Recently, my sister lent me a book called Women's Diaries of the Westward Journeyby Lillian Schlissel.  It is a sad book, a breathtaking book.  Schlissel combs the diaries of one hundred women, young and old, who made the overland journey from the settled eastern and Midwestern states to California and Oregon throughout the 1800s and gives a picture of their lives before, during, and after the move.  It is difficult for our modern sensibilities to fathom the hardships these women faced.  Why would they even risk the move, is a natural question.  And the sad answer is that most of the women didn't want to go.  Hell no, they didn't want to go.  Are you crazy?  Of course, in 1841, or whenever, you had to listen to your husband.  And if he had a wild hair to go the "land of milk and honey," then you packed up your babies, and/or your pregnant self, and went along for the (very bumpy) ride. 

Last Friday night, I attended the musical play, O Pioneers!at Ohio State University to watch Jack in the role of Ivar--the crazy old Norweigian who lives in a hole in the ground.  (He was perfect for the part ;-)  The play is based on the novel by Willa Cather.  It was a stark tale.  There were some triumphant moments and some lovely reflections on the land, but there was no denying that carving out a life on the Great Plains in the 1800's was hard work.  The story centers on Alexandra, the eldest child and only girl in the family.  Her father leaves her in charge of the farm when he dies and she rises to the challenge and becomes a successful landowner and businesswoman.  It reminded me of the strong, shrewd and entrepreneurial women I read about in the Schlissel book.  How amazing these women were to take what they were given in life and make so much out of it.

I happen to be heading west to California myself this weekend.  Except, instead of loading a covered wagon and bumping across the plains for six months to get there, I used John's frequent flier miles and booked a plane ticket.  And I had the nerve to be all, "darn, I can't avoid two layovers!"  Instead of a direct, five and a half hour flight, it will take me between seven and eight hours to get there.  Poor me.  And when I get there, I'm going to see my dear friend Colette and we're going to get massages and go out to eat and take walks and drink coffee and generally enjoy ourselves.  Then I'll fly back home where the snow will have hopefully melted almost all the way, and even though it will be Muddy, spring will be right around the corner.

I have to say that I'm grateful to be living in the 21st century.  I'll think about those women from the 19th, though, as I travel at unfathomable speed across this huge continent.  And I'll be reminded of how good I've got it as I push my seat back, sip my Coke, and crack open another book.

See you next week! 

Last night I made up a casserole of macaroni and cheese.  Homemade.  From scratch.  With crumb topping.

When John leaves, it's no holds barred on what I can cook.  Out comes the sodium, the carbohydrates--doesn't matter.  For a side, I seared some broccoli and cauliflower in a pan with butter, soy sauce, red wine, and yes, more bread crumbs.  With a little of the wine in a glass and a hunk of sourdough bread and butter, can I tell you it was wonderful?  It was. 

Whatever it takes, people.  March is right around the corner.  We can do it! 

This year is sure different.

I have felt all the attending emotions in turns.  But one thing is certain--no matter what I feel about it, the snow is there. 

It's weird--the difference between the summer and winter landscape out here.  Weird, because there is such a dramatic difference.  In the summer, I'm living in a veritable jungle.  It is hot and humid and the vegetation forms a thick wall of green all around our property.  You can't see my neighbors' houses across the road through the trees.  The underbrush in the woods can be impenetrable in places.  It feels huge and enclosed at the same time.  Huge, because the treelines of the wooded parcels are tall and they border wide pastures.  Enclosed, because the treeline is thick and the interior of the woods is dark under the proliferation of leaves.

Winter arrives and the land becomes a palimpsest, with another layer of text revealed by the unlikely hand of a covering of snow.  All the downed limbs and curling grapevine and bittersweet form a cursive script across the white board of winter.  When I look out across the land I can see all the hills in succession through the black lines of tree trunks.  There is the blackberry patch just beyond the stretch of woods behind the drying shed.  Funny, it seems so isolated in the summer, but really it's just right there.  I can't see the back meadow because of the steepness of our first hill, but I can see the far hilltop of our neighbor to the south's land.  He cut some of the trees two years ago to make pasture for cows and now the bald head of the hill shines against the sky. 

The hills curve into one another, like a child's drawing of hills on a flat piece of paper, one hump after another.  In the woods, it becomes clear how the water flows through the culverts and why some places are always wet.  Bird nests are all of a sudden everywhere, abandoned cones with a dollop of snow on top.  I think to come fetch them for a collection, think that I won't forget where they are, but of course I can't find them again once the snow is gone. 

