Eggs!

           

 Who designed the chicken molting process? Really, who thought it was a good idea for the flock to lose feathers in November and December, just when the temperature drops? Henny began molting in late November and the yard was strewn with bright white feathers. As soon as she was done, just when the temperature dropped to ten degrees, Gladys started. Black smoke everywhere and she exposed her scrawny legs and neck to the cold. Why?

            But Henny is glorious in her fresh coating, tail proud and clean against the green grass. On the day after the solstice, she dropped down into egg crouch when I walked by. I gave her a pat and shook my head. No eggs yet, I thought. Not until the light comes back around Candlemas. It’s too dark and she’s no spring chicken. I bought a dozen pale eggs for breakfast and baking.

Then, on Christmas, I wandered out to free the Ladies for the afternoon. They ran out, discussing the dust under the rabbit hutch. I peered into the nest box to see if they needed new straw yet and there—two pure white eggs.

Squash Mash, version one with leeks

It has been a very good year for squash, but several butternuts were bitten by the frost in the larder and needed to be baked. I cut them open, scooped out seeds, and popped them in the oven until soft and squishy. Once cool, I peeled off the skins and pushed them into a quart jar.

Sautee a sliced leek and some garlic in olive oil until soft and translucent. Add two cups of mashed squash, season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of cinnamon. Stir until heated through.

Salvaged Wood

No wood heads for the landfill from our backyard: It is all salvaged on site. For years, this has not been an issue, but, after a major tree pruning winter and two fence replacements, we have piles. Several Large piles.  I’ve been working through them, now that the food processing season has slowed down. 

            The first step is sorting. There are three categories:

1. Reusable: Dry and not rotting.  All nails pulled, piled in the wood loft of the shed. Used for garden beds, fencing, art, signs, trellises, shower stalls, boxes, shelves, repairs to the coop, stakes, crib slats….etc.
2. Firewood:  Dry, with some rot or small pieces. All nails pulled, cut to size, piled in the basement, preferably in size and dampness piles.
3. Compost: Clearly rotting, breakable by hand. All nails pulled, broken down to compost fast, and piled in the back corner to be eaten by pillbugs. Later, it moves into the pompost pile.

Nail pulling is a key step for all wood recycling. I don’t like tetanus shots so we have to be sure that no nails turn up in the firewood ash or the compost piles years later. It’s a peaceful task, once I have the station set up. I bring a picnic bench back under the hazelnut trees, find the large and small crowbars, the paint can half full of nails, and a hammer, and set to work. There’s something satisfying about wrestling pieces of old fencing apart, reducing them to their original boards, and sending them over to Mark to be cut down with power tools.  Bunzilla and Lucy look on while the chickens root through the old boards for new bugs. I’m about done with the nail pulling project, so we just need to saw and sort before the rains begin.

Spicy Slaw:

Several people were dismayed to find a large cabbage in their CSA box this Tuesday evening and the trade box was overflowing with rejected heads. So sad...we were thrilled. Mark immediately lobbied for this slaw, best eaten with local Indian Woman beans, wrapped in large tortillas. Fastest dinner ever, if the the beans are cooked.

Slice the cabbage very thinly.  Perhaps slice a carrot or two as well, for color. Mix some mayo, a chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, sour cream or yogurt, salt, pepper, and a little cider vinegar together in the bottom of the salad bowl. Toss the cabbage in. Taste and adjust. 

Eat dinner. 

Voluntary Complexity

     

      Anyone who believes that we live lives of Voluntary Simplicity because we have a couple of hens in the backyard, some locally grown tomatoes on the shelf and one car in the driveway has not seen my schedule book lately. I am beginning to feel like an Honors Junior angling towards Stanford. They have colored coded planners, fifteen things happening in a day, and no time for the common cold, never mind a weekend off. Me, too. We are all  practicing Voluntary Complexity, not Voluntary Simplicity.

            I once lived a very simple life. My last year in college, I had a two room apartment with the bathroom down the hall. I shared the second floor of an old house with three dirty old men, literally. The front room held my bed, a bookshelf, rocking chair, chest of drawers, and record collection. There was a small open space where I could sit on the floor and spread out my notecards before beginning to write a paper. The kitchen held my other bookshelf, which functioned as the prep counter, a small table, tiny fridge, and my big desk with manual typewriter. I went to the Laundromat and grocery store every Saturday morning, baked my own bread, learned how to make soup, and decided meat was, really, too expensive for what you got. I spent my evenings reading eighteenth century fiction and New England history, my days working in the archives, attending classes, and hanging out with friends at lunch. I did not have a car, a cat, or a boyfriend. I agreed with May Sarton, who said that one could live well alone at twenty and again at fifty, and with Adrienne Rich, who talked about the need to choose how to live, alone or with a partner.  It was a good time in my life.

