Vision + Free Time = Community Garden!

It was only a matter of time before the disparate visionaries of the Stanley area found each other and discovered that they all share one burning desire: year-round fresh veg.

At the second meeting of the as-yet-unnamed Stanley garden club, about a dozen locals braved one another’s snow-boot foot odor and brainstormed plans for Stanley’s first ever community garden. It seems, though, that the idea has been brewing for quite awhile; quite a few folks voiced well-stewed schemes for location, layout, and logistics for the garden.

Although the plan may face some hurdles, including obtaining permits and figuring out water and power sources, the club members seem undaunted by what lies ahead. Committees have already been formed to tackle fundraising, policy issues, resource gathering, construction, and communication, and there seems to be no shortage of talented and willing people to handle these tasks. 

This was perhaps the nicest surprise to come out of Thursday night’s meeting: don’t underestimate small-town citizens. Just because we choose to live simply, doesn’t mean we’re simple folk. The surface reasons for this garden may be straight-forward, but club members also devoted a lot of discussion to community-building and sustainable living, seeing the garden as not only a food source for members, but also for local restaurants, a potential science school for local kids (all ten of them), and a central gathering place that’s not a bar.

We’re getting together again this coming Thursday, Feb 18. If you’re interested in joining us, or you have something you might like to contribute to this effort, you can send a message to blog administrator, Erin Whittig, at my facebook page, linked over there on the right. We’re still working on setting up our very own page, but until then, that’ll do, pig.

from: www.filmclipsonline.com/ images/Babe-T.gif

 

Happy gardening.

Sudden (smelly) snowshoe

After nearly five days of battling the germs that someone gave to me, I bucked up enough to drag my sniffly self off the couch and into the woods for a quick snowshoe. With few really good resources online to give us some idea of where to go, Other Half and I figured we’d drive west on Hwy 21 until we saw someone else’s tracks, and follow them. This kind of logic has led me astray many times in the past, so I was betting it’d make good some time. This time was that time.

Spotting a groomed track near the Seafoam turnout, about 17 miles out of Stanley, we parked and set out. The road, we later learned from a couple of Idaho Power guys on snowmobiles, hooks up with Valley Creek road, which runs the length of the basin. About a half mile in, just after crossing Marsh Creek, a sign directed us left, deeper into the woods to Bradley Scout Camp, 3 miles.

Luckily the way had been packed down by snowmobilers, so it was pretty easy going. The trail ascends very gently through the trees for a mile or so, and is traversed by so many legions of animal tracks that I kept whipping around every time a chunk of snow fell from a tree branch.

When we reached the second turn-off (to the right), the route became a bit steeper, as it climbs steadily to the gate marking the entrance of the camp. A left-hand fork here takes you up to the Cape Horn Lakes, which I’ve never been to or heard anything about, but could be a cool detour. It looked steeper and we were (ok, I was) tired and hungry, so we trudged on to the camp, which we smelled before we saw.

Under any other circumstances, picnicking next to a tepid pool of rotten-smelling water would be low on my list of spontaneous romantic experiences. This was no exception. It was kinda gross. Still, the surprise of finding a (stinky) swimming pool in the middle of the woods in the middle of winter was charming, and the concrete provided a dry sunny spot to squat and enjoy lunch. Even the half buried buildings of the silent camp became sweet in their total emptiness, and potential fullness. The shadows of three bare flagpoles stretched across the snow and pointed the way out.

We followed a new set of snowmobile tracks made by the aforementioned Idaho Power workers, looping back to the original groomed road we’d started out on. Crunching back across the bridge, we entered an open meadow where the stunted trees bowed under anthropomorphic clumps of snow. Maybe we’d huffed too much hot-spring smell, but we were like kids seeing animals in clouds, spotting polar bears and giant ballerinas and white elephants lounging about.

In addition to the exercise and vitamin D, I got a little artistic inspiration out of the day. Another check in the pro column for staying in Stanley this winter.