Every time it snows, I can see from my upstairs window the ruins of an old barn that lies just across the old township road from the cabin.  The big rectangular foundation stones appear out of nowhere.  I love the sight.  I don't know why.  The stones are beautiful.  They belong to my neighbor to the north, Dottie.  John asked her if he could take some of the stones to use in landscaping on our place.  At first she was reluctant.  "The deer bed down there," she said.  But later on the same day that he asked her, she called and said go ahead.  John broke his first tractor hauling just three of the smaller stones over, one at a time with a front loader--the weight of the sandstone testament to why they've lasted as long as they have.  The same kind of stones sit under the four corners of our cabin and the red barn.  The old bones remain strong.  Maybe that's why I love the sight of them so much.  They steady me.

In his book, The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and its Peoples, Tim Flannery gives a reason for the marked difference between the seasons on this continent.  Climatic changes are greatly magnified in North America because the continent is shaped like an inverted wedge--a wide base deep in the sub-Arctic that narrows to an isthmus just eight degrees north of the equator.  The wedge is reinforced by the north-south mountain ranges--the Rockies in the west and the Appalachians in the east-- that help funnel frigid arctic air southward in the winter, and Gulf-warmed tropical air northward in the summer.  The hot and cold air masses battle it out as anyone living in Kansas will tell you.  I learned from this book that ninety percent of the world's tornadoes occur in North America!

The deciduous forests are also a hallmark of the climatic extremes.  They thrive wherever there is a "truly tropical summer followed by a chilling, Arctic winter."  (Yup, that's us.) The conifers can't take the summer heat and the broadleaf evergreens can't take the freezing winters.  All of that is obvious, I guess, to anyone with a sixth grade science education, but I never thought about the whole continent in this way before.  I never thought about being tucked into the horn of a trumpet before, at the mercy, or creation, of how the wind blows. 

Flannery says that the trumpet "plays two tunes."  The first is the seasonal variation, and the second is a longer note "played out over geological time, shifting the continent from greenhouse to icehouse modes."  Small changes in the global climate are magnified in North America until glaciers and sheets of ice appear...or, who knows what else with how the climate is changing these days.  To know that the continent I live on has this tendancy is a little unsettling.  Not that anyone will be in good shape as  the Earth continues to warm.

I am always a little befuddled when people scoff at global warming because we had a cooler than normal summer last year, and we're having record snowfall now.  Climate change is a better name for what's happening, since it doesn't mislead people into thinking that it is only going to get hot.  I must confess to being one of those people who secretly wish that it would get hotter--because I prefer being warm.  I know that's silly.  I know it doesn't take into account the gravity of the situation.  But I am looking forward to our "truly tropical summer" and hope it gets here real soon.

Ah, but the snow, the snow is still here.  There it is, out my window, blowing and swirling and accumulating.  I can't see my boots anymore.

Alas, there is nothing to do but read the text before me, even as I dream of summer stories in my head.

And I helped John measure and figure in the way that I always do--I sat in the same room and wrote what he told me to on a piece of paper.  And, of course, I documented ~ Math hurts! (and so does banging your head on those rafters) Aaaand presto! Shelves! Now all I need to do is get all this--in there.

Another project done.  Only about one hundred-fifty more to go!

I took it into safekeeping years ago when we helped my Dad move from his house--our family's house--of thirty or more years.   We all took stuff, probably more stuff than we should have, but what to do when so many good memories were attached to it all?  I loved this puzzle and the reason is probably obvious to regular readers of this blog.  But, I loved it for more than the horses.  It is round, which is way cool, and my mom would set it up on the dining room table where it offered the passive kind of pleasure that puzzles do, for the whole family.  People took turns working on it, including me, even though I was pretty young and it isn't an easy puzzle.  My favorite sections were the dapple grey hunter there at the bottom, the red chestnut show jumper with the lady rider, and the paint drum horse--my god, who wouldn't love that pretty set-up?

John brought some games down from the cabin last weekend so that we might entertain ourselves with something other than cards.  The man has an uncanny ability to win at cards and well, it puts a strain on our marriage at times.  If we are playing as partners against another team, then everything's peachy.  But if it is just the two of us, alone, at home together, then it's no fun for either of us to have him win every single hand.  Every.  Single.  Hand.  (I tell you, it's maddening.)

"Ooh, I'm going back up there and getting the horse puzzle," I told him in response to his offering of Spinner--some variation on dominoes.  I left him standing there with the lame "Spinner" in hand, and up to the cabin I trudged through deep-ish snow to fetch not just a puzzle, but a bit of my childhood.

