people of the south wind

I wonder, as the wet fall weather settles over Washington, how much of homesickness can be attributed to a physiological response to climate and geography. A friend described how her sense of direction was distorted when she left behind mountains and trees; I, on the other hand, haven’t yet learned to read the shifts of elevation and shade in the Northwest, the microclimates introduced by angle and exposure.

After living so long in one place, my eye is not yet accustomed to the unyielding green of Washington’s forests, nor my ear to the sound of wind approaching over mountains and water. Life on the plains is all about the sky, and the mingling of air and moisture over an open expanse of grass. The smell of the weather comes in on the wind: the heavy damp of a gathering thunderstorm, the dull bite of snow-laden wind. The red-gold of fall prairies dulls, by November, to a grayish-dun, under skies a paler, more opaque blue than the brilliance of September and October. One also marks seasons by the wind, and November is when it begins to hurt.

The joke is that Kansans always talk about the weather, and this is often true. We talk about it because tornadoes, blizzards, and adequate rainfall are nothing to be trifled with, but also because it is easier to talk about the weather than to talk about what weather does to us. Farmers remark on the hundredths of an inch that last night’s rainfall left in rain gauges or mention in passing the abnormally hot summer day, but such comments are voiced mainly as statements of the obvious. There is many a Kansan who follows a strict calendar for the use of heating and air conditioning, the observance of which is so ingrained as to become almost a moral code. Living in Kansas tempers expectations; one does not expect routinely fine weather any more than one would hope to find mountain splendors.

Often, when the tug of homesickness sets in, I find myself wishing not that I’d never left Kansas, but that I’d left it long ago, before the place had a chance to take hold.

i'm an animal, you're an animal, too

“Did you lose a dog? A little black one, near the entrance to the trail?”
“Um, yes?” We respond uncertainly, eager for information about the dog we have in fact lost, but wary of the accusatory tone that lies just beneath the friendly concern.

“Lose” is not, however, the most appropriate verb. We began the hike with two dogs, but Lupe, being Lupe, ran off shortly after we’d started. We called for her, but when she didn’t show up, we continued hiking, not knowing whether she was ahead of or behind us. We thanked the couple, also dog owners, and walked away sheepishly. It is surely a nearly universal sentiment among pet owners that at such moments it seems that yours is the only animal so poorly socialized, so egregiously disloyal as to flaunt in public behavior that could only stem from inadequate care. Bad dog; bad, bad owner.

By all objective standards, Lupe and Marcos lead privileged lives. They are well-fed, well-loved, and well-traveled. There is no doubt, though, that Lupe would in some ways be better suited to another lifestyle. As the cliché goes, dogs love unconditionally, but when does our loyalty to them become selfish? As we hiked without Lupe, I told myself that if she were running with a pack of dogs and got separated, the consequences would be on her. Dogs discipline each other, keep order within the pack, and life outside the pack therefore keeps its own order, too. But Lupe isn’t wild. She’s a domesticated animal, one with whose care we are charged. By choice.

Dogs thus offer perspective on our uneasy relationship to nature. They live in our homes; increasingly, they frequent restaurants and go on vacation with us. They calm psychological distress and lower stress levels, at least when they’re on good behavior. Dogs remain animals, however, governed by their breed and temperament at least as much as by what we manage to teach them. Dogs blur the boundaries by which we distinguish “nature” from “society,” the biological and instinctual from the artifice of human interaction. Although absolutist ideas about how human society should interact with nature make for pithy bumper stickers—“meat is murder,” “eat beef”—they conceal the thornier issues regarding our place in the natural world. The way we treat domesticated animals can be unimaginably inhumane, but abruptly ending our relationship with them would likewise be unethical. Dogs, cats, cows, chickens, and pigs have struck an evolutionary bargain with us, which, as Michael Pollan argues in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, has often been to their benefit. Thousands of years of genetic fiddling and co-adaptation with certain species place upon us a responsibility for their care. Yet even as we shirk the implications of this cultural co-dependency—abandoning farm animals to the cruelties of industrial agriculture, or conversely, to an existence in which we are no longer their caretakers—we increasingly humanize our dogs and cats. It is no longer viable, in most circles, to think of humans as masters of the natural world, but the implications of this shift haven’t yet been worked out, even among those who accept evolution, for example, or the need for sustainable agriculture. The arguments of vegans notwithstanding, when it comes down to it, how much more ethical is it to force human behavioral patterns upon a pampered dog than it is to raise and slaughter an animal for food? Maybe we can’t help but think of ourselves as “special animals,” but we’re not so special that we can remove ourselves from an ecosystem without consequences. Although sometimes, dammit, it would be nice if the dog just came when she were called.

