Journal Restoration

"I was a junior bodhisattva then named
'No More Tricks'
and was sent to sit with the boulders here
an aeon or two
til the soil came up to my eyes."
  – Gary Snyder, "Siberian Outpost"







"And why not? Bhagavan, the perception of a self is no perception, and the perception of a being, a life, or a soul is also no perception. And why not? Because Buddhas and bhagavans are free of all perceptions."


Ice over Booth Courtenay Trail
many lenses
elm leaves oak leaves maples
preserved – clean crisp jagged edges still–
soaks in some sunshine
and melts around it
leaving a holder, a platform to see time –
the other day
I walked in among the leafless,
loppers in hand
and after a few horizontal cuts
it wasn't me any longer,
had melted down into that hollow
and knew the contours
of the dolomite imported in here
for the junipers.
Names gave way to tree types–
hours to limbs and finally perfect brush piles
they were but weren't bodies of things
themselves
laying there, cross-legged at places,
waiting their turn but not waiting

Bhagavan got there by breathing

ah Diamond Sutra

Journal Restoration

"some rounds fall clean down split in two,
some though and thready, knotty,
full of frasses and galleries, gnarly,
gnarly!"
– Gary Snyder, from "Gnarly"








Skunk Cabbage



"Caution: Boardwalk Slippery
When Wet," sign says,
stands under a Douglas,
tilted a little to the right stuck into
a deep green hollow soft and fragrant by needles–
ice has crept up on first three boards
a milky white, late February melt–
Skunk Cabbage Bridge where
Wingra creek meanders, springs up,
meets the lake, where the Ho Chunk
used to live along the banks in birchbark huts
placed tough leather hands
down into the bubbles that emerged
up through columns of ancient rocks
drank
the truest medicine, from world below–
another sign on top of wooden bridge
says skunk cabbage
keeps itself warm bursts up
first in spring, foul smelling –
watch the coyote how he trots off
and disappears down in the creek

Journal Restoration

"It was not yet March, and the fen at the edge of Silver Lake was still frozen, but the warm air and the brilliant rays of the sun and the absence of motion gave the impression of a lazy Sunday afternoon in midsummer." – Paul Gruchow, from Journal of a Prairie Year









Day's work party at the Arboretum to gather at the Juniper Knoll, an old Oak savannah, now east of the service road F4, but put into cultivation following settlement, and then replanted in 1932 with common, horizontal, and eastern red juniper, tended to as small cedar glade, located near the edge of Teal pond. Tools needed: Loppers, saws, hand pruners, shovels, gloves, safety glasses, tarp for hauling out the vines of bittersweet.


Old tool shack   same one as Leopold sat
buckets now lopper handles and folding saws
or shovel or two to pierce the field ice,
warm the water for later, tea or cocoa
and a little box of chocolate chip cookies,
fill the old work truck flatbed slam the gate.
                                            Quick glance – Longenecker
                                            out there just past the work
                                            garages a lake of shimmering
                                            ice snow all melt then frozen
and we wonder if this is such a good idea
truck has nothing to grip on service road
work party walks over a thousand little holes
and mini-hillocks of hard ice at temp 32 –
but then we see as we pass this side of the knoll
that this is the very thing itself, trail rises, Big Bluestem
leaning, brown, catching the filtered sun,
this is the walk of those, all of us, who need it,

get our hands on those tools and start combing
that wild old pocket of cedar glade and get down
on the knees frozen matt of old leaves to inspect
whether its honeysuckle, sumac, dogwood, bittersweet
easy enough to see – creeps up along anything,
like strands of twine and certainly loves its victims.
                               
If you find a print with four toes on both the front
and back feet, then an animal from either the dog
or cat family has been there. In Wisconsin this would
include a coyote, fox, wolf or even a domestic dog.
If you find a print with four toes on the front foot
and five toes on back, you have found a rodent track
                                         I read outloud

Hasn't been just us–
where the laid down dead logs
meet at a shallow hole
frozen over and holds
at the base of its tub
the petrified jewels of oak leaves,
logs scaled by layers
of fungi looks like fine metal
art been there working
itself out since the Ho-Chunk
here wondering Savannah,
then the cattle had come,
dug it out planed something
likely didn't belong in stumps.
                     