It is set up now on my dining room table and I'm working on it, bit by bit as these cold winter days unfold.  I forgot how satisfying it can be to put a puzzle together.  The brain can do it's thing--recognize shape, color, pattern--while the mind goes wandering.  But it can't wander too far or fret for too long because we simply must find this one piece--where is it--it will have some blue at the edge with purple and cream--ah ha!  Perfect fit.

It is keeping me sane in a world where things seem not to be so.  I often listen to NPR during the week when I'm here by myself.  It is company, other people, talking.  Lately, though, and by that I mean the past several months, I can't stand it anymore.  As my friend Jen and I used to say, "People are stupid."  I understand now, more than ever before, the negative consequences of a twenty-four hour news cycle.  It proves, in my opinion, that yes, people are stupid.  We are stupid.  And we think only of ourselves.  We seldom consider any other perspective but our own.  Never algae's, or oak tree's, or pig's perspective.  "Well," some might say, "we are people, so that is the only perspective we can truly have."  Maybe.  But it brings me to the point of wanting out of my own head and skin.  Inside, I'm running with my hair on fire, screaming, "Aggghhhh!  Let me out!" 

So, I turn off the radio.  I do not read the articles that pop up on my homepage, no matter how intriguing the titles, because it is the same old story, over and over again--a self-referring loop that comes in ever shorter sound bytes and ever snarkier tones.  And I have my side, too--the side that I think is the right one--but I realize, that's just me doing the same thing as everyone else.

I long to break out of the loop and move on to...what?  Bigger?  Deeper?  More meaningful thoughts?  I know that I'd like to live with more ambiguity, not less.  I'd like to hear stories that acknowledge the impossibility of one right answer.  I'd like to hear people soften and admit that they are afraid and that nothing is wrong with that.  We all are.  I hear our president dancing around the edges of this discourse, and I am so grateful to him for that.  It takes courage to say these kinds of things in front of the ravenous animal of public discourse in this country (this world).  If nothing else "gets done," I am grateful at least, for that.  All I can do is sit in that gratefulness and hope that it magnifies from me into the world, little ripples of feeling emanating as far as the strength of my pebble can make them go.  Which is not too far, I'm afraid, on days when I'm struggling to stay OK with it all. 

In the meantime, I work the puzzle.  Satisfying clicks of cardboard pieces snapping together and familiar, well-loved scenes taking shape on the table before me make me smile and feel better for the moment.  At times, I'll consent to a podcast (thank god for those) of This American Life where the quirks of ambiguity are celebrated in style, or maybe if I can handle it, an interview on Fresh Air.  Let the mind wander down paths with a pleasant view while the brain engages in harmless tinkering.  I have the sense of control and the sense of letting things play out as they will at the same time.  A puzzle to fit together only to take apart again later.

Walking through snow is a great workout for my legs.

We've got plenty of water from the previous melt and more to come when this goes ~ deep, hot baths for anyone who wants one!

If it is going to be this cold, there might as well be snow.

My neighbor came by with his tractor again and plowed everyone's driveway--bless him!

The horses can get around better on the packed snow than simply frozen mudholes, and they like rolling in it.

It makes the world beautiful beyond words...

 And spring will be that much sweeter when it arrives.

I walked all the way through the back pasture and up through the woods trail to sit on the porch swing that John put up between two trees.  The swing looks out over one of my favorite section of woods, what I call the Beech Tree Forest, even though there aren't really a whole lot of beech trees.  I like it there because the forest floor is relatively free of multi-flora rose and some of the trees are large.  They create a true canopy and the sunlight filters through, church-like in the summer.  There are some young beech trees in the understory and in winter, their silver bark and their creamy yellow leaves still clinging to the branches stand out in graceful relief against the black trunks of the other trees, and, on my particular morning, snow.

Like dogwoods in spring, beech trees in winter always remind me of lace.  I guess that's a bit cliched and I should come up with a better metaphor, but it jumps to mind, I can't help it.  It has to do with the way their branches grow horizontally, snaking out to capture what light they can under the bigger trees once summer gets underway.  The white dogwood blossoms and the pretty yellow beech leaves look like they've been threaded through a tapestry in an almost even line.  It's lovely, dainty. 

Beeches grow all big and muscular of course, while dogwoods remain demure.  I like the mature beeches, too.  They remind me of people more than any other tree in the forest.  Their bark is smooth, like skin, and it wrinkles like skin around the joints of their branches.  Whenever I come across a grove of full grown beeches, I become a little self-conscious, like they're watching me, and perhaps judging.  I'm worried I'll get smacked like Dorothy did by the apple trees in the Wizard of Oz.

