The Fourth Instar

"With all eyes on WangYi, only the mountain saw her as she silently took the sixth and last arrow from his case and swiftly hid it in her sleeve. As a result, after shooting the fifth sun, WangYi found his case empty and laid down his bow. This is why there is now one sun." – Lin, Starry River of the Sky






3.

Crandall had a moment to choose whether he would cross the street to the butterfly display at the gardens or not.  The park behind was vast and green in mid July. Out beyond, the blue of the lake was something like the color of a blue enamel, only a gull or two hovering around the dock at the landing and landed boats gently rocking back and forth. On the other shore he could see dome of the Capital building, bright and white. This lake, he had been told by his father, was originally called 'Teepee Lake' by the Ho-Chunk, and more simply 'Beautiful' by the Chippewa. He felt close to the lake at the moment having sailed around its shores nearly daily. He pictured the green of the park as prairie and could see a thousand butterflies, golden and dashing up and down, left and right, over random wildflowers and heard the breeze speak through prairie like a dream catcher might. There was an interplay like this back and forth between the flowers and lakes and he wondered where all of it went eventually.  "Let's cross now," the tall man in front him said and his family crossed heading to the front of the building.  The younger of the two girls had been griping the entire way, since they left the beer garden, "why do we have to do all of this again," she said, looking up the mother who was holding her hand tightly, the girl trailing behind all the others, and holding back.  "We know what this means to your father."
  "I don't see why we need to have this one," though, the girl responded back, "we have had so many others in our garden."  After getting to the other side of road, the mother dropped her sunglasses down below her eyes onto her nose.  "We have been through this so many times, so many times. You know what to do." Crandall could not help but to follow this family as close as he could without standing out.  He had the habit of listening to and following other families wherever he went, always interested in what it might be like to live in a larger family of five.  It had been he and father and Starla for three years now. He understood his father's work, but he often went his own way.  He and his sister rarely saw eye to eye.  He felt something like a spying butterfly himself, dashing in and out of the lives of others, then off again to another and another.  "The fourth instar is the only one stage that they haven't perfected Fasha, you know that," the father said as they walked into the front of the entrance past desks that were set out for signing up for something Crandall didn't know. "Five dollars each," the young woman at the entrance said.  The mother quickly quickly handed the young woman cash.  Crandall reached in his own pocket but knew before he even felt that it was empty. He shook his head. That was that. He would come tomorrow with money. But in the meantime he would lose track of this forth instar business across the street from lake beautiful.

The Fourth Instar

"Just like that, Rendi became the chore boy at the Inn of Clear Sky. He was not used to doing chores, so when he found a broom in his hand, he had to watch Peiyi to learn how to sweep. He watched her so closely as he washed and dusted that she was convinced he was mocking her and said in annoyance, "Go clean that room by yourself." – Lin, from Starry River of the Sky





2.

When they used to approach their field for research, all it took from his father was a little direction, "once you get to the middle you will begin to hear the entire world differently.  The sound of truck wheels will give way to the bumblebees. In the background you will begin to hear the songbirds instead of the city noise. It is much easier to listen to." Crandall would purposefully lose himself inside the head-high Queen Anne's Lace and was closer to eye level with the purple field thistle and coneflowers.  On those days he wore his longest possible pants and a shirt with long sleeves.  He was told by his father to wear gloves as well, "thistle can stay on the skin for a long time and scratch. Watch out for bramble vines and parsnip." He showed Crandall a picture of all of these things but it didn't particularly scare him. The fantasy of being inside of the prairie where nobody else could see him and that his friends became the wild colors of the earth was enough motivation.  "Take a stride slowly as you walk through, make sure to look around you to either side for Monarchs. If they are on a nectarine plant, I want you to identify the type of plant. If they are flying in the distance, keep track of that also." The father didn't always show his son the entirety of the steps of the tasks to be done and Crandall wouldn't have it any other way.  He became quickly bored and uninterested at such elaborate instruction. He dashed off with measuring tape and his plot rack and found his coordinates for the first sampling.

And so that day at Olbrich Park, walking along the shoreline where the wildflowers still rose and had not been mowed, he did not have his tools but he was walking off distances and looking for flowering milkweed, inspecting the bottom of leaves.  He had wondered nearer to the beer garden and could overhear the family that had been talking about looking at blooming butterflies across the street.  His father was no doubt this very moment inside of his glass deck on the boat assembling some such data and gazing out over the flat water of Lake Monona, sailboats gliding across in the distance across the face of the Monona Terrace, "the white cake of the lake," they called it.  Back home his sister Starla would be playing some game on her phone and missing all of this action. "We all will bring our backpacks,' the man said at the table, as if instruction.  He was very tall. In fact all of them seated at the table were quite tall, two boys and two girls, maybe a mother, and yet the woman along seemed quite young as well, at least a much different age than the man speaking. "The display takes its break at 2:00 in the afternoon.  It is a shift change," he continued to say, now pulling out a piece of paper and pointing down at it as if a map.  "There are no bathrooms but there is one side room near the case, and that is where we will be. You two will...." A breeze picked up briefly off the lake and rustling of the shoreline limbs made it difficult for Crandall to follow the last part.