We don’t need no stinking grooming

Walk, snowshoe, ski, snowmobile or crawl out to Redfish Lake for an easy play day

It’s an oft-traveled road from June through September, but this time of year, if you’re looking for a long lonely stroll with a pal or a dog, the two-mile stretch from Highway 75 into Redfish Lake Lodge is where it’s at. Despite an apparent lack of recreators, though, the path is thoroughly beaten so even if you’re only hoofing it, you probably won’t be post-holing. 

As in summertime, the route offers spectacular views of Mt Heyburn and Grand Mogul, and passes beside Little Redfish on its way to the lodge. LR is frozen over now, and a detour along the lake side is worth it (just remember to cut back to the road before reaching the inlet, where the lake is decidedly less frozen).

At the turn-off for the lodge, you can keep heading straight to the lake, where you can take the right turn at the top of a small hill and follow the shoreline to the lodge, and the empty docks, a perfect spot for nosh and a rest.

Before heading back, take a turn around Point Campground (which sits on the peninsula just in front of the docks) and take in the fact that in a few short months it’s going to be crammed with retirees in RVs, but for now, it’s all yours.

Down Time

Days like today, when the x-country trails are like wet cotton candy and the wind is whipping fiercely down the valley, and you’ve had just about enough of Facebook and yoga sounds like torture, there’s really only one thing left to do.

It’s very Little House on the Prairie, I know, but it’s oddly satisfying to bake a loaf of bread. Plus, when every other loaf at the local store is suspect at best and green at worst, you have to learn to depend on yourself a bit. After all, what if wild dogs raid the town?

I recently discovered The Fresh Loaf, a great website devoted to artisan bread baking, suitable for the unseasoned as well as the stale. I’ve sort of been stuck in a rut, bread-wise, having found one recipe that delivers awesome bread every damn time (which, if you’ve ever tried to make bread, is very consoling). Since I’ve got all this wonderful time on my hands, I decided to do things right, and really learn about this process. Lesson One seemed a logical place to begin. 

Meanwhile, as my practice dough rises, I’ll share that tried-and-true recipe here. I started with a basic recipe that my friend Ed found on the NY Times website, and added a few twists:

No-Knead Caramelized Onion & Rosemary Bread

• 3 cups flour
• 1/4 tsp yeast
• 1 1/4 tsp salt (sea salt works well)
• 1 5/8 cups water
• 1 onion
• 3 sprigs fresh rosemary

Combine the flour, yeast and salt in a medium-ish bowl. Slice the onion into nice little half-moons and toss into a cast-iron skillet with some butter. Caramelizing takes a while, so let that sit there for about half an hour, on low heat, stirring it around occasionally. If you’re impatient (like me), you can toss some sugar in there to speed up the caramelizing process.

Once the onion is nice and brown and sweet, toss it into a food processor, along with the rosemary (de-stemmed, naturally), and give it a couple pulses, just to mix everything up. Throw that mess in with the flour mixture and stir it up.

Add the water and mix with a wooden spoon. It’s going to look really gross and messy and shaggy, but that’s good. Cover the bowl and leave the dough for 18-24 hours (you can do as little as 12, but the bread doesn’t get as big. Ed, the size queen, taught me this one).

When the dough has sat long enough, uncover it – doesn’t it smell awesome? – and turn it out onto a floured dish towel (not terry cloth). Push it around a couple times, then form it into a ball and cover it with the ends of the towel. It needs to rise for another couple hours.

30 minutes before the dough is done rising, pre-heat a cast-iron pot (dutch oven) at 500˚. When the dough and oven are ready, sprinkle a little corn meal into the pot, carefully dump the dough inside, pop the lid back on, turn the oven down to 400˚ and set the timer for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, remove the lid and spray water or oil on the loaf (which should be getting pretty mouth-watering at this point), leave the lid off and bake the loaf for another 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown.

It almost makes me wish for terrible conditions every day.

 

golly gosh shucks

It’s a small thing, but thanks to all who are reading. It makes my morning.

Backcountry for Posers

A yurt trek turns zeroes into heroes

It seems that I can’t go a single day here without hearing how someone just shredded some gnar pow or dropped a sweet line or spent the day flibbety flabbing down a mountain somewhere. If none of what you just read makes any sense, I’ve got the perfect winter activity for you: yurt trek. 

