It’s coffee time

 The coffee watch is on. Those eternal moments in which the combination of propane stove and coffee, percolator make so much noise. It is almost industrial. But then that grand entrance with that first appearance of clear water into the glass perk top shows up, accentuated by the sound of perking coffee that in my recollection does not sound like anything else on earth except maybe the sound of a distant steam locomotive pulling a hill.

I turn down the burner so low, the flame is on the edge of not even being there. This is the careful process of massage, the art of creating amazing coffee in a traditional percolator. If I had it my way, I would still make coffee this way every single day as if it were 1977. This busy world challenges ideas like that with “essential tasks” that we have been re-programmed into thinking that they are indeed essential.

The forecast for this weekend is riddled with rain, showers, and storms. Thankfully, I am watching this coffee perk and the birds are singing. The sun is shining through the trees, and the mosquitoes are doing their best to ruin it.

I know I’m coming to the point where the coffee is perked enough, bliss awaits. But first, silence. Letting that pot rest for about 4 minutes seals the perfection.

As I wait, the remaining sounds are children’s voices in the distance and a couple of woodpeckers that are so loud they must be robotic woodpeckers. 

Now just birds singing sweetly all around. My friends, it’s coffee time.

Return to Coolidge

 Coolidge State Park. I just realized that we have not camped here in 13 years! That is crazy! We have come up here for the day many times. Several of these memories stand out. The last time we camped here was Memorial Day weekend of 2010. We had not booked anything in advance and had a difficult time finding something but after dark on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, we hooked the Cherokee up to the pop-up and drove up. Noah was four and Liam was seven. On the way here I can still recall getting emergency calls from truck drivers as we were driving past Echo Lake, because I was still working for GMH back in those days, but not for much longer.

Because as a family, we were always late, and we would always arrive after dark. I used to do this thing where I would set the camper up, unfolding the pop-up in pitch darkness, and I was excellent at it. Well, one reason might’ve been that I was being sort of sarcastic about how we always arrived after dark and showing off a little bit that I could do it just as efficiently in the dark as I could with light. The real benefit however was setting up, had we used lights we would’ve been swarmed by mosquitoes, so I would always wait until everything was buttoned up and Velcro’d up and we were inside before we ever turned the lights on. I am certain that even today eight years after we sold that pop-up, if you were to put me in the dark with it, I could still set it up to this day just as efficiently.

We went to bed pretty much right off as it was right around midnight. I recall hearing wolves that night, what an incredible sound. Donna slept in and I spent the first hour with my boys. I can still feel that morning today. Liam and Noah got Junior Park Ranger badges while they were here that weekend. 

As I think about all these details, I never regret having camped with them so much while they were growing up. I perceive that it gave them something that they will have for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps one of my favorite memories of coming up here for the day was in the spring of 2021. Liam and Haylie came hiking with us. Poor Haylie did not have shoes that were good for hiking and her feet were really hurting. Liam worked on some solutions, and in the end, he gave her his shoes and he hiked barefoot. What I love about this is it is so symbolic of how they are with each other, and always have been. No matter what they have to do for each other. They always do it. 

At the end of the hike, we cooked backpacking food up at the pavilion. Liam and Noah had the Biolite stove cranking away cooking things. When I see them do all these things, I realize that they’ve learned a lot over the years. Today, each with their own gifts, they run with it on their own terms. I cannot love and appreciate this enough!

Tonight, I walked up to the ranger station because there was free Wi-Fi up there, but no service, since I have my phone set to Wi-Fi calling, it worked out perfectly and I called Donna. On the way back, I made friends with my neighbor who was also walking back.

He emerged from the shadows on my right flank. We started talking. He is from Connecticut. Amazingly the conversation (I promise through no instigation on my part - really) turned to Asian food. What are the odds? He was on day 5 of a 7-day solo camping trip. He seemed like a really nice guy. (I am serious about the Asian food, I did not bring it up). As we headed back to our respective campsites, I learned he was my neighbor.