The Fourth Instar

"To Rendi, this small village of Clear Sky and its inn were horrible. Peiyi was forced to show him everything, and she fumed with anger as he sneered at the rough wooden floors, the humble and broken-down houses, and the yellowing weeds dying between the rocks in the walls." – Grace Lin, from Starry River of the Sky







1.

Crandall was a better boy than anybody believed. That was to be his own fate and destiny, and one, many years later, he could see for himself.  But of course fate is a perspective only to be seen from the summit of one's own life-mountain, as he would one day tell Starla, but could not have known as a boy when this story begins. Crandall was both quiet and overshadowed by a large house, a large lawn, a fine boat at the end of the dock at Lake Monona. When they reached Olbrich Park it was by the finest of machines, whether bike or car, and the surrounding friends were well cared for. His father had enough money to retire early and they spent their days in among the various landings and harbors for boating in Yahara chain of lakes.  The favorite was Olbrich Park at Starkweather Creek. As father spent his time at the Eastside Supper Club, out back on the broad yard playing lawn bowling, Crandall safely wandered the beach and the shoreline, the near the beer garden and sometimes across the street to the Grand Garden itself, Olbrich, his kingdom of fantasy, a jungle of true and fictionalized stories alike.  One day he crossed the street from park to garden along with a group of visitors who had been chuckling about a visit from the tables at the beer garden.  It was hotter that day usual. Queen Anne's Lace lit up like a long string of white lights along the shoreline.  Crandall would walk near the wildflowers and look for butterflies. Once he had seen a monarch so large that it took up all the space before him, the capital across the lake in the distance but a small white cup.  He checked under leaves of the milkweed plants for eggs or instars.  He could have been doing anything that he wanted, playing on phones like other children, splashing in the beach only a few hundred feet away, but that day he was checking milkweed and heard the visitors talk of blooming butterflies display at the Garden and decided it was time to see it for himself. His father, among many other things, was an amateur botanist and had quizzed Crandall since he could speak.  The dried flowers set in cases around the house had become strange art and Crandall could often see bees balm in his dream, himself a bee or butterfly, using its proboscis to suck nectar like sugar water and was sure he awoke some mornings with the taste of something sweet and wild in his mouth.

Monarch Chronicles

"Weeds grow over the public well.
I loaf in my old clothes. Willow
Branches sway. Flowering trees
Perfume the air..."   – Tu Fu, "Country Cottage"








Night storms have rattled the limbs
from the old oak at the sidewalk corner.
Small twigs litter the garden
in among the dead lily stems.
I pick at the spread of bark
for weeds, pull fresh tree sprouts
and find a new milkweed has risen shoulder
high in the last hot month.
The only of its kind, thick stemmed,
white bubbles suspended
at the velvety leaves like dried cream.
Three leaves have holes eaten in them.
The Monarch in the courtyard
dances along the river breeze.

Olbrich Diaries
Blooming Butterflies

"The city is silent,

Sound drains away,

Buildings vanish in the light of dawn"

 – Tu Fu, "Dawn Over the Mountains"

At herb garden

the bee balm is fuzzy by bees.

Frog Pond lookout

flooded by emerald duckweed.

We walk over Starkweather Creek Bridge

and see the underwater grass

below flow like Queen's hair.

Gold Thai Pavilion is a flower of its own,

a thousand compass plants mosaic.

Rock water pool a sunday afternoon, 

peace of a good book,

the silent dangle of a Monarch butterfly

as if by a string so precise it nips 

at the surface of the water 

a child to sugar.

Riverside Ovens Test Kitchen
Restaurant of the Year

"It is a Sunday evening in mid-June. the cafes of Cavaillon are crammed. There isn't an inch to park your car. The noise is tremendous. In the most possible of the hotels – it goes by the name of Toppin – all the rooms are taken by seven o'clock. But the little Auburge La Provencale in the rue Chabran is quite quiet and you can enjoy a good little dinner..." Elizabeth David, "The Markets of France: Cavaillon."





It is Sunday and what we found out by the menu, still brunch time as we seated outside in a gated sidewalk terrace along Church Street.  This little square area of downtown Evanston is quite hectic, parking also crowded, as it was in Cavaillon for David, and so the better to be on foot we have found in this area of town to pick and choose from what has begun to feel like twenty dining destinations all worth the while if for no better reason than to see the future of fine dining right here in the upper midwest.  That is precisely what you get at Farmhouse, a two-story masterpiece of food, decor, concept and service that stands out as a sort of culmination of all things trendy in the farm to table

revolution, including a tasteful nod to downplaying its very own self importance. In the end, a restauranteur wants a foodie to leave their place with a gravitational pull left in the back of the mind to return, for the food, for the space, for the service, not for the sake of fashion. Farmhouse achieves all of the undertones of successful fashion because underneath it all is a concept that makes sense: source all of your fresh food from a single farm and use them to create recipes that don't leap away from midwest fare but re-engage it, with an understated elegance.  For all of us who have thought of this very idea in restaurants previously – what happens if we take simple midwest cooking and turn it gourmet – well, we have finally found it and the executive chef, from small town Ohio, likely doesn't have to work hard at producing meals in this category. It is part of his upbringing.

