When the rain comes

 

A great cup of coffee, raging fire, sound of light rain drops on the forest. And a four-day-old earache, relentlessly slapping me, trying to pull me out of this moment. I hate pain. It works hard in so many different ways to take center stage in my life. This morning I am engaged in an all-out battle with it. 

The rain holds off for about 3 hours but then inevitably yields a forecast too bad to be wrong. It is a great sound, rain on the canopy, and the crackle of the fire. We had to retreat from the warmth of the fire because of the rain. Now it only provides sound and visual effects.

I knew this was coming. Don’t act surprised. The song The Rain opens up days passed in my life. Rainy days usually. My childhood, my sisters.

It would be a crime to deny myself this sensory experience. The sounds of the rain are quadraphonic (surround sound for you millennials). It is a testament to our creator's power. The world can grow on one drop of rain at a time, and the same drop can wipe everything out of existence.

My pain has now been squelched by anti-inflammatory drugs and antihistamines. It was getting to the point where it was all I was.

The age differential between us and people who stopped having children by the time they were 30 has been fascinating. At 50, those people talk of downsizing and retirement and taking more seasoned sort of vacations. When you start having kids around 40, it is a different world. At 55, I was thinking about an Appalachian trail thru-hike in the next 5 to 10 years. 

A year ago, I got Covid. When you live in so much pain, denial is a wonderful ally. A year later, I am acutely aware that I have long Covid. My energy is tapped right out. But, you know me, my rage and fight inside is relentless. Even this, I do not accept.

So the pattern emerges in my existence: a pattern of denial and rationalization. As a young man, this was a far more damaging quality, today, a mechanism for survival.

It’s funny the things we hear in the rain. I suspect there are no hiding places. Rightly so. It is like a journey to a land where pain and age exist. During our stay, those circumstances would be the only ones we would have to deal with. 

The rain ebbs and flows as it wishes, setting the rules as it sees fit. Really, why fight it? In 2018, I recall Ben Crawford saying as he was hiking the AT with his wife and six kids: “When it first starts raining, it feels like such a betrayal. But, eventually, you begin to barely notice it as you somehow become part of it.”

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.

The silver halide forest

 Lately, I have been developing film that has been sitting for approximately 20 years. It was never our intention to wait so long. This is a great risk because film’s life quality expectancy is so much less than 2 decades. After researching online for the best option, I determined that Walmart development still seems to be my best option. Even so, there has been close to a four-week turn around on when my photos arrive from the drop date. Every roll deposited for processing feels like a piece of myself is lost, even though I have no idea what is on these rolls.

These rolls were taken at a time when we were in the transitional period of moving from analog photography to digital. The progression of resolution was slow. Somehow, with time marching on, some of the most substantive memory capturing was erased from our collective family memory.

So far, this round of developing has been from the 2003-2004 timeline. Liam’s first 2 years. The depth of the amazing life we were living back then is now coming to life with the arrival of every new set of developed prints.

There is an anomaly I have discovered with this exercise. Scenic photos, photos of butterflies or goats for instance no longer seem as important when it has taken two decades to develop a roll of film. How could we have known this?

I am doing my best to keep the momentum going by taking one roll to be processed each week. Back in 2018, I started doing the same thing. Back then it was a two-week turnaround. Currently, I have 2 rolls in process and 13 to go. I know that great treasures await as I cling to the precipice of hope that these all make it safely through. 

The odyssey of chaos

 In the last couple of years, I have learned that I thrive on disaster. The more chaotic a situation, the more in my element I am. This is where my love of contingency was born. I realize that just saying these words may seem wrong or off-center. It is nothing so weird. I was raised at a time when it took serious creativity to get by abundant limitations. I am so thankful because even though I say that there were limitations, there were also people who provided solutions to keep me and my family safe.

Many of the survival skills in life that I learned, I learned from people around me and developed the mindset that consistently worked out better ways to solve everyday problems. In doing so, solving problems monetarily was erased from the manual. I subconsciously removed that as an option and as you might guess, there are an infinite number of possibilities.

So, yes.  Most of the chaos was an implied threat to daily life. Eviction, the loss of a couple of refrigerators, two years without a car, loss of income, minimum wage, things that many families endured. Although my Mom did a very good job making sure my sisters and I still could be children, I could feel the intensity of the struggle and developed my contingent mindset.

