At Home...Dad?

"I've made it no secret throughout the pages of this book that I live for carbs, cheese, and basil. So basically, I think Italy would really like me. No, wait, I would really like Italy." – Tieghan Gerard, Half-Baked Harvest










The Middle Eastern Foil-Packet Fish is a great way to introduce a new cast of ingredients to the weeknight meal selection. The recipe calls for two leeks (including both the white and green parts), halved lengthwise and sliced 1/2 inch thick. Leeks aren't necessarily everyone's favorite just cut – they are pungent and hold a very powerful onion essence, but the beauty of this potency is that once cooked in the foil in among the other ingredients, they become a wonderful backdrop aroma, infuse everything else with its flavor, and can, if needed, be easily picked out. When foiling, it truly doesn't matter whether the amount follows the recipe to the ounce or not. Four slices of leeks per packet will definitely be noticed more than...none. Other ingredients that show up as potentially zingy newcomers are chickpeas (1 can), green olives, halved (put in exactly the number that will be edible to each eater. I never really expected kids to necessarily dive straight into the olives placed in any dish. (I've made a wonderful Mediterranean salad for many years, calling for 20 olives cut in half, as an example. They usually get picked out). There will a few strips of lemon zest, and eventually fresh parsley, fresh mint, and pinches of coriander and paprika, all of a flavor cluster from standard middle eastern, plus carrots and of course the white fish, this time asking for cod fillets. All of this can be adjusted to suit interests in the foil. I would go heavy on the carrots – who doesn't love cooked carrots? Paired by a cod is a wonderful compliment, and if eaters were particularly picky, it might be these two, plus the chickpeas, that might have the best chance of winning them over.

Preheat oven at 450. 12-inch sheets seem to the usual size for foil packets – it allows for the dividing of all the ingredients into something like 1-servings per, with enough along the outsides to use for wrapping. Don't forget a drizzle or two of olive oil onto the foil, and the recipe mentions a few splashes of water also to create a steaming juice. Divide leeks, carrots, chickpeas and olives among the foil sheets and mound in the center; season with salt and pepper; top each with lemon zest. Season the fish with salt and pepper on both sides; place the fillet on top of the mound. Bring the edges of the foil together and fold to seal, leaving room to circulate. Let these sit in the oven for 15-20 minutes. My experience has been that most foiling is as safe a process as it comes. We can just about picture the cooking process as the vegetables create a flavor steam that then begins to rise and cook the cod, imparting the flavors, and partially escaping the package. Meanwhile, the herbs create a sauce that will be drizzled over the top once the packet is opened and prepared to serve. It's hard to know who will and who won't enjoy the pungent combination of mint, coriander and paprika, but it seems that parsley is always the safest of all of these, primarily a textural and decorative add-on. I have served the foil packet directly on the plate and I have tried to scoop the contents onto a plate; for me it has always depended on how much liquid is left on the bottom. Obviously, if a goal is to save the broth, then keeping the packet seems best. If it is really the fish and carrots, for example, that are the goal for the meal, then the liquid can be set aside. The sky is the limit for foil packs. The technique could just as easily show itself handy for pescatarian and vegan and certainly vegetarian. Unlike any one-pot stovetop skillet techniques, you don't have the one-sided primary heat of the pan to contend with. There are similar qualities to a tagine, but a difference there is that the tagine is purposefully a multi-portion stewing container. The foil packet is a steamer but allows for flexibility in how you add and disperse the ingredients. In a restaurant, it seems total uniformity in presenting any given entree is critical; at home, we know, through trial and more trial, who will be most likely to set aside the chickpeas.

At Home...Dad?

"When my youngest brother, Red, was in Kindergarten, I was in seventh grade and would get home from school before he did. On Fridays, I liked to surprise him with fresh-baked treats. I would be sure to get the Betty Crocker wild blueberry muffin mix with blueberries that came in a can. I swore that's what made the muffins so good." – Tieghan Gerard, from Half-Baked Harvest








Foiled Again


The weeknight cook tries so many different dishes and techniques that it literally becomes impossible to sift back through the years and remember them all. If all five in the family stay relatively quiet and intent on whatever the dish, then that one gets one 'memory point' and is filed as a repeatable. If there is general discontent, a stabbing around at the recipe, and some talk of wishful thinking that maybe next time 'just make it a little less gourmet,' then that one might get filed as a 'forget it point.'  Since the very beginning, I have always filed as a 'memory point' the simple art of foiling. I had always used one specific recipe from an old and non descript cookbook for chicken, zuchini and tomato foiling recipe that, one way or another, always turned out well and was successful. The tecnique of foiling for weeknight dinners, I would think, could easily fill out its own cookbook. I wonder if there is much of anything that you couldn't wrap in foil, let simmer in the oven until either the vegetables, the meat, or both, soften and share their flavors? Thinking of foiling in this way is very cool because it is a great way to skip a day at the grocery store, and rely on what you find in the refrigerator. If there were two chicken breasts left, a pinch of pesto left in the little bottle, say, a few raisins, and four slices of mozzerella, that would make a good meal. Take all of the veg you have and slice it up uniformly, slip in one garlic per packet, maybe a bit of vegetable broth, and then pour this, fully cooked, over butter noodles? The foil packet holds flavor in, it traps moisture, it circulates heat efficiently, and nearly always protects the ingredients (that is to say that a bit of accidental over cooking doesn't necessarily ruin a foil packet. It's very hard to go wrong with tagine cooking, one pot skillet cooking, or anything in the dutch, but what about the foil?

At Home...Dad?

"When my mom was pregnant with me, with three crazy little boys in tow, my parents made a deal that Dad could go play handball after work every day if he'd take care of dinner when he got home...You see, Dad's usual hour of arrival home wasn't until seven thirty or eight, and that was on a good night." – Tieghan Gerard, from Half-Baked Harvest:Recipes from My Barn in the Mountains








Foiled Again

1

Some of my favorite food blogs have many similarities to Gerard's wonderful set-up, as she describes how she initially self-volunteered into the role as a major contributor to nightly family cooking. Like she says, her dad had been designated cook, but the problem was he got home late and Tieghen not always so fondly remembers eating weeknight meals at 9:00! She finally had enough and decided to take the cooking reigns (or partial reigns, still helping dad), and it was then that her cooking passion and eventual career was launched. Let's face it, it really doesn't matter whether it was mom, dad, grandma, or some other caregiver who did the inspiring – the important part is trying to work out the family meal, even learning to cook on your own when necessary when young. As with many other things in our lives, we often end up doing things that we learned when we were kids. Gerard's cookbook is

really a beautiful homage to a place (Colorado high ground barn) and to a passion for cooking for others. She goes on in her introduction, "The number one reason I love cooking is the reactions I see on people's faces when they take that first bite of a delicious dish. My favorite thing ever is watching someone's eyes roll back and then open wide into an 'oh my gosh, this is heaven,' look."

