the thermometer creeps upwards with the sun. Days are frighteningly long and the air doesn't cool until it is bordering on dusk and the mosquitoes are out. Either work is done frighteningly early in a race against the heat or beneath a ball of fire with skin shifting towards crimson and sweat rivers cutting through the dust on your face.

But the garden is parched and desperately needs tending. Somehow weeds have taken hold and are threatening to suck precious moisture away from the plants that matter. And the plants that matter are wilting, turning brown, fading, tired. The dirt was rich and dark at the onset of spring but now it too is tired- clumped and hard, unyielding.

And even now, under unending glare, it is time to plant. Yes there are already green tomatoes on the vines, some well watered peppers may even be ready to eat and you've already harvested the radishes and eaten plenty of salads until the lettuce turned bitter. But the summer is peaking. The Sol you presently curse is drifting downwards again and while the heat will persist, the hours for growing will not. This is the time to think of snow. For it is the seeds planted with hope, diligence and sweat NOW that will produce the best vegetables for the long winter hibernation.

Last year I kept herbs, a tomato plant and peppers alive through the winter. I not only had a tomato on Christmas but through the rainy spring when nothing else could be planted. True these were only cherry tomatoes and perhaps only one a week. But each globe turning red hinted at the life that would be possible when the white melted in to green. And this plant is still alive and still producing from a big blue pot tucked into a garden in NY. Not a heavy-yielder by any means but definitely persistent.

My impulse to put hands into soil has led me to gardens in three states this summer. Most plants were started in pots on a NH deck and moved to NY and PA. I last heard that the zucchini are ready...and fantastic. A late spring meant plants were still for sale in ID so with a fools ambition I put peppers and tomatoes in the ground with a host of perennial herbs and 100 feet of soaker hose. Perhaps I will only feed a bear but it was worth my time to try. Here I recently added more tomatoes because the store is eager to let them go.

And each time dirt slipped under my fingernails I saw analogies to my life. It is no wonder so many parables slant in this direction. As it is mid-July for my garden, so too it is mid-July for my soul. I've only a trowel to dig out the roots of long ignored weeds but I've tomatoes waiting to be lifted from pots and set into the dirt. Purple, pink and striped heirlooms, each with the promise of viable seeds for a new generation. I cannot wait to see this harvest and on this side of the sunburn I am confident that it will be worth the sweat.

Twinkie Report 2011

First, Phil did NOT see his shadow. Praise the Lord the snow’s gonna stop fallin’.

Second, there’s been some confusion all along about the number of Twinkies and years left in this game. Let me clarify. The boxes of Twinkies were purchased in late January of 2004 and the first Twinkies were eaten during Levy's Organic Chemistry on February 2nd of that year. Since the cream filled cakes were at that time within their ‘fresh by’ range 2004 represents year zero. So it follows that 1 year later or when the Twinkies were 1 year old we ate Twinkie #2. Thus the year is always behind the Twinkie number by one. After today there are 2 years and 2 Twinkies left so we will wrap up the experiment in 2013 with a very stale Twinkie and a fresh one for comparison. I believe that neither Jenn will ever eat another Twinkie after that day.

Now for this years results:

I had to have the Twinkie mailed to me by my father because I left the box at his place accidentally.

At this point (Year 7, Twinkie 8) the “Pastry” was dry enough to be crumbling and patches of the outside had fallen off giving it a leprous appearance. The lettering on the package was also starting to smudge so I wasn’t in a hurry to jump in.

I couldn’t actually bite into the thing so I cheated this year and cut it (with a steak knife) in to slices- six slices each amounting to 2 bites. Here is the weird thing. Somewhere around year 3 the filling absorbed up into the Twinkie and became a sort of gooey mass in the middle. Last year that was all but gone…this year it is still there. There was definitely a core of post-filling goo throughout and some of it was still sort of kind of almost white. The goo texture is something like….maybe the nougat part of a Snickers but a little firmer? And then the outside ‘cake’ part was crusty and crumbly sort of in between toast and a crouton. As for taste….I swear to you it tastes like a Twinkie. Even without the cream filling the goo still adds that essence of vanilla and the cake still tastes like cake even though it crunches. I do want to reiterate from past years that the aftertaste is the killer. It’s something like super hyper saccharine mixed with extra evil. But it’s a delayed taste- maybe even 45 seconds- so if you eat the pieces fairly steadily you can get to the end before the nausea hits.