It is pretty amazing how being raised this way can mold all the decisions you make on a daily basis for decades to come. There is a cavalier sort of attitude that as the world becomes more materialistic and disposable, I was out to smite it, throughout the course of my life.

 There are so many interesting side effects that come with this ability. I’ve created the demand within myself to expect creativity in almost every decision no matter how great or small. I am fascinated at how it is actually developed into my running into a task and expect that I will fully deploy the assembly, execution, and delivery, every single time. I have even detected this type of creativity in my sons. Obviously, that comes from learning it from me as opposed to it being born out of necessity. But this is something I certainly want to be careful

In two days, I am starting our second camping trip of the season. This one will be without a camper and upon a very rural mountain. The regular method that I have of doing meals, which is bringing a pile of food and then creating something is a headache. I am pleased right now that I can perceive this as a mess. It means I am understanding my approach to things more than I ever have before. So instead of going on my typical creative and complex path, I have decided that I’m going to put some serious forethought and preparation into all meals. Because this is such a primitive camping experience, I’m going to do my best to build a bunch of parchment and foil packets with delicious food in them. Metaphorically this is huge!

I think somewhere along the way my demand for creativity in finding solutions somehow translated into choosing complex methods. I have always joked that for me it was, “no way but the hard way“. Really, the foil packets are not the only thing that I’ve been doing this with. So many small decisions when compared to the weeks, months, and years of your life, add up to significant differences. So yes, the great experiment continues. You might say that this is not far of a departure from other ideas that I regularly deploy, and you’re right. But if the last couple of years have taught me anything, a worthy question to ask before taking on an effort is: “What is the return on investment of this effort?“ Basically, is this worth spending time on?

So, I look forward to this weekend. Looking forward to not having to create things on the spot. I look forward to freeing my mind space to enjoy the moment opening the cooler and placing that foil packet in the coals and not having to perform, which is what the alternate feels like sometimes. Here is freedom.

The pressure is on

 What happens after one writes an entry in a blog for 7 days in a row? The inclination is to pull over to the side of the road. To reflect. To analyze what just happened. But then I remember my thought process from 7 days ago. I was asking, why can’t I be more consistent in writing? It was then I knew pulling over was not the answer.  This thing has a second gear and it is time to use it. 

There is a bigger picture here too. Too many times when it comes to cooking I have done this symbolic pulling over to the side of the road. I will devalue my abilities before I move into the next gear because I get stuck in my own head and allow all of the obsolete traditional voices to beat me down into uncertainty.

I have learned some very interesting facts recently. Before COVID-19 began, 16% of all Chinese restaurants closed permanently. This was due mostly to the generation of people running these retiring with no one able to carry on the legacy. COVID-19 did far more damage. By mid-2020, according to CNN, America saw 59 percent of its Chinese restaurants shut down.  While some of these reopened, consider all those who were somewhat close to retiring, struggling with inflation, and the extreme loss in business volume in an industry in which profit margins are narrow.

This fact was recently discussed in a podcast examining what it takes to make Chinese food as available as it used to be. The answer is not good. This is the part I forget. Chinese, well, Asian food altogether, is not easy to make.  Yes, you can follow a recipe and make Asian food. But, it is really a state of mind. An Italian, French, Mexican, or American chef cannot just whip up Asian dishes, and be in the zone that defines it. You have to live it. 

If you put me on the TV show Chopped, no matter what is in the basket, I am going to honor Asian cuisine in some way. It is who I am. Sure, I love tacos too, but please I used to live on the South Texas Gulf Coast. It comes with the territory. My Asian experience came with over two decades of hard work, wins, and yes, failures. “Gotta pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues, and you know it doesn’t come easy” right?

All of that hard work has refined me. I am hard-pressed to find a dish out at the restaurants that I can’t make better. In fairness, I am not running a business. The economics of feeding the masses are not an issue for me at home so those ingredients that I can add more of to make my dishes robust are not practical when you are running a business. But it does tell me that culinarily, I can hang with these folks. With the massive losses to Asian food service, we need to carry on.

This means that I not only owe it to me to shift into the next gear, but I owe it to the industry. Things are different today.  The chefs without restaurants movement is getting bigger every day. I am good with this. Personally, I have been moving things around to prepare. There are great things coming and it has to be done my way. For writing, for cooking: stand by second gear.