Research into why beech trees (and oaks) hold onto their dead leaves ( a phenomena called marcescence) until the new growth in spring pushes them off led me to this answer:  No one knows.  There are guesses, of course.  Perhaps it helps them retain water throughout winter (but this doesn't make any sense to me, since trees lose water through the stomata, little pores, on their leaves).  Or maybe they are still getting some nutrients from the leaves (which also seems suspect since all the chlorophyll is gone and what's left are the chemical wastes from metabolism).  Or maybe it keeps deer from eating the bark since there are dead, crunchy leaves in the way (hmmm...seems to me that would not deter the eating machines I know as deer).  The best answer I found was that maybe it doesn't do them any good at all anymore.  Maybe it is a remnant from earlier in their evolution, something like an appendix.

I found that answer in a delightful article about the beech tree here by George Ellison.  He found a quote by naturalist Donald Culross Peattie that I would have thought came straight out of the 19th century, given the romantic tone of the prose.  This is the kind of stuff I eat right up...

“A beech is, in almost any landscape where it appears, the finest tree to be seen ... Far down the aisles of the forest the beech is identifiable by the gleam of its wondrously smooth bark, not furrowed even by extreme old age ... The elegant clear gray of the bark extends from the trunk to the main mighty boughs so that when the tree stands naked in winter it seems to shine through the forest ... As the foliage matures in autumn [its] delicate leaves . . . turn a soft clear yellow. Then is the beech translated. As the sun of Indian summer bathes the great tree, it stands in a profound autumnal calm, enveloped in a golden light that hallows all about it.”
— Donald Culross Peattie, “A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America” (1950)

Well.  So much for lace!  Have a great weekend.

Baumie had great style.  It was classic, but full of fun details and luxurious accents.  When I was young, she lived on a farm and I saw her both in flannel shirts and jeans and all dressed up for church or a trip to town.  The transformation she made for church always took my breath away.  I see her in my mind’s eye in cream colored cashmere sweaters and brown wool skirts, a sparkly amber brooch and red lipstick.  And she would have amazing shoes.  Suede and patent leather pumps maybe, with a pointy toe and narrow heel.  She would look beautiful—sophisticated and put-together.

She moved from the farmhouse to her townhouse in Montpelier when I was about twelve.  With eleven rooms filled to the hilt, it was the perfect place to explore my middle-school fashion fantasies.  I loved going through her drawers and trying on her jewelry and looking through all her closets at the random finds—a fur coat, a tailored suit, a mohair sweater.  The attic was another story altogether.  That’s where the ball gowns were kept.  My grandfather had been a teacher at Culver Military Academy and there were balls to attend at the formal school.  (Imagine!)  My mom and my aunt attended the dances, too, so there were gowns for each of them along with the ones Baumie wore.  I never tired of rustling through the stored silks and taffetas and crinolines, imagining which one I would wear if I had a formal dance to attend, which of course, I did not. 

On a visit to Baumie when I was in college and in the full throes of vintage style, I stumbled across a cache of shoes in the recesses of a closet I hadn’t noticed before.  It was the closet in what we called the twin bedroom.  There were two twin beds in moss green coverlets and the walls were painted lavender.  I nosed through the closet which reached pretty far back in the narrow wall and found boxes upon boxes of shoes, all labeled and neatly stored.  I opened one after the next and gasped at how perfect they were.  I tried them on.  Most of them fit, though a little snugly.  I never asked if I could have them, because I assumed she still wore them, even though she was in her seventies or eighties at the time.

I’ve got a pile of dress shoes stored, not so neatly, in my closet right now.  I haven’t worn them but once or twice since we moved here.  My day to day life has changed in so many ways since our move, which I expected, but is still strange to realize.  Clothing and footwear are the most visible markers of the switch.  Instead of pretty tops suitable for work, I’ve got drawers of t-shirts, preferably with crew necks to keep the sun off my chest.  And instead of a million different styles of black shoes, I’ve got boots.  Many different kinds of boots.  In the same way that you need a little more heel for that one pair of grey pants, or a little more of a pointy toe for that one dress, you need just the right boot for the country task at foot.   And it’s not just for each different task—gardening, barn chores, riding, hiking—but for each different task in different seasons.  Wet and cold add a whole new set of requirements.

What I will tell you is this: the search for the perfect boot is as elusive as the search for the perfect black shoe.  You need more than one pair.  Period.  Always. 

I miss wearing a dress and heels.  I do.  At my old job, I didn’t have to dress up necessarily, but I could if I wanted to and it wouldn’t be out of place.  Right now, I have very few reasons to dress up.  There is the occasional wedding or party, but most of the time I can wear jeans and a t-shirt and fit right in.  I don’t miss spending money on clothes or, even more annoying, time on shopping.  But, I’m probably losing my ability to float through a room in a pair of heels.  Maybe I’ll start dressing for the grocery.  Who’s to know that I’m not coming from the office or church, that I’m not on my way to something fabulous?

