Yahara Winter

"It was just ten years ago that Bob came home to catch the feeling of the Minnesota-Ontario border country in midwinter. He wanted, above all, to sit in a dark house with me again and watch the circling decoy and the scene below the ice." – Sigurd Olson, from the Singing Wilderness








The Lake Monona shoreline has been a veritable kaleidoscope of conditions over the past several weeks. Yesterday the temperatures had plummeted back down into the teens, a very thin snow ha re-covered the surface, and all the little cracks and seams and alleyways that had formed by a recent high thaw had nearly magically recongealed, hardened over the fishing holes, and seemed to be capable of holding the intermittent truck once again.  Living across the lake, its safe to say that the frozen months offer the onlooker an entirely new variety of natural beauty and phenomenon. The mere thought that the white trailer that stands out there in the middle of the lake, maybe a quarter of a ton heavy, is on a layer of ice a mere foot thick, full of suspended bubbles and littered with ogger holes which one might think would generally make the vast shelf of ice vulnerable and might, over time, split or sag or sink – any of the things that common sense projects onto the physics of the laws of weight and gravity. It was only last week that the sun had been out all day long, it was fifty degrees, and I decided that I wanted to check the conditions to see what a day of melting did to a frozen lake. I had never seen in my life such a collection of new phenomenon over a particular space. Only a hike last spring up Booths Falls in Colorado could similarly match the changes brought on in the time of one day.  Back here on Lake Monona, the surface of the lake had become a series of clear water ponds, glimmering and rippling with the direction of the wind. Nearer the shoreline, old ice had been heaved upwards over the rip rap, creating wavelike structures of thin ice, looking as if it was diving up toward the park. Dark holes had formed on the thin layer and you could see down to either open (shallow) water, or another layer of older ice. Where cracks cleared and water rose up to meet the thin layer of now pond-like water, small whirlpools were created. I assumed that these little oddities, which I have never seen before on a frozen lake, were created by the meeting of two varying temperatures of water, water pressure differential, and wind itself, which created a near stream pattern flowing from west to east. My boots were just thick enough at the soles to walk over the depth of the water without the uppers getting wet. Because the snow was melted, the lake, for the first time since its original freeze, was entirely clear, a kind of unusual, solid, water dessert oasis. The sun was hanging over the line of trees in its afternoon slot but left its lurching panels of light heading my way. Out in the middle, only one fisherman was left, tending to his multiple fishing holes. Next to him his quarter ton trailer which seemed to be sitting quite solidly over what was clearly a shimmering surface of likely two inches of blown water. All just water in varying forms.  When olson mentions his friend who wanted to come all the way up to the Quetico to experience again real ice, as I looked out across the vast watery space of Monona, I could understand, for it is a temporary existence this frozen lake, something like the combined efforts of both natural science and a random sort of art. To be able to sit on top of this frozen living room floor that you can actually see through to observe the habits of fish is a true naturalist's catbird seat.

Weeknight Tagine

"This traditional Moorish dish appears in various guises throughout the Arab-influenced world. Poultry cooked with dates and honey is probably one of the most ancient culinary combinations and the finished dish is deliciously succulent." – Ghillie Basan, from easy tagine










Over many years, after cooking your thousandth weeknight meal, it's simply never easy to into the realm of "this is the best ever." There's all kinds of reasons for this, not the least is that your very own self-perceived culinary masterpiece might look (over even taste) the very opposite to the kid-and-spouse combination eaters. In other words, it is time itself that teaches you the most obvious of all points about cooking, but that is sometimes hard to swallow: tastes vary. I recently received a 'best ever' vote from both wife and child and I all it all to the tagine, my new – and very much hope permanent – kitchen sidekick. The tagine I am finding out is a very intuitive and forgiving pot. One-pot meals have always made sense to me for family cooking. Gather your ingredients, add the stuff that makes sense for the overall taste of the majority of your eaters, then toss them them, turn them to a ragout style comfort food, and folks will generally be receptive. Tagine cooking is a little like finally finding a mode of doing this, but with some style, some fun, interest, and with a new flavor profile. With a tagine of chicken leg quarters with dates and honey, I know before I start the process that my main goal is to get those leg quarters tender and suffused with its surrounding stew-like ingredients – butter, ginger, garlic, olive oil, a dash of cinnamon, honey, and pitted dates. So, let's face it, knowing how the tagine works, as a sort of circulation steam system, there's a couple of things I have to do not to screw it up. One, I want my chicken skins to carry an initial flavor that will stick and not just fade in the liquid. So I browned my legs in a pan before I plopped them into the ginger and oil, sprinkling with a rotisserie chicken seasoning holds up its flavor nicely over the stewing process. After placing the tagine hood over, I could very well imagine that fresh combination of ginger and cinnamon and garlic rising up through the chicken at the bottom and then circulating back down and cooking from the top. Once in a while, even thought I am not supposed, I lifted the hood to make sure that I was not low on liquid. I placed a handful of dates along the edges of the legs, stirring in the honey at the same time, adding sweetness and a sort of gelatin texture.  I happened to decide to toss in a few baby carrots and larger cut broccoli florets over the top to steam. On the side I briefly browned a handful of almonds and eventually tossed those over the tops of the legs and dished, making each portion got dates and veggies.  As I sat the chicken legs onto the plates, I was very