A wonderful example was the brunch menu full of new takes on fairly popular midwest cuisine. I ordered the biscuits and gravy, with the hitch that the gravy be made from homemade, locally sourced short ribs, the dish covered by nearly poached local eggs, making a heaping portion of one of the

more savory, rich breakfast plates that I have ever had. A brief glance at the finished plate and one wouldn't necessarily hold it out as anything of a masterpiece, but once you get started you begin to taste the care of the biscuits themselves, the delicate cooking technique that leaves them still moist, flaky, and able to pull inside the white gravy above.  The dripping of the egg yolks over it all is almost too much and you are fairly convinced that you are eating dessert before the meal, but then look around the other tables at other plates and see that they are sharing the same experience.

On this visit the gravitational pull to return to the Farmhouse last somewhere around five hours.  A mere half a mile away from my hotel, the question becomes why not return here for a late dinner, check out the rotated menu and see how the farm looks by dim candles next to small vases full of pressed wildflowers?  The beer selection was the interesting beginning by two taps from the B Nektar Meadery, which produces wonderful honey based fermented and filtered ales, really a perfect sort of beverage to go along with the farmhouse concept. I ordered the duck confit, a dish of old world grains, Whiskey cherries, frisee, spicy duck and spicy backwoods mustard.  As so many of us duck lovers have come to find out over the years, duck is a very difficult and fickle piece of wild meat to cook well.  More than likely any technique of fast cooking is going to leave the duck dry, dense and, frankly (and unfortunately) wasted.  One of the reasons that I have skipped ordering duck at a variety

of past restaurants is that I just hate to see this beautiful wild bird wasted by a cooking process that doesn't work.  The confit process is by its very nature a purposefully patient technique, brining as early as a day before and then slow cooking.  By doing this, and by adding the right fats and juices (cherries here), the cook is likely able to manage the texture moment by moment, which is proper care, unlike with, say, a chicken thigh that can be handled quickly and can recuperate from a poor start on the frying pan.  The end dish was a real work of craftsmanship, where flavor and texture synchronize – the skin is crisp and seasoned, the meat flakes and is still moist. The surrounding flavors complement and add don't detract.  This, alongside a bee mead, was the best farm meal that I have ever had.  The success of the meal is experienced in circles of ambiance, from the nature of the dish and decor of the table, to the side rooms made by brand and classic farm art, to the open seating concept that allows farm goers to socialize.  Although all the outer details are well cared for, it is still the small hot plate of confit that will bring you back.

Last year's Restaurant of the Year Award went to the Driftless Glen out of Baraboo.  There, as at the Farmhouse, there is a thoughtfulness in dining creation that seems to transcend out of current fashion and to create the very epitome of it, as though examples of the ideal at all levels.  It will be very interesting to see next year's winner.

Monarch Chronicles

"Autumn, cloud blades on the horizon.
The west wind blows from ten thousand miles.
Dawn, in the clear morning air,
Farmers busy after long rain."
    – Tu Fu, "Clear After Rain"







Heavy rain all day runs down the roof
and splatters off of the courtyard tiles.
Across the street an orange kayak noses
the bulging green river like a lone snake.
I think of bright new friends in sunshine
from another day. A Yellow Coneflower
reaching upwards after the loss of petals.
The sweet rubies of raspberry bramble
hidden like royalty by guarding vines.
I remember on approach how the field thistle
revealed more beautiful head than body.
Leaving, my field a kingdom of faces
as cornfields filled the rest of the rearview
mirror in plots of motionless green.

Riverside Ovens
Test Kitchen

 













"In contrast, a bunch of sweet basil, the kind with big fleshy floppy leaves, fills the kitchen with a quite violently rich spice smell as it is pounded up with Parmesan, garlic, olive oil and walnuts for a pesto sauce for pasta. Again, action has to be taken immediately." – Elizabeth David, from "Summer Holidays"