I personally don’t feel different other than the sense of accomplishment of having done this for 7 years now. I think the take home message at this point is that within the same package Twinkies will still degrade at different rates. Only two Twinkies Left…

(Pictures when I have proper internet. Or never if I forget.)

Pondering

I am starting to wonder what we have lost. I wouldn’t really know that anything was around to be lost without my father but that extra generation back in time gives me periodic images of the past I could have known. For instance, his company was previously his father’s company and the company bank has to my knowledge always been the same bank on the same main street of the same town in which my father was born. The bank has changed names and people have retired and moved on but every person who works at the bank knows his name. While they process and file things for him they chit chat with him and keep track of each other’s lives in a neighborly way. They are known to each other and they treat each other as such.

My primary bank is an online bank. There is no store front. I will never see a human when I make a transaction. This brings with it a tremendous amount of convenience. I never have to rush to the bank before it closes as my father often does. I can transfer money at midnight. I can send money to most other humans I am required to pay with a few clicks and their routing number. I can even fill out a form and have them send my antiquated landlady who doesn’t own a computer a paper check. But even when I was a child living in a tiny town with a small town bank account I was never known by name until my number was somehow plugged into a machine and my name popped up on a screen.

My other example is travel. Once upon a time, air travel was a big deal. Humans dressed in their best when they moved from one side of the country to the other and people used travel agents to help them plan their journey. Think about it…who uses travel agents anymore? At this point I think people traveling in a large group and old people….my dad. If I need a flight to someplace I check Kayak. If I need a place to stay or a car…kayak. I can organize everything on one website, make my purchase using my online bank and viola! I am going on a vacation. Then for things to do I just search online until I get a list of restaurants and ratings. Ditto for museums, parks…whatever. I can even find coupons and discounts. All from the comfort of my couch. The most outside human influence comes via the for all intents and purposes anonymous ratings and reviews that visitors have given to attractions. But look at the convenience.

You might not get it from his appearance but Dad is something of a world traveler. He has been to Africa, Asia and Europe and I swear I will get him to South America with me before we die. He has always booked travel through the same agency. When he tells them about a trip they give him the cheapest deal and the most convenient. They also help him figure out a car and places he wants to go or see while he is there based on personal recommendations from their own visits, other customers and what they know of my father’s personal tastes. When he called them from Texas because his passport got messed up and he couldn’t make it to HN…they were on it. Dad called me the other day to tell me that after 50 jillion years, his travel agent was closing. They called him personally to tell him. Read that sentence again. They called him to tell him they were closing. So the last time he booked travel I logged on to his computer in PA from my computer in MA so that he could watch me and learn how to book travel online….which isn’t nearly the same thing.

Goliath Carrots

I believe I mentioned many bad things about the garden over the summer. Once food started coming in I forgot to post what was going right.

Right now I am simmering down the last big batch of tomatoes to make sauce for lasagna tomorrow night. I managed to bring in all the plants loaded with green tomatoes before the frost and they have been slowly ripening up ended in our basement. There are a few still down there and I have my fingers crossed for Christmas. Also waiting for Christmas...on a whim I planted our 'left over' tomato and pepper plants against a wall pretty much in the yard. I then promptly forgot about them so they were never watered or weeded. Apparently they just wanted to grow and the day before the frost I rediscovered them and they are sitting in a sunny window in my house. There will be at least 3 hot peppers ready for Christmas salsa.

