Hard Frosts

 

I love a hard frost in Late October. One day, the cucumber vines are struggling along…maybe one more cucumber? Maybe? And the next—nope. We are done. Move on, people. Summer is over.

This year, we knew the cold snap was coming so we prepared. I went out and harvested the last beans and cucumber (there WAS one more!) in a misty rain early this week. We put up our new heavier curtains over the south windows in the living room to keep drafts off of our necks. We washed and hung the storm windows, making the house winter quiet. Mark walked in two nights ago with the last candy roaster squash in his hands. “I thought I may as well bring it in,” he said. “The vine is dead.” We bought bird seed for the winter. I pulled the extra blankets onto the bed. The cat even decided to come in and sleep on our heads until it was too chilly and she moved under the covers. We even did the laundry and hung it outside to dry because the clouds were gone

Saturday morning, we woke up to a changed world. The sun was brilliant; the sky deep blue. Sheets flapped on the line. It was 47 degrees in the house so we turned on the heat (I try ad hold out until November). All of the summer vines had wilted overnight. We spent the afternoon at Finley, admiring the new green grass and the dying leaves, the egrets and herons, the snakes and wooly bear caterpillars.  Sunday afternoon, I cleared up the garden, getting the beds cleared of fences, hoses, and dying plants so the space is clear for the coming leaf drop.

When the clouds break and we can see the full moon tangling in the branches of our trees, we remember just how far north we are—beyond Calais Maine! Halfway between the North Pole and the equator! – and how short the days will soon be. We reach towards the sun, knowing the clouds and rain will be back. But, right now, the world is clear and bright.

               

Camp Cooking

 

                The first spring Mark and I were together, we took a road trip out to central Oregon. It was his first time traveling in the Ark and our first out of town adventure.  We stopped at the obsidian flow outside of Bend and the guide told us to turn onto to China Hat road, which loops around Paulina Crater. It passes several ice and lava caves and then turns gravel, with lots of free dispersed camping. Free being a very good price, we headed out. After exploring the caves, we found a non-descript pulling off place for the night and I made dinner. Tomatoes, onions, elbow pasta on the two burner stove. Nothing exciting. But, when I handed the plates out to Mark, he was impressed. Real food on the road. I could get used to this, he thought. Friday night, he stood watching me make the same basic meal while we were camping on the Metolious river. “This was our first camping meal,” he observed. The charm has not faded.

                Saturday evening, we were having beans, farls, and steamed broccoli and green beans. Farls are a simple biscuit made with flour, baking soda, and soured milk, perfect foils for beans or honey. It is a preferred car camping food.  Usually, the dough is pretty stiff, like a scone, and I cook them in triangle shaped pieces, one side, then the other, then, like Stonehenge monuments, on their edges. It’s fun. This time, I messed up the recipe and added twice as much milk; the result was almost as runny as a pancake. What to do? It’s not like we have extra dinners tucked away in the van’s kitchen… I turned the heat down on the stove, poured the batter in, and hoped for the best.  The creation bubbled like a pancake. When the bubbles held open, I slipped my hands and spatula under it, flipped it over, and kept cooking. It worked.  It might have been better than usual.

Early September

     

The beginning of September is always a bit stressful. Summer is closing down while school is ramping up and it requires perfect timing to navigate the transition successfully. If I want to survive the first week of teaching, the week before I must complete more than three quarters of the following list: clean the house, find my school clothes and shoes, clean up the garden, prep food for breakfast, get ahead on the canning, finish the house projects and put everything away, finish the long novel I have been reading, do a big food shop, and make a serious food plan for the week. It helps to save time to stare into space and take a few long walks. This year, I made it through half of the list. Add a bunch of new tech at school and coming home to an exploded coffee pot (Mark forgot a part…) that sent coffee grounds and water everywhere, and I was DONE on Friday afternoon.