            Life now is far more complicated. As all teachers know—and the people who make decisions at least pretend to deny—any time you add a life to your own, it adds complication. Seeing 163 students every other day (and all of them on Friday) requires more tracking and more effort than seeing 81 of them every day for one semester, followed by 82 every day for the next. Just look at the pile of summer reading projects on my counter, waiting for Monday morning.  Over the fifteen years we have lived in this little house, I have added many lives to my own, starting with a “housebound” partner and two cats and moving outward from there. Every relationship adds complexity. Every volunteer action, every group, every meeting I attend, every student I stay in touch with years later, adds complexity. Sometimes, like at the beginning of the school year when everything converges at once, it is not a good thing. Sometimes I remember that little apartment fondly.

            But Voluntary Complexity has a positive side, beyond stress. Every connection we make strengthens our lives as well. We are tangled in a web and it provides a springboard and a safety net. Before school began, my friend Julia—the high school art teacher-- and I organized an Art Retreat for our colleagues and summer hiking partners. It was simple. Bring art supplies and picnic food, gather at my house for carpooling, and head to Alsea Falls. We found a spot with two tables, spread the excellent food on one, art supplies on the other, listened to Julia explain a little bit about watercolors, and dispersed.   Some people went for walks in the woods. Some settled in with a plate of food and notebook at the table. Some headed for the river to draw. I sat by the water, wrestling, as always, with perspective, then stopped. Amy sat in front of me, her feet in the stream, staring into space. I could hear seven year old Layne telling someone a story behind me, her voice mingling with the river. Another friend settled in nearby. Other families came and went. The breeze rustled in the dry August leaves. Back at the picnic table, I knew, were other members of my web, talking, patting the dog, and strengthening ties for the coming school year. As the day began to fade, we came together once more, ate, and packed up to leave. The evening was pale pink as we pulled out of the park. Doug firs sketched against the sky. The road a dark tunnel through the trees until we broke into the valley and headed north, towards home. Mary’s Peak, our home mountain, on the left, the Willamette River beyond the fields on the right. 

Drying Fruit for Winter Eating

One of the actions that lends complexity to my life in September is the desire to be Fruit Independent all winter. Over the years, we’ve learned that local, often scavenged, totally ripe fruit is infinitely better than fruit picked green and shipped across the world. I have a small food drier that I bought for thirty dollars at Bi-Mart and it works just fine. No need for fancy equipment.

drying plums

Keys to successful drying:

• Thin slices—apples, pears, peaches
• Spread it out a bit to expose more surface—plums, cherries, figs.
• Dry it whole—blueberries and raisins.
• Have patience—all of it. It takes longer than I once thought.
• Go for really dry. If the fruit is dry, you can put it in a quart jar, seal it with last year’s canning lid, and store it on the shelf with the canned tomatoes and pickles.  If you want fleshy fruit, make a compote.

            

Gardener? Or Urban Farmer?

   

1. You find dried bean seeds in your pockets in December.
2. There is hay in the car.
3. You turn to binder twine and five gallon buckets rather than organic hemp twine and a trug.
4. You talk compost with strangers.
5. You indulge in “one more season” hose repair.
6. You spend more time thinking about fencing than the White Flower Farm flower catalog.
7. You realize, half way through a professional meeting, that you have dirt somewhere. Fingernails? Hand cracks? Knees?  No, not all three!
8. You worry more about the crop of leeks and not one plant.
9. Your crops come in pounds.
10. You use your van as a ladder.
11. You realize that it is, really, all about the soil, not the new, cool varieties in the front of the seed catalogs.

Old School Canned Grape Juice

We use the seedy, dark grapes that run up into the backyard trees for this juice. The darker, the better. This is an old recipe from my partner’s mom. It is best chilled and poured from an old glass pitcher, preferably pink.

