The Northeast: Part 4

6/23/2013 – Burlington, Vermont

My first full day in Burlington was a Sunday, and I made my way down to a well regarded coffee shop called Muddy Waters. They opened at 8:30 – late, I think, for a coffee shop, but the wait was worth it. The cafe was rustic, dark and wooden; the brightest light came from the large windows, which seemed blinding by comparison. I got a cappuccino from the barista – it was okay – nothing compared to Sam’s work at The Espresso Bar – but good enough. I took my mug and book and settled in watching the window, waiting for the caffeine to do what it does – light a roasty fire in me, make me burst out laughing at everything – the sensation of my own exploding cells.

Muddy Waters, double exposure.

I read Gary Nabhan’s novel “Coming Home To Eat,” his story of eating regional food for a year. The founder of Native Seeds/SEARCH, Nabhan is the keeper of food history for the Sonoran desert. The book is full of explorations of cactus fruits, mesquite tortillas, roasted grasshoppers, almonds, smoked turkey, and other foods that are products of the desert. His prose is beautifully phrased, wavering from the political and analytical science-minded, to prose evocative of Thoreau, Wendell Berry, and Aldo Leopold.

It is an effective read although not without its flaws – the economics of how he does this feat are largely mysterious. Nabhan was the recipient of MacArthur “Genius” grant: this puts him far above most people in terms of his own means. But truly, I don’t want to discredit the book – I love it. It is a meditation on experience, and a valuable and worthwhile goal for us to set on a regional basis if we so choose. Perhaps part of being human should be that who you are is built from foods in your biome. In The Etiquette of Freedom, Gary Snyder writes: “Our bodies are wild. The involuntary quick turn of the head at a shout, the vertigo at looking off a precipice, the heart-in-the-throat in a moment of danger, the catch of the breath, the quiet moments relaxing, staring, reflecting – all universal responses of this mammal body” Eating food – and learning what’s edible, how to harvest it, how to prepare it, from our place can give us a portal into the magic and science of our biogeographical place; allow us to explore our own wilderness.

*     *     *     *

I biked to the UVM Waterman building around noon and checked in. I grabbed some ice tea and immediately went and talked to Vic, who had been our online facilitator the past two weeks. Here he was, in the flesh, PHD in agricultural etymology and all. I was nervous, which expresses itself in a kind of overzealous enthusiasm. But that’s okay, these are all my people. We started to trickle in – I’ll just go through some – Val, a high school skills & nutrition teacher from New Hampshire; Bethy, who studies gastronomy & food policy at Boston University; Sophie, who works at Saxelby Cheesemongers in New York City and also co-hosts a radio show about cheese on the Heritage Radio Network; Kelly and Roger; a teacher/student duo from the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences; Yuting, a recent Wellesley graduate from China who was about to take a job in Washington DC trying to increase food safety standards in China; Erin, a New Hampshire biochemist with an MS in nutrition who chairs a nonprofit called the Food Education Network; Scott, the director of research & strategic initiatives at Project Bread; Mario, who is working to reform the regional food system of the Florida Everglades…the list goes on and on and on.

I know them now, but then it was the beginning, sitting in chairs and listening to Cynthia Belliveau tell us that when she teaches her class in South America, she calls it “cooking as resistance…”

*     *     *     *

The UVM Breakthrough Leaders Program, unsurprisingly, focuses on leadership – with the goal of creating a more sustainable food system; but leadership skills can be drawn out of all parts of society. I am going to break chronology here when it makes sense for me to do so, but what’s a little time travel among friends, dear reader?

I have not thought about leadership. Many ‘leaders’ we spoke to, when asked specifically about their leadership, first exclaimed that they did not see themselves as leaders. So we have a problem of language. What is it that we are talking about? If I am a leader, I see my leadership like the dimmer stars at night – I can’t see them by looking straight at them. But now here is an opportunity for telescopic vision. I have seen leaders that do nothing more than hold on to ideas they feel to be deeply true; philosophies truer than fists and feet, more solid than brick and steel. But not only are these thoughts held, sharply defined and measured like diamonds, they are expressed outwardly. So: doing something, for a reason that makes more sense to you than anything else. A good leader may perceive that they have no other recourse but to invest their lives into what they see as integral.