It’s a legacy…of sorts

 I have the gift of an extremely associative memory. This is not the photographic memory that everyone talks about. That one has its own advantages. An associative memory is limitless. It is one that takes the visual, auditory, and olfactory and pegs something else to it as if it were an actual hyperlink to something unrelated.

For example, if I am driving westbound on Interstate 84 in New York State and approach the Port Jervis exit just before the Pennsylvania state line, a very detailed conversation that an old friend and I had over the cb radio decades ago rises to the surface. This is just one of a thousand examples.

My two boys have it too. About 10 years ago, my family and I were driving out to South Londonderry Vermont for a camping weekend. Chicago’s Saturday in the Park was playing on the radio. It reminded me how my friend Karen loved ice cream, and when the part of the song says, “Man selling ice cream…” she always sang that part of the song as kind of a queue meaning, “Now I want ice cream.” This conversation happened 100 feet west of the rail crossing in Chester Vermont on Route 11. TO THIS DAY, Liam will say just as we drive through this spot, “Dad, man selling ice cream.” Both boys demonstrate this unique system of memory pegs all of the time.

We often demonstrate it to each other, to show how acute it is. It is the reason why when in a conversation I can make an odd turn in the direction the conversation is going that probably will not make sense. A hazard of knowing me? I apologize to all the kindly folk who have endured this. You have to admit though, it keeps things interesting…maybe.

Associative memory is more than an anomaly it just happens to be a technique taught in Kevin Trudeau’s Mega Memory Course. I was very pleased to find this back in 1999. In this course, he teaches you to build what he calls a tree list and then when you need to remember something, you assign it to one of the memory pegs in the tree list. After a while, you develop the habit of automatically assigning everything to a peg and can remember anything. You basically create an event that has the memory peg and the item you want to remember. Doing so creates a mini-story that you cannot help but remember.

In all honesty, I have never been disciplined enough to make the habit stick. It’s ok though, I have my random, involuntary, never-know-when-it-is-going-to-strike version of associative memory. It is my legacy, or whatever you want to call it, it is mine.

The dynamics of knowing

 When you know, you cannot know where each minute hour or day can lead. I climb into the cockpit ready for the mission. Those I care about also set out on their journeys. Yes, I could stay on task, but then all I have assimilated in the past decades would mean so much less. The smart thing to do is to let them do as much of it as I possibly can, yet push like mad to get them started. Who cares what it looks like on the accomplishments at the end of the day. It is a rich life, and you know it.  It is one that reaches so far beyond what I did today. These words I need to remember.

As I contemplate this, I think back to the spring of 85. Joe Jackson, the restraint you had to maintain to just not do things for me up to the point where you could not take it anymore and just did some things, still yet, not all for me was incredible. Sometimes I am surprised at how you are still contributing to our relationship and in turn to me. 

Sometimes I lament over how much I do not get done in the endless list of things I need to do. I need to remember that the things that derail me from really getting those done are far more important. They are the things that allow me to still be learning something from my own father nearly 40 years after it happened.

The density of a moment

 There have been a few times in my life in which I noticed that in intense and dangerous moments of life in which you know that it could all stop in the next second, your senses extended to superhuman clarity and you can pull sensory information in such large volume that time itself slows into granular segments. Very similar to when you reduce a filmstrip to its individual frames of pictures. Time becomes a choppy slideshow of second after second pieces that it seems you could actually walk around the scene carefully looking at everything around you. There is something deeply alien about it too. Ironically, it is one of those fascinating exercises you do not want to duplicate.

That is the involuntary instance of this. There is another way. We grasp onto a fleeting moment that captures us at a level so deep, that we really cannot explain why. It could be a moment of eye contact, a touch, a word, a smile. It has no definition and no description. It is one moment in life that after it happens, our mind begins to unfold, looking for every molecule of it so that we can feel it more. To appreciate it more and perhaps, find even more within it by magnifying it.

For us regular people, this is the un-describable. But for one of the most creative genius of our time, he actually did it. I am talking of course of the late, great Leonard Cohen. 

Leonard transports us to this beautiful depiction of instant love. The moment happens so fast, that he replays the moment over and over in his heart and incredibly and futilely extracts all he can from something that at best was 3 seconds of his life.