2

I take much inspiration from this book and the set-up that Tieghan talks about. As I look up at that tongue-in-cheek picture of that previous generation dad, tie and apron firmly in place, with two kids in the background bemoaning the fact that what comes from this cooking experiment might not be quite up to standards, I realize there is a lot of packed humor in this. That we still, no doubt, know many many men in families who claim that the kitchen, unlike, say, the grill outside, is not their first home, not their language. But in reality we can't help but wonder if there aren't a few more domestically astute men out there in the world today than once was? Certainly food and chef culture has sprung exponentially forward in the past 20 years – at the very least we certainly see an abundance of men in the kitchen through Netflix, Food Channel, Cooking Channel, etc. It might be downright fun to install in the new kitchen a few more spotlights on at home cooking men, just to see if things have become a little more comfortable.

3

My blog idea is to try to enter into this mix, so to speak. I had been designated home cook for 20 years for a family of five, three daughters, now each on their own food journeys, and I can only hope with some similar passions as Tieghan has mentioned. As a writing instructor over the years, or working in small family business, I managed to get home well before that 7 or 8 time frame; in fact I had one of the greatest priveleges in the world – working mostly from home, I was able to flick through tons of cookbooks over the years, dog ear great magazine recipes (the Food Network Magazine section Weeknight Dinners is honestly stellar; Bon Appetit recipes always an adventure), plan a meal, head the store, see the girls of various buses, scoot them along on homework, and then dive into that night's entertainment, the meal. Although my audience has most definitely changed, and sometimes I cook only for one, depending, I look back at 20 years in the kitchen and can only hope that my own tongue-in-cheek vintage poster shows happier kids in the background, although wouldn't necessarily hold my breath.

4

At Home...Dad? then is an adventure in cooking if nothing else. I have no quarrels whatsoever with talking about food as primarily a mode of nutritional transaction: get the best family food plan cookbook, get the plant-based menu, maybe follow a pescatarian diet, whatever it might be, I have tried it and you know what, the key is whether it is good, edible, and yes, nutritious food. But sometimes we also need to call something what it really is, even beyond the minerals. Cooking is downright fun. It is an edible art form. Some folks buy paints and start brushing across a blank canvas. Another starts with an open white laptop screen ready for writing. Another works wood. Let's not forget that cooking is absolutely an art, with many varying raw materials at your disposal, each with their own nuanced characteristics. Once the recipe has been started, and the internal timer has begun, there is that slight pressure that builds and you know that the dish just has to come out right. If it does, if it has, we will eventually receive the highest praise we need, what Tieghan calls that 'oh my gosh' moment. If a plate is empty by the end, the adventure has been worthwhile.

A Miracle of Birches
and Other Songs

"When I was beginning to read I imagined
that bridges had something to do with birds..." – Merwin, from "Echoing Light"











On the Horizon Thanks


for an entire year after there was only
one image that loomed over me from the holiday that year
it was not of the granite tables of chipped black
or the sets of matching dishes the turkey
or the green beans that lingered there shining
in the slow roasting pot nor the people as it should be
but it was later on that night across the street
one lot left yet unbuilt upon jagged and still by original pines
that did not have Christmas lights on them
mere apparitions that added such bold strokes of dark green
mixed in as with a brush the billows of a deep frost
that had entered the valley above the golf course links
and like something of the supernatural took over
for the rest of the night the neighborhood houses
the lawns still furry early winter before the pure white
of a first snow had grasped its thousand strongholds
and for once there were no sounds for what comes
first we notice never makes sound but is that what is
and I felt at home for once in that day and gave thanks
and the horizon understood without asking
sending out its abundance by the cold song of river

A Miracle of Birches

"At once, the birds began their son, and Betushka and the Lady danced. This time, they stopped before sunset, and the lady twined the bundle of flax around a slender birch. In no time at all, the spindle was filled with thread, and Betushka ran home happily." – from "The Birch Fairy" a Czech Fairy Tale










I remember a long
path as my first
encounter when a
young man near

the Kickapoo
River in the highlands
of the drift less coulee
region as the closest

to such a miracle
as is when there
were children to small
to small to walk

and packed in some
such backpack
where all from side
to side along the trail

were the bone bright
stands of birches
they stood deep into
the understory and seemed

a pattern by which
we could sense
a navigation of safety
similar to travel by stars

moments like these
breaths of time really
that stand inside the mind
as though they always

belonged or maybe
we have just recovered
and I now think
of the wonderful tale

of the Czeck girls
who loved to dance
in the afternoon among
the birches

as one day she met
the old beautiful lady
who asked if Betuskka
liked to dance?

to be asked to love
among love is once
in a lifetime but that
is what the birches

have always come
to say in their jagged
white bark which
is always its own song

and I seek them
for the only solace
for I have known
no birch fairies

of my own and walk
in wait for my
thousands of old
birch leaves to someday

to turn to golden
thread and fly off
onto the lush ground
as gold coins to gather

Riverside Drive

"I'd like to see him. Mamma would raise hell if she found it out, but I'd like to see him.
'Well'?
'He's not where we used to live, on Riverside Drive, and he's not in the phone book book or city directory.'" – Dashiell Hammett, from The Thin Man









