"comfort's a form of paralysis. It's stupefying. I don't want to waste my golden years in a goddamn cocoon." -Tom Robbins

the Year of the Swashbuckle

The year is accelerating to a stop, and I have a dozen things that I wanted to comment on / process in the written word, etc. But I am running out of time and having trouble focusing on any of them. The fall season is over.

My swampy brain cells are bloated. Saturated. Increasing intercranial pressure.

I'm heading out WEST this winter for some detoxifying adventure. not detox in terms of intoxicants, necessarily, but detox from processed food and walled rooms and stability and responsibility. My freewillastrology of the week encourages me to pursue swashbuckling, defined as being a daredevil or reckless, impetuous, irresponsible person. I really like that advice. I'm making very few plans, ala chose your own adventure.

I don't think that I like working!

News from the little mountain

The leaves are in peak color, and life is good. Our Eastern King Snake just ate a mouse, which is a bigger accomplishment than I would like to admit. My most recent adventure involves tame activities like working with the girl scouts, making delicious food, hiking up Mt. Mitchell with Hannah, and making my Halloween costume.

This past weekend was a mix of working with a girl scout troop from Greenville and an Autism camp for families. It's amazing what the dichotomy was between the two groups. The scout troop was one of the most difficult groups who I've worked with this year. Our 1.5 mile hike lasted almost 3 hours, while I endured complaints the whole way down and up. I can do that hike in 35 minutes. Groups normally take about 1.5 hours. What is the mission of girl scouts, anyways? I can't even find it on the website. In all of my miles of backpacking, I have seen enough boy scouts to form an always prepared annoying army. I have seen more girl scouts at the mall than in the woods.

The other group this weekend was a family camp for kids with Autism Spectrum Disorders. It was really educational. I was touched by the love and patience of the parents and siblings of the kids with autism. On Sunday, there was a chapel service at Cleveland Cliffs. The service ended with a song that involved the congregation saying something that they were thankful for. My favorites were cats, mountains, noodles, and the animal center. The children were for the most part excellent with the animals. There was the little boy that shook the candy corn snake and spit in the slider turtle pond....

Hannah and I drove up to the base of Mt. Mitchell, and hiked 12.6 miles, climbing up almost 3500 feet in elevation and back down. In silly costumes, in honor of Halloween. The summit is still under construction, but we snuck up to the the base of the observation deck and snapped pictures. For our Halloween party, I sewed bright orange overalls, tied on a furry yellow moustache, and wore my orange sweatshirt. To be... the Lorax, of course! The photo is of me and the Truffula tree: my coworker RaeRae. There was also a Thing 1 and a Baraloot in a barbaloot suit.

Last night, in a fluster of funky feelings, I cooked up a storm borrowed from the garden. I made a salad of arugula, radishes, and baby lettuce from the garden, adding pumpkin seeds from my pumpkin (I cooked instead of carving this year, to my friends' chagrin) and raisins, with an herb dressing made of vinegar, olive oil, basil, and pepper. I sauteed bok choy, red pepper, and garlic from Pittsboro and kale from the garden in olive oil. Cooked Pittsboro garlic, oil, and a garden jalapeno pepper and added them to a pot full of lentils with curry powder, black and cayenne pepper, and salt. Topped with shredded coconut. I baked Pittsboro sweet potatoes and beets (my favorite two vegetables) with black pepper in the oven. It was a feast, and improved my backcountry blues.

I just committed to staying here until June, for another season. I have two months of the winter free and I'm plotting.

Things that you know

I have been picking up diverse bits of knowledge every day since I've been here on the mountain, which has really cemented my I-thinks into I-knows. (Or at least the things I teach)

I also have some flexibility with my schedule, and have weekends free to roam. I've mastered the camp's 1600 acres of trails, and almost all of the trees in the area. I'm working on herbaceous plants, and will hopefully start on fungi and ferns in the near future. I have been more adventurous with tasting plants in the wild, just nibbling to see if some of them are edible. I like sourwood, sassafras, white pine, and small yellow poplar leaves.

I dug up a bunch of sassafras sapling roots one morning, washed off the dirt, and laid them out to dry. Then peeled off the bark (where the tasty sap is) and froze a bag of it to make sassafras tea someday soon.