Dear Heather Lyrics

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the winter
And your legs all white from the winter

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the winter
And your legs all W-H-I-T-E from the winter

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the W-I-N-T-E-R
A-N-D-Y-O-U-R Legs all W-H-I-T-E from the winter

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the W-I-N-T-E-R
A-N-D-Y-O-U-R legs all W-H-I-T-E from the winter

I recall hearing this song for the first time and it brought tears to my eyes and made me smile and laugh too.

If you know Leonard, his capacity for the most impacting lyrics was hard to top. This abstract departure from his usual poetic apocalypse was a wonderful surprise. By exploring the very words that describe the moment, Leonard psychs himself up to believe that his interaction with the mysterious Heather was more than those 3 seconds. By doing so, he historically augments an actual relationship with Heather. It is an admiration that will never entertain the possibility that Heather is anything but the most incredible woman to have ever lived.

Who was Heather? Maybe she was a waitress, who by the way, was not actually serving at the songwriter's table, otherwise, he would have reported an actual conversation. Maybe Heather is more of a symbol such as youth that disappeared in a flash of time.

We may never know. I recall as a child, extracting every pixel from something that caught my attention. I am thankful that Leonard happened our way. I am glad that he is, as he put it: “speaking to you (me) softly from my window in the Tower of Song.”

The awful truth

 After the storm, the shelter doors open. It has become normal to live today as though this were a different planet than we had traveled to 20-something years ago. If not for written words, how could we ever remember who we are?

Sometimes you need the 18-year-old from 40 years ago to help you get a foothold. I feel fortunate that I can still communicate with him. The contrast of what a 17 or 18-year-old needs to go through today compared to 40 years ago is like a planetary difference. 

My concern is that, as a society, we have tried to minimize emotional pain by taking away the true meaning of relationships. But the depth of the emotional attachment in relationships is just as constant as the force of gravity itself. This means once our relationship is coming to an end, the inevitable pain and desolation are still there today just like it was 40 years ago. The problem is, as a society we have tried to pretend it wasn’t there and in doing so we are making it feel like it’s only happening to that one person. It has never happened to anyone else ever before in the history of the world. In doing so, we are not there for our younger ones.

As the Crawford family was getting ready to hike Mount Katahdin in Maine in 2018, having walked 2000 miles from Georgia, they did a lot of talking about how important it was that children are familiar with discomfort. I believe this to be 1000% true. When Liam was very little, probably about 27 months old, we were camping at Donna‘s brothers. The older kids were down by a little brook that flowed through the low part of the property we were at in the woods. I was keeping him in my sites while I talked with a couple who were visiting from Connecticut. Liam was very good at sprinting. He suddenly bolted down the hill through the brush towards the stream towards the other kid's voices. I was instantly out of my chair running at my absolute full speed towards the brush and the stream where he had disappeared. As I neared the bottom of the hill I tripped. Not wanting to be slowed down by stumbling, I vaulted myself through the air almost Superman-like, parallel to the ground that was sloping below me, and caught Liam just before he fell into the water. I walked back up with Liam in my arms, to where I had been sitting at the table. The woman I’ve been talking with shook her head and looked at me. “I’m gonna tell you what, I have never seen anybody in my life move as fast as you just moved.“ It was nothing talented. For lack of a better term, I would have to quote Woody in the Toy Story movie, Who described Buzz Lightyear’s flying as simply “falling with style.“

My point is, that my life has been a series of jumping in the dark without ever knowing if there was a place to land,  yet having some blind faith that there would be. I wanted something different for my children, and in doing so it made me the classic helicopter parent. If you would ask me in my 30s if I would ever do such a thing I would’ve told you that there would be no way, yet there I was. I never realized how important it is for a child to feel discomfort. It was only after I stopped being overprotective did I noticed that my son was amazing at figuring things out. Like me, he had to experience them though. 

One of my children is very good at gleaning solid lessons from other people's experiences. As you might guess, this only goes so far. The deeper valleys of coming of age still lie in wait, like snakes on the trail ahead. It is at those moments that I wish to regress to my overprotective parent status. Old habits die hard. I have to remind myself that here, the refinement arrives. I fear that modern culture has done a major disservice in trying to erase that refinement, and in doing so has left so many people in a 15-year-old-like mentality for the rest of their lives.