When the buyer of seafood stands over the seafood section at the local grocery, there will always be a slight roulette wheel of luck to spin when betting on the freshness of the shrimp. The shrimp inside the cases is often at least partially frozen and we can't help but hope that once it melts with the assistance of lukewarm water under the kitchen faucet, some native taste will have been preserved and that what we are eventually eating doesn't taste like some manmade version of the beautiful little sea creature. If you walk across the aisle, there will always be the plastic containers parading

perfectly aligned mid-small sized shrimp, merely ready to be de-tailed, sometimes with nothing more than a swift bite of the teeth, and hope as well preserving some of its shrimpness.  Needless to say, how we pick our own for the recipe Provencal-style makes all the difference. That, and a few other rules that I have struggled through over the years.  I have found that I want a goal or two in mind for my shrimp before I even dive-in, so to speak, into the seafood concoction. I don't want the shrimp to be a waste of the fine food or time; such a delicate, intricate, uniquely sea worthy food that took so much work to get here in the first place should be cooked with perfection in mind.  I need the shrimp to be rinsed and fully defrosted; I would like for them to carry at least some seasoning and so take no time at all in choosing lemon pepper; if not over seasoned, the shrimp will come to taste more like shrimp than sodium, which is the key to all cooking, but that the whisper of lemon, the bite of pepper, will form an elegant crust.  Heat 2 tbsp of oil in the pan, let the shrimp swirl around in the oil by a smooth wrist twirl or flip, making sure that the skins do not stick to the surface.  Brown on each side all the while waiting for that particular aroma that only shrimp holds to move around the oven and on into the rest of the house. Snap one in the mouth. It should be hot as forged iron. In this, seasoned, hot, browned, we have something of little rounds of pre-cut seafood steak, really, less dense, but we always sense a muscular sort of protein that is very satisfying.

With a perfect shrimp, all the rest is window dressing.  Cooked vegetables consist of a diced zucchini, multiple sweet peppers, charm tomatoes and diced yukon golds. All of this will pan fry soft, but not mushy, and, along with a tomato paste, serve over the shrimp as an acidy salad over the stark bite of

the shrimp.  If the need seems to arise for something in the left hand to scoop all of this up, slide another shrimp a little closer to the fork, or absorb a touch of the paste, there is an answer in the form of a small baguette, also pan friend in oil on both sides, slid across the face by a split garlic clove, then lathered with an aioli. At the time of the bite that includes each of these, the true war will be whether it is the still steaming shrimp or the garlic infused aioli that wins out. This is the fun of buying the right shrimp.

Arboretum Diary

july 19


cloudy but warm, no breeze


The tunnel under the highway
links the Leopold Pines to Grady Tract
something like a dark portal
from tall prairie to oak savannah where,
in no more than a hundred steps,
out beyond the circle of noise made
by grinding brakes and screaming rubber,
soft hills carry silence close inside
brown pockets full of orange lilies
and buzzing butterfly weed.
Off along the far side of an old farm
fenceline three cranes walk through
a field like slowly striding farmers,
hunched forward, hands tied loosely
together at their backs, inspecting
here and there the effect of recent
rain on their careful plantings.  

Monarch Chronicles

"So far from the road
that its red was lost in the trees
like a spark in smoke,
a cardinal surprised me."
  –Ted Kooser, from Winter Morning Walks







july 17


2:30 in the afternoon, 78 in the shade


Zurfluh Road out in country Albany
bisects new shades of green left and right,
each cornfield an emerald jungle
so deep by mid July that it seems
that inside might rest lost cities.
I pull down my long sleeves, tighten
the cuffs of my jeans and walk
through the ancient ruins of Bergamot,
and watch the flying jewels of nectaring
moths dabble at the juice of field thistle.
From the road you could not have seen
the native cone flowers in purple
headdress gather around the green
fires to woo in unison the Monarch.

Monarch Chronicles

17 July

The 45 minute drive south of Madison to Albany becomes a pleasant one past the belt line and on into Oregon. Even though the Madison capitol can still be seen in the rearview mirror at points, five six miles away, as it is the tallest building in the metro area, the traffic is quickly forgotten and rural Wisconsin opens to its green pastures of corn and farmhouses.  Freeways soon turn to country roads and, most important to this project, roadsides, even if mowed, often become small stages for prairie flowers and a lot of common milkweed, the essential plant that we are looking for in this project.  Orange is the color flavor most noticed at this time of year – some butterfly milkweed in patches along the road, but the day is for the orange lily which seems to find a residence in country front yard and roadside alike.  I follow Google maps through Brooklyn, a clean quaint Wisconsin town, and head south toward Albany where the Albany Wildlife Area is located just a mile or two away from the city. The task is the butterfly walk, a coordinated straight line to be walked from two points at either side of the plot. This plot, over 4 acres, so on the larger side of the options offered, is set aside by the DNR as non agriculture and see no signs for hunting, although the next plot over the sign for the Wildlife Area stands and a permitted hunting sign is attached.  I park the car in a wheel rutted ditch, spray on the Off, and begin a walk through at least shoulder high Bergamot and Field Thistle

that looks quite pretty at its head, but the body prickly and I try to step near its stem bottom to push it aside.  I find quickly that this is an ideal field for citizen science, a near bouquet of plants and wildflowers with intermittent clusters of common milkweed, all ideal nectar plants for monarchs, bees all over the place, and vividly conspicuous nectaring moths. These little creatures, if they haven't been seen in action before, are a strange combination of bee-backed and hummingbird, somewhere in between at first sight, and hover around the Bergamot sampling. The redwings, as usual, aggressively flap above the head, protecting even the idea of their territory; one is chased by what looks like a swallowtail butterfly, big, black, fast and not afraid to push its snout into the bird. The behind the scenes rivalries quickly show themselves when you are in the center of a wild field that has grown above the height of your head.  I examine as much of the milkweed that I come across on my Pollard walk as I can. Many leaves have been nibbled at but not a single instar along my own designated transect at bearing 285 degrees.  I do however run across four monarchs incidental, that is, off in the

