The radio plays with continued news of Japan cleaning up. A friend circulated a list (see at the bottom of this post) of how the Japanese have coped with their tribulation; it speaks loudly of how we cope with our own hardships in this country.
For me heading back to the land, I like to make fun of the small trials I face, the changes in lifestyle that strike me, as they did, too, when I once moved to Mexico and had the opportunity to travel and see what it is like to live in a house with a dirt floor where chickens wander into the kitchen and a visitor is plied with a plate of steaming beans, tortillas and spicy peppers.
Now I aim to share a few details of this change of life, of mind. I enjoy the challenges, including shoveling gravel onto the steep, slick, muddy spots on the dirt road out, my shovel ready in the car, so that I can be sure my little car won’t slide into the dirt bank.
Getting Online Since I don’t yet have satellite at the cabin, I have to go into town to get online. By now I’ve memorized the schedule at the town library where a long table hosts those of us coming in from the hinterlands to plug in our laptops (a bank of computers serves other).
I’ve begun to recognize some of the faces; we chat about the news we pull up on the war in Libya or we break into each other’s conversations. I’ve also gotten to know some of the characters who frequent the library, as characters do in all public libraries, refuge for the homeless everywhere. Someone you can’t miss in the Willits Library is the older white dude with two-foot long dredlocks who intermittently breaks into an intense pacing of the whole library, walking the inside perimeter as if getting his dose of exercise or walking off explosive energy. I aim to talk to him and discover his mission one day.
Funding cuts and national priorities being what they are, we can send missiles to other countries, but we can’t keep our libraries open (not to mention keep black and brown boys alive in Chicago and other urban areas, as an NPR story shared this week). So when the library is closed three days a week, I can still sit in its parking lot to get online, and I often do. But I also need the juice, so I have two cafes I can visit in order to plug in; I also have their closing hours memorized. In any case, dear readers, having gone from being online several hours a day, always ready to respond to your e-missives, my hours have been curtailed, and I don’t regret a minute of being forced to read a book instead of a blog (tee hee—stop reading this and pick up a book!).
The Cabin Electric A word today on electricity: I have mentioned I rely on solar energy, and I have lots to learn about how solar systems work. Ralph, the solar samurai, is a fount of knowledge and has even showed me a circuit board to help me get clear on amps and watts and volts. I have a meter reader in the cabin now that shows how many volts seem to be registered, from 10 to 16. I have a 12-volt system, relying on 4 car-batteries sitting on the deck in a little hut that store the photovoltaic energy that streams down the wires from 3 solar panels on the roof. Ralph is helping me plan an upgraded system so I can even run a low-amp vacuum cleaner and have more lights available. But for now, if my meter needle sinks to 12.5, I make sure to turn off any of my various electric lights or inverter, and instead resort to candles and kerosene.
I enjoyed the irony of learning about kerosene lamps coming into use into use in the late 1850s. One of my recent projects has been to delve into some amazing family documents stored in various archives, including the letters of Emily Bancroft, the first wife of my great-great-grandfather Hubert Howe Bancroft (a historian and book collector). In 1863 Emily wrote home, delighted, to her family in Buffalo, “Hubert and I sit by the table in the dining room by a kerosene lamp. You don’t know what a good light kerosene lamps give.” I can’t help but agree.
Eating off the Fat of the Land: Mushrooms
One last note from recent weeks: The joy of getting to eat what the land produces with no intermediary forces, like finding a blackberry bush in the wild. For me, an exciting gift from the land has been wild mushrooms: chanterelles, coral, black mushrooms.Long ago, I heard on the local radio station a report about a whole family that had ended up dead from eating mushrooms they shouldn’t have eaten. (Sorry, another terrifying story about dangers in the woods!) Well, the report’s message worked on me: don’t eat wild mushrooms if you aren’t absolutely sure what they are. So I have never bothered to even touch the mushrooms I’ve noticed growing all over these woods.
However, when mountain man Dan was here working on clearing some of the fallen trees and overgrown brush back in December, he said, “Did you know you have edible mushrooms here?” He introduced me to my own cornucopia. A patch of chanterelles were growing huge and abundant. Bruce, his friend and the owner of the Rumble Family landscaping company, quickly noted that I should not try to pick anything that I wasn’t sure about, but as for Dan, “He’s a mountain man from Ft. Bragg. He really knows his stuff.” Ft. Bragg being the coast, I presume that there are even more mushrooms there and all the more reason for a native of the coast, Dan, to know his edibles from his inedibles.
They were quick to add that I should not even touch a mushroom and then touch my face or eyes if I am not absolutely sure it is a good ‘shroom. But the chanterelles he cut for me were assuredly edible—and indeed very delicious once I cooked them, thick and chewy, into a mushroom sauce for my noodles that night.
The very next day I went into our one remaining bookstore, the Book Juggler, stuffed with used and barely used books, and found the perfect addition to my library: Mushrooming Without Fear in which we learn about gills, ridges and tubes. Rule #1: Never, never take a mushroom with gills. The book is written for idiots like me, repeating that key rule at least 10 times. Believe me, I’ve got the message.
However, cauliflower or coral mushrooms are “mavericks” that don’t have gills and are clearly recognizable. After seeing pictures of in the book, I remembered seeing them in a couple of places on the land. The next day, I hunted these down, got Dan’s code of approval, and made an awesome soup.
I have since learned a couple of key points from my mountain men friends: 1) cut with a knife to perpetuate the spores; 2) the mushrooms will grow back in the same place generally next year; 3) certain mushrooms appear at certain times of the year. Hence, Dan noted black mushrooms cropping up near tan oaks in February, pictured here.
And so my fettucine dinner of mushrooms called horn of plenty. How appropriate!
Japan: 10 Things to Learn
1. THE CALM: Not a single visual of chest-beating or wild grief. Sorrow itself has been elevated. 2. THE DIGNITY: Disciplined queues for water and groceries. Not a rough word or a crude gesture. 3. THE ABILITY: The incredible architects, for instance. Buildings swayed but didn't fall. 4. THE GRACE: People bought only what they needed for the present, so everybody could get something. 5. THE ORDER: No looting in shops. No honking and no overtaking on the roads. Just understanding. 6. THE SACRIFICE: Fifty workers stayed back to pump sea water in the N-reactors. How will they ever be repaid? 7. THE TENDERNESS: Restaurants cut prices. An unguarded ATM is left alone. The strong cared for the weak. 8. THE TRAINING: The old and the children, everyone knew exactly what to do. And they did just that. 9. THE MEDIA: They showed magnificent restraint in the bulletins. No silly reporters. Only calm reportage. 10. THE CONSCIENCE: When the power went off in a store, people put things back on the shelves and left quietly.
thanks kim, this is much better. and more pictures, please. xoxox
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