it's alive!

I feel that I’ve crossed some sort of line. A few years ago, my best friend bought me a copy of Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions. The book is unabashedly confrontational: the front cover boasts a challenge to “politically correct nutrition and the diet dictocrats.” I was on board with her central message, which is that eating minimally processed foods is healthy, but I found other ideas a bit off-putting, such as her chirpy proclamation that an avoidance of vaccines enhances the benefits of eating lacto-fermented foods. It seemed to be a bit of a totalizing proposition, that things would start out with homemade ketchup and then I’d be compelled to home-school my kids and weave clothes out of hemp fibers I’d grown and processed myself. I’m all for self-reliance, within reason. I enjoy the challenge of preparing complicated dishes from scratch. I’m crafty, I sew, I plant things in dirt. I enjoy the transformation of raw materials into finished product. But realistically, I also enjoy living in a world where the division of labor and mechanization allow me not to spend my days procuring food and garment by stalking prey and tanning hides. I don’t particularly enjoy washing clothes by hand, nor would I last long on a diet of, say, fish I’d caught myself. There are problems with the current system, but I’m not sure a whole-scale, back-to-the-land movement would solve them. After all, things like vaccines and industrial agriculture, despite their unintended consequences, came about as a means of mitigating the risks involved in living.

One thing that Sally Fallon and I do have in common, though, is a love of fermented foods. Bread, cheese, pickles, kefir, miso, tempeh, beer, wine; there’s something almost miraculous about foods that are alive and that use that life in the service of creating more complex flavors and, often, increased nutritional value. (Another thing that proponents of fermented foods seem to share is an evangelical tendency regarding the purported virtues of their favorite foods.) Until recently, my forays into the realm of fermented foods had involved bread and kefir. I have now made sauerkraut, and it was good. About a month ago, we helped Kendall’s parents crush grapes they’d grown themselves and bottle the juice for wine; a few days later, Kendall and I made lacto-fermented pineapple-cilantro chutney for fish tacos. Thus, it would seem, I have leaped willy-nilly into the world of fermented foods.

I’m not sure what any of this says about my political leanings, but I’m not alone in this. People are making jam, building yurts, raising chickens in their backyards; a friend of mine quit her job and is devoting a year to investigating food and farming around the country—on her bicycle! Some point to the recession, others to frustration with the pre-fab, have-it-now nature of contemporary life. There is pleasure in work well done, certainly, but there is also a weird sense of nostalgia, even luxury, now attached to tasks that were once considered drudgery. Maybe the days of industrial civilization are numbered and my pleasures really are as guilty as they sometimes feel. Maybe the economics of green jobs really will pan out, and we can somehow have the best of both worlds. Or perhaps what we should hope for is something on a smaller scale, so that as more people bake their own bread and do their own laundry and grow their own food, we’ll start properly valuing the labor of those who do these things for a living.