distance. Three seem to be large and mature, one was of smaller size.  Each flying in the distance, it seems possible that these were Viceroys, but hard to tell without the rear stripes in full detail.  Much white aster, purple coneflower, black eyed Susans and what looks like Queen Anne's Lace along the way. Bees in work mode fill the airwaves.  Near the end of the field, wild raspberry vines make the rest of the transect virtually impossible – one of the great tricks of nature – the voluptuous red berries tucked back in the thorned vines would take wings to sample.  As I walk back along the roadside to the car, the landscape shows itself more clearly now, fields to the left and right agriculture and hunting, but this field, untouched, a disturbance itself, ironically, in relation to the rest of the usage surrounding, is a butterfly haven. If anybody needs evidence that it takes only 4 acres to let pollinators thrive, come and take a look, wear long pants and sleeves, and see how easily conservation works.

Arboretum Diary

"The following year, almost to the day, I enter the pinewoods and remember the nighthawk just in time – in time to be cautious and silent. And the bird is there, in the same tree, on the same limb, in the pinewoods that is so pretty and so restful, apparently, to both of us." – Oliver, "September"










July

And what do I know of prairie? The growth of rock candy goldenrod gently shifting next to the dogwood might have grown a foot in the last month.  In passing, Bluebird house looks empty. At the edge of the Aster, Coneflower, the Susan Black-eyed, by afternoon, when the long-legs of visitors phase away, does motherbird arrive with a beak laced by short roots for bedding? I know of the Michigan Lily. That it is a tepals 6, a 3-chambered ovary is scientifically divine. That it is alone among the bluestem a red ribbon as if tied and that when I say it the tongue is comfortable is a feel of lily already born inside the mind the texture of silk. That this picture could come undone at any moment, unwind as if from some first garden to roll off the lips like a breath is prairie.

Monarch Chronicles

"This love letter, folded in two, is looking for a flowery address."
– Renard, "The Butterfly"










The blown glass of the compass plant has risen over night to new heights. Some petals dangle over as if by purpose by the hand of the master craftsman. When it was dark, three petals dropped. They turned to an amber hue the same color as molasses but see through so that when it rose, suspended by motion, you could see the tincture of the white moon through its surface which created white spots as electric as stars. A stem of wrought iron spread like veins to hold it all together, eyes and antenna molded to a vibration that followed the way the pollen flew.

Brices Prairie

The oak savannah of previous centuries here in the U.S. were a merging zone on the continental map where mountainous regions met prairies and, kept by natural occurring fire, allowed a palate of growth that ranged from tall grasses to a profuse variety of wildflowers, often commanded over by the surviving oaks that might have looked something like feudal lords watching over their territory.  Wisconsin fit inside this continental jigsaw and much the state had been vast prairies – much information exists that La Crosse itself, just down the black river from from Brice

Prairie, was originally called prairie La Crosse and where now timber stands to the edges of the river was flat, wide and grassy all the way up into the bluff lines.  Today prairies are primarily the result of human intervention; meadows along the sides of the bluffs at Trempealeau, for example, need the hand of the fire starter to keep encroaching brush clear; the great Curtis Prairie at the UW Arboretum is world renown restoration, planted by native species comfortable within the network of remnants found throughout the near location in the state and kept clean by burning and clearing.  Prairies, then, are somewhat the work of artists, mimicking what nature herself used to gladly handle...but the results, if it all takes, is diverse, beautiful and abundant, therefore worth it.  The multi-acre prairie that surrounds the new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Nature Center at Brice Prairie is no exception.  Even despite a hot day, and despite that this prairie has not yet grown its planted oaks to maturity, and therefore no shade, its the dry and colorful panorama that is one of the great throwback landscapes