Sunday morning, we had a morning fire, a lovely fall ritual that evokes camping without leaving home. I start a fire in the chiminea we have set in the heart of the garden, using the fallen branches and fig cuttings. Then I leave Mark and the cat to keep an eye on it while I make breakfast. Fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, the last slices of apple bread, tea. We eat, read the New York Times, listen to the chickens rustle in the leaves under the hazelnut tree, and move the cat from lap to lap. OSU has not started yet, so the streets are quiet. The air is cool, the sun just rising into the space, the morning glories are blooming on the trellises. The world is peaceful.

Next year, I think, I’ll get it all done before school starts.

 

Time, Place, and Manner

 

Two years ago, the state of Oregon passed a law—ORS 195.530—that “city or county law that regulates the acts of sitting, lying, sleeping, or keeping warm and dry outdoors on public property that is open to the public must be objectively reasonable as to time, place, and manner with regards to persons experiencing homelessness.” The law went into effect in July 2023, so there was a flurry of activity as cities tried to figure out what to do and how to comply. Many cities determined that homeless people could camp in a specific area—in some small towns between two specific trees in front of city hall—but had to move in the morning, every morning. Corvallis decided on a broader approach, allowing overnight camping in city parks as long as it did not impact natural features or riparian areas, or playgrounds and playing fields, but the sleeping arrangements must be packed up and moved every day.

I have taken long backpacking trips, where everything I needed was in my beloved grey pack on my back, creaking as I moved. I have read dozens of books about thru-hiking and long walks and I feel the pull of being rootless every fall.  I have been on the road, living with my parents in a camper for eight or ten months and, later, in my van for long periods of time. I have couch surfed for several months. I have had my family double up with another family because of financial challenges. In all of these moments of shifting and unstable housing, I have always been safe. There has always been some sort of safety net beneath me and I have been mentally and physically healthy. Even then, there have been times when I have felt a deep disconnect from the society I am moving through, unsettled as night fell, and, sometimes, psychically frail. Each time, I have come through because I have chosen this path and there is an end.

In effect, what this new law does is turn people without stable housing into thru-hikers on the AT, packing up and moving on every day, with the crucial distinction that thru-hikers choose this life. Thru-hikers travel in informal packs, walking alone or in small groups during the day, carrying all of their belongings, and then landing on the designated campsites in the evening. They often eat meals on the trail, not in the camp. They pick up pre-packed supplies in designated town. They leave the trail for mental and physical breaks. Even so, it is a challenge to keep going, to be dislocated every single day and set up a new camp every night. So, most importantly, if they can’t stand it anymore, they return to their lives.

So, we, all over the state, are asking people without stable housing to move into an area after we are done with it for the day, set up a sleeping spot, and then be gone in the morning before we come back. Leave no trace. The vast majority of people living on our streets and in our parks are not able to do this. First, they do not have the means—the beloved creaking backpack—to pack up their equipment every day. “We’ve been posted,” one woman told me a few weeks ago, while her dogs leaned against my shins, asking me to rub their ears. “We have two dogs, our stuff, and no way to get it anywhere else. What are we supposed to do?” Then, they often do not want to leave the community they developed in their illegal camps. People often ask for a second coffee for someone else when we are out on Street Outreach—he’ll be right back, they say.  People look out for one another in the camps. Not everyone. Not all the time. But often enough. Finally, and most importantly, it is far more difficult to move out of camping if you are changing camps every day. Having a stable place to stay, even if it is a tent between the path and the river, is the first step to moving back into stable housing. Housing First.  If you are in the same spot, you can go look for help with your paperwork, set up an appointment for an interview, figure out how to charge your phone so you can learn about the pickup job on Tuesday. There is the first step towards stability.

I don’t have the answers to these problems. We need physical and mental health care. We need more affordable housing. We need drug treatment centers. We need group homes where people can be supported in their lives. We need to tax Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos back down to reality. What we do not need to do is ask our most vulnerable citizens to move camp every night so that we never see them.