Good leaders are like mushrooms – they replicate and spore the values on which their work is based into others – clients, co-workers, peers, competitors. Leadership is also keeping your own passion alive and turning it into a communicable form that replicates itself in others. Some people are leaders because they believe in pottery, guitars, clothing, wool, strawberries, cheese, chocolate, garlic, airplanes, outer space, bicycles. These are people whose imaginations have been caught as if on a blade by the shapes, flavors, sensations of the reality they choose to inhabit. Even better leaders – do-ers – thinkers – invest in a way to keep the core of themselves pulsing. Reality is hard: the sun burns our necks; lettuce planting breaks your back; email piles up; projects fail; knowledge is power but too much knowledge overwhelms – you cannot deal with all the impossibles at once: governmental change, revolution, economy, health, corporation, war – the worlds of our interest spin on the shells of these turtles on turtles of structure and paradigm! And so– revitalize, refocus, build feedback and recess and rethinking into process – maintain the structure of the seed that grew the oak openings.

*     *     *     *

Your economy is what you choose to measure. I’m a big fan of outcomes based action. I believe in the scientific method and that means measuring things. But what do you measure? What you choose to measure can be rooted in your priorities and philosophy. Brendan Fisher, a research scientist at the World Wildlife Fund, showed us a study that, among other things, tracked birds and dung beetles. These, he said, were markets of biodiversity in rain-forests. They collected data on these variables for three different types of rainforest: Unlogged, those that had been logged once and replanted, and those that had been logged twice and replanted. They also graphed the dollar value of logging those rain-forests. The markers of biodiversity did not decrease that much – what did decrease, drastically, was the dollar value of those rain-forests. This means that an organization which keeps conservation as a core tenet can purchase once or twice logged rainforest that is still surprisingly biodiverse at a much lower cost than unlogged forest.

Your metrics should reflect your core philosophy. Over and over we saw this – to build a system from the heart of belief that will check itself against the values you hold. And, in determining your metrics, you get to ask that necessary question again – who am I? Why am I here?

In systems like the food system, we can easily understand that change in one part of the system has tradeoff effects in another part. We can simply this using the SEED model – Social, Economic, Environment, Diet/Health. Much of our food system is focused on maximizing the returns of the economic portion of the equation, and the tradeoffs of that wide-scale aggregate choice are evident throughout the other areas – inequalities between large producers and distributors such as Wal-Mart and its suppliers; water pollution, the disturbing nature of industrial pig farms, antibiotic resistant microorganisms from the use of antibiotics in livestock, an obesity epidemic, a diabetes epidemic, and all of these poor health outcomes occurring earlier and earlier. Tradeoffs are inherent in any system.

We ended the classroom portion of the day and went upstairs to dinner. It’s always fun to try to figure out where people go from strangers to becoming friends. It might have happened there, in the midst of talk about metabolism, baby names, nicknames, and how we all wanted to change the world. It continued as we left, found ourselves walking down the hill toward a local Vermont brewpub in the middle of downtown, and later to the waterfront, which was dark and quiet. We had forgotten it was a Sunday.

The Northeast: Part 3

6/22/2013 – Burlington, Vermont

I am unused to mountain roads. Pat recommended I take Spear street north to Burlington, saying I’d avoid the traffic and have a pretty drive. What I did not expect was to cruise into a hill at 2000rpm and then, even with my foot on the gas, see my RPM slowly drop. Whoops! Downshift up hills!

Burlington was muggy and rainy when I came in, like a soft focus film. Everything was swollen with water. It took me a while, but I found my way to the dorms, got my stuff inside, and parked my car. Slowing down now.

The first one of my fellow travelers I met was Rex, my roommate, who was from Denver and had a knack for asking good questions – probably an excellent quality to have if you are in economics, a field which was losing meaning for him as he started to consider the food system and the individual expressions of health within it. He wondered what he could do. There is room for everyone in the food system – especially economists – more on that later.

I brought my bicycle here. It’s nearly 10 years old but still looks good because I keep it out of the rain. I rode into Burlington seeking nothing in particular, having ate pickled vegetables at the base of Mt. Philo. I bought them from a roadside farm store in New York. Cauliflower, zucchini, green beans, carrots and more, with sugar, vinegar, and salt. It was delicious.

Burlington is sliding towards Lake Champlain it seems. It all slopes downhill, and being on wheels, this seemed the path of least resistance. After buying some nice pens (I love nice pens) at Boutiliers, an art supply store, I set about exploring. If you are familiar with Burlington, you probably know Church Street, which is a brick road that has been converted into a pedestrian road with all kinds of shops and restaurants. To those familiar with Ann Arbor, I’ll say Church Street gave me an Art Fair vibe in a way – probably the amount of pedestrians – but also the sense that while the larger attractions might be overwrought, there were smaller secrets to be found.