that any visitor could choose, especially if on the adventurous hunt for milkweed plants and signs of the incubating monarch butterfly.  The entrance itself is lined by butterfly milkweed, that most conspicuous of the species, orange, bright, a little like glowing round lantern wherever they are found in the prairie in patches.  So far this summer the only installs we have seen were the two directly outside the Arboretum nature center, in the wildflower garden, right at eye height when crouching down to inspect.  The obvious beauty of the third stage instar is a lot like assessing the beauty of an exotic jewel that one rarely sees, an almost enamel white and stark yellow that shudders as it consumes its precious milkweed leaves.  No such luck throughout the Brice Prairie today, as we meandered in handout of all of the common or butterfly milkweed that we could see close to trail. Not a single egg or instar to be seen under the high heat....but one monarch, maybe fifteen feet off in the interior, flitting about from nectar plant to plant.  Besides the clovers and the asters, it was the compass plant that became the highlight of this search; to our own amateur eyes questions came up: what strategy does the compass plant use as its enormous basal leaves seem to show a much woodier plant at the base, prickly stem, very unappetizing, and then such a robust flower at the end? Apparently the wide leaves play off of the sun patterns and move in tandem to the heat, hence the idea of the compass. Through the looping trails of the planted prairie, closing in on the nature center again, it's the land 'esthetic' that Leopold understood so well that comes into play as the palate of nature, seen more broadly from a distance, and by now experienced by the walking and exploration, that becomes object of beauty itself, one of the most important components, Leopold thought, of coming to care for nature.  He understood early on that people might not come to care for the 'soil' out of sheer goodheartedness -- in fact many consider the land commodity -- but that if the land is beautiful it may gain favor and cared for properly.  The prairie, stocked full of wildness, a gentle breeze creating motion through the grasses and prairie lily's, can become just the sort of man-made art that could stir easy interest in the young trail walker.  Tempt her with the prospect of inspecting the undersides of the thick milkweed leaf for long jewels and she might come back some day on her own.

Come Along Newbury Street

"The fervent heat, but so much more endurable in this pure air – the white and pink pond-blossoms, with a great heart-shaped leaves; the glassy waters of the creek, the banks, with dense busier, and the picturesque beeches and shade and turf" – Whitman, from "A July Afternoon by the Pond"







At all times in Boston the waters of the Charles and the Harbor are ever-present – the wharf at the aquarium at the northeastern shore of the Bay where the old docks still shoot out into the improved waters from recent years and alongside one such the sea seals might emerge wild and humped an unusual sight against the downtown skyline of the city. Next stop, in the wild heat, we hail a cab to the Science Museum along Nashua Park across the bridge that is Charles River Dam Road – standstill traffic so we get out to walk and reach the reach the ferry bridge that opens just as we approach and watch a construction crane make its way slowly deeper into the north end past Millers River at east Boston. It is on the return to the Back Bay along the Charles River Esplanade that we can finally see the full geography of Boston – city to our left, the rolling links of honking traffic that disappear into Berklee, Clarendon, Dartmouth, the sailboats, pink regattas, to our right, the river wide, slowly chugging to either banks and MIT and Harvard across the horizon on the other side, history swirling in the air and that has become cars, taxis, trucks, ambulances and limousines.  We finally reach the origins of Newbury Street, the great line of brownstones and retail outlets, umbrellas by courtyards hemmed in by wrought iron gates and faces happy to get out of the sun for a cool drink...and shopping.

Prairie Lily

"But the log house was finished. It had only one room. Before winter they would add a loft for him and his sister to sleep in. Inside there were shelves along one wall and a sturdy puncheon table with two stools. One of these days, his father promised, he would cut out a window and fasten oiled paper to let in the light. Someday the paper would be replaced with real glass." – Elizabeth George Speare, from The Sign of the Beaver








The view from what had become the outdoor 'collection,' as Chase liked to call it, was always beautiful.  A long series of old wood stairs led down through the opening of a pine stand and onto what had become something of a restored prairie, then a dock for the 'marine' boat.  It had been nothing more than an old sandy beach held in by a line of rip rap rocks, especially fortified at the corner where the boat waves crashed in the hardest and tended to undercut the soft soil.  Two maples grew in the back corner and provided slight shade, but otherwise, it was full sun, flat, and Chase had always remembered the great walks with dad through Brices Prairie near Lake Onalaska which became a tributary to the main channel of the Mississippi at La Crosse a few miles downstream.  "This could become a prairie, right here," she had said the first time out loud, but really nobody had paid full attention to what she had in mind.  Two years later, plant by plant, a rock here, some grooming there, from the landing at the stairs down to the lake edge, had become a perennial prairie and the pontoon boats that made their pokey way counter clock wise around the lake began to slow down a hundred feet out, and Chase took great pride as she sat up on the deck, below the cover of overhanging pine limbs, under shade, a slight breeze carouseling around the cabin, in the fact that she

had her own little Sand County Almanac. She took notes in her pad in pencil and would walk down to check in among the purple prairie clover and butterfly weed she set in spread clumps near the rocks for the monarchs to lay their eggs, clip petals from the spiderwort and lay them in a thick book to flatten then pin, as best she could to a flat cork board with notes underneath.  Over those two years the cabin had been for sale on and off again, depending on the season and so she had contrived a way to plan new and larger restoration projects so that some day, no matter the price of an offer, there would be no way mom and dad would consider the option.  She pulled out her collections and notes and invited Lily to draw up at the corner of the deck. Dad had noticed that the work Chase was doing was becoming more serious and dedicated. The rocks to either of side of the steps leading to the cabin become blooming ground cover, asters, lupine and wild indigos. "Next year I would like to live here full-time and work on my collections year round," she had said casually in passing.  The distant drone of a speedboat passed from the other side of the lake.  Some of the kids from two cabins down were paddling along the bay. "Did you hear the loon cry this morning?"
   "One of the problems with your plan, wait, two problems, wait, sorry, three problems with your plan are that you go to school in a city with other kids. The cabin is for sale. And then there's the issue that neither mom or I work here."