                                 Ghosts of both, we each
                                 say, here I am
                                 stack brush 6-8 feet in length
                                 along the side of F4
                                 Samsara, peace, struggle
                             
                                 We'll let the sun
                                  in here again
                                 
                                 someone hums




for Gary Snyder

CHEW Cookbook Review

For those great chefs who have come to master the fine art of cooking eggs, the rest of us would like to learn their magical secrets. This is the gist of one of the classic articles written by the great food writer Elizabeth David, “An Omelette and a Glass of Wine,” in which she shares with her readers a few of her own secrets found along the way while sampling eateries in France. “Quite a few of these customers subsequently attempted to explain the particular magic which Madame Poulard exercised over her eggs…She mixed water with the eggs, one writer would say, she added cream asserted another, she had a specially made pan said a third, she reared a breed of hens unknown to the rest of France claimed a fourth.”

There are no doubt many secrets to be gained by cooking folklore, but if we are seeking a more thorough examination of these “conjuring tricks,” as David calls them, for creating perfect eggs in all of their various forms, then Michel Roux’s cookbook, Eggs, (Wiley 2005), reads like a much needed definitive guidebook. Even though Roux is considered one of the most highly acclaimed chefs in the world, “who has held three Michelin stars at The Waterside Inn near Windsor in England for an astonishing 21 years,” the tone of his shared secrets are wonderfully down to earth, drawing on his stated respect for the egg’s “genius in all forms of cooking,” and on his humble farmhouse origins. “At the age of barely three, I would rush outside whenever I heard Julie, our family hen, cackling to announce that she was about to lay. I would gently collect the still warm new-laid egg and hurry to the kitchen with it. My mother collected the eggs in a large bowl, which would be kept full during the summer; in winter Julie laid one or two eggs a week – but we loved her just the same.”

Every chapter of this elegantly photographed cookbook, from the more standard egg recipes of boiled, poached, fried, scrambled, baked, and omelet (Roux had been asked to write a foreward to David’s article), to the more sophisticated crepes, pastas, meringues and dressings, all are warmly revealed by a master technician with a warm heart, “Nowadays, I love making crepes and waffles with my grandchildren. They all help to prepare the batter and join in with the cooking.”  The Pavlova with berries, mango & Passion Fruit…“undoubtedly one of the finest desserts in the world. My Australian wife, Robyn, and Bette, her mother, make the best pavlovas I have ever tasted. The fruits you use must be ripe, very sweet, and full of flavor.”  As for the omelet, Roux prefers his baveuse, runny in the middle, the color very light and golden, “delicate to touch, squidgy and soft.”

from Peach Blossom Spring

"The other villagers invited the fisherman to visit their homes as well, each setting out wine and food for him...One of the villagers said to him, 'I trust you won't tell the people on the outside about this."   – from preface to Peach Blossom Spring










Saul had known of both great and small adventures. So many other young people spoke of times spent on their city blocks as children, of neighbors that they had known for all their lives, maybe a deep winter hunting trip with a grandfather. These were not the things that Saul had remembered. He remembered many hours on travels out west, the hundreds of trails that he had felt he possessed as he learned their curves and growing patterns.

Years ago, when I was young, he thought,
there were the grand old rocks of the mountains.
From their tops, looking out over lake,
there were new heights as the eyes of the trees.
At the backside of the great lake shoreline,
the beach was all rock and sun rarely reached,
a long formation jutted out into the clear water
where we would walk and look down the bottom
and I knew then that was the purest of mystery.
Later I would try to read all this back into being.
Only a small handful of books could bring
the great mountains, the passing boats,
alive and dancing along the lines of the page.
Years passed and then came that old yearning
to return to the tops of those same mountains,
and it circled there much like the eagle itself.
I took long walks to recapture the open hours
but it rarely worked so I conjured them myself.

from Peach Blossom Spring

"The people, seeing the fisherman, were greatly startled and asked where he had come from. When he had answered all their questions, they invited him to return with them to their home, where they set out wine and killed a chicken to prepare a meal."
– from Preface to the Poem on the Peach Blossom Spring








Saul had previously only walked briefly through these small towns littered along the high ridge roads of the bluffs. Many of the lives that he passed there had looked quite dull and routine and so that he had never considered stopping, but merely walked past admiring the forests that lined the small green parks and avenues, but this day, now that he claimed spot in the world up among the rocks and the oak savannah, he decided to stop.