But the hills were overpowering, and I found my way, as every animal before me, to the water. Lake Champlain is tall and skinny: you can see across her, to the shadows of strangely active Adirondacks, but not up her, to Canada and loons. She fades away into the horizon line, a victim of the sphere.

I found a rails to trails path that went north along the lake, flat and easy. At one point I crossed under a small railbridge, and on either side of me was a rocky gorge, eaten with dripping moss. An abandoned bicycle lay on the road, I do not know why. Maybe given time someone find my bike like a seashell on top of a mountain, and from that finding know that here was a place we used bicycles, and they will try to dive into the meanings and form and function and discover as much about us as they can – it’s too bad we won’t get to see them fail. I’d like to see a museum of myself, through the lens of aliens or other distant progeny. If nothing else, it would make for an interesting afternoon.

I rode back, and stayed on the beach a little while, watching distant clouds stand still, waiting for the light to change.

I ate dinner, hungry, at a sushi restaurant called HJ House. I popped a roll of tuna into my mouth and slurped up curried pork ramen. The ramen came in a big plastic bowl and was full of noodles, bok choy, onions, pork, and a most excellent broth that was hot and flavorful – a rich curry.

I am a big fan of broth. On a purely nutritional level there is little that’s better in terms of good fat soluble vitamins, but on a visceral level I enjoy the idea of melting away the useful bits from the very bones of a creature. It is a sacrament to make good broth – you honor the skeleton, the cartilage, the mysteries trapped in the tissue, and you drink it slowly, not because you want to but because it’s hot; it scalds; it’s life. Makes great poached eggs, too.

The Northeast: Part 2

6/22/13 – Mount Philo, Vermont

Four hours ago I was worlds away, packing up my tent, wandering down to the river one last time to see the morning on the waterfall, and saying my goodbyes to Randy and Laura Huckaby, the Texas couple on a slow trip up north to Prince Edward Island (because of Anne of Green Gables) with many stops along the way to “see the land.” They were packed up tight in a little white sedan and when I saw the license plate as I was walking past, I had to ask them: “Whereabouts in Texas are ya’ll from?” “Corpus Cristi” Randy tells me. About two sentences later he asked if I wanted a burger and a drink and I said I’ll be back with my guitar and a song in an hour.

My dear friend April once described “Texas nice” to me. She was an air force brat but calls Texas home herself, so I trusted her. I don’t know what it is about Texas that makes people so friendly. I think that if I can just be try to be as nice or nicer than them, I’m doing okay. Randy and Laura had a few kids back home and a few more grandchildren, and they fed me a tasty burger and some fresh strawberries and snap peas they picked up from some amish folks on the side of the road. Laura showed me a picture of their horsedrawn cart on her smartphone; the fruit was delicious.

I’m never good at remembering conversation, but the light dried up and the fire got smaller. They told me about how they had kept a pet squirrel for two years until he died. A good natured, fat squirrel named Ranger, who liked to hang out with other squirrels outside. Until people came around and scared all the wild ones away. More nuts for him. Other acts of texan animal husbandry included: raccoons, badgers, and foxes. These are the sorts of things campfires are designed for discussing.

After they went to bed I wandered around the campsite and gathered things to make my own fire, which was ordered like this:

pine needles-treebark-twigs-larger twigs-log-leftover firewood

<first—————————————————————————–last>

It went up easy, so I must have done it okay. I think one of the keys was arranging everything beforehand. I spent some time staring at the collapsing glow pondering whatever it is that most folks think about while looking at a fire alone. Out here I’m so focused on essentials. Each event leads into the next like the order of my fire. I get stressed out without a plan, but more than stress, I sink into a world where nothing happens.

Laura and Randy made me breakfast before breaking camp themselves, and I did the same not long after. I aim to be in Burlington today. I drove up 9N to willisboro and then south to the essex ferry. Randy told me it was $30, but it was $9.60. A pleasant surprise!

Lake Champlain had an easy surface of barely acknowledged waves. It was that kind of morning, with misty Vermont mountains growing out of the background. These places exist so much stronger here than in my imagination, which doesn’t have space for the vertical complexity of mountains, much less the liquid fact of lakes. The breeze was cool, and all around us was the veil of weather, past and present, dancing between the clocks of New York and Vermont.