Other than the stuff we recently brought in, I don't actually know what we had for a harvest. However, we have plenty of jars of tomato sauce, zucchini pickles, green beans and other wonderfulness in the basement. We got maybe 15 lbs of sweet potatoes that are simple marvelous and even with the diseases running rampant we managed to bring in 4 pumpkins and 4 butternut squash (both of which ended up in the pumpkin cookies from the last post.

At this point all that is left in our garden are the carrots and the parsnips. These crops can handle the cold just fine and their tops are still the same green shade they have been all summer. Apparently this extra time in the soil is REALLY good for carrots. Allow me to illustrate with part of tonight's dinner:

The 3 carrots on the left are my rainbow carrots -orange, ruby, and yellow in this case- and the one on the right is one of our "normal" orange carrots.

When I pulled up the monster carrot we figured it wouldn't be any good but it is perfectly carrot flavored and textured. It is actually way more carrot flavored and crunchy than supermarket carrots so it is definitely a win. And....we still have like 40 this size in the ground.

Now for dinner.

-Jenn

This is going to be one of those recipes

But I have figured out recently that those recipes are actually a huge pain in the ass when you want to go back and actually MAKE a repeat of the damn food in the first place…without the chaos that went in to it. I promise that I don’t always cook or bake in chaos and that I am a successful cook on days without chaos. But I apparently need chaos to convince me to write things down.

Pumpkin cookies go like this.
I received a recipe from Shuff Dog for pumpkin cookies as part of a recipe exchange. I hate these things. Just send me a damn recipe because you like the idea. Don’t make me copy and paste and jump through hoops and feel guilty and email 10 friends. If you love me…give me a recipe. If I love you I will do the same. Anyway. I recently and begrudgingly “participated” in the same exchange that Shuff sent me which either means he was responding to me or I got hit with it twice. Either way the first round made me immune. I only ended up with 3 recipes instead of the promised 30 and that’s only because I cheated. Whatever.

With this recipe resting daintily in my inbox and secretly calling me in my sleep I was faced with a choice at 9 pm (ish…I thought it was like 7) and with no supervision from Boyfriend…I could wash the mounds and mounds of dishes or grade lab reports. So I elected to make cookies.

I always gather my ingredients before I start out or I invariably end up missing something important so I gathered away without reading the process instructions. I was using left over pumpkin from a batch of muffins earlier in the week. I declared the muffins a failure but everyone else seems to think they are tasty enough. I am not a muffiness. I need desperately for someone to give me a whole wheat flour plus whole grains and maybe oatmeal and or mixed grain hot cereal muffin recipe as a base muffin recipe that I can add whatever fruit is in my pantry to and call it a success. I keep trying and failing. Anyway for the muffins I wacked 2 sugar pumpkins (one from the garden and 1 from TJs) apart, baked them, and removed their orange succulent goodness for my own purposes. I had less than a cup left over so I had to supplement my cookies with a few scoops of left over baked butternut squash from my garden. Orange and squash flavored. Perfect.

I am not content to follow a recipe so I elected to swap out the regular flour for whole wheat. I dutifully measured out the requisite amount of flour and suddenly was overcome with the feeling that I was not alone. We have flour moths! Cue horror music and shuddering.

To be fair I found 1 worm in 1 bag of old flour. However this spawned a panic attack which resulted in me shoving all baking products not in jars or Tupperware into the freezer. Then running out of room and becoming despondent. There was nothing else I could do…so I made cookies. (Actually we are like an hour in to the cookie making process at this point and if I hadn’t already started melting the butter I would have gone to bed. )

The all purpose flour was pure and white and both nutrient and worm free so I could proceed. Per usual I mixed all my ‘wet’ ingredients and all my dry ingredients separately. I then planned to mix the 2 sets of ingredients together but I paused to read the directions. I always forget that cookies are more high maintenance than other baked goods. You are supposed to mix the butter and sugar together then add everything else. Whatever. You can skip that. But you really do want a mixer to combine the pumpkin and the butter. Crap.