fishing report

November has been too full of student essays and visits from friends to do much fishing, but I did finally purchase a pair of waders at Swain's General Store the last time we were in Port Angeles. (As if access to Olympic National Park, the Coho Ferry to Victoria, and in-laws weren't reasons enough to visit Port Angeles, Swain's puts it over the top.) My waders are a very lady-like shade of pale blue, with pink lettering on the chest. Although Swain's does indeed have almost anything you might need for almost any kind of activity in which you might engage (Logging equipment? Check. Polish pottery? Check. Dog toys? Check.), they did not have wading boots in my size. So my waders wait, a little forlornly, at the bottom of my closet. Winter steelhead fishing, perhaps?

red in tooth and claw

Fly fishing is often exalted as a sport that requires a deeper understanding of nature, given that the mimicking of hatches and the reading of water and the like necessitates a fuller engagement of ecosystems in action. Or something of the sort. Whatever else it may be, fishing is a reminder that nature is not always a benevolent aide to human endeavors.

On a recent outing, we were fishing off the southern part of Indian Island. The sky was a clean, wind-swept blue; the Olympics jutted above the trees to the west, and the snow-tipped Cascades rose off to the east. It was easily one of the more beautiful places I’ve ever visited. It was also extremely windy. Kansas-style windy. So windy that it was impossible for me to mend my line, let alone to make decent casts. Once we gave up on fishing, we puttered around Port Townsend, then just made the 5:10 ferry, lucking out as stand-by passengers. As we drove across Whidbey Island, we discussed writing projects and the books we were reading; we talked about dogs and wilderness and factory farming. We got to Deception Pass, the connecting point between Whidbey and Fidalgo Islands, just as the sun was setting over the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Ever since our early road-tripping days, back when we were driving Highway 1 up the California coast, we’ve been waiting for the perfect Pacific sunset. Clouds and mountains and trees had always foiled our plans, but this was magnificent. The sky was streaked with orange and purple, the green-blue, white-foamed water dominated the foreground, and trees shaded into distant bluish mountains. As if to gild the lily, we turned and saw a full moon rising over the Cascades in the east. The whole scene had the feel of a minor miracle. People were jumping out of their cars, skipping along the bridge to snap pictures they knew would compete poorly with the experience of being there. Perfect strangers grinned at each other awkwardly, giddy and a little embarrassed at having shared something that felt so special and almost intimate. The afternoon had doted upon us with a series of happy coincidences.

When we got home, though, the same winds that had complicated our fishing had also blown down trees and knocked out power to our neighborhood. Of course I’d waited until Sunday evening to finish my lesson plans, and we were sitting at a road block a half a mile away from our non-electrified house. The serenity of the sunset ebbed completely, and I was tired, cranky, and behind for the week, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.

Deception Pass is but one part of the system of rugged inlets, islands, and coves that characterize the Washington coast; it is so named because the Vancouver Expedition explorers who traversed it thought it a part of the mainland. Whether cartographic or ecological, nature does have lessons for us--object lessons about preparedness, and more abstract lessons about respecting complexity--but conservation is one thing, and empathetic fallacy entirely another. It is good for the human spirit to seek solace in nature and to delight in mountains and seascapes, but sustainability is ultimately a human concern. We talk of saving the earth, when what we really mean is the hope of preserving our ability to survive on the planet. Nature--that is, the forces behind sunsets and photosynthesis and air currents--ultimately doesn’t care whether we survive or not, or in what condition. Although we should certainly care about creatures beyond ourselves, talk about climate change and environmentalism often seems shot through with the same anthropocentrism that got us into this mess. The earth is simply too vast and too interconnected; we can no more save it than we can have dominion over it.

god bless lawrence, ks

Kansas is not the sort of place most people associate with wild excitement, unless of course you're talking about college basketball. There are nevertheless very good things to be had in Kansas, if one but knows where to look. To mark Kendall's graduation and to celebrate our wedding, two events that took place during the same packed weekend last May, we had dinner at Krause Dining. From the outside, it looks like any other house on a typical East Lawrence street, but the interior is divided between a modern addition and the original nineteenth-century structure; diners can peek in on the kitchen as they move through the spaces. Each aspect of the multi-course meal was well planned and very, very good, but the whole affair remained happily low-key. After dinner, we chatted with the owner on the patio as the soft spring night fell around us; it turns out the couple moved to Kansas from San Francisco in part because they wanted to bike their children to school. All in all, a very Lawrence experience: a little funky, rarely flashy, and completely true to a particular vision.

