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| From our bedroom window looking north. |
2013 came at us from Day One with reminders of what winter
used to be like, could still be like, north of 45 degrees latitude in the
center of a continental land mass. The
thermometer registered 18-below on New Year’s morning at 7:30, then actually
dropped a couple more notches, stopping at minus-20 as the sun crept over the
southeast hill. I looked at the dial
with some disbelief, but when I stepped outside and heard the deck boards creak
and groan with a frigid lament under my feet, I believed (I have not
over-indulged this holiday season, so I’m certain excess weight wasn’t the
cause of this phenomenon). Also my nose
hairs went instantly crispy, and my still sleepy eyes were like to be glued
shut if I had stayed outside a minute longer.
Odd thing was, the needle stayed put at -20 as the sun grew
stronger; Mary eventually went out and gave the dial a tap, and it jumped up
suddenly to near zero. Who knows where
we actually bottomed out? Cold
enough. But it warmed enough by
mid-morning that we (Mary and I, guests Martha and Tom ) got into our skiing
togs and hit the trails. A glorious day
for it—with bright sun and little wind the exertions quickly warmed us. Lily charged ahead of us over the crest of
the hill and her pounding paws kicked up a flurry of powdery snow while her
breath billowed out in a steamy cumulus, caught in the sun’s sharp
near-solstice angle on the line where snow meets sky.
We skied over the hayfield hill, swooping down the eastern
slope to the boundary with LeRoy and Shelly’s land, traversed back up to the
top and came down toward the house through the old pasture. I took the hill first, on a slightly
different line than I had taken before, and as I came around the curve and over
the knob with speed, I saw that divot, and I thought Oh, crud…. I believe I was airborne for a moment; then I
was anything but. Wipe out. It must have
been impressive, but I don’t know if anyone saw. I got up and shook it off; I was a little
embarrassed, but more exhilarated.
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| Top of the hayfield hill. |
One thing I’ve been trying to do a lot while skiing this
year is to fall down. I know that might
sound odd, and counter to the general aim of skiing, but I feel that one of the
best things a 54-year-old can do is to fall down in the snow—provided that he
is able to get up again, of course. The key
is to not be afraid of falling—charge ahead, fall down, get up, repeat.
That’s going to be the theme of 2013 for me. I’m avoiding the resolutions game. Except that I have already publicly resolved
to eat more Wisconsin cheese. And I want to learn to play Johnny B. Goode
on the Ibanez Artcore electric guitar that Mary surprised me with on my
birthday last October, best present ever.
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| Best present ever, the Ibanez "Blue Beauty" |
But back to the ski trail—and just to digress here a bit: I
have discovered this winter that one key to perfect bliss for me is to be able
to step out my back door and ski in my very own woods; it’s a luxury, for sure,
but one that I appreciate fully.
I took Martha and Tom through the woods to the northern tip
of our land while Mary stayed out in the field (she’s particularly averse to
trees on skis as she’s still just picking up the sport). The woods trails could use some improvements,
as there are a lot of downed trees and some brushy patches with no clear way
through, but it is so quiet and beautiful there in the snow, skiing is really
just a way to get there. One charming
thing I’ve noticed this winter is that there are often deer tracks running
right down the ski trails—I don’t know if this is because the deer and I share
an intuition about the best way through the woods, or if the deer are cleverly
taking advantage of our efforts to lessen their energy output in the cold snowy
weather. Or perhaps they’re curious
about these odd emanations in the snow, and follow them wondering what sort or
creature they will lead to. At any rate,
it creates a pleasant feeling of simpatico with the animals, like, yeah, we all
live here together. We often see deer at
a distance, in the woods at dusk, but I’ve noticed the hoofprints following the
ski tracks nearly right up to our back door.
Après-ski, a warming lunch, and Mary and Martha sat on the
couch knitting while Tom and I flipped through the Fäviken cookbook they
brought us as a gift, wondered about just how tasty would be a tea brewed from
forest leaves that have “almost turned into soil,” and vowed that we would mature
our own cider vinegar in a charred, hollowed-out stump, so help us Odin. (Fäviken is a Swedish restaurant on the
cutting edge of atavistic Nordic cuisine, employing ultra-local ingredients
like, yes, old leaves, moss, lots of other foraged stuff that is very far
removed, indeed, from the typical European luxury ingredients like truffles and
foie gras. Some—well, a lot—of the
recipes read like parodies of obsessive-compulsive chefdom in pursuit of the
hottest trend, and yet I find the idea of digging down (literally and
figuratively) into northern culinary roots really fascinating. It’s the very idea I’m slowly developing for
my next concerted project, as I look for emblematic foods, methods, and recipes
that speak compellingly of our place.)
Tom and Martha took their leave mid-afternoon, to get back
to town before full dark, and I took a nap.
I just zonked out, and woke feeling as if I were getting sick. But I willed myself out of bed, put on my
Swedish Army surplus wool knickers, whistled for Lily (Annabel, 14-and-a-half,
pretty much just putters around the yard in the winter), pulled on the ski boots, clicked
into the bindings, and headed back up the hill just as it was turning to
dusk. I followed the path along the edge
of the field and then, near the top of the hayfield hill, turned left and
worked a traversing course up to the highest point on our property, stopping
along the way to remove a section of barbed wire. I got to the top of the hill where a serious deer
stand—ours, inherited—is slowly going back to nature, the plywood walls
delaminating one by one. Then I skied
out to the tip of the promontory I romantically think of as “The Grande
Esplanade”; from here there is a marvelous view of our house and outbuildings far
below, and the valley and ridgelines running off to the south and west.