pleased that the chicken was clearly tender but not yet to the moment where the meat began to disconnect from the bone – sometimes slow cookers have a tendency to render meat like this and although many might claim that this is an ideal texture, I've alway felt that usually by this time, the meat has post some of its inherent taste and structure and tastes far more like the stew surrounding than meat itself. It took it out right on time. As we began to eat, it was very promising that as an entire dish it is did not overly exotic. Moroccan, stocked full of a wonderful assortment of nuanced ingredients, could look a bit complicated for younger eaters. Here, only dates might have looked out of the ordinary; the almonds there but fine and acceptable.  The tagine had worked its magic and indeed it had become deliciously succulent, just as Basan had mapped out in the recipe description. Some 'best evers' were tossed around. Even though I realized this was one-pot cooking, I became convinced that the tagine likely does have at least two advantages that more delicately handles the cooking process: the hood is higher and makes the heating less intense on the topside than a standard dutch ceramic, and two, there is a considerable call for sweetness in tangines which of course highlights the surrounding North African culture and its abundant ingredient: dates, figs, honeys, cinnamons, even gingers, once broken down, as a sweetness. Maybe it was possible was Moroccan cooking, although from far far away, held the promise of offering a taste profile quite close to the heart of a young dinner eater.

Yahara Winter

"The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end." – Emerson, from "Circles"










Now, your days
by winter
will go by
with less truth;
is it I who handles
the steering
wheel that scuttles
across the weary
streets
covered by the lead of ice,
or some other
that I watch,
as if from a far,
a moon
watching the earth
by night?
These are not
questions
for everybody.
Winter can sag low
and uneasy
like poor old cats
abandoned
and slinking in among
the alley eaves.
Who am I by cold?
The silver pictures
of Alaskan
summers behold
the crisp
domes of Denali,
and perhaps
we see
the slurping tongue
of the husky
take hold of her
reins and barge
through a crystal lit snowdrift.
The hours,
here, however, don't hold.
Today
the truth of the sunlight
came out and held.
I walked out
onto the ice
rippled
by the melt,
small holes
uprose like a vent
of whirlpools,
resurrected leaves
circled
and I could see through
three inches
to suspended bubbles.
I could say,
for once this month,
I knew all I needed,
for the water was clear
and bright
and the face
that shone in the water
below
as mirror image
I could see

Yahara in Winter

"Last night
she
came,
livid,
night-blue,
wine-red:
the tempest
with her
hair of water..."  – Neruda, from "Ode to the Storm"




Oh, white glass
I see
across the street,
a tundra
of old trees
that I am used to
but the bark
of the north facing
slivered by snow,
how did you paint that
my friend?
By Wisconsin streets
in winter
we hold captive
by the compulsion
of the sun
as it is our only
diadem,
the glitter of a world
we know
but are not,
like children, allowed
to peruse
such a section of delight.
Neighbors now
scoot by
holding the tethered
handles
of their leashes
as if the spring has sprung,
as if that light
that coats
the river
and sorts out its folds
rendezvoused volume
had been sent
from a world
of solution,
a world that is cinder
and pure
which does not
know restraint.
Up there, a thousand
years away,
long ago beamed,
yellow molten
paint dab sun.
I walk up to the glass
case in my house,
and know not
what I have
done to deserve
the pattern
that reels in protest
against
the monotony
of dull gray winter.

Yahara Winter Journal

"...All the walks here are wide, and the spaces ample and free – now flooded with liquid gold from the last two hours of powerful sunshine. The whole area at 5 o'clock, the days of my observations, must have contain'd from thirty thousand finely-dressed people, all in motion... – Whitman, from Specimen Days







January 24. – it will always start here, near the Rutledge Bridge which leans so firmly over the Yahara as it carries its buses and hundreds of cars, very early, and out the little bedroom window the joggers have already taken hold of still-icy road, adorned their yellow slick suits, glowing in the dark by the shining of car light. That is the fresh and invigorating way to begin the day...but oh how difficult it is! The cold seeps in the front doors, it finds its ways inside the cracks in the floor, frost flies off the eaves at the roofs and whips up in a wintry mix, no sun for days, but here they are, the runners the walkers the bikers to work, thin-wheeled, slow, deliberate over the shoveled sidewalks. Most of us come to live out on the road. Down East Washington toward the Capitol building, that domed white giant teacup up against the luck of the blue threshold that opens for a moment above makes the building a natural gravitational pull. I drive often down these roads and watch the traffic boil and complain at lights. I watch the young men walk out of EVS Coffeeshop, the smokers by lunch standing at the curb lights outside of the Baldwin Grille, no longer cold, already whiskey on their breath. Another man pulled over along the vestibule of the Avenue Bar talked to by cops. Buses whir past, baby strollers, wrapped up in blankets, so not a single breath can reach inside to where the miniature traveler sleeps so snug.  This is the city as it unfolds. Tomorrow the sunshine glaze will be out again and these same very scenes will lose their menace and monotony. Far reaching fields of golden sunshine will wash along the jagged shores of Mendota at James Madison Park. One skater, off in the distance, etching along the crumpled ice, as the last lake eagle soars overhead looking for fresh inlets. And there, from three hundred yards out, the white capitol, stolid, gleaming white, at the center like the very edge of a postcard.