Luckily, Boyfriend’s mom gave me an old stand mixer from a yard sale. I fired that baby up and…nothing happened. At this point I began to suspect that Boyfriend had disabled the mixer either because he wanted me to stop making baked goods to prevent me from weighing 400 lbs or to prevent me from making baked goods and adding on to the huge stacks of dishes to be done. Or maybe the reason it was at the garage sale was because it was broken. Whatever.

So I used one of the mixer beaters as a hand held tool to combine the pumpkin and butter. I then tried to do the same when I mixed the flour and the gooey stuff but it was a no go. Fork…spoon…spatula…worthless. I had to result to hand mixing literally by hand. This worked amazingly well and resulted in me being coated with pre-cookie. I was forced to eat the pre-cookie before I could start my baking.

At this point the self control fuse was blown in the back of my brain. The doughy goodness was so amazing that about 5 larval cookies lives’ ended before I realized what I was doing and forced myself to stop eating the cookie dough like cereal.

I got the first batch of cookies in the oven, cleaned up enough to make space for the cookies to cool and made the glaze/frosting/icing. Right about the time the first batch needed to come out, Boyfriend came home and I was caught red handed filling up the cookie jar. It was also like 1030-11pm and the first time I had looked at a clock since maybe lunchtime. Which led me to ask the question “what the hell am doing baking cookies when I should be asleep?”

So I finished baking and frosting the cookies and went to bed. The end.

I figured out that the glaze goes on much nicer if you nuke it for about 10 seconds. After that you can drizzle and spread it on to the warm cookies with a spoon and when everything cools you will have a nice crusty frosted top on each cookie.

Boyfriend asked me the next day if the cookies were made with crack because they were so good. I could easily eat 5 in a row frosted or not but I would probably die of a diabetic coma if I tried. Moderation in all good things including cookies….and cookie dough. Which is why we are down to 6 cookies in 3 days. Don’t double the recipe unless you are giving these away. They are too dangerous to have laying about the kitchen.

The REAL recipe.

Pumpkin Cookies

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar (I used ½ brown sugar)

1/2 cup butter (1 stick) softened

1 cup pumpkin puree (canned or fresh)

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

Glaze (see below)

Preheat over to 350 F. Grease baking sheets.

Combine flour, baking soda and powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a medium bowl. Beat sugar and butter in a large mixing bowl until well blended. Beat in pumpkin, egg and vanilla until smooth. Gradually beat in the flour mixture. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 15-18 minutes or until edges are firm. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely. Drizzle glaze over the cookies.

Glaze

Combine 2 cups sifted powdered sugar, 3 Tbs milk, 1 Tbs melted butter and 1 tsp vanilla extract in a small bowl until smooth. (I added a healthy dose of cinnamon as well)

Yields ~ 36 cookies.

For the non-cinnamon types I would suggest substituting ¼ t of one or all of the following: ground clove, ground ginger, or ground allspice.

mid-July

Any good garden book will tell you the same thing. When the snow flies for months of end and the wind is increasingly frigid, humans look towards the promise of green. Some hasten it any way they can, buying seeds, planning plots and dreaming dreams of fresh salads. Then the drifts finally drift away and ground is broken for the first time of the season. Hearty seeds are tucked gently in to hard earth with whispered prayers and fingers crossed against late season frosts. And after the first hits of green manage to push through the crust towards the sun, there is hope for flowers and a flurry of activity. The winter is now over and there is much to do, much to plant, and everything, everything, everything must be grown. The excitement of planting gives way to the first leaves of each crop, then the first TRUE leaves, then the long hopes for flowers. And as this growth is happening, sometimes doubling overnight, there is a fight against hungry vegetarians. There is transplanting, watering, staking, weeding, mulching, pruning, fencing and sweat. And it is all carried by the next new thing and the next. Time marches forward and thoughts move to the harvest, jars are purchased, recipes are planned and all is right with the world. Each day is one step closer to the harvest but to make it there you have to pass through mid-July.