You turn your detective agency into an at home business when you are quite ready to no longer receive an offers for work. It had taken a life time to figure out that that racket really wasn't for me, and turned my attention to carving out lashes and sewing together birch bark canoes for neighbors at a hundred and fifty a pop. At that fine price, I kept busy, held onto my sanity, and didn't have to rove the underbelly, so to speak, for lost kittens of every kind. Until the phone started to do its buzzing bit in my back pocket. Where else do you put it? Keep it in the house while you're working away and you feel guilty when you walk in a few hours later and see that one of your three daughters have left the only voice mail in the last month and you weren't there. And, let's face it, in case a call came from someone left out there who still actually dialed up the services of a sleuth.
"Emerson it's me." I knew the voice but not the familiarity. As I've said, business had been purposefully thin. My birch slabs were calling my name.
"This isn't Chance?"
"You picked the right name out of the hat," he said, a thin, raspy sort of voice, as always the tinkling of glasses and the setting of silverware sounds in the background. Chance was a maitre d at the finest French restaurant a mile west, near downtown over looking the lake. That's what he'd be looking at right now as he called. Too early in the morning for customers, the lake calm, blue, and prepared for a canoe caravan, just as soon as Emerson had fixed a few more of these up and sold them.
"It's mildly nice to hear your voice," I sputtered, hoping to install a hint at my new side profession.
"I know, I know, you're laying low and figuring out ways of sliding through the next ten years without a minor injury. But you are the best of the best you know."
"That's because I am literally only one left, you know?" Chance had a lot of ears out on the street. One in the restaurant, but he had also held a city government job simultaneously in years past, and so knew all the small time crooked stuff of suits and ties and the woman on the street. I was sure this going to be a tail a cat kind of call. Long nights in car listening to smooth jazz and mindful meditation recordings.
"Lay it on me, then."

The New Bark Canoe

"It is five-fifteen in the morning, August 12th, and Henri is up splitting cedar. The lake is smooth. The far shore is indistinct in rising mist. A loon, attracted to the sound of the axe, cruises near. When the axe stops, the loon laughs." – McPhee...Bark Canoe








Nov. 2


Henri had limited space to work with in the morning. The roll of the cartwheels and deep rumble of the bus which passed by here every other hour started only just before he awoke at 5. It crossed his mind that the noises he made from behind the walls of the courtyard here in the neighborhood of the city, across the street from the river and at the lip of the lake, might sound a bit much in the morning. He was not the type that wasn't aware of his unusual craft – just one week ago he had unloaded two 16 foot slabs of cedar into the courtyard. Picture this: a densely carved, two-way, old narrow city street. A lumber truck backing into a slab driveway barely wider than the haunches of the truck itself. Long screeches of the disk breaks and then an exaggerated crane picking timber up off the flatbed and setting timber up and over the courtyard walls. There are many people at home in the neighborhood, out walking small dogs which peak up from fire hydrants. These are good and likable people and their curiosity is tamed by an attitude of 'whatever works for them, just don't harm others' property.' Henri appreciated this, although Gracey was not sure what to do. Gracey was twelve and sharp as most forty year olds. "Will the neighbors mind that we have trees back here," she had asked. We had mentioned Henri was conscientious, which he was, but there were certain tenets of do what must be done inside of him. He had put off bark canoeing not long enough. He had been in the city for two years, taking care of his only granddaughter. There was much work to be done and he had done it. Now it was time for the timber in the courtyard. "Here is what I would say – if they can just hang on for a moment, than they will greatly rewarded. They will be the ones who receive the canoes." Gracey pictured the same thing that Grands, as she called him, had: it was a perfect scenario, a business plan, so to speak: the neighbors who could easily carry their light canoes across the street and set them into the water with ease. "These canoes can take a beating Gracey. No other wood quite works like the birchbark. It doesn't get sodden with water. It can take hits like no other. It will last a good ten years if the craftsmanship is correct." Grands stood tall but slender. His eating habits had become sparse but healthy. He cooked for Gracey with a different attitude. She was too thin, nervous, and he would look out for fatty foods to cook, but his own metabolism had outreached the need for so much. It slowed him down. They had this conversation the night before the timber came. The timber truck was the symbol of beginning anew and they both knew it. It would be happened next that would take them on their most unusual next path.

Italian Wedding Soup

"Contrary to popular belief, the way to a man's heart is not necessarily through his stomach.  His nose can be equally susceptible..." – Peter Mayle, from French Lessons






One brief step into the house of where a good soup is being made reveals much much more than the house with no soup.  The house of the soup has been transformed for at least one evening, until gradually, perhaps overnight, the memory, along with dynamic smells, disappear, and the eaters (smellers) must wait for the next hopeful batch.  This last week I went on a good soup cooking frenzy: Hunter's Minestrone (from Tyler Florence's very useful home cook book Tyler's Ultimate) sunday, and later in the week a pot of Italian Wedding Soup.  Of the two, the Minestrone was a heartier,  more

Wedding Soup

stew-like concoction, stocked full of sausage and very robust rigatoni pasta.  The Italian Wedding, on the other hand, was surprisingly pungent and filled the house, for at least a night, with a dreamy European pizazz.  I picked this recipe because the chief trio of components – the cheesy turkey meatballs, the wonderful ditalini

Ditalini

pasta, and the escarole – would literally "marry" well together and would be eaten by adult and child alike.  The recipe asks for meatballs that are made of ground turkey hand mixed with a 1/4 cup ricotta cheese, some pesto, and another 1/4 cup of grated parmesan.  These ended up an excellent choice.  The heaviness of the cheeses were nicely supported by the lighter type of meat.  There is no doubt that any fully marbleized beef could have sufficed, but the soup kept some lightness about it because of the meat choice, and then further, the short pasta, and then the head of escarole that dominates in a very

Escarole

good way each spoon full.  The base of the soup is a standard mixture of onion and garlic, but with a solid dash of Italian seasoning and salt to taste.  It was at the point where the "upper" and the "lower" portions of the soup merged that created the very marriage that the Wedding Soup is named after.  The title doesn't really have anything at all to do with the ceremony that one might assume, but instead it refers to the very thing that the cook finds out: the meatball, greens, pasta and broth serve as a wonderful meal in one.  This fine marriage is the nose of the soup, at once cheesy, green, meaty and enticing.