All this time, he thought, has been on the move.
Step by step over miles of gravel only to pass.
He looked up, in among the tall pines, to a majesty
hard to know from the distance of a moving car.
It was spring, still quite cool, and a few patches
of rounded snow sat gathering at the outer edges
of where the circles of warmth spread from the pines.
So this might very well be the place for sitting.
Out in the town the cycles of samsara didn't bother.
He could see the cafe owners and the barbers
diligently at their work, stooping over customers,
using their crafts and trades for their betterment.
All the while, look behind the city, he thought,
that old green world which cradled the buildings,
which provided the birdsong and footprints of mystery.
It was so easy for all, including himself, to forget
about those things that don't speak or get us anything.
He laid down his pack and sat on the pine needles
and listened to the raindrops scratch the street.

On the Peach Blossom Spring

"Every evening, after the merchant had left, Rendi crept from the stifling, sticky cart into the fresh night air and peeked up. And every time, the Starry River of the Sky was empty."
  – Grace Lin, from Starry River of the Sky









2.

It had gone on much like this for Saul for several years – as the other young men and women from his school had gone on their own adventures, pursued the sports of the seasons, and crammed into large cars for road trips to each others houses, Saul would dutifully wake up early in the morning on the weekends, pack in bag with all of the essential that he might need on his journey, set a course and then leave for the day, telling his mother that was most certainly no alone on this adventures. It was on this particular morning in middle spring that he became quite surprised by where he finally found his place for the future, as he had been calling it for two years to himself now. The morning had begun a slate gray, without much prospect, but as the sun rose the sky quickly became the kind of blaze that feels immediately enlightening and most importantly inviting to the walker of trails. He wanted to catch a view of the valley so walked down a well known road into the mammoth suburbs of the city, where, along the sidewalks, children on bikes had also felt the great promise of warmth. The last of the snow piles had turned to pools of water across the surface of the green and rolling golf course. Two men even stood at the tee box of the first hole eyeing up distances for the first time of the season. Saul knew of a hidden trailhead at the top of one of the last vacant lots left in this rolling, hilly suburb and began to walk up it, taking a stick for stability on the uneven ground. It was the dark side of the valley so that the trail itself, at least along its way upward, was quite dark and cavernous, an old farm trail that was no doubt used for a hundred or more years before it had sold off. An old and haggard fence lined the way to one side and a steep and sometimes rocky bluff side lined the other. He began to see through the eyes of the farmer, who no doubt used this very trail for cattle passing or a tractor to seek a better view of the land. It rose up to a top that blazed nearly orange by the exposed sandstone where a prairie led upwards through an outcropping of laid rock and back behind that a birch stand and finally what Saul knew to be an oak savannah, never touched, never grazed, wild, bright, open, a landscape not often seen or admired. He sat up on the highest manageable rock and looked down onto the valley, now awash by sunlight, and even though the large geometric homes lined every side street and cul de sac, it was the old geometry of the farm fields that he could see. The green of it had become stronger than the color of the roofs and it came to him, as he scanned back and forward, and all around, that this would be his new project for the future...

"A plain stretched before him, broad and flat, with houses and sheds dotting it, and rich fields, pretty ponds, and mulberry and bamboo around them. Paths ran north and south, east and west across the fields, and chickens and dogs could be heard from farm to farm..."
  – T'ao Yuan-ming, from "Preface to the Poem on the Peach Blossom Spring"







1.
     Some years ago there had been a story that circulated in a small midwestern town of a young man who had hiked every hill and bluff in the drift less area seeking the very farm that he would one day call his own. It was an unusual goal for someone his age and although he had said it aloud to his uncle once, he could not bring himself to tell it to his peers, for theirs were not so much goals of a future land or trade or to tending of the earth. He did not know where such day dreams came from but could remember when he was young his grandfather's small farm nestled at the foot of a ancient sandstone bluff where it was told there was still one cougar who climbed at night to the very top and prowled quietly the ridge lines and looked over the great river by himself only to disappear into its hidden cave by day. There were parts of this dream that the young boy absorbed and he could see himself as both a grandfather and cougar at the same time and felt the need to both walk the land, tend to it, and become, as ancestors had put it, one with the world. For this he was generally seen by others as unusual and alone and his stories that he found for himself, full of some many things along the trails that he sometimes tickled, of course he kept to himself and learned to paint pictures and write words in his mind, the greatest of canvases....
   

