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Boots here. Taking a nice little breather from all of life’s various forms of coffee goodness and cabin door delights. I came across this picture tonight and was trying to remember what possessed me to take such an un-artful picture and whether the clues in this image scream happiness or stress, celebrating or re-grouping. The moment must have meant something to me, one way or another — otherwise I wouldn’t have felt inclined to capture it on film. The clues: a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, two wine glasses, some junk mail, a phone that has been turned off, some ripe bananas, a clean stovetop . . . Hmmmmm.
This past year has been full of change. Lots of moving from place to place and lots of moving pieces. For those of you move frequently, you can understand how life sometimes presents many choices — choices that beckon and ask to be your dance partner for the next tune. For those of you who haven’t moved for 15, 20, or more years, you might not be able to comprehend the impact of all the chaotic transition that moving creates. And I feel a goodly bit of envy for you. You know where you want to be and you have found it. This is a rare thing in life and you should feel proud that you have found a place to hang your hat and scrape your boots.
I’ve moved from unrefined one-room cabins to primitive wall tents to fixer-uppers to fancy beach houses . . . and back to rustic cabins. Cabins with rotting floors to houses with the finest hardwood flooring. No running water to three (count ’em!) full baths. Kerosene lamps to the latest and greatest in recessed lighting.
With so much moving, details get muted, memories get slopped together like a North Dakota funeral hotdish, and stuff remains unpacked. Boy, does it ever. Items that felt to be so important to you when you were carefully packing them into boxes become forgotten. Unnecessary. You learn to make do with what you have. You realize that one wooden spoon is enough. Three bath towels are plenty. You’ve moved so many times that when you are heading home from town you forget to turn left to your new abode and turn right instead toward your old home. Habits generate your direction. You realize that you have been operating on autopilot. A thought takes hold: Maybe that’s why I keep moving so often.
You start to associate seasons, sunsets, conditions, and wildlife with certain residences. The house with the Canada geese. The house with the beautiful birdies. The house with the deer. The house with the glorious sunsets. The house with the stinky water. The house with the ultra-quiet nights. The house with the flickering lights. The house with the orbs. The house with the scary bat. The house with the wet firewood. The house with all of the glorious sunlight. The house with the smoking stove. The house with the cranky water pump. The house with the insane squirrel that kept chewing through the screens.
I am going to make the assumption that this photo op was cause for celebration because I can’t fathom why I would want to visually record a time of stress and duress . . . unless, of course, I was celebrating that I had survived some such mishap . . . which I guess makes stress, ultimately and in the end, a cause for celebration.
Maybe there is some mysterious circuitousness in this image . . . reminding me that even the survival of mishaps deserves some homage. At the very least a celebration that calls for a bottle of wine and a toast for two. From where I (temporarily) sit now looking out over the Sound . . . with memories of past dwellings mingling and steeping in this little pot of Now . . . there is this message, sometimes extraordinarily subliminal, that pops into every image: Life Is Good.
And what would life be without a Stetson to hang on the back of the door and a good pair of boots to slip into each morning? Everyone loves a Stetson and I, in particular, love Ariat boots. Something about the fit and the cut that make my feet happy.
Stetson Men’s Powder River 4X Buffalo Felt Cowboy Hat
http://amzn.to/2cnjbkY
Ariat Women’s Legend Western Cowboy Boot
http://amzn.to/2cnk5xP
Achla Designs BS-03 Boot Scraper
http://amzn.to/2cnjGeO
I remember the time when someone told me that I was buying way too many boots and heels . . . and that if I only spent the same amount of energy on my spiritual life as I did on buying new shoes, I would be a much happier person. Yep. Someone told me this as I was going through my urban coffee days — as a top-notch barista in a singularly-popular coffee shop, sporting a green apron and pushing beverages to the Needy Uncaffeinated .
I remember the morning Bill came skidding into the parking lot wearing some old WWII aviator goggles. The goggles being necessary as his windshield was blown out. When we asked him about it — how could you not? — he grumbled something or other about a Late Night and Trees that Jumped in Front of His Rig. Who knows what the real story was, but I am suspecting it had something to do with reading his fortune at the bottom of a gin bottle. You would have thought seeing some old Bull of the Woods cruising down the highway wearing these vintage goggles, his longish gray-black hair blowing back in the 55-MPH-generated breezes, would have been hilarious. Heck, he could have likely pulled over alongside the road and charged tourists good money for a ride in his plane-mobile. But to us? His chronic lateness stripped him of any comic relief. I can laugh now, but not so much at the time.
Boots the Badass Coffee Babe here to talk Percolator Coffee . . . Are you thinking that this brewing method is just too old-timey or outdated or un-hipster-esque? Does the image of a percolator bring back your mother’s or grandmother’s Wednesday morning kaffee klatch? Or a church supper? Or a rousing Saturday night of Polish polka on a waxed dance floor? Or Uncle Dean’s summer mountain cabin? Or old-timey conversating between the old folk sitting around a kitchen table?