New Bark Canoe

"'Where the crooked knife was, the bark canoe was,' he said. 'People from Maine recognize the crooked knife. People from New Hampshire do not. All they knew was the drawknife. The God-damned drawknife–what a bummer.'" – McPhee, ...Bark Canoe







Nov. 1

Vaillancourt said he wanted to see every birchbark canoe still existence. He had read of them up in Quebec, one that the author had seen hanging on a wall at a resort in Maine, and said it was on his list to see and that they should embark on a spring journey. The author, McPhee, a canoer since childhood, swooned, as he said, like a drunk at the prospect. Part of it all was the dedication to the craft. Henri might be seen by five in the morning out there chipping away some potential piece, looking out over the lake, a loon in the distance making its eerily ancient cry. He did much of his work by whim, this art, and simply eyeballed like a great painter certain measurements because he knew and understood the potential elasticity of the materials. Part of it was to serve as a corrective to misinformation about many of the existing canoes. That had to be part of it. Any thing that is a native craft is subject to the possibility of limited true and traditional instruction, understanding, so that many canoes might be out there in the world incorrect information behind it, wrong tribe, wrong distinguishing features, so why not get it right. Another part is the investment in the canoes themselves as they become, we learn, something like family members, part of a great chain legacy of care and creation. Wouldn't you want to see the three cousins you never met? You read of Henri, and you read for the style of McPhee, and it is a revelation in considering the difference between this entire life dedicated to the process of laying hands on trees for the sake of things that will live along while and that are useful, and all the things that we spend our hours on nearing 2020. As real crafts and trades do disappear, it must be remembered that it is far easier to make claim that they are outdated, hokey, silly, and tag down the phrase onto them, 'who has time for such things?' As we get far enough away from being capable of uniting time and purpose in culture, the equation becomes sheer irony. The more urgent question becomes, 'who doesn't need, more than ever, the time to put something together?' The difference between these two responses is only one thing, just like any other...do it, then it becomes the thing you want to do.

The New Bark Canoe

"When he can, in his travels, he visits his canoes. This satisfies his longing to know how they are doing. He is pleased to get one 'back in the yard,' so he can touch it up, repair it, perhaps even improve it in the light of continually rising skill." – McPhee, from The Survival of the Bark Canoe







Oct. 30

The birchbark, a light, beautiful, entirely natural hand-handled boat. Living across the street from a river that flows into a lake which then flows into another river and ends at a final lake, the vision of setting one of these glowing white and light 16-footers up on the shoulder and walking across the street to drop it in any time of day is very alluring. There are any number of vessels that show up along this strip of the beach, itself lined by enormous quarry stones used as perfect landing zones. Old fiberglass canoes, clearly left outside under a house window in the leaves, are seemingly the most common. Because they are from directly in the immediate neighborhood, many are walked down on wheeled contraptions, then paddled off upstream toward the lochs. All kinds of varied colored kayaks, the bright blues and the sharp dandelion yellows all over the place. Once these are dropped into the Yahara River, they are picaresque at least as jut out from under the nearly hundred year old cobblestone Rutledge Bridge. The river here is often, unfortunately however, of a milky green cream color, as phosphorous is churned up at the lochs only a mile away and flows to expand itself along the northern shores of Monona. I picture the white birchbark gliding over the green, outrunning, if you will, its flow out into the middle of the lake where apparently the water clears up. It says in the book that Vallencourt, the skilled creator of the birchbark described in the books, spent all of his days working, repairing and testing his creations at 'his yard.' That each one, first and foremost, were artistic possessions, honed with skill and wisdom. That the split wood of the birches is far more strong than anything sawed, but therefore needs the patience of shaping. Once assembled the tensile strength of the unsawed birch is close to unbelievable; Vallencourt might very well punch the bottom of the boat with all of his might and that nothing more than deep thud occurs. He had spoken of rowing over stumps at a local lake and that it was the stump that took the worst of it. All that strength, a lightness of navigation, a pretty boat, handmade so that every fiber has been cared for technically and each shape and dynamic a deep homage to an ancient art. I have read recently that folk art craft and trade schools have taken on a very significant upswing in popularity in the past few years. We can see so many reasons why when we give ourselves a moment to see what it is that actually tends to gobble up our days, our time, and assess that with the same exact criteria of building a canoe, as just one example. The digital trades can easily take care of one half of the equation of time: it does indeed keep us busy; but has a much more difficult time holding up to the second halves of satisfaction: is what we staying busy doing have meaning, depth, lasting promise? Maybe most obviously, for those of us who have a strong spiritual leaning toward the outdoors, digital busy-ness can virtually never promise that a connection other than mind to digital can be achieved. In other words, in the end, there is no there there. No lasting substance. And you begin to wonder if the making of canoe should should show up at sixth hour school right after computer class? At the end of the day, a field trip to the local lake.

How to Read and Live McPhee's
The Survival of the Bark Canoe

"When Henri Vaillancourt goes off to the Main woods, he does not make extensive plans. Plans annoy him. He just gets out his pack baskets, tosses in some food and gear, takes a canoe, and goes." – McPhee, from The Survival of the Bark Canoe









Oct. 29

You might think that after reading the ways of Vallincourt above, about not making any extensive plans, just get out there, that the last thing a series of journal entries about the process of creating something would be a long term plan. Not planning is the ideal of things; its once you have all of the other things handled, so to speak, that you are allowed to simply wake up in the morning, peak out the sliver in between brown curtains, catch a nice shard of sunshine, and just head out to the river with birchbark lightly over the shoulder. Problem is you have to have the birchbark. I do have one-mans, and I do have the river. As for the sunshine between the curtains, well, it is Wisconsin, and that is about as unpredictable as the future success of my undertakings. It is quite fascinating though, isn't it, how long a man or woman might spend planning certain things just so that they might experience no planning. I'd say in many ways this is the very crux of the idea behind the writings here. My idea to personalize the reading of the great McPhee's work stems from a seed of recognition that has grown inside my bellow for virtually ever. It has now sprouted at mid-age and is trying to find some ways grow outside of my ears or wherever else it can find some sunlight. It is this recognition: I, as I sense just about every other American (adult or young), need some more constructive stuff to do than sitting inside our minds and we watch our minds even more than ever as it usually sits right in front of us as a lap top or in our hands as a phone. I happen to love both of these, so this is not by any means an anti-tech screed. It is, however, a final acceptance that the being we call human has a lot of impulses and abilities inside it, formed over a considerable amount of time, that simply are not getting proper exercise in these modern times. I always ask myself the most rudimentary philosophical / lifestyle question in the world: would a day go by better if I were able to both look into my self-styled mirrors (computer, phone), and create something by hand all the while? A favorite move and historical character comes to mind, Ghandi, who was often shown throughout his day both handling the political foment of his country while sitting or lying down at the weaver's box...making something. I think to the farmer's trade and craft, the original back to nature work, but that also had things to do, create, offer, share, make a living. As we've all rapturously escaped the farm, we'll notice we have also rapturously escaped collective sanity. I'd give every cent I earn from all endeavors, if our current group of political class had to farm on the side. Every one of them. Make something. Do something. Get to know a tree, they're neat! What happens when your farm water gets sick? Help it out with sustainable solutions! Maybe show the country some leadership in how to ... govern! Point being, the modern has figured out a way to unconsciously skip over the raw material of being human and we live inside bright and seemingly always gratifying mirrors. It's a land of narcissism, but that, if not detected, goes on as a cultural mantra and has fewer wise detractors left to say, hey, wait a minute, take a look inside another kind of mirror, one that is either right at the end of your own arms, your hands, or the woods, or the rest of the world which holds some folks out there that might not be exactly like you. Whoa. This may be the beginning of something. I sense I'll read the book. We'll just have to see if I ever get around to crafting my canoe.