This came with a particular generation, but I am not blaming them solely of course. My generation, Gen X, is responsible for that generation. What did we do? What happened from the mid-80s to the year 2000? MTV stopped playing music. The Internet happened. It would be an excellent scapegoat to blame social media but during the formidable years of millennials, It didn’t really exist until later. It makes me wish I had met the Crawfords 20 years earlier, or at least the idea of what they symbolize. Their thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail had nothing to do with suggesting that other families should do the same. It was a reminder to look at the people in your family and understand what each one of their gifts is and allow them to show each other who they are. They showed that in doing so a level of discomfort is experienced based on decisions and it strengthens them and gives them the resolve to take on challenges, to express their gifts, to succeed, to not be afraid to fail, and to live.

As a parent, I now crave balance. I really do value what I have. We all know the awful truth is that hindsight is 2020, and inevitably I can never stop the wish but I had done things better. I know I’m a good parent, don’t get me wrong. I think I am just expressing the depth of love that all good parents have when they see their children grow up so fast. It takes more than a lifetime to learn.

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.

Big day coming

 “The years pass by so quickly. One thing I’ve understood. I’m only learning to tell a tree from wood.” -John Lennon.  I know. Mind Games. 1973.

 

The alarm clock is going off every 10 minutes now.  Waking from working dreams of effort and change are now going by like telephone poles on the open road. My twilight struggles overnight are torn away from me and rendered useless as the real struggles become exposed in the light. I land on the ground. Pain check: 18 years - check. In the next 30 minutes, I sweep up the shattered pieces of what makes me a person who can make it to the other side of the day, and with coffee, love, and rage, I put them all together, and the day begins.

Big day coming. When I think of all of the good and bad that can funnel into a single 15 minutes, it is remarkable. Why should I be surprised? I have changed the course of my life in a split second so many times before. The next morning, I awoke in a different life each time. Today, the changes are the result of lessons learned. I am more concise. Looks like indifference, rudeness, and disinterest, but it is only the desire to speak worthwhile words, listen to worthwhile speech, and take fruitful steps.

As I glean the pluses and minuses of the lessons learned, I look for abstract solutions to the journey that is today. Sometimes I create an orchestra of harmonics around the task, other times, I rush in, guns blazing. Yes, there is a big day coming. I hope as I collectively grip all that I am in the midst of the mess that I am made of, I have learned something. 

It’s all about trajectory

 I’ve often thought of my daily existence and collective existence as random particles traveling through the void. That is certainly true. After pondering this for about seven years now, I have come to the conclusion that random particles they may be, the good news is that they are all traveling in the same direction.

Let me lose the abstract here. At the age of 57, there is an awful lot of clarity. My 28-year-old self is extremely envious of that focus. But let’s face it, there are way too many non-existent bridges leading back to 1993. So deal with it.

What I mean by this is, I know the things that I want to do and I also recognize that time is a more budgetary thing than I have ever realized. Despite this, I have my moments where I lose the fight against my 18 years of RA pain, fatigue, repercussions of hard living, and don’t make the best of every moment. But that doesn’t stop me. Like someone tied down at those times, I struggle and tear against those bindings in order to make a difference, to move forward, to make every day not look like the day before.

So where am I now? Something that has taunted me for years is that house-smashing trees in my front yard were taken down 2 1/2 weeks ago. Although I will be processing that wood with a chainsaw and a wood splitter and dealing with that for the better part of this year in some way, it is definitely a relief.

I love to cook, this is well known. After all the dust settles on personal and work projects in the first half of this year, I have really wanted to take the first steps into making my side hustle the reality in which I provide meal kits for sale, a farmers market appearance, or two, and maybe even some small catering jobs. In doing so, I see that as a family endeavor. To work with my family would be the most rewarding thing.

Sometimes it feels like I’m sort of moving further away from that. As the storm of projects pelts me like asteroids striking the hull of a spacefaring vessel, it seems that I lost the ambition to cook, which is sort of important for what I have in mind. In May of 2020, I secured my ServSafe certification, which just ran out about two weeks ago. Sorry for being whiny about this, as I know that I just need to invest some time and take the certification again. But, really? Three years gone and you (I) haven’t done anything yet?

I noticed that I navigate these days as one would in a large unfamiliar, booby-trapped library. I don’t want to make mistakes like I did last year, in which I allowed piles of dirt to steal an entire year of my life from me. This year, I want all of it to mean something. There is so much to do, and I am looking for ways to make sure that I can do those things in the most intelligent manner.

My boys have automobiles that they need help with. My own vehicle has significant maintenance needs if it is to continue. For some reason, my existence always seems to be connected to the organizational level of my garage. I know this really sounds pretty stupid, but let me tell you what, when it is chaos in there which has been most of the 22 years I have lived here, my life cannot have a true course. That needs to happen.