I think my sisters lost out in this fashion shoot--matching dresses? Boring. That's me in between my mom and Baumie. The three of us look dashing, don't you think? : )

We spent the weekend watching M&M while their parents were in Cancun.  (What's wrong with that picture?) So, you know what I'm doing today...swabbing the decks.

In the meantime, check out the third Menkedick Girl Blog ~ "Mom!" written by none other than M&M's very own mommy. 

Have we got an empire going here, or what?

Living on the farm, a thirty-minute drive from the nearest grocery store, and fifteen-minutes from the one and only closest restaurant which is open only select hours, has definitely been cause for more home-cooked food in the past year.  Now, though, I'm ready to take it up a notch.  The proximity factor is a good thing, because I'm not sure my resolve would stand up for long if I had a plethora of restaurants around the corner.  It was my undoing in the city.  That, and my return to the world of school and work.

In the early days of my marriage, I plunged right in to my role as instant wife and mother.  I was full of enthusiasm for nesting and I basically taught myself to cook from a single cookbook we received as a wedding present ~ New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant.  I had been "cooking" since I was fifteen, but opening jars and cans and boxes of food and heating them on the stove does not really count, in my mind, as cooking.  It wasn't anyone's fault...my momma died young and my sisters were off at work and college and well, my Dad and I survived my attempts.  Let's leave it at that. 

Moosewood, for those who don't know, is a vegetarian cooperative restaurant in Ithaca, New York.  The cookbook was amazing because it had a thorough glossary in the back describing different foods and how to purchase, process, prepare, and store them, so whenever I came across something in a recipe I didn't understand, I looked it up in that godsend of a glossary and started accruing confidence, meal by meal.  Learning to cook as a vegetarian was, I think, fortuitous, as I learned how to make things flavorful with a thousand different ingredients, and not with say, beef broth.  Beef broth is tasty, let's admit it, but what about ginger root, cardamom, fennel seeds, tahini paste, saffron?

Things went swimmingly for several years and I got to where I made my own stock and baked bread every week, one loaf a sourdough with starter I scored from the friend who taught me how to make it.  And then I went back to school and after that got a job.  Ooh.  Can you hear the screeching halt to homemade goodness?  Did you see us tumble off the vegetarian wagon into the littered streets and back alleyways of Campbell's Chunky soup, two large pizzas with one-topping deals and salad in a bag?  'Cause that's what happened.  Turns out, running a healthful kitchen for a family of five is a full-time job.  Or, at least a large part of the full-time job of keeping a family's whole act together.   

I liked school and I liked working, but, I wasn't one of those women who could "do it all." A funny thing happened when I gave up on cooking, though.  Even when there were fewer kids at home and I had more free time, I was in a rut.  A "convenience" rut.  The desire to return to my former kitchen glory days was there somewhere, deep inside, but the surface of me said, "Eh," and made spaghetti.  Or better yet, called John and asked him to pick up Marino's fish on the way home.  It's okay and I get it and far be it from me to judge somebody who eats take-out when they work full time.  Like I said--it takes time and energy to run a kitchen.  We should stop and honor (and give health insurance benefits to?) those people who stay home and do that important work.

I have Sarah to thank, in part, for my new resolve.  Everytime she comes home (just last week) she makes delicious meals out of interesting ingredients.  I am inspired to make a splash of my own and an unspoken, but friendly, foodie challenge unfolds.  And my neighbors who keep lavishing the spoils of their awesome garden on me--squashes still viable in the dead of winter, jars of homemade salsa, black cherry preserves, pickles, grape juice--make me crazy to start growing and canning my own stuff.  It is a true joy, a little lift to the soul to open up a garden in a jar in the middle of winter. 

So, tonight I am making Japanese Braised Eggplant.  The recipe is from the very same New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant.  (If pressed, I would name it as my favorite cookbook of all time.)  Even though I am the only one home right now and a bag of popcorn might suffice, I am going to make the meal.  Sarah is now in London (see here) and she left a large eggplant in her wake.  They can decline fast and I hate to throw them out.  With their shiny, impossibly purple skins and picture-book green stems, they seem hard to grow.  I don't know if they are--I hope to find out this summer--but they seem that way and I want to honor the gardener, whoever he/she is, who grew it.  The recipe calls for sherry and tamari and molasses.

Tomorrow, I'm making piroshki and red slaw.  And then I'm going to sit down and plan the menu for spring ~