Per Quart—endlessly flexible

1 cup of grapes pulled off the vine

¼ to 1/3 cup of sugar

Boiling water to half an inch of the top

Cap and process in steam canner for ten minutes. Allow to age for a month or so before drinking.

Potato Planting

   

Prepped bed

        It was warm and sunny in the Willamette Valley this weekend. The garden beds were at the perfect stage, between mud ball and hard clay; the moon was just past full. The time was ripe to plant the potatoes--.  Yukon Gold. Desiree. All Blue. Ruby Crescent. Enough to last the winter, stored under the stairs. I pulled out the shoe boxes full of saved seed, opened the new bag of Bio-Fish fertilizer, called Mark, and settled in. I spread the fertilizer in rows. Mark used the old pointed hoe to dig the trenches. I cut up the tubers and settled in them in, then he followed behind covering them over. We put in  90 feet of seed potatoes—two ten foot beds, four full rows, plus the extras tucked in the middle—in about an hour.

       

cut potatoes

     While we planted, we listened to the neighborhood. The Laugher had company over and his constant guffaws dominated the back alley. Next door, Kallen was noodling around on his guitar, following a jazzy riff. The frat boys a block away were up on their roof, shouting cheerfully for a friend to crank up the Bob Marley and then come up and join the party. The chickens let us know how they felt about serious digging going on without their help (they were not pleased). The cats came by to comment and supervise. A bike rattled by. Someone carried on a conversation, loudly, over their phone. Al, who lives about a block away in the other direction, shouted out a greeting to a passer-by. Everyone was out, enjoying the sun.

planted-- blue potato sprouts stick up

Vegetable Hash—a perfect use for old potatoes and large leaves of mustard greens!

Wash, chop in chunks, and boil 4-5 potatoes, any type, although waxy is better.

While the potatoes boil, sauté a large bunch of mustard greens in the cast iron skillet. Add some garlic, salt, and crushed red pepper.

When the potatoes are done, drain and add to the skillet. Add a half pint of canned roasted tomatoes. Stir. Mash the potatoes a bit with the wooden spoon, taking the sharp edges off.  Stir, mash, and warm through. Eat with new whole wheat bread.

2012-- Year in the Garden

These photos were taken almost every Sat. morning from the same spot in the cherry tree, looking over the vegetable garden. 

Winter Bees

Bees remain a mystery to me….maybe it is because I can’t see what is going on in the hive without tearing it all apart, maybe it’s the alchemy that happens within, or the unexpectedness of a swarm….but I don’t begin to understand them. There has been a hive in my back yard for three years now and I’ve harvested honey, hunted for the queen, and spent long spring hours watching the bees dance and I still do not have a clue.

Last week it was warm and there were bees. When I was raking, a bee had tangled herself up in my fuzzy jacket, pumping venom into the fabric. When I shook her out, she flew into my hair. I was not stung, but it was a bother to shake her out and I moved away from the area. Today was forty degrees out, so I didn’t expect to see any bees and took advantage of the chill to really clean up the area and snug the hive back against the fence for the winter.

While I was raking the last hazelnut leaves, I found a spill of dead bees—a large one about a foot around— two feet out from the hive entrance. Oh dear! I scurried over to the hive and lifted off the top. There were a few dead bees there, as well. That I expected; bees get trapped between lid and bars regularly. I put my ear to the hive—nothing. A few of the bars had a little mildew growing on them. I laid down on the ground and peered up—dead bees on the screen and the hive was silent. Mark came out to see what the problem was while I lifted a bar from the summer harvest side of the hive. There was some lovely clean comb hanging off it and some honey, but only dead bees. Dead bees on the screen beneath. A few dead bees head in comb, like they had climbed in and died. I pulled out three more bars – cream colored comb all wonky and curved, honey, no bees…Bee crisis.

“Wait,” Mark whispered, as I began to scrape down the side of the hive, so that I could move the end bar closer to the center. “Is that a bee?” Sure enough, staggering out from the winter honey side of the hive was one bee, looking decidedly rumpled and grouchy. Another came out of the entry. “There are still bees,” he said, stepping rapidly back from the hive.

Ok…we gathered up the platter holding the comb and replaced the side board, snugging it against the winter comb. I tucked hay between the end of the hive and the board, folded a burlap sack over the bars for insulation, and replaced the lid. I don’t know if that was the Last Bee, or if the queen and her diminished for the winter court are tucked in the corner with the winter honey. I certainly don’t want to let in any more drafts by moving bars. I guess I’ll just have to wait, and watch, until they emerge—or not—to harvest the pollen from the hazelnut catkins.