I also know how important it is to be in the moment. On Sunday I was outside in the woods cutting up large limbs of the ash tree. It was in the low 50s, light rain and I was trying to make the day count for getting some of the wood processed. The whole episode at times can feel like singing 999,999 bottles of beer on the wall. I know that’s silly, but I am moving forward. Then, in one moment, I was done. I was sick of standing in the rain cutting trees, sweating in my gear, just done with this task for today. The one thing I wanted to do was get cleaned up, take a ride with my wife, and do something together.

With all the things that I know that I need to do, sometimes it feels like I am writing new lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire “, but hey, I’m not special. Isn’t that everyone? For now, I think I am going to write a project map/calendar. It should allow me to take on tasks easily without wandering back and forth like a caged animal not knowing where to start. It should also allow me to see progress, should I make any. (Sorry for the cynicism, my humor can be dark.)

Moving forward that is what it is all about. I am going to do it, and I’m going to write about it. It is not for you. This is for me. Just putting things out there somehow clears the debris, and maybe, somehow the garage of mine can find order, thus causing all of the tumblers in my life to fall into place.

LEll

 

My life has changed course several times on the head of a pin. And yet I keep finding connections that are hardwired through past, present, and future. I am shaken by these. I am thankful. I am grateful. It tears my breath away from me. That number that I see every day, is always there to remind me of what I once had, of what I have ultimately lost, and what I still have. I’ve made a decision. The story I have not told here will be told. for now, I just need to remember to breathe. 

Taco Week 2023

Back in 2016, I read the book "Julie and Julia". For one whole year, Julie Powell had this themed undercurrent that was the star of every day for 365 days in a row. The book was riveting and stark, and the movie was cutesy and profitable. I wanted a quest. Her adventure was so unique. I could copycat that and choose Maangchi's Real Korean Cooking, or the Vietnam Memories cookbook. But to cook through one of those books in a year would be a significant challenge, and one I feel that I am not up to at this point with everything else that I have to do during my busy weeks. That said, Julie Powell, you were a superhero.  Sadly we lost Julie last November at the young age of 49.

In February 2021, I found a theme that I thought I could handle. I had this idea about having a taco week, its goal is to create a completely different taco every night that week. It was intense, educational, fun, delicious, and memorable. February for me can feel like I am on the International Space Station, counting the days till my return to Earth, with 18 months to go. Taco week adds a festive distraction to the long short month.

For 2023, I wanted to take it a step further.  I loved the raw learning of pulling a farmer's market or cooking for 165 people I have previously experienced. What could I do to increase the challenge? It was not hard to come up with.  Food is better when shared, so this year, I would adopt someone's family.  The family, known affectionately as the Ryba's would pick up their evening meal from my kitchen each night, and hopefully, it would be great. The meals fed five to seven people a night and produced leftovers throughout the week.

Overall Taco Week was a success. If I had to sum it up in one word, that would be “control“. With some brief moments of an off-target taste or outcome, there really was never a doubt about whether I could save it or not. Well, that’s not exactly true.  I did have one moment in which I almost threw away a sauce. I also had a batter that showed a pepperiness that never happened before. Obviously, a different brand of spice or ingredient can change the game.

The first two nights begin with using charcoal and wood chips to cook the proteins. Sunday was Taco Night 1. Carne Asada tacos. These are char-cooked marinated beef and they were cooked perfectly. What I find amazing about that is the logistics part of this. My desire to use charcoal made me have to deal with an unwelcome reality. Lately, it’s been pretty mild, and one might actually start to believe that spring was coming. But this is Vermont and it’s February, let’s not kid ourselves. So on Sunday a cold wind kicked up and made me very nervous about the idea of using a charcoal grill on my deck even if I put a fireproof mat under it. So I moved the charcoal grill to the backyard. This put the meat cooking station on a completely different floor from the rest of the preparation which is upstairs in my kitchen. 

It’s kind of funny but I was looking at my Garmin data for day one and day two on Sunday and Monday and I have 28 stair events on Sunday and 25 stair events on Monday. It is also very surprising that I could have cooked beef, actually, a lot of beef, so perfectly while having to run back and forth like I was attending 2 parties at the same time. 