I collected white oak (Quercus alba) acorns, too, intending to make acorn bread out of them. I roasted them in the oven to kill any insects, then broke them open with a hammer, removed the nut in the inside, and soaked the nuts for about 6 days, changing the water twice a day. This is how you remove the tannins (carcinogenic, toxic for humans). That's where I went wrong - I thought that the nuts had to be dry to grind into flour. So I dried them, and now they are good for little more than a maraca. Better try again next year...

I also had an adventure trying to dye a couple ratty shirts of mine with pokeberries (poisonous berries that I discovered as a weed this summer with the farm crew - see my post on foraging for some funny pictures). I made a mixture of pokeberry juice and water (2:1) and boiled my shirts in it for a little more than an hour. They were brilliant at first - I hung them out to dry for a day, and then soaked them in cool water with vinegar, to try and set the dye. Instead, it almost all washed out. I guess that pokeberries are finicky. You need to dye only certain types of fabric, and boil the vinegar along with the pokeberry juice to get it to stay.

New Job

"Now Timmy Tim Tim, are you respecting your classmates by singing while they're talking to the group? Thanks Timmy."

I say something equally as ridiculous at a minimum of 15 times a day. If I played a drinking game with "respect" as the key world, I would be loaded by noon (luckily, I don't do that during work hours). It's tricky to try and dissect the last 2 months and describe what it is like, exactly to leave the cove of the farm and be launched into another community with so many similarities and stark differences.

The same: I work about 60 hours a week. There is no separation between work and eat and play. I live in a beautiful setting. I am in charge of the garden, with vegetables and medicinal plants and flowers (as if anyone could really be in "charge" of something so headstrong as a garden). I have little cell phone reception. I am surrounded by intelligent, interesting people who CARE.

The different: It doesn't feel like I'm working most of the time. I am attempting to edumacate masses of easily-excitable munchkins about why they should A) care about the environment and do something positive for it, and B) like themselves and eachother. I also take care of 3 snakes, 5 turtles, 2 collared doves, and a small (but growing!) colony of mice. I miss the farm and its unintentional community / intentional chaos. A lot. I live in the MOUNTAINS now, within a mile of TWO beautiful waterfalls.

Yesterday, I spent the day pretending to be in the 1850's. Dressed in calico. And taught half-hour spinning (no no, not the trendy bike thing) with real sheep wool, 8 times in a row. Today, as atypical a day as any, I spent the morning teaching a class about "Bugs" (a term that gives the entomologist in me the heeby-jeebies). Then spent the rest of the day working in the garden and on our composting system. After dinner, Tay Tay and I led a campfire with songs and skits for a group of 1st through 3rd graders. In a "disco era Norwegian" costume.

The hardest part about this job is that I feel as though I'm giving up some of my own ideals in order to reach lots of kids. I'm living in a community where water conservation is a concept, not a lifestyle. Energy conservation is only turning off lights (sometimes) when leaving a room. Food is best when cheap or free, not the ecstatic fiasco of "party in my mouth" I am used to (beets! pesto! cherry tomatoes!). Basic perceived philosophy: Environmentalism is a cool idea, and one we should all agree to. As long as it doesn't involve actual lifestyle changes.

I guess this is how the more-enlightened half of society feels. It's just strange to emerge from an extreme corner of the world and find out that I have become ... extreme?

Biking to Cedar Mountain

I left early from the farm, hitching a ride with Jill and Andy from Pittsboro to Greenville, South Carolina. To have time to myself, to synchronize my thoughts and body and regain my independence, after a summer of intense community. I also relished the idea of once again leaving my route and plans up to the FATES. I had four days, a barely functional road bicycle, and at least 50 miles from Greenville to my new job in Cedar Mountain, North Carolina.

Jill and Andy dropped me off in the parking lot of a Target. From the moment I stepped into the store with my pink backpack full of all of my necessities, I felt like I always feels on the edge of adventure – uninhibited, free, and exhilarated with the knowledge that it was about to rain, I didn’t know where I was going to sleep that night, and that was totally and completely okay. So far, self-sufficiency is the most intoxicating experience I have found. I thought about that as I peddled through the city of Greenville, hand-signaling my way through the four lanes of traffic. This summer, I admitted to my farm family how much I rely on my ability to take care of myself, to pick up and move somewhere alone, to take off on a multiple-month adventure without anyone else’s assistance. About how much I hate to owe anyone something, or to rely on the karmic system of “you give me something, and eventually life will circle around when I give you something in return,” because I want to feel like I can disconnect from a place and move on. It’s harder to disconnect from a community that you feel dependent on and with people who depend on you.