"Our Pure Land is not only the fragrant lotuses and bunches of chrysanthemums, but is also the mud which nourishes the roots of the lotus and the manure which nourishes the chrysanthemums." –Hanh, from Touching the Earth









Little chance for Pure Land
from here behind the house windows

there it is, at the edges of city,
a little out there just off the highway–
    Get out, find a northern horse
             and pack the dog in back

Capital Springs, sodden marsh
        closed off, boardwalk
            carlots empty
the trailing of geese calls from a flood creek
a rise up out of the source of things
sun off the October grass
bright as moss
bright as the inside of stars

-----

Let go of the leash
What's behind you in the background
the sewage, the dump, asphalt living
the end of things, the beginning

Ahead through two inches of mud
we see only the black
fine velvet gloves of the geese heads
steadily swim along
the swollen creek which has no banks
they're not going anywhere

later they swoop down onto the city park
just north where you live

at the bench
under old friend oak

you know where it all came from

Farm Fresh Revisited

"Her first thought, curiously, was of Auden's poem on the fall of Icarus. Such events, said Auden, occur against the backdrop of people going about their ordinary business." McCall-Smith, from The Sunday Philosophy Club










Sam Farrar had just made up his mind. It was far too early in the morning and he knew by 4:45 that he had not closed blinds to his second story window above the Farm Fresh overlooking Lake Monona, Madison WI, and the mere brightness of the sun had begun to make its soft glow along the walls of his office. He didn't make a habit of sleeping here anymore; there had been plenty of these nights when the Fresh had just opened when he decided by one-thirty in the morning, with dirty dishes still stacked at the rack, new servers still stunned, and tomorrow's rotating menu already peaking up over the morning of his mind, that he would casually disappear from the kitchen, grab a cheap bottle of Korbel champaign and slip up into his office for a few hours of sleep. It had been over the course of many of these nights that he had brought up with him a pull-out ottoman bed, a fine piece of furniture that no visitors could every guess also served as a nightly mattress. He had thought of a washer and dryer; why not a small version of a kitchen right here in the room along with him? Well, why not move in? It was at that revelation that something in him had snapped and he realized that there are many ways to live your work but without proper definition of drawing boundaries, well, days become one long elastic stretch with no real divisions. He got rid of the ottoman and never did build his own kitchen. This morning, as he was looking through the news online, he wished he had his bed back, and last night.

Date to Watch the Moon

"Our date
To watch the Moon
Has problems. A quiet visit
To discuss the mountains is far off."
   –Hsi Chou, "Early Spring At the Capital Sent to the Honorable Kuan"









I sit.
I see mind release
to landscapes
each leaf.

I know this is
as good as any home.
Maple so golden
by autumn it has become
a sun of its own.

As if ascending
some castle stair
from around a blind bend
I stood at the top
of the knoll blooming
like pure land.

The thousand passers
in the distance along
the howling highway
heading to other
loud gray roads.

The Stream-enterers

"According to the story, by simply hearing these words, which to our ears may hardly seem inspiring, Sariputra gained the first stage of insight into nirvana and became a stream enterer." – Lopez, The Story of Budhism










It is not always the new trail that I find all that is remarkable.
There is that, too, new adventure upon new adventure,
some new scene upon the mind I walk with hope of the new.
Today we parked along the upper ridges of Picnic Point,
a spit of a peninsula which overlooks the other side of Mendota;
the water all around so high that the green waves crashed
inside the usual hollows of walkable trail and new trees
were under water, new waterlogged stumps, new leaves jewels.
We made it in under the curves of the Frautschi Point trail,
something of a winding lair of dark muddy trail curves,
our own footprints temporary relics to behold on our return.
Where were we? Had we every truly been here overlooking
the swollen lake as this before or was this a new creation?
I could have sworn that the last time we walked through
my mind had been nothing more than a television of serpents,
as the news and the loud mouths had gained foothold there.
I thought of the Buddha and his following sangha,
walking from village to village for forty years learning
anew the same people who they had known for centuries,
and braided fresh eyes to a trail home right where they stood.

On the Yahara 

"It's me–Mama, Mama said. I opened up and she's there with bags and big boxes, the new clothes and, yes, she's got the socks and a new slip wit a little rose on it and a pink and white striped dress. What about the shoes? I forgot. Too late now. I'm tired. Whew!"
– Cisneros, House on Mango Street







Dad said two weeks ago that all this water was about to recede. I asked him what recede meant, even though I think I knew all the while, because who wan't saying the same thing all around the neighborhood? It had been well over a month. I'd take ol' Blue with me (or try I really should say) across the street and up onto the bridge where we could see where the water had crept up way over the big rocks. That's where our trail was for dog walking. Now we had to walk along the street on that end. I learned that recede was on the minds of al the neighbors. Their own houses were along other streets close and they wanted it to go away.

I told dad right then that I didn't want to go to school again on monday. "What else are you going to do my child," he would say in his kidding voice, but I meant it. "I want to work and take care of the dog, and listen to the neighbors about receding and help. Maybe they would pay me?" Oh, I had visions of it all, that I will tell everyone now that would listen. Visions. I saw myself right then skipping right over school years. Getting right into things, not waiting around.

Blue and I were outside all the time in those days. Out in our backyard playing around a hundred kinds of bones. Hundreds of kinds of things. Little tricks I tried to teach her, why not. I had visions of being a pet professional. Could I train animals for a living? Let's get started. Right now. Let's not wait. I had ideas for my dog walking business already set. We watched the water rise. I hoped it would recede, always, always.