Mid-July, when it is too hot for the plant munching beetles to fly, when it is too dry for new weeds to start, when the simple act of watering causes sweat to run down your back, and nothing new happens. Lettuces are going to seed and radishes are done and everything else is in an infantile state. Sure you can fry your green tomatoes or throw your squash flowers on a salad but that seems awful wasteful. Why garden, why grow things, why bother with all this time and money when the grocery store is air conditioned, why were you so ambitions, and why do you now have to go out into that hot sun to pull out the lettuce and replant radishes, beets, carrots and spinach? Why me? Why now? WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!

Because you want spinach for your pasta sauces and you want your own radishes and beets for thanksgiving. And because if you get really really lucky, those late tomato transplants you just put in will bust out a few green tomatoes before the first frost that you can tuck discretely away in the cool cellar until two weeks before Christmas. Just think of the goodies Santa will bring you if instead of cookies you offer a toasted tomato sandwich with home grown tomatoes now ripe in December. It could happen.

Yesterday I did a bit of harvesting practice. I pruned down my parsley and chives and I yanked a beet to see how it was doing. After crunching on the beet slices I threw the beet leaves, chives and parsley in the dehydrator ($8 at a yard sale baby) and went in to Boston to see Old Ironsides. This morning I chopped up the beet leaves and threw them in to some tuna salad. I couldn't taste it but other reports said it tasted like dill. Maybe thats because it went in the dehydrator with the chives. Either way I will do the tuna salad thing again. It adds vitamin A, some B's, C and a compliment of minerals so why the heck not.

Canned Zombie Berries

We picked strawberries at a pick your own place this year. The perfectest berries were set aside to make preserves only I screwed it up. Apparently with strawberries (unlike other berries) you need to soak them over night in a sugar solution. This will help to preserve their color and fill their internal airspace so they don't float. But since I didn't know this and we didn't do this we got several jars of beautiful bright red liquid with a mass of mushed albino strawberries floating on top. Zombie berries. Not exactly what I had in mind.

I have laid awake at night mourning the fact that I wasted the best of the best of our berries on a slimy worthless mess. You can't give these away. They are ugly and gross and hungry for brains.

I was super antsy tonight so I popped a box of lame $1-on-sale-with-coupon brownie mix out of our makeshift pantry to occupy myself. Instead of the oil called for on the box I used fat free plain yogurt because I had never tried it before. Then I figured "What the hell, I think brownies are gross anyway so it would be hard for me to make them worse right?" I scooped the mutant berries out of the jar and threw those in to the mix. You were supposed to add water but when I was spooning out the berries I also got a fair amount of the syrup that they were canned in which added more liquid than required. Oops. I had to add an extra 10 minutes on to the bake time to make up for this.

So now, picture if you will a chocolate covered strawberry. The fruit is perfectly ripe, red and sweet and it is cocooned in a thick chocolaty shell just waiting to grace your lips and dance across your taste buds. Now slowly transform that outer shell into a thick and fudgy chocolate cake and that is my contribution to the world.

The yogurt made the brownies fluffier and gave them a slight tanginess. This complimented the subtle strawberry flavor that infused into the brownies. And the undead berries apparently have every ounce of flavor of the fresh-picked sun-kissed fruit. And the left over syrup is pretty much just strawberry flavored juice which is pretty tasty in it's own right. But it is absolutely indescribable when mixed with an equal part gin. All grown up but still that same vibrant shade of red.

Now everyone will want a jar.

New "friends"

Recently I started seeing little green "bubbles" on my tomato leaves. One maybe two per plant. Interesting color and shape and a satisfactory snapping noise when you pop them. They look like this:

And they will become this:

At which time they will do this:

SOOOOO....I spent 2 hours today going through my tomatoes leaf by leaf and plant by plant gently removing the little tomato hornworm eggs from the leaves and dropping them fiendishly into a Ball jar half filled with soapy water. Then giggling.

When I was done I proceeded to crawl around the rest our back 40 for oh ...3 more hours. The patrol was pretty damn successful.