Despite the full load of "lessons from the farm" on my mind, as I rode on the hills got hillier and as I approached Paris Mountain, the self-reproachment was replaced by glee with a new and exciting adventure. I was bicycling north to another state! I was traveling to a new job, a new community, and new friends and all was unknown. I cached my bike in the state park ranger station and set off into the dwindling sunshine with my backpack. A few miles down the trail, I cowboy camped by the firepit, giving in to the exhaustion that had haunted me all week like a long shadow.

I didn’t wake up until after 10am. It was already warm. I smiled to myself at my fumbling morning preparations, trying to get all of my things to fit into the little backpack: the awkward transition period when I am still trying to synchronize my sleep with nightfall and before travel becomes instinctual. It’s a pattern that I have practiced so many times that it feels familiar in its awkward newness.

Back at the station, I biked northward following a circuitous, indirect route, stopping often to squint at my map and scribbled directions. Before too long, I arrived at scenic Rt. 1 and like a mirage, a fruit orchard. Prone as I am to reading into auspicious circumstances, I decided to stop and see if the apple and peach orchard needed an extra hand for the afternoon, as I already missed fresh food desperately. I smiled at the women flitting about, and asked if they needed an extra hand that afternoon. It took me a good fifteen minutes to get across my circumstances – I has a hard time communicating that I wanted to just volunteer in exchange for some fruit, and that I was only available for the rest of the day and maybe some of the morning. That I didn’t want a full time job. When they understood that, they offered me free grade B fruit instead, telling me that I didn’t need to work for it! “But…” I tried to explain, “I WANT to work. I miss the farm, and I just want to be working with plants.” They looked at me blankly, so I took my accidentally “yogi-ed” fruit into the shade and ate two peaches before continuing on to find a place to spend the night.

Just as the day was getting dark and I began to think about ducking off of the road to find a nook on wooded private property to spend the night, I passed by a county park! I sneakily biked in, and hid out from the rain at a picnic shelter, into the evening. Stashing my bike up the hill and in the woods, I set out on a “nature trail” to find a suitable place to stealth camp. I set up my tarp on a downhill, planning to cowboy camp instead. I slept well until the middle of the night, when it began to rain and I dashed to the tarp. I spent a restless night sliding and readjusting as it rained a few inches from my head and toes.

The next morning, tired and groggy, I continued onward to climb the mountain that everyone had been warning me about: close to 2000 feet in a few miles of road. I biked as long as I could, then dismounted and pushed my bike up the hill. Feeling tired and lazy, I stopped pushing midday, hid the bike, and climbed a roadside hill to a rhododendron grove. I crawled through the grove and emerged into a flat area with magnolia, maple, and poplar trees dominating the forest canopy. I set up camp, napped under the trees for an hour, and wrote for a while. And as I ran out of things to do, it dawned on me for the first time in the last few days how much I missed the farm and being surrounded by friends.

I finished the climb early the next morning and parked my bicycle at the still-closed ranger station, walking up to the Ceasar’s Head overlook, looking south towards Paris Mountain and west to Table Rock. Another lone person came up to railing, and we talked for a minute before he left. I sliced a tomato for breakfast, sprinkling garlic salt on it. The man came back and looking down at my unusual breakfast said, “Can I sit with you?” His name was Eddie, and he had been up most of the night on a strange schedule from his job. He rode his motorcycle to the top of the mountain every couple of weeks. Once the time hit 9 am, a gaggle of cyclists began to arrive at the parking lot. A group of ten in dorky little cycling outfits pulled into the bike rack, talking about ride-times, Gatorade, etc. I sat there waiting for them to notice my little Huffy in the rack next to their tripped out bicycles. A man walked over to it, “Who rode THIS bike up the mountain?” and I proudly grinned and said, “Me!” They looked at me in shock (or so I like to think). And then of course I had to modify it to, “Well… I mostly just walked my bike up the mountain.” Way less badass.

With trail map in hand I said goodbye to Eddie, heading down to a waterfall trail. It seemed to be an awfully quick 10 mile trek, and before I knew it I was back at my bicycle and twiddling my thumbs. It started to rain. I crouched by the interpretive trail sign and waited. Families walked past. Couples walked past. A lot of people asked if I was okay, “Yes. Just waiting for the rain.” It was mid afternoon, and the rain finally stopped. I had two options: I could arrive at the YMCA camp early, or I could go find a place to stealth camp for the night. If it weren’t all downhill to camp, I may have camped. Before I knew it, however, I was at the entrance to camp, parking my bike outside the Main Office. Ann came up the drive, saying, “you must be Becka.”