Granary Burial Ground

The ninety minute tour of the Freedom Trail begins at the Beacon Street Dome from inside the Commons. The massive gold-plated dome stands at the street edge and is a strange anomaly, stark gold against the surrounding age of brick that is old Boston.  The Commons itself, a jumble of grass slopes, made ponds, statues, has, above all, a look of an old park as we might have seen it in the past. A few blocks down we walk into the tucked away setting of the Granary Burial Garden, the oldest and most anachronistic features of the Boston tour, as the old half domed grave stones, thin and tall, have slanted over time and look like they could fall at any minute. We take more time here then any other place but the eventual State House.  At the center of the cemetery stands the near obelisk of the

Franklin family, signifying not Benjamin's resting site – he is in Philadelphia – but other family. Benjamin and his brother had once operated a printing business here in town, they did not see eye to eye, and the brother had found ways to scoot the one-day Founding Father, Benjamin, on to Philadelphia to take his hand at drafting a Declaration of Independence.  Hancock stands with his profile secured in the side of his stone; Sam Adams near the entry, as well as other less notable signers of the Declaration.  The history is absorbed through the stories, but it is the preservation of the awkward stones and ill-landscaped grounds that seems to be the most powerful tool for understanding the life process of a time that was caught up in revolution and preservation all at the same time.  Old trees shade the grounds. The buildings that surround are quite quiet. The street nearest is not the busiest.

Henrietta's Table, Cambridge MA

"In the five days I saw a dozen or more kudu cows and one young bull with a string of cows. The cows were big, gray, striped-flanked antelope with ridiculously small heads, big ears, and a soft, fast-rushing gait that moved them in big bellied panic through the streets." – Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa









The streets of Cambridge around Harvard Square are busy and the travelers in summer seem more tourists than students and professors.  At the great Bookstore, in back, a great bookmaking machine, something like a 3-d printer and we can see through glass sides the machinery of the printing process, one book at a time.  Children there run through the aisles unable to concentrate on the well selected books.  At a later time, near the bookstore, we walk into the bakery on the next block, I believe Cafe Tatta, where the chocolate mousse dollop is as large as the palm of my hand, each precisely rounded in their rows, something out of a French patisserie magazine spread. For lunch, we have reservations for a local iconic farm-to-table a ways down at the St. James Hotel, Henrietta's Table, the work of chef Peter Davis.

On the way there Cambridge back alleys open up in the same way as do so many of the great European cities – the old brick and cobblestone labyrinths have been transformed to open air decks away from the storming tourists.  We reach the St. James Hotel square, a wide open space, and walk up a few stairs into the shopping courtyard to get to Henriettas.

Here there is a feel, as we sit down at the courtyard outside table, that we are inside an upscale garden shack turned eatery.  Planting beds of fresh herbs and lettuces are lined in among the outdoor tables; inside, near the entrance, a large bronze statue of Henrietta the pig stands to greet walk in in customers. We learn by thumbing through the cookbooks available on the wall that Chef Davis is obsessive about buying only locally farmed produce and proteins -- a long list of wonderful farm connections such as Shy Brothers Farm and Pete's Greens are listed as long time friends to the restaurant.  We sit and order the Salt Cod Cake entree, vegetarian chili, a smoked ham and cheese

sandwich and salmon blt.  The entrees, each brimming with arugulas, sprouts, watercress, not only naturally match the proteins but here take center stage.  Farm to table can be an accurate catchphrase for those, like Henrietta's, that are truly committed to the idea of recruiting surrounding farms to supply your menu – the closer the connection, the more the seasons and local bioregion begin to flavor your plate.  As we walked back down the steps of the St. James Hotel Square, this we knew was such a place and we felt it necessary to secretly bow and wave.

Monarch Chronicles

"Water lilies bloom on the Great River.

Brilliant red on the green water.

Their color is the same as our hearts.

Their roots branch off.

Ours cannot be separated."   

    – Wu of Liang, "Water Lillies Bloom"

Common milkweed sags by noontime –

the early July sun blazes over the top 

of Brices Prairie, no oak cover relief.

Among the dabbles of purple clover,

the unfolding of rising blazing-star,

a compass plant stands, goldyellow,

stern, bent forward over showy goldenrod,

a school teacher waving basal arms 

at the chattering white aster.

