Category Archives: Uncategorized

New World Latkes

by

Our Thanksgivings will never be the same. I suspect this might be true for many American families who experienced the rare and fortuitous cooking collision of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving this year. What a feast! The Thanksgiving potluck we enjoyed included Latkes, the traditional Ashkenazi Jewish potato pancakes. While the turkey roasted, we savored hot fried Latkes smothered in sour cream and apple sauce.

Latkes strike me as the perfect Thanksgiving appetizer. You can eat them with your fingers, they’re delicious, and they symbolize a profound horticultural circle between the “New World” and the “Old World”. I find potato history fascinating, but in case you don’t share that peculiar passion, here’s the saga in brief.

Spanish explorers show up in South America and find everyone eating these weird starchy tubers. The Spaniards acquire a taste for spuds out of necessity and stock up on potatoes for their long return voyage. They introduce the folks back home to the lowly potato which gradually gains favor. The new tuber becomes a staple crop in Eastern Europe where the Ashkenazi Jewish people incorporate it into their recipes. Since frying potatoes transforms them into highly addictive substances, the confluence of Hanukkah — a holiday celebrated by frying foods — and potatoes was a match made in heaven! Latkes were born and eventually came to America with the Jewish people.

Of course, Jews aren’t the only folks who love potato pancakes but their version of the dish might be the most well-known in America, for good reason. The sweetness of the apple sauce, the sour of the cream, and the salty fried potatoes create a synergy of flavors that resonate, and make my taste buds deeply thankful.

The Lowly Rock Jack

by

 

When the ground is too sandy or rocky to sink a fence post, you gotta come up with an alternative. A wire basket filled with rocks is the favored solution around here. Throughout the West there are variations on this theme. Where wood is plentiful, the rocks might be corralled in a square or triangular box.

Different regions have different styles and names for their rock-assisted fencing contraptions. I’ve heard them called rock jacks, rock cribs, or gabions. There are probably more names than that. I like rock jacks. It seems to match their utilitarian nature and appearance.

Most rock jacks are hardly noticed as one speeds past them mile after mile across the rangelands. But there are a few out Steens Mountain way that rise above the ordinary. Leave it to those Oregon buckaroos to jazz things up with an occasional hubcap.

 

Tumbleweeds in Bloom

by

 

Tumbleweeds and I don’t get along. It all started when my daughter got bucked off her first bike and landed hands first in a pile of dried tumbleweeds. I lifted her from the prickly thicket and pulled dozens of tiny thorns out of her palms and fingers. Even after we got all the prickers out, their sting lingered. It was a long, tearful ride home. Since then, it’s been war between the species.

Later we moved to a place where tumbleweeds are the dominant plants. They form six-foot-high windrows against backyard fences. They lodge under cars in dense, impenetrable mats. They spread summer wildfires across miles of rangeland. I spent hours uprooting them; extricating them from flowerbeds; smashing their remains into trash cans; yanking them out of bushes at the end of a pitchfork … all the while, hating them with an irrational passion.

But last week I saw a side of these noxious weeds I’d missed. Walking along the edge of a parking lot in Central Oregon, I noticed a scattering of tumbleweeds glowing magenta in the filtered sunlight. I knelt to investigate. Their tangled purple stems sported tiny papery flowers in screaming shades of crimson and pink — each blossom no bigger than a lentil. This fragile beauty nestled in a den of nasty spikes, protected from adversaries like me. Because tumbleweeds are wind pollinated, they don’t need to create an inviting environment for pollinators. In fact, they seem to go out of their way to create uninviting environments for everything, including each other.

Which is why the brilliant jewel-toned flowers were all the more amazing. Why splurge on the frivolous party colors? I don’t know the botanical answer, but for me those blossoms are the counterpoint to the tumbleweed’s spikes — the yin and yang, chasing each other endlessly across the West’s wide open spaces.

Mountain Thoughts

by

 

South Sister thinks up her own cloud. In meteorological terms, this Cascade volcano is creating an altocumulus standing lenticular cloud. She is particularly good at coming up with these. I’ve yet to learn why that is — maybe it has something to do with how her slopes are shaped? For whatever reason, she often has her head in the clouds. We’re alike that way.

 

 

Dinosaur Nation

by

 

There aren’t many places where extinct animals are more visible than living ones, but along Highway 40 in Utah and western Colorado, dinosaurs rule. You see them everywhere as they’re portrayed in paintings and envisioned in sculptures. Although these outrageous creatures died out millions of years ago, they are neither gone nor forgotten. The dinosaur has discovered a fertile habitat in the human imagination.

 

Although you might encounter dozens of prehistoric creatures on a drive between Duchesne, Utah and Steamboat Springs, Colorado, most of them will not resemble the real deal — not even close! There are two main reasons for this: 1) Our scientific understanding of what dinosaurs actually looked like is constantly evolving as we come across new specimens and develop more sophisticated research techniques. 2) Humans, as a species, love to tell stories and fabulous monsters are major characters in most of our primordial mythologies. We love a good monster, especially if they’re scary — but not too scary. Roadside dinosaurs are made to fit the bill. They get your attention, but unless you’re under, say, five-years-old, you’re unlikely to worry that you’ve wandered into Jurassic Park.