I struck up a conversation with a sunglass-wearing, wavy grey haired man named Pat, who had been golfing and staying at a friends house in New York. A native Vermonter, he was on his was home.  He was an easygoing man with a polo shirt tucked into his shorts and drove a black Ford pickup truck.

I asked him where he would go for a day hike, and he thought for a moment and told me to go to Mount Philo. In the middle of explaining where it was, he told me that when we got off the ferry he’d just have me follow his truck to the road and he’d point it out to me. Apparently “Vermont nice” might also be a way of being. Or perhaps this is just how folks traveling alone operate.

Our plan worked, and I found myself parked in front of a little mountain not twenty minutes later. I changed into my hiking boots and set off, losing the trail almost immediately but found it again soon enough. Wooded areas on mountains might as well be anywhere – it’s just through the going up that you know something is going on. I practically ran up the thing – it’s been two years since I have seen a summit. Before we came along, Philo was known by the native Abenaki people as Matagusaden, which means rabbit mountain.

A little while later I’m here, sitting on warm stone, looking out at farms, lake, and distant geography. I ate an orange and some beef jerky, and now it is time to go again, find the next stepping stone, and enter the world of Burlington.

The Northeast: Part 1

6/21/2013 – Wilmington Notch, Adirondack Mountains

Solstice 

Can you and I connect my calcium to the nuclear light
that outlines all shadows, that spits out each morning?
Let there be, light. My bones are surrounded by what
I call legs or chest or fingers. I built them with my mouth.
all mouths I eat, all grains I grind, all glowing fruit I swallow,
my teeth dripping light like riverspray.
I drank a river washed in evening light
as quickly as I gulped down my tea.

Light moves in waves: salt, beet sugar, bitter greens
that squeak and sizzle. Butter and jam, golden yolks.
Light moves in particles: milking cows, blueberries, apricots.
Maybe you could say that light moves in berries, just this once?
Somewhere a physicist is eating a raspberry he just picked.
He remembers conduction. He looks around, wild,
and sees the tall forest that closes the sky, metal leaves
dipped in June: all trunks, all fruit, all beasts, all sprouting seeds
stuck like splinters in the skin of the earth.

*     *     *     *

This is the longest I have ever traveled in a car by myself. Frank, my 2002 green Subaru Forester, a hand-me-down from my father, is my sole traveling companion. He’s waiting for me back at the campsite, holding my food, my guitar, my bicycle, my underwear – everything important.

I’m sitting on top of a cliff – this camp is called Wilmington Notch, which is between Lake Placid and Wilmington. I could not have found a better spot, which is surprising, as Lake Placid turned out to be a horrible cesspool filled with fake roads that rushed bumper to bumper. And here I am, with an ever constant thundering waterfall, a mountain, and thick pine forests as far as I care to see.

Back at the campground, I befriended two texans, Randy and Laura, who have invited me to drink a beer and sit at their campfire. I’ll wander over with my guitar when this is done.

Some things about the road: a) Sunglasses are incredible. I have a new appreciation for mine– a comically large pair of fitovers that go right over my big glasses. b) I rely too much on my iPad for direction and entertainment. c). My A/C is broken. The highway wind, although loud and smelly, is cooler than the jets of heat that shoot out of my vents.

*     *     *     *

Lake Placid

I came to Lake Placid looking for
the solitude I saw in the picture on
the website: a woman in a sweatshirt
darkened by the sunset over a lake
and a mountain, but all I found was
a deadlocked main road that frantically
curved in all directions. I stopped
at a wooden restaurant that claimed
to make their own sourdough bread,
and was greeted by a vacant eyed
young man who asked if I wanted
dinner. No, I thought, I want the
nothingness found next to and inside
of wilderness, but all my mouth said
was “Sure.” As I ate, I looked
for campsites on the cartoon map
that boasted of every way to spend
money and listened to the manager
yell at an employee on the telephone.
I tipped her a dollar and left.
The campsite I found 8 miles
out of town and nearly to the next
boasted nothing but hiking and
fishing. I set up my tent and
walked down to see the river
and was instead greeted by the
roar of a fifty foot waterfall
in the shadow of a mountain.
Climbing to the top of a cliff blessed
with a glut of rooty pine trees,
I found my way to lose time in
the ever flowing river, the sky
licked treetops, and the promise
of darkness and the full moon.