Hanging on

 Almost 6 months ago to the day, cold winds blew outside my window, as the woodstove kept us warm and dry inside. My computer screen was lit with hope of a summer day, waking up on top of a mountain in a lean-to. I booked a weekend at Coolidge State Park in Plymouth Vermont. There I would be climbing out of my sleeping bag, joints sore from sleeping on a harder than I am used to surface. I start a fire, the Coleman coffee pot on the fire. I wait for that blissful sound of the coffee bubbling up the funnel into the percolator top. The scent is amazing. The sun filtered through the fog. It’s going to be a great day. I want to remember this feeling of the morning air, the smell of the coffee perking on the fire, and eventually breakfast cooking. I want to remember the birds chirping happily that it is summer and that it is a beautiful day.

Somewhere in a parallel universe that we call reality, we are staring down the barrel of a miserable forecast. With it raining every day during the middle of the week I just knew we had to be safe by the time the weekend arrived. Those were odds that we’re not going to happen, however. Bringing up the weather channel I can clearly see that as far as the forecast goes the skies are turbulent with lots of what meteorologists describe as beneficial rain.

 As I think of the things that I need to pack for this weekend and how much extra work it is to tent camp, everything inside of me says to cancel. But is that what I really want? It’s not like if I stayed home I could get a bunch of the chores done that I want to knock off the list.

I know from experience that it is a weekend like this that is more likely to stick intensely to my memory as the years go by. It is a firing of all the senses to hear rain on the rooftop of the leanto or to fight a smoky fire. What really constitutes recreation? Is it doing something beyond your routine? Is it blue skies and perfect weather? Is it struggling for basic comfort? I honestly don’t think I really know the answer to this. What relaxation, regeneration, or discovery awaits on a weekend when you put yourself closer to the elements that remind us that we are very small, and it’s not really all about us.

I have canceled camping weekends in the past in the promise of terrible weather on the way, only to see one of the most beautiful weather weekends there could be. I imagine my appreciation for those trips would have been spectacular had I stuck with it. 

To cancel would be a mistake. Foil packet meals, keeping warm and dry when the elements suggest otherwise. Being out in nature and really taking in what summer is, wet or dry is what we really need as humans. Our manufactured version of comfort is irrelevant. After all, look at where it has gotten us. As a species, healthwise, we are breaking down and falling apart. I am all too aware that this is because we are removing the natural elements from how we live.

Back in 2016, we camped with our family at Green River State Park in northern Vermont. We canoed out to an island campsite, that after we spent three days there, my niece nicknamed “Hell Island” after noticing that the rain and the wind seemed much more intense than the other sites a quarter mile away. The day we arrived it was beautiful, but after breakfast the second day the skies turned dark and it began to rain and the wind was intense. It had been in the 80s but the temperatures were now falling. I have RA, it does not do well with dropping barometric pressure and cold damp settings. As the second day progressed it got even more intense and the rain poured out of the sky. This has been difficult for me because I spent a lot of years in the military on muddy rainy 40° rifle ranges. I think you get your fill of this in your life and you just don’t wanna do it anymore.

That night the rain never stopped pounding on the tent that my family and I slept in. The wind blew hard all night. We woke up on day three with the ground just absolutely saturated, 51°. All of my extended family members canoed over to our hell island for breakfast. Somehow we managed to get a fire going cooked a lot of food and had a great time spending time together. I had this incredible revelation during this breakfast. My auto-immune condition should’ve made me absolutely miserable, barely mobile. I should’ve been in pain more than normal. I live in pain so the expectation was that it would be even more intense in this miserable weather. But it was the opposite. For the first time in years, I was not in pain. I felt strong and powerful. Something about getting down in the dirt and being a part of it was very healing. It was on this day that I gained a serious understanding and appreciation for the power of being in the natural elements.

So what about canceling? Not me. Well, it’s probably going to be one of those no way but the hard way situation’s, I am sure that this will not be a watered-down (sorry) type of camping experience. This is real life.

Notes from the campground bathrooms - Sara

The pieces of life you can catch in the conversations around a campground bathroom have always fascinated me.