In the process I managed to catch 3 pairs of these guys:

Doing the striped cucumber beetle salsa:

Which is something like a 30x bonus multiplier in terms of pest removal. I also caught umpteen hundred lonely striped cucumber beetles and more than my fair share of *#&#@# oriental beetles (See last post for image). Most garden web sites say that they aren't found in gardens and that they do little damage. BULL. They are as ubiquitous as the cucumber beetles and as frisky. They are as frequently found nibbling the outer edges of my cucurbits as digging around the roots looking for a place to lay eggs. Their cute little three pronged antennae fan out nicely in the water.

I also got one of these:

Thank God it was only one because a little part of me curls up and dies every time I see a Japanese Beetle. I must have had a bad experience as a child or something because Asiatic and Oriental beetles are the same size and shape and...consistency but they don't bother me all that much. I don't want to remember.

While we are talking about unpleasant bugs, I extricated a huge squash bug from a pumpkin plant (after which I smelled like slow death):

Who knew squash bugs looked like this when they were small?

I found squash buggies in excess sucking on the bottom side of my tomato leaves. They are way easier to squish than to pop into a jar when they are that size. Almost exactly like these guys:

We have more ants than blades of grass in the back yard but thankfully they haven't found the aphids yet. If they do they will start to guard them from predators and move their eggs around. Ants herd aphids like cattle which is wicked cool...as long as it isn't on one of MY plants.

Also on my kill list are two of these:

These have the awful extra crunchy exoskeleton of a Japanese beetle, the ability to cover you in an unholy stink like a stink bug AND they can pinch you when they back that thing up. If that isn't enough, they have teleportation powers that allow them to appear at random out of thin air. The Earwig is the officially insect of Hell.

A few garden sites claim that these buggers don't really harm plants. I put this in the same box as oriental beetles because I found them wrapped up in a wilted squash leaf that had been reduced to lace. They die in a rather impressively violent way when they hit the soap.

All told I only found two helpful insects and one of them got flipped into the soap when I grabbed a striped cucumber beetle.

Young two spotted stink bugs are beautiful, soap bath or no. Hopefully I see more of these. I promise to be more careful. They are fond of piercing caterpillars and sucking out their juices like a Capri Sun. I am going to need an army of them if I missed a tomato hornworm egg. Heaven help me.

I found a 14 spotted lady bird beetle that I managed NOT to kill. I will take more of those any day. Go ye forth and munch my aphids buddy.

We also had a robin camping out and chomping down while I was weeding my herb garden. I think cucumber beetles are like bird skittles and I am ok with that.

Someday maybe I will put up my own pictures. As before none of these are mine.

-Jn

Kerry Kerry quite contrary

Kerry, Kerry quite contrary

How does your garden grow?
With plump white grubs
Snails and slugs
And seed corn maggots in the bean rows

Marmota monax visits for snacks
While cabbage butterflies flutter past
And the click beetles click
And wireworms squirm
As the oriental beetles plan their attack.

No seriously kids, stay out of our $*(&#$ garden or I kill you. And I live happily ever after.

The End.

• > 10 grubs per square foot? Apply grub-x liberally
• Slugs and snails on all your plants? Weed EVERYTHING. Place any molusc you find into an empty Gatorade bottle with lid. Leave in the sun on a hot afternoon then THROW IT AWAY
• Seed Corn Maggots stunting your beans and allowing them to be infected with some type of damping off fungus? Let everything dry out for 3 days. Helps if you can make it stop raining. This will also help with wire worms.
• Find a click beetle? Cool. These are adult wire worms. If you can catch the fast little bastards stick them in a container. Shake it until they are upside down and watch them do their thing. When you get bored, squish them.
• Catch a cabbage moth or an oriental beetle? Squish it. Or stick them in a jar with plaster of paris so they dry out and die. Then you can shove a pin through them and stick them in a box.
• Think of it like shrunken heads as signs of victory in battle.
• Got groundhogs? Praise the good Lord for sending you target practice...or that the neighbors lab got loose and dispatched it for you. Whatever.

Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well. Ecc. 11:6

-Jn

(By the way, none of those pictures are mine.)