Ignorance is bliss, or so they say. What I considered to be an innocent Borrowing turned out to be an act of Brazen Temerity: I borrowed (translate: nearly lost) the glass plug that fits into the percolator lid for my playtime pleasure. I was setting up an opulent mud-pie party for my dollies and, after scavenging the kitchen cupboards and drawers for Items of Elegance, I came across the glass perking plug — which was to become the most perfect and elegant crystal teacup. I didn’t give it another thought until the next morning . . .
Boots here. Your Badass Coffee Babe shooting like a star from the hip today and telling it like it is. With the advent of Father’s Day, I am reminded of many things . . . memories of life-in-general this past year concerning my own father . . . times that now feel to be long ago and quite far away. I was thinking back to the summer when my father came to visit me up at my cabin and how, bored out of his gourd with no television for a week, he split enough firewood to last me nearly a month. I can still see that stack of split wood and that look of satisfaction of a job-well-done on his face, happy he was leaving me, his daughter, with the gift of time away from the woodshed splitting block.
So, there I was. Rain drumming on the metal roof of the cabin. My feet propped up on the oven door and sitting just an easy arm’s length from my cup of Joe that was staying nice and hot on the stove-side warming tray. It was a day for getting caught up on my reading and for thinking about getting started on some chores that were on the list for Needing Doing that day.
So that’s it from me, Boots the Badass Coffee Babe, on the brink of Father’s Day 2016. This is the first year when I do not have the need to send a greeting card or make a phone call to my father, as he passed away this past December. I think about the years when my Father’s Day cards were late and when I didn’t call on Sunday. It makes a part of my heart droop to the sad side, and I hope that my father understands.
It feels odd and strangely marvelous to think that I have stood on the same planet all of these years past with my father, streaking through the Milky Way together . . . and I wonder. Like looking up at a cloudless sky at all of its nightly glory, it’s hard not to wonder. I stand out under the starlight and I see the faint remnants of our galaxy and I send Milky Way love to my father, a man whom I didn’t always understand yet I loved all the same. And I know he loved me.
Boots the Badass Coffee Babe here! It’s nearly summertime, so I am thinking that it’s time to branch out into the Arena of Pie. Campfire Pie. You might be thinking: Pie out on the trail? Yes, indeed! with good old-fashioned Pie Irons. Check them out below . . . they are so much fun! I’m hoping that you find these Pie Irons to be as gadget-y and interesting as I do! And so simple and magical, too.
Now I know what some of you might be thinking: Let the Wookie win and just make him the damned pie. But it was more complicated than this. I knew — or maybe I should say intuited — that once I made that first pie, I was going to be chained to the cook cabin for the rest of the summer. Which was NOT going to happen. Not on Boots the Badass Coffee Babe’s watch. And would you feel any differently? Option A: spend glorious, pristine days working outdoors in the unspoiled high country? Or Option B: spend the summer in a dark cabin peeling fruit, rolling crust, spicing filling, and baking the danged pie? I don’t need to tell you which option I preferred.
The Battle must ensue! Or so it seemed until one day when I was mucking out the barn. I was digging through some old camp boxes when I came across some old rusting Pie Irons. They were in need of a good clean-up, but they were certainly serviceable and a goodly remedy to our sparring match over pie or its lack therein.
Pie King asked me to run up to the cabin and get his stash of Irish Whiskey. We had nudges and we baked a few more pies to have for breakfast the next morning before letting the coals die down. He surprised me by laughing and saying he had to hand it to me for sticking to my guns. That I was skookum. That I was the longest hold-out that he had ever had in the Hired Girl line-up. And that I somehow still not only didn’t make pie but he made his own pie in the end.
We ended up having a few more Pie Iron shots of whiskey before the fire died down. The rest of the season passed without Grand Incident, and I packed up my duds in early October. Times change and we with times but not in the ways of Pie Iron friendship. I sent Pie King a home-baked apple pie up on the float plane each summer to commemorate a war well waged. He never thanked me but he didn’t have to. Sometimes you can let the Wookie win post-war.
Howdy to all of you super-outdoorsy souls who are planning your menu for this summer’s camping, climbing, rafting, bicycling, kayaking, or hiking trip. It’s a general truth that dehydrated meals are the way to go when you’re going to be carrying any kind of weight on your back or in your boat . . . and it’s also a general truth that while some of these ready-made meals that you buy in expensive outdoor stores are pretty darned good, others are, at best, kind of mediocre. Why not set mediocrity aside and start each day on the trail with a fresh and energizing cup of Bircher muesli? It’s easy to make, it’s healthful, and it tastes great!
Bircher muesli is one of those meals that tastes good for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It is a healthy and creative choice that tastes good if you roughly follow the script of oats, fruit, coconut, honey, nuts, berries . . . you get the idea. It’s made of good stuff that is easy to pack and you can prepare it in advance of the trip. And the best part? Muesli doesn’t require any cooking, which makes it an ideal choice for those trips that are going to include some dry camps. Easy, healthy, tasty, and easy to prepare . . . you can’t get it wrong.