 I was Listening to a mother, who has a significant Hudson River Valley accent while at the bathroom this morning. I will call her Sara. She was talking to a man she did not know out by the dishwashing station. They were talking about the cold last night. (It had been in the 30’s). She said they were in a tent. She said that hopefully someday they would be in a camper. That’s made me thankful for ours. It may be 31 years old, but it is ours, and it takes good care of us. 

Then I heard a little girl say “Mom, can we go swimming?” “Later” was the answer. Sara shook her head and said to the stranger, “She just had a winter jacket on 10 minutes ago!”

I love these moments.

The Finest Hour

Monday, July 19, 2021

Woke up with no more Mr. nice guy by Alice Cooper playing in my head. "What’s the significance? I don’t know!"  (Peewee Herman voice). Despite the rain those incredible surreal never to happen again moments materialize in the strangest of places without warning! 

We went to bed last night in the tent. I was feeling like I might actually drift off to sleep fairly quick when my stomach had other plans. I reluctantly trekked across the road to the state park bathrooms. There was no one in there when I first arrived but after a while what sounded like three or four boys of various ages, pre voice changing age came in on a mission to pee and brush their teeth before turning in. Rolling conversations ensued amongst them. What sounded like the older boy of the group, possibly 11 or 12 years old said that he was going to the bathroom and to let mom and dad know. Two more boys remained at the sinks brushing their teeth. The little one kept drinking water from the faucet, over and over again. I could not see him, but I could just picture him hanging on the front rim of the sink on his stomach, feet flailing behind him, slurping water, gasping for breath in between drinks. 

The middle kid finally had enough and tells him “hey! Stop drinking so much! We’re headed to bed!“ The little guy replied, “it’s just water, so it doesn’t really count.“ The middle kid disagreed, “oh yes it does! Every sip of water equals a minute of peeing!“ Out the door, they went.

I was still grinning from the science of that water equation while there were various grunts from the end stall until the 11 or 12-year-old very quietly began to sing a song. I wondered if he knew someone else was in there. As the moments passed he sang louder and louder. The words came clearer as time went by, “how great, how great, how great is your love?“ Louder and very melodic, he could definitely sing. My guess is it was some sort of Sunday school song.  

An adult came into the men’s room and went into the center stall. The boy just kept singing away. I washed my hands and left. Back at the tent as I tried to fall asleep, I thought about the boy who is not afraid to sing in the State Park men’s room. Will he always have this innocent confidence? If so what will he do in life, will it be important in a family sense or important in the eyes of the world? One thing I knew, he has a good start with his parents bringing him camping during childhood.

Staring Down the Barrel of Another Winter

September happened.  I am another year older, a spring and summer have passed, the brilliant bright green leaves that were so new on the trees only seemingly seconds ago have hardened to a callous veteran status and with one free fall of the mercury, will yeild to color too spectacular to imitate. What do I have to show? Not as much as I would like. Back in May on a rainy Saturday, Donna, the boys and I crossed the Pemigawasett River in the White Mountains. The feeling was amazing. It felt like we were really doing this. This was only the beginning and here we were now, off to a good start.

Mt. Flume and Liberty was just too much for us and we could have had a better hike had we done better research. I. We  turned around when we realized that we would be walking for hours after dark, on steep slippery ridges in wind driven rain. We told the boys it was “Cheeseburger time” a famous saying of our YouTube friend Shawn a.k.a. Sintax77 when he finishes a hike. We told them that the first good (by which we mean not Mc Donald’s) burger place we find we are eating at. It was fun, but sad too. We so wanted to sleep in those hammocks that we almost hiked all the way up Flume with.   When we were back down on the trail alongside the river, we noticed a couple of hikers walking around gathering firewood. What this means is, out of sight the required amount away from the trail, there were people camping in the woods just like we wanted to. But, when you raced down a mountain in anticipation of a big hearty cheeseburger that no longer seems like an option. So we went and had our burgers. 

 It was memorial day weekend. Anyone who is been in the White Mountains knows that on holiday weekends nothing is cheap, nothing is available. We called a couple of hotels but they had jacked up their rates four hundred percent of course which made no sense. So late, late at night, we drove all the way back home. On the way home, extremely hard rains pressure washed us.  When we arrived home we put on the television, YouTube, and watched other people successfully do the hike that we just trying to do. It was clear to us, had we continued, we would’ve been in a world of trouble. 