Yahara Winter

"Out here in the fields, few social affairs,
on backwood lanes, rarely a horse or carriage;
bright daylight, but I shut by bramble wood door,
in empty rooms rid myself of dusty thoughts."
     – T'ao Yuan-ming, "Returning to My Home in the Country, No. 2







The weary traveler today passes rickety farm fields
at 75 miles per hour his eye on the busy interstate.
The land becomes a long series of drift less hills,
shallow valleys lined by broken corn sagging.
There had been a season many years ago that I walked
thirty miles from West Salem to Sparta along the road;
the barely visible contours of the limestone bluffs
that I rush past today in such a hurry to head north,
had sunk into my hot bones, my mind became the fields.
I had stopped walking for a moment, exhausted,
not enough water, a t-shirt wrapped around my neck,
and as I sat behind the hill there was no sound of road.
The ancient whispering of the farmers was the wind
that slipped through razor thin ears of the cornstalks.
Was that hawk who, off in the distance, not visible,
shrieked to me or to absence of the abandoned field?
By the time I reached the city my legs were too tired.
Dust had gathered in the sweaty hairs of my arms.
I took the ditch growth of goldenrod as my sign
to keep moving on to the next shrinking oak savannah.

Yahara Winter

'If fame and money could last forever
the Han River would flow backward."
     – Li Po, "River Song"










Ice recedes. Ducks race overhead.
Yahara Park is a stark white field from recent snow.
Up over the bridge long-gaited neighbors
again make up a long line of passers-by
as it all melts, the sidewalks a thousand rivulets.
I watch from inside the living room,
as the white sun reaches in along the floor
as if staking new territory, warming the air,
turning the cherry wood to golden walls.
My mind returns to the canvasbacks
that crash down into the open water across the street
and a rush of excitement flies out me.
I feel the cold water below, warm air above.
The poem done, I leave all my work unfinished.
I wonder who would ever really notice.

Yahara Winter

"It may be that the hour is snow
seeming never to settle not
even to be cold now slipping..."
– W.S. Merwin










This morning I awoke
and knew I didn't have to look out the window
to see that the world
had slowed down
by the great new folded drapery
of snow
It was not a dream that there were no cars
for just this hour
and the only sound
was that imagined tinkle
of each flake
falling down silent as cut cloth
and finding its song
the flowing river
to hear again
not the bus drone but the crisp squeak
of childrens' boots as they slowly
punched down into the inches
of the sidewalk
When I walked outside
it was the trees along the river
that held their tongues
they did not speak
they did not want to
and greeted the curl of fog that lifted
up over the mouth of the Yahara River
as the old breath
of passengers who paddled across the lake
you could not see
their story and speech
disappearing

Yahara Winter

"The old snow gets up and moves its
Birds with it

The beasts hide in the knitted walls..."

– W.S. Merwin, "December Among the Vanished"








But then there always was the short drive
along riverside
where it did not matter the condition
of the old houseguests
across the street
where I knew the crows roamed the rooftops
and the old man wore his mechanics suit to shovel
because I saw
the bridges
I saw the lace like sheets of ice
bulb out out at narrows
and neighbors
young and old
hunch over the rocky crown of that bridge
and it felt a home
what are we looking for?
we have the water
a school outlets
and students come walking over
the steps
and I see
what it is for always has been

Yahara Winter

"This way the dust, that way the dust.
I listen to both sides
But I keep right on.
I remember the leaves sitting in judgement
And then winter."
– W.S. Merwin, "Air"







