Gratitude

 

We are moving into the time of Advent, the darkest time of the year. On Halloween, we put our gardens to bed with the guardians we carve out of pumpkins and lose out the time of the year for growth. There is a long still time before the seed catalogs come out. The first half of this six week stretch is a deep breathing of stillness, usually punctuated by some cold, bright nights. We burrow in. And then, after Thanksgiving, we move towards waiting for the return of the light. I often use this time for specific daily actions. One year, I took an extra step for preventing climate change and wrote about it. Another  year I used the Beat idea “Be in Love with Yr Life" and remembered everything I love about my life here in this corner of the world.

This year, I am thinking about gratitude. Despite some rough patches is year, I am so much to be grateful for in my life.  Thinking about something every day—and writing it down—will help my focus on all of the light in my life and fight the darkness.

 

December 1:  My physical therapist, Maggie, who, in the course of several months, pulled all of the nerves and muscles that had jammed together when I fell on the ice apart, allowing me to walk fast and confident, again.

December 2: Unity Shelter, which works, with great grace and focus, to shelter the most vulnerable in our community.  It is a constant battle to survive.

December 3: Local cinema that shows Monty Python and the Holy Grail on rainy Sunday afternoons.

December 4: I am grateful, tonight, for community-- for everyone who shows up at council meetings to speak, observe, and be present.

December 5: I am grateful for...Snapchat, which allows students to see where their friends are and then call them and put them on speakerphone so that they can explain that they were too tired to come to English class.

They find the thought that I might join snapchat and allow my location to be seen with a little avatar very entertaining.

December 6: The ritual of holiday cards, like small shouts of love across the miles. We make our own and send them across the country.

 December 7: I am grateful for tiny people, who walk around their preschool garden in one piece rain outfits with traffic cones on their heads. Gnomes!

December 8: I am grateful for SAFE Corvallis happy hour(s) when there are so many bike helmets they spread onto neighboring tables until the very patient waiter asks us to move them.

December 9: I am grateful for our Lucia Day ritual-- wake up at 6:30 to bake the rolls, then meet friends at Bald Hill to break bread and sip cocoa before climbing the muddy trail up to the view over our beloved valley. Rain, snow, sun-- this Saturday, we are there.

December 10: I am grateful for our crockpot which cooks the best beans ever while we sleep or go for a hike.

December 11: I am grateful for our local farmers, who feed us even in the middle of winter.

December 12:I am grateful for fire drills on sunny afternoons, even when the reason we are standing out there forever is because one of MY students did not listen at the beginning of class when I told them where to gather, wandered off, and had to be called on his phone and talked in to the correct location.

December 13: I am grateful for small holiday rituals on dank nights: winter lights on porches, small trees and menorahs in windows, and latkes for dinner.

December 14: I am grateful for Ilene McClelland, who organizes the It's Lit bike ride every year, when we light up our bikes and ride around the neighborhoods.

December 15: I am grateful for Winter Break.

December 16: I am grateful for Government Corner, Sat. morning at the public library. You never know who will show up to talk with you so it is a pretty perfect example of Democracy in action.

It would be a little better if I was not backed up to the water fountain when some slurper decided to gargle over the bubbler.

December 17: I am grateful for long quiet walks in the December woods.

December 18: I am grateful for the sacred pause right before a meeting begins.

Describing Climate Doom

 

Mark and I were talking about Climate Change this morning. It’s not an unusual topic of conversation around here. I am always wondering what I need to say or do to have people take the issue seriously and make profound changes.

                “I don’t think we are doomed,” Mark said.  “Human being are not going to be totally wiped off the face of the planet.  That’s just not possible.”