Night light

         

Summer evenings….When the first heat wave hits, we move outside. Backpacking mats become our bed (which makes the cat very happy), piles of books and used water glasses settle next to the benches, the blue firewood bin becomes the foot bath, full of cool water, and I set up a light on the table for reading. When the temps drop back to normal, I dump the footbath and we sleep inside (Mark’s idea, not mine), but the light stays until the rains begin.

Around eight, we finish up our day’s work. The steam canner is turned off from whatever batch of food I have processed, Mark has finished the dishes, the rabbit has been sung into his hutch, and the chickens have argued about their respective perches. The cat wanders back from the front yard where she has been accosting passersby for pats. The solar lights shaped like bees that curve over the arch in the garden flicker on. Crickets set up their rhythms. The dude on the loud bike passes once more  through the neighborhood.  Mark makes the bedtime tea. I turn on the light. It shines down on the table so that we can read but also up into the sky, creating a quiet oasis of light in the darkening night. We sit, read and write, pat the cat until she settles down on an extra book or map, and dream.

 

Apple branchfall

 

Our apple tree is overproducing this year. It’s on a two year rotation for production but the stars aligned this spring and it is covered in fruit. It’s been shedding small apples for a month or so—they hit the roof of the van in the middle of the night and wake me up. It also seriously needs a pruning; I missed three years in a row and it is now too big for me to do well. The combined extra fruit and need for  a prune—along with, I suspect, a dry spring—led to a major branch break yesterday morning. I went out to haul in the trash cans from a pick up and a big branch was blocking the sidewalk. A couple of dogs were eying it nervously and crossed the street to avoid it. I sighed, brought out the loppers, and cleared the sidewalk. Later in the afternoon, I finished the job and cut back the branch, picked up all of the fruit, broke down the big branches into smaller ones that fit into the garbage bins (easier to haul back to the compost), and generally cleaned up.

We were left, after clean-up, with wheelbarrow full of apples. Mark came home, looked at the fruit, and headed inside, hoping it would go away. Are they even ripe? He asked. Yes, they were. We needed to press them. Pressing apples looms large in the tasks he would rather not do; we borrowed a finicky press for several years before we got our own, the summer of the pandemic, and that is what he remembers. Even with the new press, it’s a project.

1.       Gather all the fruit

2.       Haul the press out of the greenhouse and wash it off

3.       Find the knives, cutting boards, yellow bowl, and huge pasta pot for boiling the juice

4.       Set up the cuisinart and run the extension cord

5.       Quarter apples. Try and cut out most of the wormy spots.

6.       Chop apples in cuisinart.

7.       Dump in press. Repeat eight times.

8.       Press the juice into the yellow bowl

9.       Empty the pressed apples into a five gallon bucket to take back to the compost

10.   Quarter and chop more apples

11.   Press

12.   When all of the apples are pressed, clean up. Use the hose on the table and press.

13.   Compost all the residual apples, pulp, etc.

14.   Wash quart jars to hold juice

15.   Wash all tools

16.   Heat juice to kill the worms you may have missed

17.   Can juice

18.   Cool and bring downstairs

 

We actually moved pretty efficiently last night and pressed seven quarts of apple juice for the winter. The tree is still loaded. I am hoping no more branches break.

The Blue Wall

 

                Last December, Mark and I bought the house next door. It’s from the 1920s and has some beautiful details inside, but it had been neglected for 20 years. One big thing that was ignored was the garage, made of cinder blocks and settled on Oregon clay, which moves fairly dramatically over the course of a year. There have been repaired cracks in the wall as long as we have lived here and they only grew worse over the years. And the roof leaked. And the beam over the doorway had rotted through. The space over the garage door had a scary bulge to it. It had to come down; the insurance company refused to insure the house if it remained standing. Today, it began the process. The roof first, then he blue wall closest to our house and green house. It was fascinating to watch and I caught the wall coming down in a series of photos.