Fortunately, that’s only a few weeks away…Meanwhile, I’m draining honey from comb in the kitchen.

Transcontinental Lettuce

“The transcontinental head of lettuce, grown in the Salinas Valley of California and shipped to Washington D.C., requires about 36 times as much fossil fuel energy in transport as it provides in food energy when it arrives.” (Eat Here—a worldwatch book)




We are eating oil, not food. It is not an efficient use of resources. This inefficiency of resources—namely grains—was enough to convince me to shift to a vegetarian diet back in college. It was also cheaper….and then, I decided that I didn’t really like meat anymore. Maybe being a meat wrapper and watching all of those bloody London Broils go by had something to do with it, too. And the intellectual appeal of eating closer to home did have some affect on my decision to shift to a more locally grown diet. But it wasn’t enough to change our habits.



It really started three Decembers ago. We had been eating only local produce since early June, between my garden and our Early Winter CSA box. But, a week after the box ended, we ran out of veggies and I had to go to the co-op once more. I bought a lovely head of broccoli, came home, and placed it on the chopping block. The stems were tough! And desiccated! A little brown around the edges! “What is this,” I wondered. “A dead broccoli?!” It wasn’t tender, or sweet, or a lovely light green… and I did not want to eat it. That was it. Local produce, even a month of kale and mustard greens, was a better option than dead broccoli. And, despite an occasional banana, or a red pepper in March, we haven’t looked back. Local produce is just tastier.

"Compost in Place"

The front flower bed was trimmed down this week…The eight foot tall fennel plant, that ladies walking by always comment on—“I’ve never seen such a huge dill plant.”—had toppled onto the sidewalk, the asters were all brown, and the comfrey was taking over. Halloween is over; the rains have begun; we no longer need a living hedge  between the sidewalk and the house. Besides, we were starting to look like the home of a crazy old lady, buried in foliage. It took a few days. I whacked away at the fennel with the long-handled loppers and pulled the stalks around back, shedding seeds everywhere, and then began on the smaller plants. Over the years, I have adopted the “compost in place” technique in the front yard. I cut everything down, break it into slightly shorter pieces, and lay it back in the beds. Once everything is gone, I cover the whole bed with leaves scavenged from the street, place the Halloween pumpkins into the mulch to slowly rot into the ground, and we’re done. Much easier than the old technique of hauling everything out back, turning all winter, sifting in the spring, and hauling it all back up, loaded with fennel seeds.  Not to mention moving a semi-rotten, soggy pumpkin off the front step on Veteran’s Day.

Taking Stock

It is about time to take stock of supplies for the winter….

We have:

50 pounds or so of potatoes (not a good year)

Four long garlic braids

Five huge Boston Marrows and two smaller blue Hubbards

Two trays of Long Keeper tomatoes, which we’ll eat until Solstice or beyond



Greens still growing in the garden along with a few climbing zucchini, some huge leeks, and three cabbages that Hennie the Leghorn did not eat.



Almost a gallon of honey



15 quarts of grape juice

60 half pints of roasted tomatoes

3 quarts of dried tomatoes

12 jars of salsa (Sunbow tomatoes and Bina’s peppers)

12 pints of applesauce

4 quarts of dried apples

6 pints of blueberries

3 quarts of dried blueberries

8 pints of cherries

3 quarts of dried cherries

9 pints of blackberries

12 quarts of peaches

4 quarts of dried peaches

14 pints of various plums, canned

10 half pints of plum jam—it was a good plum year.

5 quarts dried plums

12 quarts of pickled plums

6 pints of pickled beets

4 quarts of dried zucchini



Lots of jams and chutney backed up from last year.There’s also dried figs and fig jam from last year—the season never warmed enough for figs this year.In a few weeks, we’ll add oatmeal and wheat berries, flax seed and carrots, onions all purchased in bulk from local farmers.

And today, the cycle started all over again as I planted garlic cloves—one for each week of the year, plus a few extra—and yellow storage onions in the first garden bed.

What I love about Fall...

Once I have resigned myself to the end of summer, and sun, and long days of hiking and staring into space, I love fall.




I love putting the coop back on a garden bed and the ladies back to work, fertilizing and aerating the soil.