Dad was distracted by everything but I knew his heart was still with me. Always, always. I never quite knew how he did it, but when he asked me what I was doing it always already knew. He didn't really have to ask. I wondered if he had the binoculars on me. How did he do that?

We learned to run over the bridge by the end of september. Leaves were falling. The river was moving back and forth still, big and green, side to side, you could tell it was still too much for its tunnel. I taught myself to cook, and who didn't appreciate that?

The Path to Han Shan's Place

"As for me, I delight in the everyday Way,
among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves.
Here in the wilderness I'm completely free,
with my friends, the white clouds, idling forever."
  – Han Shan, 12







We slip on her dogleash and are finally free.
There is a little road that is bordered by tough pines
that guard against the blaring highway.
What do we see ahead but the hope of open road?
A few more miles and out into the cattail
reeds and hawks hunting mice from cottonwoods.
Across the continent the mountains sleep.
We walk alongside the last of their night's dream.

Some Fine Talks

"Lunch in my mountain kitchen
the spring provides the perfect sauce."
     –Stonehouse, 67











Sept. 24


And so we had a fine talk about ideas of reciprocity.
What is such a word it sounds too close to legal.
It is not. It is not bound by permanent scratchings
of some other men in some other city some other era.
As I open the door I overlook a back channel
of a long river that feeds into the Mississippi.
I know that lines that we have created to hem it in.
A fine loop around the water as rising banks
and twenty boats like houses afloat and at ready.
I also know the river as a circulation of wild water.
I know that the names uttered by others named
the same thing but that they all flowed over earth.
I paddle to ancient banks exploding by roots
upturned willow trees exposing a hundred wet years.
I follow the egret as she strides alone across
the thin shallows eyeing the slivers of small fish.
These are not my things; I am possessed by mystery.
While we talked of reciprocity we came up with fine
examples where we come to see things give and take.
We call it also, as the waters, by a hundred names.
It is not whether we know that I am it but whether
we give it a hundredth of a blink of our time to see.

The Path to Han Shan's Place

"Keep Han Shan's poems in your home.
They are better than sutras.
You can place the book on top of a screen
and read it through every now and then."  – Han Shan, 307








2

You should have arrived at the college earlier.
There was the placing of the bone back home
directly in the right place at the corner of the kitchen,
so that the new white young puppy could chase.
You should have taken another street through city,
this one an afternoon barrage of car lights
strung through the center of city like gaudy lace.
Oh if you only would have been patient!
Stopped there latched to the back ends of trucks
like the puppy teething against her bone.
What stirred? Looking into the rearview, nerves
like the pulsing roots lit up under shaken trees.
The sky had been blue powder for first time in days.
The fire was pleasant. Old man ahead of you
slow to turn, no blinker, hardly awake, sad.
You should have arrived at the college earlier.
As they stood in the courtyard doing poses,
breathing in the air as rose up from soft grass.
They didn't know you were coming; who cared?

The Path to Han Shan's Place

"The path to Han-shan's place is laughable,
A path, but no sign of cart or horse.

And now I've lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?"
   – Snyder, from Cold Mountain Poems









Lowlands here in midwest sopping green.
September rain a new gray breath every hour.
By seven we walk out to the hydrant,
itself red as any spring cardinal, a spark,
erect, unscathed by any stirrings underground.
Two little curly terriers scoot by on leashes.
Master has his headphones securely attached.
His music bright sea waves lapping at dunes.

Prairie East

"But Pip rose this morning more animated than he had been yesterday at breakfast time, when he refused the three regulation milk bones he expects to find waiting for him on the edge of the breakfast table every morning after his early constitutional." Klaus, Weather Winter







Sept. 20

The waking up now is fast and furious, similar to the old days of charging across the hallway at 5 in the morning to care for an infant or two. It might randomly begin with a Samoyed puppy bark that is crisp and shrieking, time to get going, in essence, and along with that, dare not retrieve her as immediately as it might take to hop out of bed, pick her up and take her outside, it will likely mean at least one clean up puddle placed on the center of the hardwood floor. Who needs a good stretching in among soft warm pillows anyway. Such small complaints, the ones that oddly are the ones that make a difference, while for others on the current east coast mull over their house drowned in floodwaters, or the conflagrations that seem to spur up on the west coast monthly. So we head outside at that hour is quiet and fairly empty except for the other dog walkers. Rain grays the scene this morning but it is animated by the plunge of a duck across the street onto the high surface of the Yahara River. Such continuous action. I consider the duck's night and wonder at what creature comforts they dismay. Here, along this cut of water between Mendota and Monona, ducks overwinter. I presume that unlike dogs they don't exactly fluff out in another warming coat. No matter the weather, back in the water it is. Frankly, I'm glad they can't literally complain for I sense we'd get an earful. Coffee in hand. This helps. Then it is the pup's daily constitutional, and the coffee becomes something of an unsavory sight, sharing with the scooping hand. A bus roars by, charging up as it does to the crest of the Rutledge Bridge, then bearing down quickly onto the stop sign. A few more cars whizz past in the rain. No more quiet. Poop in hand. Unsavory coffee. I think back to my poor ducks and wonder, just for a brief second, what would it be like to fly out there to the middle of lake, bob around for awhile plucking away at the lake weed tips?

"Sunday morning,
only one place serving breakfast
in Colusa, old river and tractor men
sipping milky coffee." – Snyder, from "River in the Valley"







Go off in my own patch of the Evjue Pines
can still hear the belt line
the long steady winding highway
directly at the edge of the woods clunk and clatter
  no meaning just sound
bend down to my knees into Garlic Mustard
the entire floor green, leafed, waxy
old tendrils of Bittersweet under fallen oak limbs
looks like a new kind of snake
peaking out by coils
and I begin to lop at the Buckthorn like a mower.
Two hundred years ago
what the farm wife was doing right here,
what she did all day with mud
scraped on her legs for relief from mosquitos,
but gather kindling for another fire.
Blue jay out there a handful of blue cloth
or a rag tossed up in the leaves
then falls a little then wafts back up
to wherever it chooses.
Bluejays always had it right – still waiting for us.