It was pretty much dark now.
I took in the view, and the silence, only enhanced by the bit of breeze
that rattled some frigid branches. A
very light snow was falling, but I couldn’t really see it, only felt the flakes
touch my face. With my literary
education and inclinations, I couldn’t help thinking of Frost, “Stopping By Woods
on a Snowy Evening,” and that was okay.
Whose woods these were, I knew. The
woods were lovely, dark, and deep, but I did not have miles to go before I
slept.
In our woods going up is often easier than going down—certainly
less dangerous. But coming back down
last night I found the line I’d been looking for all winter: a long traverse of the big swale, between the
oaks and maples, avoiding deadfalls and stumps and hidden barbed wire, so that
I made it from near the top to the edge of the woods in one exhilarating run,
in control but with enough pace to make it interesting. It felt like an accomplishment, as if I’d worked
out a writing problem, and it made
me feel like, yeah, I will learn how to play Johnny B. Goode, the coolest song ever.
Then I skied to the top of the hayfield hill and finished
with a lovely downhill run with a decent telemark turn, and as I glided into
the yard I thought for some reason of Hemingway, something reminded me of a
story from In Our Time. I can’t help it;
I’m made that way.
For New Year’s dinner Mary and I raided the fridge for
leftovers—a couple of shrimp fritters that were excellent reheated and dabbed
with mayonnaise; home-smoked duck breast and its accompanying sauce, so
luxurious served on toast with a carrot slaw, “leftovers” seems a wholly
inappropriate term. Then the last
remnants of some excellent cheese, Uplands Pleasant Ridge Reserve, and aged
Marieke gouda
(off to a good start on one resolution…).
We were both weary, we didn’t talk about too much, but it was
pleasant. We sat in our usual living
room chairs and noshed. Mary went to bed
around ten; I practiced Johnny B. Goode for a while. I’ve got about two-thirds of the intro down
pretty good.
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| From my office/spare bedroom window; note Tom (L) and Martha's (R) herringbone ski tracks up the hill, impressive. |
Thinking about the events of last year makes my head spin—we
bought a house, sold a house, left the city for the country, plunged into home
renovations, learned to live in a whole new place, embraced it; my mother went
into a nursing home, had to leave her old life behind for one with not
promising prospects, but she’s doing okay, has such a positive attitude, she
sustains us all; our old dog Annabel had a major health crisis last winter (because
of various and numerous fabric items she consumed), and last summer, a seizure,
so she’s now on a daily dose of doggy downers; Mary became a country-to-city
commuter; book events crescendoed in the fall then completely tailed off (don’t
forget, I’m available for birthday parties, bar/bat mitzvahs, bachelorettes,
etc.!).
I hardly fished, barely hunted. I found morels in our yard, chanterelles
where I expect to find them, and missed out on most of the other
mushrooms. Our garden produced a lot of
squash, but our apple trees bore little fruit.
We ate exceedingly well, and I grew rather tired of taking pictures of
food, or looking at them. Cutting,
hauling, and splitting oak logs to feed our wood furnace has become a consuming
concern for me; we could turn on the LP furnace, but to me that feels like a
moral failure. I’m heading up the hill
with the chain saw and the ice fishing sled this afternoon.
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| Not the easiest way to heat a house, but among the more interesting. |
What’s past is past (or not, ask Faulkner), and I’m taking a
clean slate approach. Charge ahead, fall
down, get up, repeat. Focus on the
possibilities; it’s never too late. Resolutely
avoid resolutions (except as noted). Let
conclusions present themselves. Some of
this applies to the future of Trout Caviar, as its five-year anniversary
nears. It’s usual to say something like,
“Five years ago I never would have believed I’d be writing this damn thing five
years later…”, but since, when I started this journal I didn’t put a term limit
on it, it sort of makes sense that I’m still doing it, especially in light of
the book, and all.
Which is to say: I’m
not sure about the future of Trout Caviar.
I ended the year in a bit of a slump, with only a brief, herring-induced
bounce-back; I wonder how long the topic can remain fresh, or why, ultimately,
I would keep at it. I know I am not
alone in this, since if you click on many of the sites in my “We Read These”
list, you’ll find that there’s not much new to read on a lot of them. It is probably
melodramatic to say that I have seen the best blogs of my generation destroyed
by madness, or that the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of a
passionate intensity…. Well, melodramatic
and derivative, and wrong. If some of
our comrades have fallen by the cyber-wayside, others have picked up the torch
and race onward.
Nonetheless, what seems fairly clear to me is that the
thrilling promise of a true “Internet community” is paling more than a
little. I’ll bet there are plenty of you
reading this who have resolved to spend less time on-line, get off Facebook,
give up Twitter. Who doesn’t want to
live her or his life more fully in the actual moment? There’s good stuff to be gleaned from the Interwebs;
it’s setting the limits that is tough.
I revile myself for caring about how many Twitter followers
I have (300!), and I believe that the whole of social media creates a lot more
heat than light, while at the same time, thanks to the “blogosphere” I’ve met
lots of people who have enriched my life.
I’m not planning to crawl into a cave; or, if I do, I’ll be sure to
bring my iPhone….
What I meant to say was:
Happy New Year. The designation
is arbitrary, sure, but nonetheless significant. Marking passages is important, can lend
clarity. I hope your 2013 is filled with
satisfaction and growth; that the people and things around you compel your
interest, and that you spread it to others.
I wish you moments of calm reflection, bursts of inspiration. Thanks for hanging around here. It means a lot to me.
Cheers~ Brett