This disconnect between what we actually know of dinosaur biology and what we imagine them to be like is the focus of paleontologist Brian Switek’s new book, My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs. After Brian was a guest on Cara Santa Maria’s “Talk Nerdy To Me” video series, she asked viewers, “How long do you think it’ll take before our romantic vision of the dinosaurs catches up with modern science?”

Having traversed our nation’s dinosaur hotbed, I’d say, “Never!” We know what bears look like but has that led to the demise of the Teddy Bear? No! There’s fossils, and there’s fiction. Something as monstrously cool as the Brontosaurus is not going extinct a second time.

(The Brontosaurus (thunder lizard) turned out to be an inadvertent hoax but that hasn’t kept it from becoming the most popular dinosaur, hands down. Read Brian’s book if you want the whole scoop.)

God’s Magpie

by

 Between
Your eye and this page
I am standing …

Bump
Into me
More.

~ Hafiz

I’ve heard it said that our eternal life intersects our mortal experience every moment. We’re seldom aware of it but every now and then we’re offered a glimpse of this expanded dimension. It’s possible to come around a bend and … surprise! Your eternal nature greets you — your forever friend. Something like this happened to me when I met Hafiz for the first time.

Hafiz lived in the garden city of Shiraz in ancient Persia. He left his earthly body in 1389 AD but his physical departure hasn’t stopped him from scattering his crazy, funny, spiritually sane ideas over the earth like a continuous meteorite shower for the past six hundred years. Why hadn’t I encountered this luminous outpouring before? I must have been ripening toward an appreciation of Hafiz’s shoot-the-lights-out approach to celebrating the Divine.

Why
Just show you God’s menu?
Hell, we are all
Starving —
Let’s
Eat!

~ Hafiz

Hafiz and I met unexpectedly — of course. He wouldn’t have it any other way. On a summer road trip from Northern Nevada to Colorado Springs, I stopped at a Trappist monastery outside of Old Snowmass in the Colorado Rockies. Saint Benedict’s is both a working ranch and a retreat center. The monastery cultivates hay, contemplative prayer, and silence. They also have a small bookstore which is where my rational mind said it was going. (I’ve always been a fan of Thomas Merton — a Trappist monk — so I figured I’d buy one of his books.) My heart, however, suspected this rationale was  a bunch of hooey. My real reason for visiting was a fascination with the monk’s commitment to keep conversation to a minimum. Writers tend to cherish places where silence has the upper hand.

I followed the gravel road to a cluster of buildings sheltered in a grove of fluttering aspens and gregarious magpies. No one else was around. Walking up the path, I followed signs to the bookstore and opened a heavy door. Peering in, I saw light from a wall of tall windows washing over shelves and tables loaded with books — my heaven.

Thomas Merton made a good showing among the metaphysical titles, but so did Mother Theresa, the Dali Lama, and Rumi. The Catholic monks of St. Benedict’s had eclectic taste. It was a contemplative’s candy store. So many points of view! So many prospective guides! I told my mind to shut up — and my heart to speak up. I was honing in on something …

Next to Rumi lay a mustard yellow paperback with frilly Victorian-style graphics. This? It looked a little stuffy and academic. I was skeptical. 

I almost judged the book by its cover but something compelled me to look inside. After reading a smattering of poems, I fell under Hafiz’s spell. He made me laugh. He made me think. He showed me the hidden world in plain view. Here was my beloved in a future life; a brother from before we were born; a companion I’d always sensed but never known.

I put the money for the book in a small wooden box the monks had left for that purpose and hurried outside. I needed a place to land. A few wooden camp chairs waited beneath the aspens. A magpie alighted on the back of one and then took off. I nestled into that chair. It looked across the high mountain valley toward Mount Sopris. Taking a deep breath, I opened the book and dove in …

 I am
A hole in a flute
That the Christ’s breath moves through —
Listen to this
Music.

 *
Why complain about life
If you are looking for good fish
And have followed some idiot
Into the middle of the copper market?

*

The
Great religions are the
Ships,

 Poets the life
Boats.

 Every sane person I know has jumped
Overboard.

 That is good for business
Isn’t it
Hafiz?

See what I mean? No piety here, but an infectious honesty whose cackling irreverence reveals the sincere reverence of a true pilgrim. That summer afternoon, I wandered in these heady poems for hours as thunderheads billowed above me unnoticed — until it started pouring.

The rain reminded me that I needed to continue my journey but I left that remote valley far richer than when I arrived. I’d spent the better part of a day touring eternity with my new friend Hafiz, the Sufi magpie. What an eye-opener.

Listen: this world is the lunatic’s sphere,
Don’t always agree it’s real,

Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door

 My address is somewhere else.

 ~ Hafiz

(Some critics claim Daniel Ladinsky’s English translations are more Daniel than Hafiz. For me, it doesn’t matter. I admire the teamwork between the 14th century mystic and the 20th century craftsman. Together, they rock.)