How We Go On

"To be shaping again,
model and Tool, craft and culture,
How we go on." – Snyder, from "Axe Handles"







Outside the shed,
buckets of loppers and small limb saws,
the mosquitos
fly in like gray laces,
little shadows
against our beige shirts standing out here under the plum tree.
"Not sure if we should even go out,"
one says, another, "we'll try it, and if it gets too bad, we'll turn back."
Look out onto Curtis Prairie
Golden rod dominates under morning sun,
can't see a thing
no swarms, no under the brush heat,
and so we load the old Ford,
and it takes its bumps across the service road
like an old dog, not much to say,
a couple of bad hips.
"Today we're after Buckthorn," we say
"when you see those long tendrils climbing up the trees,
those are Bittersweet, yank at the roots,
pull it down like Tarzan."
You'd think with loppers into the tangle
you'd be safe, clip away,
stack, take the road, prep the tendrils
in the truck for burning.
Deeper you get in under the old oaks,
now under attack by Buckthorn and Honeysuckle,
every other invasive imaginable,
garlic mustard seizing at every step,
the world is no longer yours.
"No matter the deep," you call out.
Look in on sweaty arm
twenty needle pricker noses
down into the cloth,
how do they know – try anything.
"Walk around a bit and create a little headwind,
maybe you can outrun 'em."
Out on the Evjue Pines service road
cutting back down
toward Savannah Oak and Tract Knoll,
long patches of sun
burning up the air, cleaning it out.
Look off longingly as if stuck out in some
desert, looking in at the waterhole.
Out on the road it's all better.
Better world,
Buckthorn there under control
already for another month or so.
How we go on.

Riverside Drive

"It wasn't as if I I didn't want to work. I did. I had even gone to the social security office the month before to get my social security number. I needed money. The Catholic high school cost a lot, and Papa said nobody went to the public school unless you wanted to turn out bad." – Cisneros, from House on Mando Street

Paddling the Bike Trail

You could never find it in yourself to blame the little yellow house. It stood out on the corner, on the other side of the bridge, as something like a Tuscan revelation, really, something else entirely from the rest of the neighborhood. Mother had said the previous owner lived in Europe most of the time and then when she came home, she wanted to Europe to move back along with her. "There were nights that we lived here," said Sandy, the construction owner of the company who had worked on the little yellow house for years, perfecting it, building courtyards where there had been none, garages out of nothing, even raising the house a foot to protect it from the possibility of the river across the street. "We are sorry," Sandy said, when he came after the flood, "but it never would have mattered." It had rained for three weeks nearly straight. The two of us and Puppy watched darkness from the upstairs windows. Traffic had slowed, the city had become quiet. Each time the enormous bus drove past in its deep hum it seemed to slow as it approached the bridge, wondering if it would make it this time for the water continued rise up to its bottom to the point where cancers could no longer paddle underneath without ducking. It was the very first day that we realized the river was flooding across the street from our little yellow house that Shannon and I kayaked all the way up the Yahara River without much permission...

Flash Nonfiction

"Yet poetry is in Nature just as much as carbon is: love and wonder and the delight in suddenly seen analogy exist as necessarily as space, or heat, or Canada thistles.." Emerson, from April 1859








Sept. 14


Reading from a physician in Japan who speaks of the needs of Forest Bathing, its profound naturally occurring positive effects on the soul, psyche, body, and as I imagine days surrounding this one, back a few, forward a few, I begin to see, perhaps like others, those very comfort zones that seem to serve as ease and security as a mere walk in the park, a short run along the banks of the Yahara River, the short walk that it took from my car down to the banks of Lake Wingra where the great college building Mazzachuli sits. Do men and women alike share such visions of comfort? Has humanity succumbed to a 'nature' of things in which we have unknowingly extracted the very thing that offers to us, without any thinking, menace, selfishness, our very course of health? Such questions. Men spend miles in their minds and in their verbal work for the day it seems chasing something forever in which, if caught, more like trapped, and secured, that it might make them for once feel at fine east in the world, in which mind and action were placed in unison, and a love rose up through the self out into the world...naturally. Yet they have lost the very first step in the sequence! The very first steps are not found in hours bent over laboring against the numbers of accumulated success; they are not found in mere dreams of a more golden tomorrow; not necessarily in what they eat; how long they run around the lake; the extra thirty minutes bonding with their sons. These are the effects; the cause is the first connection, the very one that lingers in all of us like a ringing invisible fiber that runs throughout, what Wilson called Biophilia, and it is an understanding of our natural surroundings. Who does not chase in their hours the invisible catalogue of what we are supposed to be doing? Who does not long achingly to the very place where peace for all lies, the quietest, least desperate of all things? Dwindling nature does not cry or entertain and therefore it recedes in our imaginations for it is ultimately humble and far more stable in its own patterns than the human mind. Stars sometimes align. A thousand lights shine inside the mind and connect with the forever traveling lights of the universe.

Flash Nonfiction

"All men keep the farm in reserve as an asylum where, in case of mischance, to hide their poverty,– or a solitude, if they do not succeed in society." – Emerson, from Farming









One my way back early in the morning from dropping my daughter off school, pass by old original ramshackle of warehouse not far up from the backwater sloughs of the Black River, itself on its way to the Mississippi, a tributary, a flyway, a great expanding waterland of beige greens, cattails, flicking away at the tips of its broad sheets of seeming canvas below. Always there, just out of old red cadillac, the owner, slunched, gray frothy hair, opening up a metal lock or two by key, into half-broken doors to get into a nearly windowless building. Months ago, spring time must have got in that building, for he had a crew build him a nice new office overlook at the top of the second floor, white, a rising piece of perfect cake stemming up out of otherwise broken box of a cobbled building. And so I follow the footsteps up what must be a musty ascent up through root cellar-like walls, up stairs that likely lack a handrail, chipped at the stone, lightless, then up into an office which overlooks the woodmill, itself a fine clean assembly of wood stacks and yellow forklifts with front pronged teeth silver as stars blinking by night. "The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity," said Emerson of farmers, men who we know must have had two things always in those old days: the panorama to himself each day as he overalled out to his pastures and cornfields, that raw possession of not possessing, for he knew, as our man in his high tower this morning, overlooking his marshy landscape, that he is of this air, this time, this geology; but that he too must create, to purchase his hours, so to speak, to survive his days. "Then the beauty of Nature, the tranquility and innocence of the countryman, his independence and his pleasing arts – the care of bees, of poultry, of sheep, of cows...." Emerson goes on, is acknowledged care of things. I drive by slowly thinking of how to start my essay.