For those not in the know, a yurt is basically a glorified tent that (with any luck) you don’t have to set up yourself and is equipped with everything you need to enjoy a spartan weekend in the woods in the middle of winter: plank bed, wood stove, stump chair, camp stove, Scrabble. 

If you’re in the area (i.e., in Idaho) then you’re probably within an hour or two of a yurt. Once I started investigating, I quickly found that they’re pretty ubiquitous around here, and most are open to the public, for fees which run the gamut (from Super 8 to Hilton). In the Stanley area, Sun Valley Trekking owns and operates the Bench Hut and Fishhook Yurt, both of which can be reached with a bit of effort from the Redfish Lake turnoff, on Highway 75. 

But for our purposes (celebrating my husband’s 30-somethingth), we needed to get a little higher and deeper into the Sawtooths, and closer to the birthday lines he’d drop on his as-yet-untested back-country gear (See? I even picked up some of the lingo on the trip. You, too, can achieve fast results! Book your yurt today.) It also helps to have friends in high places––our old pal Trei used his connections to get us two nights in the Williams Yurt, owned and operated by Sawtooth Mountain Guides and located six long but worthwhile miles into the SNRA, at the base of Williams Peak.

The haul into a yurt can usually be made on either snowshoes or skis; generally the skiers use skins (sticky strips resembling brightly colored seal hide) affixed to the bottoms of their skis for grip. And take it from one who knows––from recent experience––snowshoes only go so far in really deep snow. Luckily the trail up to Williams Yurt is oft-traveled, so we didn’t have to do much slogging.

If you don’t worship at the altar of powder, your day in a yurt might break down something like this:

1. Stoke fire, or complain until someone does.
2. Burrow deeper into sleeping bag until you can no longer ignore your bladder.
3. Visit “Pee Tree” and try not to pee on your slipper.
4. Hop back into sleeping bag.
5. Fetch buckets of snow to melt for water, or complain until someone does.
6. Revisit sleeping bag.
7. Pour now-melted snow into percolator for coffee.
8. Wait for coffee (in or out of sleeping bag––your call).
9. Drink 5-10 cups of coffee, or until warm.
10. Cook meal, depending on time of day.
11. Eat.

 

Most of the rest of the day consists of a repetition of one or all of the above.

Perhaps it sounds interminably boring, and if so, don’t go. No one’s holding a gun to your head.

But if you’re up for a place where the only interruption in the silence might be the occasional whoomph of snow falling from branches or settling on slopes; where there’s nothing more precious and miraculous than warm toes and fingers; where your yurt-mates become irritating siblings that you wouldn’t trade for anything; and where you’ll eat mountains of food that you actually need: go.

Just go.

Glide, two, three, four

After a promising early snowfall, then a depressing and bitterly cold dry spell, it looks like we’re finally sitting pretty for Stanley snow sports for the next few months. The revving and roaring of snowmobile engines rumbles throughout the valley. The back-country extremophiles who’ve been hibernating in a whiskey haze for the last couple months are getting up earlier and earlier to do the trudge-n-ski from sunup to sundown. And for those of us who like to sleep late and avoid getting snow down our collars or up our pant legs, a system of nordic ski trails has been groomed, from Park Creek at the western end of the valley, down to Galena Lodge in the Wood River Valley.

Jury duty last week kept me from getting a good head start on the area’s nordic ski season, but two outings in as many days has helped catch me up. My new ski buddy and I consulted our map, Nordic Ski Trails & Snowshoe Trails in Sun Valley & the Sawtooth Valley, available free at Mountain Village Merc (and Blaine County Recreation), and decided to head down the valley to Alturas Lake, and its 10 km of wide groomed trails. New Ski Buddy’s first attempts at skate-skiing were aided by excellent conditions brought on by the previous night’s subzero temps. Several short loops offer everything from long, flat straightaways perfect for beginners, to racy rolls and curves, and even a couple steep drops for added excitement.  There’s one 6.5 km out-and-back to the lake, but the really fun trails loop through the trees and hills closer to the highway. 