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Because you are the one arriving by bicycle.”

Duh.

4 friends and a trip back home

As life began to spin more rapidly, and the number of sympathetic community members saying, “I hear you’re leaving soon!” increased, I left with David and Adah for a 4-day weekend. We put the band’s things into the back of the truck, and I climbed up into the driver’s seat. David loaded the classic rock in the cassette player, and off we went, westward to the mountains. As the morning warmed into midday and we began to wake up, the three of us discussed our take on Life, discussing some Buddhist ideas and how they overlap with my own ideas, scraped/inspired/borrowed from my upbringing and experiences traveling and backpacking these last 4 years. In Asheville, I drove the truck to Adah’s sister’s house. It was built into the side of the gully, with terraced beds flush with vegetables climbing up the sides.

They dropped me off in downtown Asheville by the giant iron, where Lily and AJ met me, full of energy and warmth. That evening, we drove back to Bakersville where Lily’s parents had rented a house, and cooked food I had brought from the farm. We grilled cherry tomatoes, sliced tomatoes and sprinkled salt on them, and I made a bowl of pesto to top them - with Genovese basil, roasted almonds, farm garlic, olive oil, and salt. Late that night, Lily and I stood on the porch and helped LP and Jamie to navigate the mountaintop by yelling into the night. And suddenly there I was – in the middle of four old friends, back into my college-alum bubble and thawed out.

As if that wasn’t enough, the next day the five of us drove to the base of Roan Mountain for three days of backpacking along one of the most beautiful sections of the Appalachian Trail. The last time I was here, it was in the aftermath of a tornado in Tennessee, and it was miserable. I remember the freezing rain as I hiked up the 2000’ climb to Roan, and slipping on the icy ground on my way back down. Orangeman made me tea at the top, and I ate two candy bars. Then walking in the muddy, slippery sleet over the next couple of balds to Overmountain Shelter. It’s all very vivid in my mind, eventhough it was two and a half years ago.

It was a beautiful, warm, clear day, and the five of us hiked backwards from Carver’s Gap, north a few miles to the summit of Grassy Ridge, before backtracking to the parking lot and heading south with our full packs for the night. We spent two lazy nights on the trail, starting late and finishing early, singing and resting in the sun, at lookouts that faced Tennessee. On the third day, we hiked down to Greasy Creek Friendly to meet our shuttle and find our way back to the car. We emerged from the woods onto a lane, with fences, barking dogs, and rickety old cars filling up the space where trees used to be. The vivacious proprietor flitted around, organizing things and chattering nonstop as my friends gaped in amazement. After we were back in our car, one of them asked me, “Is that normal for the Appalachian Trail?” I miss the trail culture.

It makes me think more seriously about culture and how it is generated on a linear path. I have become deeply invested in the Mountains-to-Sea Trail during the last eight months, when thoughts of hiking it first began to fill my mind. What can be done to ensure that hiking it is as meaningful an experience as a weekend on the Appalachian Trail?

Foraging

I like to forage. On a farm, that is not so difficult. If I want to make a salad or a stirfry, I don't have to ask myself questions like, "is this plant edible?" or "is this vegetable or green local and in season?" I just stride out to the fields, wielding a knife and excise a ripe watermelon or eggplant. Even more exciting is harvesting what we call "volunteer crops" - aka crops that spring up in a field where they have been unintentionally sown. We have basil in the leeks, chard in the lettuce, cherry tomatoes in the beans... We harvest the wild greens amaranth (for leaves, not grain) and lamb's quarters (see photo)- considered weeds by most farmers, but actually incredibly nutritious and delicious. We also recently have accidentally grown entire beds of arugula and senposai (asian collard greens), and are in the process of accidentally growing a partial bed of ruby streaks, another mustard green with beautiful variegated purple leaves.

Beyond the farm, I have been foraging mostly for berries - blackberries when they were in style in late June/early July, and Russian olives in the second half of July. I had my first experience making jam with Russian olives! They are little red-speckled berries, an edge invasive species, and they taste like sweet tarts. I squashed them in a pan, added a little bit of water, boiled them for about 5 minutes, then using a colander, mashed the mixture through, and squeezed them out in a cheesecloth. Then mixed it with some sugar (to taste) and 1/3 pack of Bell's pectin (no sugar needed). Boiled vigorously for 3 minutes, poured into a jar, and shut! Que simple! It does taste a bit like salsa, because I didn't boil the jar beforehand.