There is the forest of Clark County
that I pass by winding road
it is early February and a recent snow
has turned the floor of the world
to a crystal fabric, dry and light.
The woods have been recently thinned.
Old lodgepole pines stand now
without limbs or their own drawn
fabrics of green that have draped
their rising bodies for how many years.
I keep moving, but also stop and wander,
as we do with all things from car
at forty miles per hour, warm by heater,
and move in among the new briars
that circle around tall stacks of lumber
like the razor spiral fences
we see in movie war zones.
It had been the simplest of measures
for the drivers of mechanical saws to lift
that giant crane by nothing but a finger
and erased the limbs by a flick as if shaving.
The leaping squirrels and dashing whitetail
can now see a thousand yards past
those old stands of tented trees
into all the danger that was once hid.

EggZ Foodcart

"It's amazing how many people have never had a truly fresh egg. Hens that live a healthy life with fresh air, good food, and clean water (not to mention open space and green pastures) lay eggs that are firmer, more deeply colored, hater-shelled, and, most important, more nutritious than those of their factory counterparts." – from the Backyard Homestead









I assume that like most every other regular daily cook out there, over the years I have thought of my very own food cart concept. In fact, as I look back over some of my oder blogs, there had been a time the pace of food cart ideas got a little out of control, as if I were going to actually follow through it, put idea to action, buy the truck, paint it cool, then hit the street. It didn't help much that Tyler Florence's Food Network show Food Truck competition was then in full swing and the process of perfecting your niche food, vying frantically for your little parking spot somewhere on the fringes of a park usually, or maybe a tailgate-style location, looked awfully fun. On second glance, ten years later, I see that there are some pods of success for food trucks. We visited Harvard University this past last summer and they had a very nice couple of offerings right at the edge of campus, and a good two or three hand fulls of people were lined up on a nice day grabbing bahia ma sandwiches.  At the very top end of State Street in Madison, near campus, there's a very active cart economy, perfectly placed, near the U Bookstore. For myself, I always wondered if I could have opened up a egg card, cleverly called, with a 'z'! Eggz...the idea being that everything made, as our niche, would include

eggs in some way. A few nights ago I made an asparagus frittata, for example, and remembered how wonderfully adaptive and inclusive eggs can be. I basically created my pan frittata by putting into stuff I had on hand like a bottom layer of sliced then baked potatoes, some red peppers, parmesan cheese into the egg mixture, sautéed mushrooms, and finally a good ten asparagus strands across the top for beauty and green. A slight warming on the stovetop began to set the mixture, and only really 15 minutes firmed the frittata in the oven. Cut it into quarters and you truly have something potentially similar to a slice of pizza in your hands. You could churn out a ton of frittatas quickly and with any ingredients folks wanted. Why not a chili mix over the top? How's about a chipped beef inside?  All veggies you ask? Perfect. All cheese? Yes.  Eggs have, for obvious reasons, a long and varied culinary past – they can be used as the most primitive source for a meal as fried and served, or turned to a mallet over arugula drizzled with a french sauce. Virtually every food style you can think of, eggs could contribute.  My own recent 'hot style," tagine cooking, could use in virtually ever recipe a cracked egg over the top for style and texture. Think of an omelet style disk turned taco cover and holding in .... breakfast ingredients?  Egg over a soup? Absolutely. Scrambled eggs and mashed potatoes? I don't see why not? We haven't even gotten started with all of the various things that can be done for Deviled eggs. You name the favorite ingredient, dice it up small, and plug it into that perfectly ovular receptacle and there is a protein bite that offers a lot of flavor.  Our Eggz Cart would, of course, get its eggs only from the most local sources. It could offer morning noon and night. Watch out for the passing egg truck coming to your neighborhood soon!

Yahara Winter

"Autumn rains ending in this river town,
and wine gone, your lone sail soars away."
  – Li Po, "Fairwell to a Visitor Returning East"










Mild temperatures we walk the ice,
thin snow covers hundreds of fishing holes.

Yesterday forty small shacks stood
as if the skyline of a city block.

We follow eagle tracks from where it landed
as if from nowhere and smothered a sunfish

then walked off near shore to open water
where the talon marks just disappeared.

Today the sun has slid behind the curtain
again and fishing holes like mirrors abandoned.