The promise of a hearty lunch and $6 milkshakes (worth it) at nearby Smiley Creek Lodge motivated us around one of the longer loops. Only five minutes’ drive from the Alturas nordic trails, Smiley Creek is a perfect pre- and apres-ski destination; a lunch of black bean hummus and cheddar broccoli soup, washed down with a glass of Black Box generic red nearly put me in a happy coma. Ski Buddy went big with a chicken sandwich and homemade potato chips; almost everything at the restaurant is made in house, and you can tell. The potato chips had skins, and were warm and crisp; the soup was distinctly cheddar, not Velveeta, the broccoli bright green and tender, not flaccid and brown as if from a can.

Stuffed and sore, we drove back down the valley to Stanley and spent the rest of the evening watching many episodes of a certain television series that will remain nameless. It rhymes with Muffy the Campfire Player.

Trying to stave off crippling pain, we headed out again the next day, this time taking highway 21 to the Park Creek nordic area, about 10 km outside Stanley. 

Even at 2 pm, there was only one other car in the parking lot, and we had the trails to ourselves. While the grooming here wasn’t quite as smooth as Alturas, the scenery made up for it––the main loops wind up into the Sawtooth foothills, offering occasional but spectacular glimpses of McGown Peak. 

On a full-moon night, a ski at Park Creek followed by a dip in the Boat Box hot spring just outside of Lower Stanley might make it even more difficult to leave Stanley behind for the wider world next fall.

Is Christmas over yet?

 

http://hunterburgan.buzznet.com/user/journal/4197031/hunter-burgan-analyzes-megan-fox/

 

With Gabe gone to the yurt for the past two days, cabin fever’s gotten a little more serious; the ways I’ll stave off loneliness and boredom are not limited to my usually strict criteria (you know the ones––like the presence of wine and a glass [glass optional]). I’m pretty sure this relaxation of the rules is how I found myself talked into reading a chapter at the Stanley Library-sponsored annual Christmas reading last night.

Head librarianatrix, Jane Somerville, has been putting on this reading for “years and years,” according to detail-oriented assistant librarianator, Casey Bruck. Townsfolk volunteer to read selections either of their own choosing, or like this year’s reading, a chapter from a short novel with a Christmas theme. Jane told me she’d struggled since October to choose a book, and finally, the Monday before the reading, had landed on The Paper Bag Christmas, by Kevin Alan Milne (I’m guessing no relation to Pooh’s creator, A.A., based on the younger Milne’s predilection for lessons learned from harsh reality rather than the nebulous zen-like wisdom that comes from getting stuck in Rabbit’s hole).

Milne’s story centers on two tween brothers, Aaron and Molar, who find themselves guilted by the mall Santa (a doctor at a local children’s cancer ward) into volunteering at his hospital for the holidays. Despite sensing Milne’s clever aim that the reader also share in this guilt (after all, when was the last time you volunteered at a children’s hospital ward, you heartless grinch?), and despite the reading lasting nearly four hours instead of the projected one-and-a-half, and despite having not nearly enough wine and cake in my belly, and despite chasing a restless child around for much of the night––despite all of this, I drove home with (yes, embarrassing but true) a distinctly Christmas-y spirit. 

If you know me, then you know that I hate Christmas. One of the most satisfying and enduring reasons for staying overseas for the past three years was being so far away from America at Christmastime. Christmas took on a different (and better, in my opinion) meaning when we lived in Bosnia and Ethiopia. We invented our own traditions, like crepes on Christmas morning in Bosnia, or imported our favorite ones, like homemade soup and bread on Christmas Eve. Other ex-pats gathered at our house in Mostar and we became each other’s family, and the best part was this: there was no gift other than the company and the support we provided to each other living as strangers in strange lands. We didn’t need anything else, and even better, we didn’t want anything else.

So lately I’ve been a little grumbly about being back in the shit, as some might say, back to the “true” meaning of Christmas. Being in a mountain town of 100 people does take the edge off a bit, but you still get the feeling that everyone’s got just one thing on their minds: What the hell am I going to give to ____ this year? We stress, we fight, we spend, we fret, and if we utter a single complaint about how meaningless these gifts are, how weird it is that we feel compelled (or downright pressured) to have a gift for everyone, or (god forbid) we tell people we don’t want anything at all, we end up with the most ironic of labels: Scrooge. Grinch. Commie.