Pokeberries (supposedly poisonous but reputedly used in West Virginia to make jam sans the seeds) make good temporary paint.

More Prints

Hem - Half Acre

Think of every town you've lived in
Every room you lay your head
And what is it that you remember

Basil, Coincidence, & OBX

It's high-time that I update with some new news about my adventuring in the NC. I have been back down in this slice of steamy heaven for almost two weeks, interning near the Triangle area on a little-itty-bitty farm, living with some crazy folks in a co-op. It has been so full of activity and living, in fact, that I haven't had much opportunity to reflect on this grand adventure (ie. the world after college).

It was strange to say goodbye to my friends, and to Carleton: a place that have been more or less kind to my development as a person during the last 5 years. I arrived down here just in time for a massive lightening storm, an auspicious sign I think. Since then, I fell smack into this little community of farmers and biodiesel producers, lots of new, environmentally-conscious, and intelligent friends. I have been muddy & active, eating good fresh food, and am constantly learning new things.

It's pouring outside and the frogs are calling. I am tan and happy and tired from a weekend on the beach, a vacation with my fellow farmers. Tomorrow, running and farming will be muddy. It is prime cucumber, basil, garlic, and onion season. The potatoes and tomatoes will be ready soon, and the rainbow chard is on its last stretch. Coming to this farm was a very good idea. Come visit me at the Durham Farmer's Market sometime! The Piedmont farm stand.

Printmaking

These are a couple of the prints that I made for a course this spring, inspired by this winter on the MST. I made them by carving a wooden block, and printing multiple layer of colors onto the paper.

The Green on the Map

When I first arrived in North Carolina at the beginning of December, excited to be exploring a new place, I began to search for outdoor areas to visit in the state. It is automatic for me, to begin to scan maps and look for the green patches – signifying vegetation-dominated parks. And it isn’t just neo-hippie ecology-obsessed me who searches for these biomes: lots of road trippers search for state or national parks. Real estate is affected by proximity to county or town parks. There is an economic draw to greenery!

On the map, I discovered an expansive patchwork quilt, dominated by a dreary white (developed areas), with pockets of red (population centers), criss-crossed with yellow stitching (interstates), and dappled with green splotches ranging from itsy bitsy to quite large. I used to scoff at the real value of those little fragments of county and city parks, as artificial imitations of nature, engineered to provide shade and refuges for dog-walking suburbites.

If my senior thesis taught me little else, however, it taught me that larger is not always better, and looking at the biological value of an area based solely on its size is myopic. As I am an the brink of my college career in Minnesota, teetering on the meniscus of my liberal arts education, I seek refuge in our dear Cowling Arboretum with its oak savanna, restored prairie, pine plantation, and liana-laden floodplain. The arboretum was established in the 1920s by a far-seeing president and professor, and it now stretches 880 glorious acres through Rice and Goodhue Counties, in stark contrast to the surrounding matrix of corn, soybean, and sod farms. I spend an hour, five days a week, traversing its paths at a loping run, emulating the meditative feeling of the open road that I miss so much when I am stationary.

The Arb, as we affectionately call it, is full to the brim with iridescent migratory birds right now, most visually striking Baltimore Orioles and Scarlet Tanagers. Our little Arb is also a refuge for threatened prairie birds, driven to dwindling populations in a landscape of intense farming. We have a healthy population of deer and small mammals, frogs in the marshes, insect of unmeasured diversity and abundance, and a restored population of wildflowers in the forest and prairies. The Arb isn’t an Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or a Pisgah National Forest. But it is analogous to Duke Forest or Eno River State Park. And the value of little pockets of protected vegetation, even restored landscapes like the Arb, gives me a lot of hope for the future of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. A corridor across the state of North Carolina would be invaluable not only ecologically, but also recreationally and as an educational tool to connect people to the natural world. Even these little splotches of green on the landscape make a big difference.

Minnesota

Spring is finally arriving at Minnesota, as evidenced by these first flowers in the Cowling Arboretum. Last week I presented my senior thesis, and am now focusing on my final four college classes. I miss North Carolina, although I love being back in the prairie and with my college friends.

This song is dancing around my head a lot these days:

The road is a lover
You never recover
Not now or anytime soon
My head starts to spin
When I think where I've been...
As the wind chases after the moon
-Alison Krauss and Union Station "The Road Is a Lover"