The Long Trail

We still pressed on.  So we decided to try the Long Trail.  If you don’t know what the long trail is, it is a trail that was established around the beginning of the 20th century. It is the trail that inspired the Appalachian Trail. It runs 272 miles from the Massachusetts state line and ends at the Canadian border. 

 The hike we planned seem pretty simple. We would start from the trail head on route 103 in Wallingford. We would hike out past the Minerva Hinchey shelter, summit Bear Mountain, cross route 140 and end for the day at the Greenwall Shelter. This was about 9 miles of hiking with two significant climbs (for us anyway).

One of our biggest failures as a family is not being prepared for these hikes.  As a result of this we ended up leaving the house way too late that day. We knew for sure we would not get as far as we originally intended. However, it was a beautiful 74° day. We made it to Minerva Hinchey As the sun was setting. We got to talk with some through hikers, some flip-flop hikers, long trail hikers. Just as we arrived 15 other people were arriving at the same time. We decided that it was pretty urgent now that we find places to hang our hammocks.

Liam Ended up using a privy that was in the woods all by itself. And at 2:15 in the morning an animal was scraping and clawing up that privy trying to get whatever smelled in there.  It sounded huge to us, but likely was porcupines trying to get it. We will not know because we did not wish to shine a light down there just in case it was actually a bear because we did hear some noises of beers too. In fact, the nighttime noises were so intense it was like Mutual of Omaha‘s Wild Kingdom out there.

Here Comes Green River

My wonderful niece Melissa goes through a great deal of work and problem solving each year to give our family a truly unique outing. There are not many families that will ever experience something like this. So we got ready.  Opportunity always seems to knock in the form of investment, by which I mean 50% money and 725% ingenuity and hard work. This year it was in the form of a rowboat that was for sale for $100 on Maple Avenue in Claremont. The rowboat fit easily in the back of the truck could carry lots of cargo and people and would be a great thing to have at Green River. Besides how hard could it be to fix a rowboat?

We got to work. Patching and sealing and taking apart and scraping and painting. I also decided at the same time it was time to resurrect the old truck cap  that we had, so we started scraping and painting and sealing that as well. Then I realized that the oars that came with the boat we’re not what I would consider to be worthy and started to try to find those too. What I did not realize it was as I was working hard on this boat my YouTube friends the Crawford family were hiking up through Vermont in the hottest summer in a while and on Fourth of July a Wednesday that I had off, they were over in Clarendon gorge dipping into the cool freshwater. They crossed Route 103 and hiked up the next mountain and spent the night with Peewee another friend of ours and had nothing to eat except Ramen noodles that night. 

 Since these hikers had started last winter down in Georgia it was always my intention to meet with them when they got into the Clarendon area to feed them and to congratulate them on such a wonderful job well done. And I missed it. 

Green River started out rough. There was three hours of actual rowboat paddling which left my hands full of blisters, a trip to the emergency room in Morrisville with Noah who got a fish hook stuck in his hand and he wasn’t even fishing. Missing out on a great first meal and of course having to set up our hammocks  in the dark.  Thankfully, the rest of the weekend was wonderful. 

We're on the Road to Nowhere....Haa!

My friends, family and co-workers alike have asked me for years when I would or if I would open a restaurant.  I have had very good advice from people close to me who owned restaurants.  The bottom line is, you become a restaurant owner because you love to cook.  You love the ideas, creativity, the execution and finally the reward of diners pleased with what they paid for.  I got that.  I can do that.  Much better than many. I mean no arrogance here, I just know.  But the issue is, a restaurant is a business, it has employees and it needs them to make it work.  Human Resource attention is needed, an accountant is needed.  No fledgling restaurant owner can just hire people to do those things, they must do it themselves.  So while you are handling those administrative "departments" someone else is doing the cooking that YOU thought you would be doing.  Do they share your dream and vision for what should be on each plate.  I really know in my case, absolutely not.  So you get it, restaurants are not in the plan.