 

The Brasserie and the Beehive

"In food-song and travel-story the scene, the characters, and the opening dialogue are familiar enough: the inn is humble and is situated close to the banks of the radiant Loire. (In legend the Loire is always radiant. Quite often it actually is radiant...The inn, ever-humble, of French cookery fable is, on this occasion, archi-humble)." – Elizabeth David, from "Pleasing Cheeses"






Brasserie Jo, Boston

The plates, you have come to hope, look like these – the simplicity of the very standard of French cookery, steak frites, done medium, and so delicious you could just as easily swear this is dessert.  A Salad Nicoise lined by tuna so ruby red as to nearly glow and looks another species. A Boston Bibb salad a la Francaise and at the fourth corner of the table a deep red burgundy bowl of Coq au Vin, lardons deep and meaty, mushrooms, onions, garlic by bits at the top.  The Frites and Coq create a

sort of French country hearth aroma that carries through the air between the table and the bar so that those who are seated closer to the server station do not necessarily have to look at what the three waiters are bringing at this hour to the tables but guess by the trail of smells made by the menu itself. There is in the background a hint of French music; enormous bottles of Madame Cliquot surround the tables; the waiters, precise, pleasant, they are ambassadors for the food. Outside, later, walking across Huntington Avenue, the night shade mixed by the waxy signs of the storefronts and the thick hum of traffic still nudging toward Fenway, you see this isn't the Loire at all but the next best thing.


The Beehive

The brownstone neighborhoods that line West Newton, Concord, Canton streets from Huntington to Tremont, something out of an illustrated children's book where days – you wonder enviously as you walk-by – pass warmly under lilac and maple at the courtyard wrought iron gates.  These are side streets, streets for patrons, dads pushing strollers, a nightingale swinging languorously at the hedge. The further we move from Huntington, main artery road, one part of Boston gradually fades to

muffled noise, replaced by another... hushed tones of neighbors at their doorways, small shops, barbers, ice cream vendors sunken downstairs of the brownstones and guarded by miniature gardens.  Restaurants flowing outside their front entrances onto the sidewalks, we come onto the Beehive Restaurant and walk into its dark web of corridors and rich fabrics.  Here, oysters on the half-shell and a Duck au Poivre and Schmaltz friend rice is as succulent as it is rich – the laced curtain behind the table at the stage backlit by old time silent movies and time here moves as if by a lull in the French countryside Zephyr wind.

Days in Boston

"One phase of those days must by no means go unrecorded – namely, the Broadway omnibuses, with their drivers. The vehicles still (I write this paragraph in 1881) give a portion of the character of Broadway – Fifth Avenue, Madison avenue, and Tweny-third street lines yet running." – Whitman, from Specimen Days, "Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers





June / July '17


Downtown Boston at Copley Back Bay on Huntington and Stuart Avenue, what stands out is the grid of streets forever wrapping – as New York does Central Park – around the Great Commons and always the question to walk or taxi.  This becomes the very network the traveler comes to see – the great park in the center, the ponds there, the grass that itself seems to stand out considerably green against the surrounding high-rises and old churches, the golden Beacon Dome, and the Charles River bi-secting the city from Cambridge.  We walked miles and miles on this trip, one most recent, from Huntington on this side of the Charles, across Harvard Bridge where the foot traffic was continuous to and fro, into MIT campus and along Cambridge Avenue down into the belly of the city where the locals live in apartment housing and yards so small hardly worth mowing.  We were on our way to

the Peabody Museum of Archeology off Harvard Square on Divinity Street when we finally decided to hail a van cab driven by a gentleman who casually told he did not know where he was going.  To Peabody, we said, and he was afraid that this was something of a different city, maybe at the outskirts of Cambridge itself.  We mentioned Quincy Street and recalculated our Phone maps and followed the lagging arrows as best we could to Memorial Union where the Food Trucks waited.  To ride the city in the cabs is a shaky experience – front seats littered with the personal belongings of the drivers, seat

belts may or may not be in order, the shocks on the cars worn down to a num so that every city pothole rattles the frame and the axles seem to complain at every turn.  We may or may not arrive at the precise spot on the campus, buildings at Harvard on squares and inter-linked and the passengers will need to get out and walk to look for signs.  Peabody off Oxford part of the famous Natural History Museum, we walk to the backside and, like the Memorial Union doors, old, nearly

crumbling, tall black wooden frames barely opening so that the front desk worker has to pry them open for us.  Pristine museum, perfect lighting, exhibitions meticulous and the air conditioning set to precise degrees. The Lakota Indians the first exhibition, then Penobscot Canoe, South American Indians, a room dedicated to Alaskan Totems.  An hour ago we were walking the seedy backroads of Cambridge, now we are towered by the 150 year old masters of wood cutting, upstairs the great collection of ancient world-wide weapons, and one floor up, the most uniform of them all, a dedication to the two great Harvard founders of the new of the discipline of anthropology and

archeology, Putnam and Boas.  Our second visit here in three days we now know Harvard, all of its shops and institutional buildings, the library with 7 levels dug underground, the statue of John Harvard who is not really John Harvard at all and the freshman dorms off the square that George Washington once garrisoned during the trials of the Revolutionary war.  The ghosts of the past, the travelers of the new, where old dusty books meet shiny new phones, where lecture rooms or chapel halls, stained glassed and iron fortified windows a sort of fortress of old knowledge forging out into the new world like old flames that never surrender.