I love hanging our beautiful hand-made by Mark Meyer wooden storm windows around the house, how the inside becomes more silent and the outside picks up another layer of color.



I love the smell of apples in the larder, the glow of Boston Marrows in the shadows, the milkcrates of potatoes, the shelves of jars of canned and dried goods and tins holding grains—there is food stored throughout the house for the winter.



I love the muted colors of the bigleaf maples against doug firs and the way the clouds come down and sit on the hills that surround our town.



I love fires in the evenings and the piles of wood, sorted by size, in the basement.



I love how the grass is green again from the early rains.



I love wearing wool sweaters or heavy sweatshirts in the mornings—and a t shirt in the afternoon, when the sun comes out.



I love the weight of winter blankets and the cool breeze from the open bedroom window at night.



I love having people over for potlucks or pie, sitting around the dining room table telling stories.



I love empty campgrounds and trails.



I love the way school settles into a rhythm after the first month—papers in, papers out—and everyone knows the rituals of the room.



I love the first hard rain of the season and how loud it is on the skylight in my classroom—the rush to look up in the center of the space.



I love seeing the bare lines of the garden beds and the trees, spotting the branch that needs to be trimmed out, rethinking the position of a planter.



I love how the cats move inside and search out laps once more.



I love baked winter squashes and roasted potatoes, lasagna and flan, baked beans and brown bread.

Fall Fires

The rains have settled in early this year and the entire house feels damp—is damp, to be honest. The bathroom towels never completely dry out. So, on a misty rainy night, we had our first hearth fire of the season and autumn officially began.




I start by choosing the wood carefully from the tottering pile in the basement—the proper balance of laurel log, rosemary twigs, purchased fir from Mr. Bush, and old garden signs of snappy cedar, plus a candle end to get it all started. Then I build the fire pyramid; Mark mutters that I have become a pyro in the last few years, and I do take the set-up seriously. You need air circulation for a good fire. Then it’s time to rearrange the chairs, pulling the old rocker and sixties wooden armchair close to the hearth. I find the folding table rescued from a student dumpster and shift the light to between the two chairs and we’re set. Time to make dinner.

While the soup heats up, I light the fire and Mark checks the s’mores supply—marshmallows, graham crackers, and Hershey’s chocolate, all in a Christmas tin in the hallway, out of reach of ants. The cats wander in. Kayli the Sun Kitty makes loving eyes at the flames. Lucy tries out both seats. I spread an old fuzzy directly in front of the flames for Kayli and she purrs contentedly. Mark hunts down his notebook, reading material, and suduko puzzle. We have new library books. Water glasses are filled and covered by a napkin to discourage Lucy from drinking. She tries anyways.

After dinner in front of the fire, Mark cooks the marshmallows for four s’mores. Cats settle on laps. Kayli stretches out on her back, paws towards the fire, for a blissful tummy rub. We read, write, stare into the flames. The house grows dark around us—we have become a small circle of light in the universe, focused on the hearth at the center of our tiny house…I remember Wallace Stevens and “the cry of the peacocks” turning in the wind. The night feels late. The flames slowly die into the glowing coals, throwing off heat into the room. Some nights, we move the couch over and sleep there, others, I shift the laundry rack covered in jeans pulled of the line when the rains began in the late afternoon, taking advantage of the dry heat.

The next morning, I clear out the ashes and spread them on the garden beds, clearing the space for another fire, returning the laurel and rosemary to the earth. We will miss the sun—it’s warmth and dryness—but the fireplace begins to compensate for that on the long winter nights.

Most Useful Object...

I’ve been thinking about the weird tools that I use every day—things that don’t look fancy, but I cannot imagine doing my job without. At school it could be the biggest binder clip, or the ancient staplers—we go through more staples, thousands of them, than I ever thought possible—but I think it is the tiny screwdriver I confiscated from a kid who was thinking about dismantling a desk in class. (Don’t laugh—a famous wild child with Mark’s last name’s parting shot was to unscrew at least ten desktops on his last day. And he liked me.) I use it all the time to unjam said staplers and pop lead out of the electric pencil sharpener, among other things. Once in a great while, it is pressed into service by a ninth grade boy who needs to repair his finger skateboard.


