Category Archives: The Homestead

Cloudspotting, The Homestead

Pyrocumulous Clouds

pyrocumulousI have spoken before about the pleasures of cloud spotting.  They make every adventure outdoors fill with anticipation to see what might be painted on the canvas of the sky.   As Gavin Pretor-Pinney says in The Cloudspotter’s Guide, “I’ve always loved looking at clouds.  Nothing in nature rivals their variety and drama; nothing matches their sublime, ephemeral beauty.”  And this is nearly always true for me as well.  Except when the clouds are ominous.  I’m not talking about storm clouds, for I actually love all kinds of weather.  But this week there was a cloud on the horizon, rising behind Point Six Mountain where the homestead lies.  It is the kind of cloud we are seeing every summer now in the west, one full of dread and worry,  the billowing, white topped pyrocumulous.

Pyrocumulous clouds form from the column of air rising from a forest fire.  In order to create these clouds, the fire must be large, large enough to create strong convection currents that carry any moisture aloft, where it condenses around the particles in the smoke.  Forest fires can thus sometimes create their own weather, complete with thunder and lightening.

This particular cloud was the result of a fire burning up north in the Mission Valley.  It grew to a size of  1750 acres and caused the evacuations of 21 homes.  Living in the west this has become our new reality.  We work to thin our forests and create fire safe zones around our homes.  Many of us have given a great deal of thought to what we would take in case we need to evacuate and friends of mine who live deep in the woods pack up their treasures every summer, just so they’ll be ready.  It is beginning to change the way we think about what we “own,” and the price we are willing to pay to protect it.  The loss of 19 firefighters near Yarnell, Arizona this summer is making us question the whole notion of protecting property as a priority for the fire fighters.  Agency reports on the incident question one of the primary  priorities  being that of protecting property.  And yet, lawsuits filed against the land management agencies when property is destroyed in a wildfire makes one ponder where the responsibility actually lies..  Add to that the spiraling costs of fighting fires that threaten all the hundreds of thousands of homes built in the urban-wildland interface in the last twenty years and you have to question who ultimately pays the price for someone’s desire to live “in nature.”

In recent discussions about these very issues I hear people changing the way they think about fire and its seeming inevitability in these times.  I know that if a fire should break out up at the homestead, I would not want anyone to risk their lives or expend their resources to “save” my property.  I will do the thinning required to reduce the chances of fire.  I will remove the beetle- killed trees and do what I can to mitigate their damage.  But ultimately I know the land is not really my property.  It belongs to the mountain and to the forces of nature.

 

Field Notes, The Herbarium, The Homestead

The Lowly Buttercup

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buttercup

First sign of spring in the forests and meadows, it blossoms even before the last patches of snow have pulled back. It’s creamy yellow petals flash in the gray brown tangle of dried grasses, fallen pine needles and melt-soggy soil. They are so small they would probably go unnoticed but for their neon color.

When I was a child we would pluck the blossoms and hold them under our chins. If the bright saffron hue reflected on our skin, childhood folklore said we were fiends for butter. Invariably mine would glow, for there is nothing I love more than thick pats of butter melting into crispy warm bread, or a scoop of melted butter pooled on the end of an artichoke leaf.

One common name for a species of buttercup is “ugly buttercup,” but it is hardly ugly. It may not have the flash of the shooting star, or the elegant swoop of yellow bells, or the exotic glamor of the glacier lily. But those flowers come weeks later, allowing the buttercup to answer our eagerness for spring. Their five shiny petals are created by an underlying layer of white starch which reflects light back through the yellow pigment, making them look like drops of liquid sunlight. The Navajo are said to make a tea from the leaves to protect hunters against dangerous animals, which reminds us when we see the buttercup bloom, the bears are leaving their dens.

We might, later in the season overlook them altogether amongst the abundance and rainbow colors of the summer wildflowers. But it is because they are first, because they grow in great spreading clumps that splash the hillsides with gold, because they are such a welcome contrast on gray cloudy, gumbo mud days in late March, that we so avidly seek them out. Proving, I suppose, that even the most ordinary and unremarkable can be something extraordinary if it finds a way to stand out from the crowd.

The Homestead, Wanderlusting, Woodscraft and Lore

Cold Cookout Culinary Concoctions

skiersAnother annual cookout at the homestead and as usual there were plenty of creative ideas for outdoor cooking.  We began the day with a snowshoe trek up to the saddle and down the south side, looking for tracks and other sign.  A few brave souls tried skiing on the crusty snow and got a bit of thrill careening down the narrow old road with tree hazards strategically placed.  The upper meadow was smooth as white paper and for once we humans were the ones who left the story of our passing for other creatures to find.