On the Yahara

"Sitting in the Scamper, curling her arms up like a boxer, Keeper flexed her muscles. She certainly was not like the Incredible Hulk, but she was proud of her strong arms." – Appelt, from Keeper










So far Cora and Shaw had only one summer client signed up for what they decided to call The Lost Bee Society.  Mrs. Gavelwood was an ex biology school teacher and knew all about these things. She was almost always out in her frontyard which faced the park and made sure the park department didn't cut down the dogwoods or mow over what she called the spring ephemerals.  Cora and Shaw would walk past Mrs. Gavelwood's house every morning that they remembered and ask what she was doing today? "We want to count all the neighborhood bees," was the first service that The Lost Bee Society would work on.  "Well remember, it matters how much we give them to eat and pollinate. Now if every house planted an apple tree, we'd have something wouldn't we?" Mrs. Gavelwood was pruning the long branches of her own apple tree that particular  morning. "Once those bees sniff out those apple buds, that's all it takes. Come on back here girls, let me show you something." Gavelwood set her loppers down and made a tidy stack of limbs along the tree. The front porch of the house was a lush herb garden planted along the stairs and up onto the porch railings. "When you start your bee counting, no need to come back this way," she said, pointing out the contours of the backyard. It was rolling in small hills. Raised beds were fit like square puzzle pieces. Ms. Gavelwood was the tallest woman that the girls knew and when she pointed to the raised beds, her arms seemed to extend all the way down the ground without bending over. "Do you see that box back there by the garage? Don't tell anybody but those are my Italians. Stay put for now." The side wall seemed to be moving. "Italians?" Shaw asked, wanting so badly to walk over to the mysterious box. "What has a powerful queen, likes apples, and lives on one another in a very small apartment?"

On the Yahara

"'Come on, moon,' she implored. Didn't it know she was in a hurry? As soon as she said the word 'moon,' she chewed on her bottom lip. So much had depended on tonight's moon, a blue moon, second full moon of the month." – Kathi Appelt, from Keeper









Cora hadn't figured out yet how to stand upright on the stand up paddleboard. "You are supposed to stand up" Shaw said, who herself, of course, was paddling from shore to shore in a zig zag over the perfectly lit green water. "You can see right down to the bottom," she said, and sure enough, right at this twelve noon sunshine beaming straight down before the Rutledge bridge, she could see rocks on the bottom and a few slippery fish dart to the tangled banks. "Don't fall in" said Cora, who herself was sturdily on her knees. There was no way that she was going to go into that water. It was green for a reason. She wondered if it might take her skin off. It had been only a month ago after the big rain in spring when the little white fish floated down over a green haze. That very day that she saw that parade float from under the bridge and out into Lake Monona, there were a group of boys at the next bridge up toward Willy street who were jumping off the bridge a good fifteen feet into the water. She wondered what their feet felt. She hoped they hadn't accidentally drank any of that 'green tea' as her dad had called it. "Catfish!" she yelled out loud at Shaw. "Catfish two o'clock." She had never ever seen a real catfish along the Yahara here, but they were very scary dudes, big as the paddle board itself, and this river had once been called 'catfish alley,' as dad had said. Oh, this didn't bother Shaw in the least, not a single eyota. For Shaw was a true naturalist, had been from the get go. Dad said some are born Huck Finn's, others have to grow into the role." Cora was a grower into. She was going to save the neighborhood bees, that was a given. But it was Shaw that she let lead the way and do all the work, of course. "Catfish are like pets anyway," Shaw said, paddling now with greater ease and grace. When she swiped off the left the board went right and circled back to Cora now. "The reason I wanted to come out here is because now we can see the house from the proper distance. The first thing we do if we are going to do do Luscious Landscaping is see what our trees are like." Luscious landscaping was the title from a book that had become the families farm bible for the last few months. There was usually a new book and plan at least every week. Dad would try anything. The house on the corner was to become a nature center, and if it was going to be a nature center, we had learn how plant permaculture, he had been saying. Shaw understood intuitively. She knew for certain they would have to draw a map, first. "Remember there will chickens," she said back then, and now there were seven chickens in the back courtyard dropping their stinky pellets all over the place, clucking, pecking. Cora thought they were a funny group of birds, not particularly bright. The plan, however, was in action. "First we have to get you up on your board otherwise you can't see a thing." Nothing had said anything about getting up on a board first to create luscious landscaping. Cora was leery.