Here, at The Urban Homestead, there are several contenders. There’s baling twine taken from the hay bales that I use to tie up everything because it does not rot in half a season. And it’s often green, a nice touch. There’s the staple gun, which attaches said baling twine to the fences and garden beds, as well as plastic to the cold frames and many other such things. Love the staple gun—do not love how it always runs out of staples right when I am precariously balanced in a garden bed with a bramble sticking into my back. I’m pretty fond of those tiny nails called brads that hang pictures and kitchen equipment inside and can be used to build hazelnut branch trellises outside. Canning jars are ubiquitous. Holding all sorts of food besides jam and pickles, they are our version of Tupperware and they can pop in to the microwave without off-gassing.

But the most useful thing in our house—even more than the milkcrate, which is not so important now that I have bookshelves and do not move every year—is the five gallon bucket. I prefer the shorter, squatter version, because it is easier to carry when you have short arms, but any will do. We use it to haul and store apples and pears and potatoes at harvest time, move compost in all of its forms from extra trimmings during the Grand Peach Canning to finished and sifted mulch, carry greywater and pompost to the back forty… It sorts and totes tools of all sorts, keeps bailing twine in order, stores lime after the bag rips open, and, with a few holes in the bottom, functions are a planter or a watering funnel. Mark sits on one and weeds into another when he goes on a false dandelion rampage in the front yard. With a good lid, it can hold wheat and oatmeal for the winter or rabbit food in the shed. In the winter, an abandoned five gallon bucket becomes our rain gauge for the season. It has to be the one most useful object in our garden shed. And I wonder, how do people garden without them….are they forced to buy those fancy plastic tubs in decorator colors? What a waste.

A Search for balance-- Musing around the Fall Equinox

It is the Fall Equinox—the time when the day and night are of equal length and the world balances before sliding into the dark months ahead. I spend considerable time, around the equinox, thinking about balance in my own life and neighborhood.






Mark has been patrolling the townhouses for the last two weeks, looking for loud parties and calling in noise complaints. One night, when I came home from chaperoning a dance, it was really quiet on the block. “They’re not back yet,” I thought as I walked in. Mark was looking downright smug, sitting in the rocker. “It’s quiet,” I told him. “Good,” he said. “I called in five parties about twenty minutes ago. I thought it quieted down.”

This last week, when all of the freshpeople are in the dorms and the frats are back cleaning up their houses, is notoriously bad. They have nothing to do, so they begin shrieking on Sunday night and do not stop for the entire week. It reaches a crescendo on Saturday. Mark and I went out around ten o’clock on Thursday. People were everywhere, but all heading for the townhouses. You could hear them several blocks away. We walked down the alley, making note of noise, then headed over to the park complex—the passage through the Catholic Church was a highway. Worse by the park…we started for home, when, suddenly, it grew very quiet…”What’s up?” Mark muttered—then we saw the police car in the alley—and another on the street—and three police officers going down the row, knocking on doors while several drunk students climbed over the balcony railings, broke a light fixture, and ran. Clearly underage…

This week, we will hang our fliers about noise and talk about setting up a system to inform landlords about loud party complaints. I’ll probably bake some oatmeal cookies for the night shift. And I’ll go to a meeting about a new development being planned near-by, because the balance between partiers and sleepers in my neighborhood is just way off.





Over the weekend, we fled Loud Week and headed for the Metolius for three days of car camping, day hikes, and the sound of the river at night. I love campgrounds; they feel like home. I spent a year of my childhood living in them—several months traveling around the country then the winter in Florida, raising money to go home to New England. For years after, we still lived in the camper in the summers, first with my cousins by their lake then at another campground. I love the scent of a campground—the fire smoke, the whiff of outhouse occasionally, the damp mulch under the trees. I love the sounds—dogs barking, kids riding bikes in circles for hours, someone attempting to chop wood, the wind in the high branches, the sound of the river at night. I love the lights that hang off of awnings in Old School set-ups, the flashlights like fireflies heading to the bathrooms at 9:30, right before bed, the huge variety of rigs and rigging that people who camp regularly develop, the old guys who like to swing by and chat when you are sitting by yourself at the table, the network of little trails that like campsites with the surrounding woods. I like campground with no amenities—just a water pump and an outhouse, a wooden table at the site—and with hot showers in white tiled bathrooms, electricity for the hotpot, and ice cream sandwiches down the road. There is a place for all sorts of campgrounds…and they all call to me when I climb into the Ark to run another round of errands, when I just want to flee my life here and hit the open road, seek balance somewhere else for a little while.