To end the meal, we were served basil sorbet with candied basil leaves, a dish that prompted many a discussion over the course of the summer. Upon receipt of an ice cream maker as a wedding present, we promptly set out to re-create the dessert. Because I am an advocate of all things made from full-fat dairy products, I couldn't bear the thought of sorbet when ice cream was in the offing; besides, we live in Washington now, where sorbet rarely tastes as good as it does on a hot summer day in Kansas. We adapted a recipe for ice cream, and it is as follows. My candying technique was heavy-handed, so my basil leaves ended up rather sodden; they tasted better than they looked.


Basil Ice Cream with Candied Basil Leaves

For the leaves:
8-10 whole basil leaves
Egg white
Granulated sugar

Lightly beat the egg white, adding a little water if necessary. Lightly coat both sides of each leaf with the egg white, then dip in the sugar. Let air dry for several hours, then use as garnish.

For the ice cream:
1 cup whole milk
2 cups cream
3/4 cup sugar
1 large bunch fresh basil

Heat the milk over medium-low heat with 1 cup of cream and the sugar, just until bubbles form around the edges. Add the basil and let steep for an hour. Strain leaves, then let the mixture chill thoroughly. Add the remaining cup of cream and freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions.

Variation:
We've also made this ice cream using mint; I was running low on fresh mint leaves, so I substituted about a teaspoon of Morrocan mint tea leaves. It was delicious, with a deeper flavor than the fresh herbs alone.

with both feet in

Still no waders, but wading didn’t make a huge difference. I did, however, take a big step toward becoming a Washingtonian, or at least fishing like one. When we arrived at the Nooksack last Sunday afternoon, I gazed longingly at what was sure to be the sweetest spot on the whole river. It was just beyond a gravel bar, and the water pooled between two log jams, creating a lovely confluence of fast current and deeper, slower water on top of a rocky shelf. If I were a fish, I’d hang out here: plenty of gentle water in which to rest, a line of faster current dropping off food, a deep shelf under which to hide. I’d had my eye on this spot, in large part because it was just out of reach. But on this afternoon, the river level had dropped enough to make the wade only ankle-deep. So I did it. Barefoot, the better to save my feet some time in wet boots.

The highest compliment paid in the fly fishing world is to say that someone thinks like a fish; knowing one's prey is, after all, the hunter's goal. At this point, I think I have more in common with the insects. Brought into sudden and bracing contact with a world full of strange practices and stranger terminology, I’m often lost. That afternoon, though, was the first time that casting felt, well, somehow right. More often than not, I’m apt to tangle my line around my feet or my rod, but when the movement of my arm came into rhythm with the flexing of the rod, fishing became fun. As is repeated over and over to every beginning fly fisher, “casting isn’t fishing!” (Kendall’s personal variation on this theme is, “None of that River-Runs-though-It crap!”) Like most dour, fun-spoiling axioms, this one is true, but I understand why casting is so captivating. For the layperson, it is the most visible difference between spin fishing and fly fishing, the practice that, until one knows better, defines the sport. It is also hard, so when I felt my line at last sail cleanly out of the end of my rod and watched it arc over the water, it was exhilarating. Excited, I overdid it on my next cast and promptly turned the end of my line into a tangled mass of fly, leader, and tippet. Luckily, untangling knots happens to be the one thing in fly fishing at which I am very, very good. Although I have yet to catch anything larger than a salmon smolt, I felt momentarily like a fly fisherwoman. It only lasted for a few casts, but it was enough for now.