The Black Hills, Part Two: Oh, how we ate!
September 13, 2011 § Leave a comment
I think we dined better over a campfire than I often do in my somewhat well-equipped apartment kitchen. We met up at Spokane Creek Campground and Cabins, nestled in a quiet valley outside of Keystone. Such a peaceful place, with just enough conveniences to keep us comfy. The first day, I’d dozed under a tree and listened to the creek running along behind me, waiting for my family to get there (they all came from the east, while I came from the west) . . . they arrived just before dusk and everyone was hungry!
We had quick happy greetings and then, starving, got dinner started. How nice to stand next to my sister, slicing peppers and summer squash and onion and garlic and hamburger to wrap in aluminum for hobo pies. With sweet corn on the grill. Most of the vegetables were from the CSA my sister and her husband belong to, with some of the squash and the garlic from the farm where I work. I brought raw milk and filled everyone’s blue speckled mugs. We were eating late so darkness crept around us as we buttered the corn and felt happy about being together. My father and brother-in-law set up kerosene lanterns, and we put water over the fire for coffee. A good first dinner. A good sign that we’d be eating well for the week. And so we did.
Breakfast was zucchini chocolate chip bread (courtesy of my sister), sometimes cereal, and gluten-free and buckwheat pancakes. Lunches were buffalo meat, cheese, bread, peaches, plums, apples, crackers. Of course we had s’mores. Peach cobbler in the Dutch oven. Dinners of brats and burgers with a side of beans, and more sweet corn. And more roasted marshmallows. (I will make homemade marshmallows one day. This was not that time, so yes, we had the bad-for-you marshmallows, a little food-sin I can occasionally live with.)
Later, we moved over to a cabin at Palmer Gulch Resort. What a fun place! The electricity was out the first day we were there, though, so we laughed and made shiskabobs over the fire. How entirely delicious. Thanks to E. and J. for their hard work! Thanks to the cabin for having a delightful porch, with a picnic table and stunning view.
One evening after lots of driving and hiking and scrambling over rocks, we ate at a pie shop in a purple-and-pink painted Victorian house, aptly named The Purple Pie Place. Admittedly, the appearance of the building got us three ladies to clamor for going there. Mostly we wanted a good dinner after our day’s long activities, and we got it . . . then split a piece of bumbleberry pie for dessert.
Our last real meal together was a good-fun chuckwagon dinner, at the Circle B Ranch. Mom and Dad went ahead of time, to get on horseback for a South Dakota trail ride. We met up with them later to see the miniature donkeys, the wood carver, the small shops on the Old West street, and then to eat: beef, beans, potatoes, biscuits, peaches, and ginger cake on a tin plate, and coffee and lemonade in tin cups, while the cowboys strummed their guitars and sang to us in rollicking harmonies.
Ah, good food. Good times.
A favorite book on a favorite subject
September 5, 2011 § Leave a comment
As I was writing the previous post, and thinking about good words in the world, I happened to remember this book. It is the book that made me want to try my hand at nonfiction when I was adamantly going to be a young adult fiction writer. I am so glad. This book is written in a way that reminds you of snow falling in a dark night. There is something quietly powerful, quietly beautiful. Read it.
The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg
Wind and calm
August 31, 2011 § Leave a comment
Today at the horse barn, as we moved horses from pastures to paddocks and paddocks to stalls, and contented them with their evening feed, in blew a great gust of wind. And another. It forced us to squint, to turn sideways, to push hair out of our faces. At times I could hardly see for the dust that went blowing around.
“It feels like I have dirt in my teeth!” I told my coworker, as we maneuvered our way through horses who, fortunately, remained fairly calm despite nature’s fuss and fury. Inside the stalls the shavings spun into mini-whirlwinds.
White-grey skies. A few handfuls of raindrops blew sideways with the wind. Doors closed for a quiet barn.
Back home, I found cedar shavings in my hair.
As I pulled them out I couldn’t help grinning, thinking, What a funny small thing to make me happy this day!
Along the gravel drive
August 9, 2011 § Leave a comment
Just about every week I drive to a little town between Boulder and Longmont to pick up my milk, from a small farm where I have a share in the herd. I am obsessed with this milk. The icing on the cake (cream on the top?) is that in order to obtain it I get to go out to a farm and smell that dairy smell, see new kittens lingering the doorways with their dewy glassy eyes, say hello to the curious gray goat, and watch the hens pecking around and making feed bags crinkle.
The last two times I’ve gone to the farm, I’ve gotten some additional glimpses of the good ol’ country life in this state of Colorado. (Something I am always glad to see persisting despite the influx of wealthy outdoor adventurers and trendy corporate professionals.) Two weeks ago (I missed a week between), as I was pulling around a corner to go out the long gravel drive, there in front of me were two girls on horseback. They were probably in their early teens, on chestnut horses, just ambling down the way and laughing with each other. Such a scene I’ve imagined or read about so many times I can’t count. Every horse-crazy girl imagines long rides on horseback with her best of friends and her best of horses. It made me happy to realize that this does still happen, in real life, not just in the imagination. Despite the blur of speeding-up technology and speeding-up society, and also the speeding-up of growing up, there can still be these slowed-down, timeless, quiet, enjoying-childhood moments.
I wanted to wish those girls all the good that life can hold. It’s strange to be older now, a real grown-up, not living on so much hope of the future as you used to, having fulfilled some dreams and abandoned others, having reworked perspectives, having come through difficulty and sought after strength. It’s strange to see these young ladies in the thick of girlhood and to remember how that was, to rather miss it, to hope that their choices and experiences are as good as some of yours, and much better than others.