Needless to say, going to the Christmas reading was more than a little out-of-character. 

But once my limited wine supply diminished and my mocha rum cake baked and filled Beckwith’s cabin with grandma’s-house-aroma (if your granny’s super-hip, that is) and I listened to locals make valiant efforts to approximate the Indian accent of the novel’s token ethnic character, my grinch heart maybe did swell a couple sizes, and my urge to break a Little Drummer Boy LP into shards shrank a bit. The effect was so total that I think I even busted out my Visa online this morning in a fit of unbridled capitalism and bought someone an impromptu Christmas gift. 

See? That’s how they get us. Hit us with the saccharine songs and movies and fudge and eggnog, lull us into this semi-comatose tingly philanthropy, and before we know it, we’re on Amazon buying the DVD box-set of Saved by the Bell.

Fancy a trip to hell? Just take a nature walk.

 

Copyright (c) 2009 CineGoGo

 

Hopefully by now our few faithful readers are aware of “The Shining Challenge,” in which we will watch or read your suggested material (i.e., books & movies) with themes of isolation, madness, and downright creepiness. 

I know it’s only just December, and we haven’t been at this long, but: We have a winner. Shawn Convey, please come claim your prize, and then do me the favor of never ever suggesting another film for this challenge. Pretty please.

No film has ever left me wanting so badly to un-see what I’ve just seen, to erase all traces of the images that pop up behind my eyes at just the worst times (Hubby wants a kiss and a cuddle, huh? Did I just shudder and gag in reply? Yes, I did.) But this has always been what director / writer Lars Von Trier is about: making us squirm.

I’m not talking about the kind of squirming that happens when you realize the movie you’re watching with your parents has a sex scene–you get over that (if you have the misfortune of seeing Antichrist with your folks, do yourself a favor and chase a bottle of Vicodin with a jug of vodka, because you’re never getting over it). LVT’s brand of squirm is deeply internal, in your guts and your frontal lobe, your id and your ego. You’ll think you know why you’re uncomfortable, but it won’t occur to you until much later that you were disturbed by something else entirely. But this is the payoff I’ve gotten with von Trier—if I have the patience and the fortitude to subject myself to his films, the insight that comes after the initial shock is truly spectacular.

In necessary—but insufficient—summary: the movie revolves around a nameless Man and Woman (who could be any man and woman) whose toddler dies in the opening scene, falling from an open window while they’re having sex (le petit mort at the exact same moment as the little one’s death—you gotta love von Trier just for this shit). The Woman (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, who won Best Actress at Cannes for this role) grieves destructively—she’s an understandable, yet uncontrollable and violent, wreck. The Man (ever-creepy Willem Dafoe, aka Cheekbones McGee), a therapist, strives to assist his partner rationally through her grief, and suggests going to the place she admits she fears the most: Eden, a “fictitious” forest / cabin retreat. Much horrific, haunting, and nauseating shit ensues at this point, and I will try, without spoiling too much, to be specific about why this is the best (or worst) movie to watch in a cabin in the woods in the middle of winter. 

Tina Beattie, in her article “Antichrist: the visual theology of Lars von Trier,” writes most convincingly about the film’s portrayal of Genesis; namely, of Eve’s culpability in the fall of man, and women’s subsequent struggle with the guilt and consequences of that imposed culpability. Beattie writes that as the couple crosses a small bridge on their hike to Eden, they are crossing a boundary between “culture and nature, reason and chaos, sanity and madness.” It is the “bridge to hell.” Where so many other filmmakers have envisioned urban landscapes or apocalyptic futures as ideal hells, von Trier hands us nature, to which we often ascribe heavenly attributes—and he even goes so far as to name it after paradise itself. 

Before arriving in the woods, we are privy to the Woman’s thoughts as she imagines walking to Eden, and the composition of these shots (slow motion, the Woman in stark black and white, looking almost like a paper-doll cutout) evokes such an unsettling dichotomy of sensations: quietude and peace, terror in an unidentifiable form lurking everywhere. If you’ve spent time alone in the woods, this scene will feel very familiar.