                “ I don’t think so either,” I agreed. “I just think we are going to go back to the Dark Ages. No energy, very little food, no medical care…”  It was kind of a revelation; we had never really tried to quantify or describe what Doom looks like. The Dark Ages—we could both agree on that.  But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that, in Europe and The United States, it might look more like Ukraine, right now, going into the second winter of the war. Or Maybe France during World War II. Or any other war torn country. Very limited fuel. Bombed out buildings. Restricted  food, mostly locally produced. Poor health care. Tainted soil and air.  Add in drug resistant viruses so basic infections are no longer curable and nowhere to go that is not in the same situation. There will be no escape. James Kunstler called it the Long Emergency.   That sounds like Doom to me.

                Then I continued with the thought experiment. What if we all lived with the same consumption patterns as people in the early 1950s, but with the newer, more efficient technology?   Average house size was about 1400 square feet, rather than 2200. That’s half the space to heat, cool, maintain, and fill with stuff. There were 380 cars per thousand people in the U.S. in 1955; 808 per 1000 in 2012, when the chart ends.  Regular people did not fly for vacations. If my Betty Crocker cookbook—and my mother’s cooking—are any indication, people ate meat, potatoes, and a veg for dinner almost every night. Mostly fresh, some frozen. But portion size was much less. Gong out for a meal was a special occasion. People had fewer clothes, coats, pairs of shoes, toys and bikes. But this was not a time of deprivation; consumerism was just ramping up after the war.   But the life style, just by scale of home and not flying, is less than half of a carbon footprint today.

 We can do this. We just have to want to.  

               

 

Winter Veg

 

Last weekend, we walked up to the Fill Your Pantry event at the Benton County fairgrounds. The place was buzzing with people picking up preorders of beans, grains, and veggies, as well as adding to their pile while eating samples of winter foods.  We dodged a downpour and came home with about 30 pounds of dried beans (our winter stores) and a poster that tells us to Eat Our Winter Veggies! For the fridge.

We don’t really need to be exhorted to eat winter veggies, especially local ones…we have potatoes stored under the basement steps, squashes and onions in the larder, canned tomatoes and salsas on the shelf, and dried fruit in jars. I made a batch of sauerkraut from a huge head of cabbage last Tuesday evening; it is fermenting on the top of the refrigerator.  There are still leeks and parsnips in the garden, as well as some volunteer mustards.  We buy our greens and other veg from Sunbow every week.  We are ready.

 We eat our local winter veg  first because it tastes better than summer food driven  in from the other side of the world. A fresh head of kales and mustard is alive in a way that a pale winter tomato will never be. It is also better for our planet; we are not shipping what is essentially water  thousands of miles. And it supports the local economy. We know the people who have grown our food and we know where they are spending their money close to home.  There is also the challenge to menu planning from what is at hand and how that ties us to the seasons. We eat asparagus until it is done then wait for next year.  Broccoli and cauliflower come and go several  in the course of the year.  We eat zucchini until we are bored but embrace it very early summer when it comes around again.

So it is time to shift, again, to winter foods. There are beans  for soup in the crockpot.  New bread. Cauliflower waiting to be chopped and roasted for dinner this evening.  Winter veg.

November Begins

         

On Halloween night, Mark and I opened the doors to the dark time of the year, but we placed our guardians around the place for protection. We started with serious local food for dinner: a quiche with leeks and apples from our yard, salad from Sunbow, and a peach pie to finish up the peaches Mac delivered to our doorstep back in August. While everything baked, we carved our pumpkins—elaborate faces for the door guardians and flowers and swirls for the garden spirits. I lit a fire using the branches of a tree we had taken down in September; it was the first fire on the hearth for this winter. After dinner, I shuffled the tarot deck to pull, yet again, the Five of Wands, which encourages me to focus my energies.

Since then, we have been bringing in food for the winter—dried beans, onions, wheat and flour—to add to the stock already in the basement. I grew enough squash to carry us through the winter; there are canned tomatoes, jams, and cider on our basement shelves and potatoes under the stairs. Today, we put the woodpiles into order, finally sorting the wood into fireplace and stove, small, medium and large pieces with the oldest, driest wood on top. Slowly, we are settling in for the winter, bringing our basement life, at least, into order.

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.