Monday, taco-day 2 perplexes me. The Pollo Asado chicken is made with boneless skinless chicken thighs after a 48-hour marinade, which of course is far more forgiving than chicken breast. While this meal was a success, I am my own worst critic. Making absolutely sure I was hitting the prized 165° Fahrenheit on the poultry, I went over the temperature. I usually pull sooner and allow residual cooking to take place. It wasn’t what you could call dry in a white meat sort of way. But it could have been dialed back for sure to allow the natural juices to prevail. The flavors were right where I wanted them.

Wednesday night taco-night 3, my copycat recipe of an Applebee’s appetizer from 12 years ago was this night star. It was also the Ryba family's favorite taco of the week. I have refined and sharpened the flavors in this recipe which may only visually resemble its inspiration. Everything about those crispy chicken Asian slider tacos I have given new life to. And they came out perfectly. The wontons were fried at the precise temperature to have every single one come out perfectly golden and crunchy. The chicken was tasty and velvety. The Asian slaw was savory. The peppers and onions popped with brightness. If there was not a party going on at the Ryba's before this dish was served there certainly was afterward.

Taco-night 4 was good, although looking back on it I could actually begin to see some interesting fatigue showing. This fatigue was only in my perception of things.  Chipotle shrimp tacos with bacon lime-cilantro slaw and lime Crema. Also did roasted pork butt tacos with a creamy soy-based sauce, bacon slaw, and pickled jalapeños. The flavors were excellent. My one critique of this taco was that I was mocking pork belly with the pork butt. So I slowly roasted it at a high temperature for 30 minutes then drop back to 275 for over an hour. You can do this with pork belly with no problem and it comes out beautiful, but you cannot do this with pork butt. The pork was overcooked, yes. No one really seems to care though, evidently because it tasted so great that flavor overshadowed a tremendous amount of cooking it endured. Talk about distraction. This would have certainly taken me out at the Judges' Table.   In hindsight, were I to cook this like I was cooking Chinese Char Siu, it would have been the bomb!

Friday taco night 5. I really thought this would be my auto-pilot meal. I have made a variation of Baja fish tacos for about 18 years now. I can do it in my sleep. I made the avocado lime cilantro sauce and to my surprise, it did not taste as it should’ve. I use yogurt to substitute sour cream as sour cream can bother some people's stomachs. This time I used a different brand of yogurt and got a different outcome. For a moment I thought about starting over, then I got my head back into the right space and asked myself "How do I pull this back together"? After all, one time I accidentally used Banilla flavored yogurt and it was STILL good!

This is where you really know that you’re instincts are adapted. Add, taste, add, taste, taste, add, taste and OK, we’re back! I was so pleased with the 3.7 pounds of cod that I found in West Lebanon, it was beautiful, fresh, and firm. Seasoned, then dipped in a beer batter and deep fried. One plate in, I decided to taste, and much to my surprise, this also did not taste like I expect it to. It seemed peppery. So I added another cup of flour and started adding seasonings. This had to be completely intuitive because raw fish was in this batter, you cannot just taste and season here! 1 piece dropped into the fryer then back out, taste test, all good now! Now I have enough batter to fry 20 pounds of fish!

The Ryba’s went on their way with their dinner and I with mine. The only thing left to do for Taco Week is clean up this greasy mess. I am happy it turned out the way it did. It was fun to share. It was very educational to have deadlines, and it was amazing to see how much I have grown in ability, technique, and purpose! I love the control I had over everything and I was very surprised that my awareness of that control began fading in the final two days. Thursday I began second-guessing myself, and Friday I almost tossed 2 key ingredients and started over before I realized that I could do better, right from where I was. Don’t ask at this juncture "What did I do wrong"? Ask instead "Where do I go from here"?

Cooking for the Ryba's was a great experience.  I am grateful for them to do this adventure and to be starkly honest about everything. The connection you can have with the people you are sharing your cooking with is fantastic.  In Korea, there is great respect and honor that goes into sharing a meal together.  When a Korean host has invited you to a meal, upon arrival, it is customary to tell the host, "잘 먹겠습니다 – Jal meok-ge-sseum-ni-da – I will eat well".  It is a respectful statement that says, "I appreciate the effort you have put into preparing this meal, I will have a wonderful meal because of you."  It is times like this, that you can really understand that connection.

What will there be for future challenges?  Who knows.  But, there are many other months in the year that could use a little something extra.