While we were skiing my son and his friend Grant, newly returned from Namibia where he’d spent two years in the peace corps, built a fire and got the tea water started.  Grant mixed up a batch of barbeque biscuits and had the dough slowly rising by the side of the fire.biscuits

applePackets of succulent concoctions simmering away soon covered the grill and coals.  The usual mixed-  grill  dishes of meat and veggies in various combinations were the main course, but the deserts were what intrigued me.  Judy made a baked apple, filling the cored center with brown sugar and cinnamon.  Sharon split a banana lengthwise with the skin still on, then filled the center with peanut butter cups and melted it all slowly at the edge of the coals.  Grant’s biscuits were slow to cook in the cold temperatures, but the crusty outsides and warm fluffy innards were delicious.  When we are finished I threw Sharon’s banana peel on the fire and listened to it sing.banana

Looking forward to next year, I happened upon a great cookbook on a recent trip through Ennis.  Titled Over a Fire: Cooking with a Stick and Cooking Hobo Style, it is filled with intriguing ideas and campfire lore.  I’m planning to try the Fry Brownies made in hobo skillet.   Check it out:

Fry Brownies

Before leaving home, stir together I cup flour, ¼ cocoa power, ¼ cup sugar, 1 tsp. baking powder, ¼ tsp. salt and 2 tbls. Nonfat dry milk.  Add chocolate chips and walnuts if desired.  Divide mixture among six zippered plastic bags, placing ½ cup of mix in each bag.  Each bag will make 1 serving.

To prepare brownies, create a flat foil skillet.  Find a sturdy Y-shaped forked stick and cut off the forked ends to matching lengths, 4” to 8” long.  Cut two pieces of heavy- duty foil, extending 3” beyond the edges of the fork in all directions.  Wrap foil tightly around the fork and joint.  Use the skillet on a grate or tin can stove. (A portable frying pan was sometimes called a “banjo” in hobo terms.)

Place the pan over medium low coals or embers.  To one bag of prepared brownie mix, add 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil and 1 ½ tbls. Water; knead mixture in bag until blended.  Heat 1 tsp. oil in skillet.  Cut off a large piece from one corner of plastic bag and squeeze spoon-sized mounds of brownie batter into hot skillet.  Cook until bottoms are browned and tops are no longer shiny.  Flip brownies over, flatten as needed and cook until other side is lightly browned.  Let cool before serving.

Field Notes, The Backwoods, The Homestead

Reflections on 2012

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My last blog post for 2012.  One year of trying to capture, in words and photos, the small moments of wonder that have captivated me in the backwoods, at the homestead and beyond.  Keeping the blog has been inspiring in much the same way as keeping a field journal, with the added benefit that I have been able to share it with others and hear their own stories in response.

Whenever I go out to the woods now, I find that my experience is deepened in the recording of it.  I pause, look harder, try to note all the details so I can recreate the experience for my reader.  I make note of the weather, the feelings of cold in my bared fingers as I struggle to retrieve my camera, or the heat of the sun on the top of my head at noon-time.  I know that the heron or the squirrel are feeling that too, the heron fluffing up his down in the icy wind, or the squirrel seeking refuge from the summer’s heat in the shady, breezy crotch of the uppermost branches.

I will sniff the fissures in the ponderosa bark for the sweet vanilla scent of sap and know by the intensity whether or not the sap has started rising in the spring.  I will taste the ripening huckleberries that scent the forest in the mid-afternoons of August with their sweet baking pie smells, and pucker my lips at the bitter flavor of buffalo berries.

I listen for the sound of wings when a shadow darts across the meadow and wonder at the stealthy silence of the Great Horned Owl as he passes overhead, or thrill to the deep pulsing thrum of the heron as he heads to the river, looking for all the world like a pterodactyl with his long neck crooked in.

And I don’t just notice the blooming of a wildflower, but will look deeper at it’s leaves, maybe the small and thick skinned leaves of an alpine plant designed to conserve moisture,  hugging close to the earth before a radiant, heat producing rock.

I experience it deeply so that when I write about it in the blog I can attempt to make my reader feel, hear, see, smell and taste the wild.  And in the writing I go deeper still, finding connections and insights I would have missed had I just let the experience pass.

Finally, I have rejoiced in the feedback from you, my readers, some of you close friends who share similar experiences with me or will add to what I know with your own specialized knowledge.  Or perhaps you are someone I don’t know and you have just  stumbled across my blog and that is always a thrill, to make a connection to another curious naturalist in another part of the country or the world.  It is exciting and inspiring to share in your own beautiful poetry or stories and see your homeland  through your eyes in your creative photography.

So to all of you who have read this blog over the last year I thank you and I encourage you to comment and share over this next year so we can, as Barry Lopez says, “create an atmosphere in which the wisdom inherent in the world becomes apparent.”

 

Field Notes, The Homestead

On Being a Packrat

I have come to the homestead to escape my garden.  For weeks now I have been harvesting and freezing and canning, putting by against the long winter.  Here, by the old barn the leaves of the wild roses and the serviceberries are just starting to turn, the tips of the larch needles lighting up with a pale yellow glow and the berries on the kinnikinnick are juicy with red.  It is mellow and peaceful here, away from the city where “the world is too much with us; late and soon/getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” ( Wordsworth)

It is mellow and peaceful that is, until a great clattering arises from the barn.  Small urgent feet scrabbling over loose boards, banging and thumping and then a high pitched squeal, the sound so long and sharp it keeps me nailed to my chair before it ends.