Also familiar and unsettling is the film’s portrayal of nature as destructive and creative, disgusting and lovely, violent and nurturing. It’s so easy to fall victim to the simple-minded and comforting notion that nature heals us somehow, offers us peace and security that we can’t find in the hectic “real world.” But it’s not always true. Things die in nature, sometimes very violently and suddenly, and often not under handy and blamable circumstances that occur more frequently in “the real world”—car accident, cancer, old age. “Chaos reigns,” the fox reminds the Man, in between bites of himself, ironically reminiscent of the ouroboros, a symbol not of destruction, but of wholeness and infinity.

Yes, I’ll admit that ten minutes of this movie were the most nauseating minutes of film I’ve ever watched, but oddly, those ten minutes aren’t the bits that I would call creepy or haunting. Just like The Blair Witch Project, it was the subtle little things—the chaos of nature—that raised the hairs on my neck. Acorns fall unceasingly and rhythmically on the metal roof of the cabin throughout the film, like an aural Chinese water torture. The wind gusts momentarily, and dies again suddenly. The Man wakes one morning to discover that he’s slept with his hand out the open window, where it’s been covered with leeches. A baby bird falls from a dead tree and is immediately swarmed by ants. A deer has partially birthed a dead faun, which still hangs halfway out of her body, and flops sickeningly as she runs through the woods. Twigs snap like bones breaking. The sounds of things moving and growing and dying are everywhere, quiet but deafening, and by the time the visual chaos comes, you’re in such a state of panic and nerves that you’re too stunned to close your eyes.

I can’t say that I liked it, but it definitely did a number on me.

It seems to be the trend

 … to write these Thanksgiving posts. Actually, I was just bopping around on the internet, as I’m prone to do at 10 p.m. after a little vino and dinner and the warmth of the fire sedates me into this particularly calm state, which is great for writing. The little critic who sits on my shoulder and tells me to erase every other sentence just poof! disappears. Gotta take advantage of this time before the little bastard comes back.

As some of our readers may know, this is the first Thanksgiving that my husband and I have spent in the US in the past three years. Last year, we were in Addis Ababa, at an out-of-the-way yet offensively expensive restaurant that catered Thanksgiving dinner for all the ex-pats living in the city; the two years before that we were in Bosnia, where we celebrated both years with my students, and an American friend who moved to Mostar the same month we did, and who still lives there now. All three years, Thanksgiving was the holiday when I thought most about our families back in the States, and considered the reasons why we’d moved so far away from everyone. I thought about our friends, too, and our own Thanksgiving tradition of getting together for a sushi feast sometime before or after the holiday—Arigatogiving—and often missed this more than anything else.

This year, though, we’ve stayed in the States, and are actually living a stone’s throw away from those friends I was missing the last three years, making my Thanksgiving pining a thing of the past. Still, I’m inclined (it couldn’t be the wine) to broadcast all the shit I’m thankful for this year:

#1 Wood. Wood is awesome and it burns really well and keeps us warm. There’s a heaping pile of it in the garage that my awesome husband hauled in from the forest in the past month, and cut up with the help of some really wonderful people.

#2 Really wonderful people. I started to make a list here and realized it was going to be too long and I’d probably miss someone and then spend the rest of the weekend feeling bad for forgetting about so-and-so. You all know who you are.

#3 Shelter. A solid roof over your head is an incredibly rare thing in this world, yet so easy to take for granted. I love my roof, and I also love how temporary it is.

#4 The ability to roll with the punches. Shit changes like that and I’m glad I can take it.

#5 Being lucky enough to be born an American. I cannot believe how much I appreciate this, and am still considered a liberal hippie asshole.

#6 My health. I don’t have any health care insurance, and I’m very, very, very glad that I don’t have some awful terminal disease that I couldn’t even begin to pay for. Knock on wood.

#7 Options. I don’t know where these came from, but for some reason I have a lot of them. I’m glad I have them, even if I don’t quite know what to do with them.

#8 My parents. I probably wouldn’t have all of the above without them.

9# Gabe. Everyone should have one.

#10 I thought I should write ten things because 10 seemed nice and round and balanced, but number 9 is a good ending.

Happy Thanksgiving.