"Not everyone will get it, though; the language of stone is difficult. Rock mumbles. But plants speak in a tongue that every breathing thing can understand. Plants teach in a universal language: food." – Kimmerer, from Braiding Sweetgrass








Sept.

The water bank sand bags lining the initial curve of the Monona Terrace are as large quarried boulders. Only a little leakage makes its way underneath these mammoth fixtures, blue handled for the sake of the crane which must have lifted them into place. The water is so high underneath the lower terrace that you can tell it is higher than the very place you have your feet. The New Orleans dilemma, if, of course, only on a much smaller level. Bright blue on a sunny day for as far as the eye can see; off to the other side, a network of destination, as I see that pools of water have gathered at the loading ramp going into the Terrace, all down hill, pumping pipes spiraling all over the place...but pumping where? Let's face it, I say to myself, when the mind has the choice between these two scenes – water as blue, beautiful, and holding the jewels of fish, or supporting ducks that wash across with such ease – or as sodden, moldy devastation, we tend to the blue. I run past and the park rises to the first overpass at Broom Street where a cluster of streets merge in and out of one another and an internal alert of loud crashing sounds made by cars kicks in...and now that is the concentration. The city I see is just like this: a zooming in, and zooming out; a clinging to the beautiful but also a necessary nod to the hidden bowels of concrete or, in the case of our homes, our wet basements as a consequence of last week's city-wide flood. Later that night you read of a hurricane making its train tracks inland at the Carolinas. It is told that a previous hurricane back in 1954 whipped up such devastation that it is truly unimaginable, 6, 8, feet of water up to the middle of your house.  The mind, thinking about such terror, skips to the hope of the settling weeks afterward, to the peace of the inhabitants, to settling their claims, and tending to the frightened. For us, here, to get through our part with relative ease, is a fine gift and one very worth receiving.

Prairie East

"Two rivers meet at this corner of the city
where a one-thousand-step polo field is smooth as if planed
and a low wall stretches around three sides." – Han Yu, "Poem to Commander Zhang at the Meeting of the Bian and Si Rivers"









August 

Fives Lakes of the Yahara have been rising for what seems like weeks. Those of us on the isthmus watch the nearly golden green bank of the River rise, inching up into the grass like a thousand eyes of snakes. Ducks now splash in unknown banks, plucking, surely, at worms who have lost their skinny canals in the rich earth: a bounty for some, loss for others. No matter. On the fine and bright days, the flood is a new and calm sheet of crystals, new contrasts, frothy in among the long line of bridges that span over, and we can no longer take them for granted. We walk new paths to check on the lochs at Mendota. Rumbling water, churning, surging in between two mammoth walls of four foot concrete, ease our concerns until we look downriver and see the parked pontoons under large and temporary canvas roofs, rising up to meet its ceiling. Tennis courts tilted, and exposing how basically uneven its surface. Hills and valleys exposed at every turn; we are all curious animals, watching the inevitable.

And so a trip to the prairie. And so a trip across the city at rush hour. Main roads closed, traffic in a hurry, hands gripped to steering wheels tighter than ever; all as we find pockets of water damage at the bike path or the swell at a street side storm drain, but quietly glide afloat and behind the wheel. Turn on your music. Ward off the rain forever. Transplant the rain to California, to Spain, the red targets of wildfires, to the villages of the Sahara, find that answer. City is contrasts. City is a game, a love, a world onto its own, Monona Terrace a bright wide smile against the churning blue below; the rip rap down the path has been undercut and weedy water has crept up to the wall of the terrace. What will it be? At Longenecker I follow nothing more than a path lit by sunlight. That is all. A dry path, through the horticulture of crabapple, hawthorn, and finally the prehistoric spruce, limbs like loving arms, draped by beads, kindly as mothers. Two fawns don't scare easily. I am quite sure that they see me as something as a long companion, as they move closer to me, biting away at the plums that dangle down like finger fruit. The sky is a powder. Faint voices of walkers along Arboretum path are cheery against the Wingra quiet.

It is true that at the highest bench, stationed at the top of a drumlin, I sat for an hour and watched out over the mismatched trees, a long green procession without people and without the gulping of water. It is true that there I told myself not to keep moving, as we are trained at home, keeping watch, checking emails, tuning in baseball games, plucking weeds, prepping meals. It is true that I was already sitting there from the time before I had visited. I had never left. A rabbit began nibbling close to me because it knew I was and was not there. I was the shape and shade of a tree, still, reliable. Crickets did not sing for me and for that I thanked them. Three turkeys passed below pecking at old chestnuts. One of their feathers sat the shape of a miniature boat against the green grass. I took a picture and sent it through my naturalist phone app to test it. The city was not a city. The water of the lakes was not thinking of moving one way or another. There was none of me there. Soon, here, I will leave.

Old Fence Oak Friends

"–Trail crew foreman says they finally got wise
to making trails low on the outside, so water
can run off good – "

– Gary Snyder, from "Walking the Long and Shady Elwha"









Assignment for today's work is get inside the roadside prairie where sumac, dogwood and bittersweet have taken over, cut it, stack it, treat it with herbicide if its not predicted to rain today or the next day.

Get rid of the road.
Lift off the visitor center.
Do away with the country club
we can see peak up out of the scrub trees
just across the street –

then it's just you and us,
old oaks there in a line as they were
planted a hundred years ago
by the farmer along a fence
all gone now but the disturbance.

When you hunch down
to lop at the base of the dogwood,
you're right inside the old,
because all of the other stuff
floats off, time itself, evaporates,
I know that I'd be lookin out
over natural prairie
goldenrod hard to chop down
no matter what
while you harness your horse
to pull up these rocks.  Not your fault you put the plow on through the panorama the pied beauty.
What's beauty with crying mouths
out along the shed, mud on dead boots,

hot heat, the kind with no conditioned sleep,
coffee two hours earlier
still stinging in your gut
sky closing down on your
because something's coming,
boil water,
hide the deer,
mosquitos will eat you up.

Remember when you stack the dogwood you have to separate out the bittersweet tendrils, the manager tells us, and pull back through the limbs of the dogwood with slender vines circling around and around in spirals, choking off the life of the limb. Vines go in separate piles to get burned.

One of the volunteers
wearing shorts not pants
walks through a low-lying mass
of broadleaf green and thorn thicket.
Might be ivy.
He keeps on going through.
He bends down to scratch.

Good friends old oaks have never moved.