Then, today, as I drove away from the little shed with my half-gallon jars full of whole milk, down that same drive, I saw to my left that a horse camp or group riding lesson was happening. There is a small paddock on the farm, just past the shed where I pick up the milk, and I’ve noticed before that it seems the farmer’s wife or some other relative must regularly offer riding lessons there. Today a collection of probably 8 – 10 year olds were lined up with their horses – mainly chestnuts and bays, all prettily matching – and they watched as one after another worked at circling barrels. I laughed – I did – I couldn’t help it. Cowgirls and cowboys are not the same, quite, as they used to be back in the height of the Wild West and all the myths that surround it, but they are still alive and well out here, a new version based on the old prototypes. They hold onto certain passions, practices, and, to some extent, a set of values. Cowboy boots and hats and Wranglers are worn shamelessly, even proudly. Just the other day I made a new acquaintance who has a seven-week-old baby girl. She said to me, while nursing her daughter in the seat of her pickup, “When we were naming her we went with Kylie Rose over Kylie Grace, because my husband says it’s a better cowgirl name.”
Oh. It’s just too good. And my little-girl dreams of being a Colorado cowgirl have never been so close. I was a wishful, pining dreamer, and to think all this time God had this up his sleeve. Life is incredibly interesting. And even when I’m broke and trying to figure out the next step and wondering if I’m wasting my talent and am yet still so full of ambition, there is so much to be grateful for, amused by, and celebrated.
Right now, I am especially thankful for this cup of coffee, bacon in the fridge, a swimmed-out sleeping dog, several articles to be written and published, the best sister in the world, and the likelihood of riding lessons in the near future.
Dirty clothes
July 31, 2011 § 2 Comments
I am getting used to being sweaty and dirty almost every day (again).
It’s actually much easier than having to dress in appropriate business attire almost every day, that’s for sure.
Not that I don’t like to dress up, to don ribbons and pearls like most girls. I happen to find the perfect balance is this: a tank top, jeans, and boots most days of the week, then light, pretty, ruffly sorts of things for outings and social times. Work clothes and play clothes. This seems right.
My dad likes to say that if he went to work in a suit and tie and came home still pressed and neat, he wouldn’t feel like he had really worked. This isn’t to say that all those out there who do go to work in nice clothing haven’t done anything all day – I know lots of you do, and it’s strenuous and challenging and important and it brings home a paycheck. We need suit-and-tie people just as we need jeans-and-boots people (and skirts-and-pumps people, uniforms-and/or-costumes people, corduroy-and-oxfords people, hard-hat-and-coveralls people). But I think what my father is getting at is the same thing I crave, too, in a job: to have visual, physical, immediate evidence of hard work, well done, towards a clear purpose.
Mud on my pants means I’ve been down on my knees getting weeds out and plants in. Spit on my sleeve means a horse got fed (and wiped its mouth on me). Straw down my shirt means bales moved to where they need to be. Sweat on my neck means distances paced, loads lifted, buckets and bins and wheelbarrows filled. These things are satisfying. Satisfying to me in a way that paperwork will never quite be.
So I toss filthy clothes in the laundry basket at the end of the day, glad I’ve saved these rag-tags from the Goodwill box when numerous moves tempted me to toss them. And oh, man, doesn’t a shower feel good when you, in fact, truly badly need one!
Horse crazy. Still.
July 14, 2011 § Leave a comment
I get to spend an hour or so with horses six days out of the week – most at the boarding stable, one at a therapeutic riding center. The people are great and the horses are great. The smell of the hay, and the horses themselves, and the grain and even the beet pulp . . . the feel of the smooth leather on the seats of saddles . . . the soft breath blown from the horse’s nose . . . the eager nicker in anticipation of food . . . the smooth coats, the clop of hooves, the way they move. Oh, I love it.
I was a thoroughly horse-crazy kid. In my mind horses were wonderful and I was brave and we ran far and fast through meadows. Then my family got a horse (my parents liked helping our daydreams to become real as much as they could) – but he was a stubborn Arabian and he didn’t listen and I didn’t know how to make him. And I realized how fragile I was. And I felt afraid of horses then and sort of shut down the horse-craziness for awhile, in-between still really liking horses and trying to hide the fear.
It is important to be aware of what horses are capable of. What is better is to be aware enough to become informed and cautious enough to know that you need not be freaked out to the point of missing something marvelous. Fear can be shifted into something useful, or it can be crippling. Volunteering here and there helped me learn how to read horses at least well enough to not feel so afraid anymore. Unfortunately, at the same time this shift happened life was crowded and horses just had to be pushed aside for awhile while I worked (silly me!) on trying to have a career.
This year, I decided that it was high time I get my foot back in, well, the stirrup. (I’m not there quite yet. I might lease a horse. Maybe. It can be expensive. But we’ll see.)
Life is not very long, you know?
So now that I’m all intentional about being around horses even just this little bit, oh how the horse-craziness seems to be coming back. Horses! I am always smiling and happy-sigh-glad when I come home from the stables. I look forward to that hour or so every day. Is this my life? I always imagined working at a horse barn. And then it seemed impossible. Darned grown-up ways of thinking. Here and there, old dreams come and get fulfilled, after all.
It’s nice to feel ten years old again, sometimes.
Kinds of Honey 