Silence once again and I move slowly to the barn door to peer in.  At first I don’t see anything but the heaps of dried greenery and old boards in the packrat midden.  Then a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye and I spot a long tailed weasel, his jaws in a vice grip on the neck of a lifeless packrat.  His shiny little eyes are fixed on me and the moment I turn my head he lets loose his prey and scurries out of sight.  I retrieve my camera and then stand at the door as still as possible, the lens aimed at the hapless packrat.  I can see his massive nest-cache beyond, something silver and shiny peeking out from the foliage, a long string of red carpet thread, a brass coat hook, the pink puffballs of chewed up insulation and a half dozen cassette tape cases, the long streamers of shiny brown tape in ribboned tangles.  It is months worth of gathering, harvesting all those branches of leaves, but also a strange hoarding of glittery, colorful baubles with no purpose.

Eventually the weasel returns and I freeze in place, snapping pictures as the weasel circles, as if considering an engineering problem.  He is smaller than the carcass.  At last he latches on to the packrat’s neck and begins to drag the bounty away to the abandoned burrow of another mammal where he lives.  There will be no caching and hoarding for the weasel though.  He will feed on the packrat for at most a couple of days, then return to the hunt.  He must eat a third of his body weight each day.

One last look at the abandoned packrat nest.  I leave shaken, not by the violence of the small death I witnessed, but by the now useless nest and the life of the hoarding packrat.   I drive back to my own overflowing nest of home.

Reading Nature, The Herbarium, The Homestead, Woodscraft and Lore

Having My Cake and Eating it Too

      Today, while my husband prepares for his annual hunting trip, I am up at the homestead gathering.  As convenient as my garden is, right out my front door with its neat rows of produce ready for the picking, its domesticated flavors can’t compare to the wild tanginess of a berry foraged from the forest.  Half the experience of eating a huckleberry or spreading thimbleberry jelly over your toast is the memory of finding it–the day spent in the mountains taking careful notice of things, discovering not only the berries you were seeking, but stumbling upon the carefully built midden an industrious chipmunk has gathered against the winter snow.

I read recently that women are better suited to gathering than men.  It seems that we see colors more vividly than the guys and I wonder then, what the world looks like through their eyes, slightly less saturated, a bit duller perhaps.

Anyway, on this fine summer day I am gathering rosehips to dry in the sun–a winter’s bounty of vitamin C rich tea.  And of course, a few kept by to make a rose hip cake.  When the boys were little and we spent our summers rangering in Glacier Park, their favorite stories were the Broughton Bear books, by Susan Atkinson-Keen.  The main character was a little boy who lived in a cabin in the wild, just like my sons.  And the boy in the stories lived with a grandfatherly bear who took him out in the woods to share some natural history and gathering adventure which always ended in the preparation of food, recipe included.  Thus began our tradition of gathering the fat red rosehips to make a summer rich treat in the middle of winter.

ROSE HIP CAKE

2 cups dried rose hips
1 cup water
blob of butter
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder

Cover and simmer rose hips in water for 20 minutes.  Strain to remove seeds, hairs, and pulp.  Set aside 1/2 cup of this juice with a blob of butter.

Beat eggs in large bowl.  Beat in sugar.  Add flour, baking poweder, and hip juice.  Mix well.  Pour into greased 8″x8″ pan and bake 25 minutes at 350 degrees.  Remove from oven.

Topping

3 tbls. butter
3 tbls. brown sugar
2 tbls. cream
1/2 cup sliced almonds

Mix topping in small pot and heat until butter melts.  Pour over cake, then brown slightly under the broiler.

Enjoy!

Field Notes, The Homestead

The Bench

     Bench snuggled into the shade of the Ponderosas.  Looking out beyond the meadow to the mountain range across the valley.  Openness, spaciousness, while feeling nested.  I have always wanted a mountain view, always loved the aerial sense it gives me of my place in the world.  A living topographic map laid out before me.  My mind can wander those far off ridge lines–imagine itself climbing up the scree slopes of Petty Peak.  It can dip down into the parked out forests of Ponderosa pine on the near slopes.  Mounds of gravelly sand that once were beaches on Glacial Lake Missoula.  My mind can conjure its watery surface creeping up the sides of the valley, shaping sand bars and inlets as it rose and fell over eons.

Or my mind can creep in closer, dancing in the meadow with the waving wands of fuzzy grasses.  It can peer through the bushes and see Grandmother Rhubarb–imagining her steadfast presence in this place for a hundred years–planted by a woman long dead and not a native to these mountains.  But the rhubarb still flourishes here, reminding me of the first family to sit on this hillside and look out at a sunset coloring up the view.

Maybe my mind doesn’t even leave this bench.  A piece of pine, sawed and shaped by the hands of a young man in Oregon, never imagining its place in the Montana mountains and the two women who would sit and write here, spurred on by their experience in his homeplace weeks before.

This is a special place where the mind has the freedom to wander back and forth in time and in and out of different perspectives. To be a butterfly tossed about on the breeze, giving itself up to the gusts and riding the waves of grass.  Or smelling the breeze like my dog–nose into the wind to catch scent of whatever might be lurking unseen in the woods.