I started packing my own version of Bircher muesli the summer that Mitch the Mobius joined the trail crew as Camp Cook. This particular crew worked trail up in the high High Country so the work season was short. We made summer base camp at one of the high lakes once the snow receded and the supply horses could make it up the trail. We operated as Trail Rovers who did trail maintenance, cleaned up camp sites, and packed out a whole heck of a lot of annoying garbage from the High Country. Depending on the destination, one might have to pack some overnight gear to cover the necessary miles — but, as a rule, we all generally did our best to return to camp each night to eat around the fire and sleep in our roomy, canvas wall tents.
We actually had it pretty good in camp, as it was stocked at the beginning of each season with gear and supplies, compliments of Sam, Jim, and Katy — our much-appreciated district pack horses. At the beginning of the summer, we had brief and glorious access to butter, eggs, cheese, and cream . . . and we even had an ice cream maker for our season-end Ice Cream Feed — the snowfields providing us with just enough “ice” to “freeze” the cream. Albeit, the ice cream ran a bit on the soft side, but it was pure 100% wilderness luxury.
Mitch the Mobius was what you would call an Unknown Quantity. He came from Havre, Montana, and was a self-professed jack-of-all-trades. I don’t know about the veracity of his self-professing, but one thing we were quick to learn about Mitch: He was an Ace Bull Shitter who ruled camp with a Mighty Spoon. What Mitch made, we were to eat . . . all according to the Rules of Mitch. And that was that. His was a simple system: Whatever we didn’t finishing eating the night before was added to breakfast. Whatever we didn’t finish eating at breakfast was added to dinner. And so it went. This might not sound that bad, but think back to your past few meals. And imagine combining them all together. Trust me. It’s a bad idea.
No matter how much complaining we did, Mitch stuck to his Zero Tolerance Policy of Leftovers. Mitch added dinner macaroni to breakfast scrambled eggs, and he then added said macaroni-scrambled eggs to beef barley soup for dinner. There was no end to the ludicrous chain of combinations. Leftover Morning Coffee was used as the liquid ingredient for dinner cornbread –> coffee-cornbread went into the next day’s breakfast pancakes –> coffee-cornbread-pancakes went into dinner biscuits. I think you get the idea. You had the sense that what had been served as our first meal our first night in camp was still morphing itself in Mitch’s Petri Pot of Anthropological Proportions — resulting in an enduro of marathon indigestion that would only end when we ate our final camp meal in early September.
This is when I started to make my own Bircher muesli. I could guarantee that I was going to start my day right with food that wouldn’t sucker-punch my gut later in the morning. And it was simple. I would soak my muesli in my mess kit the night before and hang it in the bear bag. Voila! Instant healthful breakfast awaiting my morning.
It all came round right when the district’s horse wrangler came up the hill to pack our gear out for the season. It was Tradition that the wrangler would come bearing berries for pie and cream for the ice cream maker. All of us were quite vocal, along with some strident cussing, that Mitch was not to lay the breath of a single fingerprint on our end-of-season Berry Pie a la Mode. No, as much as we all knew the rules of the trail to respect Camp Cookie, Mitch was not going to throw a tangle into our Ice Cream Soiree.
Hey y’all. Boots here. And as we are going into hiking, camping, and glamping season, I am thinking about ways to keep your coffee hot and your coffee cold. In other words, we are going to be talking about thermal mugs, insulated containers, and the good ol’ homely, tried-and-true coffee thermos in the next few posts.
Now this thermos had to be one of the most trail-worn thermoses I have even seen. It was one of those tall green Stanley models that looked like it had been handed down through the ages since the dawn of Manifest Destiny. You couldn’t help but think of all the lunch hours and picnics that this thermos must have poured its way through to get that mean looking. It was scarred up, dented, and ugly, and it truly was a testimony to the quality of the Stanley company’s product line. It was still keeping the Banks’ family coffee hot through all of the abuse it had been subjected to.
One of them would pull the coffee boiler from the fire while the other readied the Sacred Stanley to receive its daily sacrament of Joe. Usually Bill poured and Doreen steadied. Doreen would cluck about the importance of being careful while Bill filled the Stanley to the very brim.
I dug for a spell until Doreen told me to stop. She laid Bill and the Stanley to rest, and I can’t tell you how enormous that moment felt. I have been to funerals before, and have shed my share of tears. But this. Seeing someone being laid to rest in one of his favorite spots on the planet in a damned thermos gave me pause. I could see how our physical selves all truly return to the ash from whence we came. The Cycle of Life is enormously dizzying and, if we are lucky, we have someone special in our life who we can hold on to to ease the spin.
When we returned to the campfire, I laid a blanket around Doreen’s shoulders. I poured her a Coffee Nudge and sat with her for a while. No one else knew that she had just laid her best friend and husband to rest. It surely does occur to me that hidden sorrow has to be one of the most difficult things that we carry with us in life.
Cabin Door Coffee 