Food trucks are a much better way to go, but do require an up front investment.  So after going back and forth with some folks at the City of Claremont NH, I became a vendor one Saturday in July, cooking and selling Southwest Egg Rolls.

The reception from customers was excellent, and if I had a Saturday morning to give each week, I could see the real opportunity of real momentum that could lead to a food truck.  Claremont is tough, their farmers market is still in the stone age.  Nothing wrong with that, they all had to start somewhere.  But in September I went to Londonderry Vermont, THATS a farmers market!!!

Goodbye, Farewell, Amen

In July the time had come to say goodbye to my cousin Tom. The previous March, Tom died at his home in Nebraska from the flu. He was only 56. A service had been held in Nebraska back in March, but for those of us on the east coast, a celebration of life was held in Danbury CT.  There was no way that I could not speak in honor of Tom.

Tom was 4 years older than me, yet he always gave me a chance before anyone else ever would. He was like my brother. We became friends in the late 70s and by the early 80s we had become best of friends. So many deep conversations were had and they always came so easy. Tom taught me how to play guitar. Tom’s life had dealt him some tough circumstances as the years progressed, certainly none that he deserved. You always think you have more time, but then in just one moment....time’s up. He was in Connecticut in 2016.  At that time of course, there was much happening in my life to find a moment to get down there.  I am sad that it meant that not finding the time, meant that I would not have one more visit with him.  He was really a great guy, good person and a true friend.

Back to the White Mountains...well for the day

"Was there a family of 8 here that are hiking the Appalation Trail, kids ages 2-17?"  I could not help but ask one of the attendants at the White Mountain Information Center.  "Yeah, there was, a couple weeks ago I think.  They took a picture over by that moose." (Stuffed moose).  Yup, missed them again, but I knew that.  Ben Crawford, the dad in that family had messaged me and told me they were in Maine and we probably had missed an opportunity to meet, but he thanked me for sharing my "story of change" and for the support.

We wanted a hike.  We asked a woman at the counter what would be a good hike that would take just an afternoon but allow us a nice summit with nice views of the Whites.  She suggested Hedgehog Mountain, which is just up beyond Hancock campsite, on the Kancamangus Highway.

It was a wonderful hike but it did take more time than the woman said, we came out right at dark. There is a youtube video of this hike posted in this blog.

First Vacation in Two Years

Moose Hillock?  It is a campground in the White Mountains.  It is resort like, has all the amenities, yet sites that are not on top of each other. This is still not the type of camping that we do, but I was plotting in my mind that, we would get the kids to go to a campground that has all the attractions, and we can hike the Whites.  This campground would be more than I have ever paid for a campsite, but hey, if you are the best.  No regrets, right?  Well, then there are these pesky little things called "reviews".  The more I read, the worse it got.  It seems that Moose Hillock was in a tailspin, and we were not going to be spending $72 a night for such a regrettable experience.  So Saturday of vacation, I am directionless. The next thing I know we forgot the camper and we booked an AirBnb in Sevierville, Tennessee.  Oh boy!  The AT in the Great Smokey Mountains.  Yes it would be rural, and the kids might be disappointed that there is nothing to do there but hike.  

Pidgeon Forge and Gatlinburg Tennessee turned out to be as Ben Crawford says, a cross between 1980s Las Vegas and something else. So the kids were not interested in hiking.  A YouTube friend was very helpful in suggesting things to do. We did get to cruise Cade's Cove and go to Clingmans Dome. An expensive vacation complete with 2 stays in the same Ramada Inn at Strasburg, VA, that could be a great set for a post apocalyptic movie.

Inevitably....Autumn Arrives

September arrives, three seconds after the end of May.  Another summer season over. We had a weekend booked at winhall Brook in South Londonderry Vermont. I love this place and I also love the farmers market in Londonderry Vermont that has such wonderful Vermont charm oh, there is no other place like it. Well there we met some mushroom growers. From them we bought some maitake mushrooms and some lion's mane mushrooms. These were amazing and we made crab cakes out of the lion's mane.

On Friday I had the opportunity to hike the Appalachian Trail from Route 11 to the Bromley Summit it was a beautiful day for a hike.