grat·i·tude

[grat-i-tood, -tyood]  - noun.

The quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful: He expressed his gratitude to everyone on the staff.

When I opened the doors to the main hall on the Friday afternoon of Canoecopia, this is what I saw.

When I asked to take a picture for my blog, they cheered.

The Buddhists call their community Sangha.  It’s Sanskrit for “community” and “together.”  Might seem redundant to Western eyes, but I love the redundancy.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

Oh, sure, the Society of Uncreative Sticklers for Exact Equinoxes will dispute my claim.  ”It’s Winter,” they say.  ”It won’t be Spring until March 20th.” At which point, a second, less creative person will say, “Exactly.  March 20th.  At 17:32 GMT.”

Hey, sticklers, lighten up and listen up.  It’s not about the facts, it’s about the truth.

All of us upper Midwesterners have a different sense of Spring.  We don’t use the astronomical definitions since they’re largely irrelevant.

Spring is when you see bare spots on the  backyard.  Spring is when we wear shorts when it’s 42 and sunny because we can.  Spring is driving with the window rolled down, elbow out, with the heater on high keeping our feet warm. Spring is when a winter’s blanket of snow is pulled back to reveal a minefield of dog poop.  Spring is when you take the ski rack off the car, and even if it snowed, you’d still leave it off.  Because skiing, irrespective of snow cover, is over.  Spring is when you start to smell life in the air, and sun casts both light and warmth on your face.  Or in my case, on my head—my forehead extends back farther than most.  My head is a solar collector.

Spring is when sleeping buds start to stir.  Some of them are locked up tight until there’s no chance of a killing frost, but most plants are a little more daring and want to get a jump start on getting some chlorophyll action going.  They’re cold, they’re hungry, and they want it to be Spring.  Like me.

For us paddlers, Spring is when the water is paddle-able. Not necessarily warm, mind you, but it’s mostly fluid (except for the ice chunks) and it’s lovely, even if wading is not advised.

For me, Spring stated March 1st because I saw two nuthatches (Sitta carolinensis) working over the shaggy bark of one of our Silver Maples (Acer saccharinum) looking for bits of food. They have an unmistakable, nasally honk, and a pair of them sound a lot like my grandfather (Homo sapiens var. Utahensis) blowing his nose, but a block or so away.

Sure, it looks inhospitable.  Well, maybe it’s a little less welcoming than warm sands and bright sunshine, but it’s wet and it’ll float a canoe.  Physically it might be a little hostile, but Winter early Spring paddling has its own beauty.  The light plays off the melting ice like crystals in the window of a new age bookstore, and the breakup of the ice shelfs create sounds that can vary from a sharp crack like the report of a rifle to a soft, rippling music like a giant wind chime.

Then there’s the guilty feeling that this is just, well, wrong.  It’s a harmless cheat, where no one loses but you win, and Nature just sits there and scratches her head, like a teacher catching a pupil doing something, only there’s no proof of any actual mischief.  But everyone knows that somewhere, in some way, somehow someone got away with something.  I love it when that someone is me.

As I drive around Southern Wisconsin, the changes are subtle, but unmistakable. Rivers are opening up and willows show tinges of yellow.  Cardinals sing to each other constantly, flashes of red in a monochrome copse of cottonwoods.  And woodpeckers…that was the kicker.

A pair of Red-Bellied Woodpeckers have been clattering in the big maple, spending a lot of time there.  Normally they spend a few minutes in a tree and flit off to another, but they seemed particularly attached to this one.

I like Red-Bellies.  Melanerpes carolinus are fairly common in our woods, as well as Hairys and cute little Downys.  We get some Northern Flickers here and there, but the Red-Bellies seem to be the most common.

A few days ago I heard one of the resident Red-Bellies singing her lungs out. I could not for the life of me see where she was.  Ian spotted a flash of red, and I ran for my camera and stuck the big lens on.  A nesting pair built a nest in a dead limb.  I guess Silver Maples are good for something besides dropping limbs on unsuspecting passersby.

We feel honored to have such lovely new neighbors.  They’re the best indicator of all that Spring, despite the lack of a Vernal Equinox, is here.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

P.S.  I know that picture up above is not a nuthatch.  It’s a chickadee, working over a cluster of bittersweet berries.  If you want to see a picture of a nuthatch, go here.

Spring is coming soon, but winter does have one last hurrah.

Last weekend was Winter Fest, an amazing event wherein Yuriy Gusev, an amazing event planner and promoter, turns the Capitol Square into a nordic ski course.

Over 20,000 people come to Winter Fest, to race, to watch, and to celebrate the idea of winter.

There were children everywhere…and of course, the mascot, Gentle Ben, who I believe, in a previous incarnation, was the Hamm’s Bear.  From the land of sky blue waters, I suppose.  I outfitter Mr. Ben in a pair of Alaskan snowshoes.  It works.

I spent some time demonstrating traditional snowshoe building, and one young lady in particular was transfixed.  She didn’t take her eyes off the snowshoes for quite a while, and I could see gears turning in her head.  I asked her if she wanted to do some weaving.  She nodded silently and I got her started.

Sophie picked up the idea quickly. She didn’t speak much; she was focused on the task at hand, and with an occasional correction, she finished a tail section.  There was obvious pride.

I love teaching kids, especially ones as bright and curious as Sophie. Her parents had the foresight to name her wisdom. Her father watched her, smiled, shook his head and said, “She’s always like this.”  Like this, meaning she loves to learn new things.

I am thankful for children like Sophie, and in her hands the future of the world is safe.

Now, everyone; join hands, close your eyes and repeat after me:

Spring is coming.

[Spring is coming.]

Snow is banished.

[Snow is banished.]

It’s time for paddling.

[It's time for paddling.]

That should do it.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of pages have been written about the horrors of the Nazi party’s concentration camps.  I feel like adding words to the tens of millions already written is a waste of your time.  But I must write them anyway.

I extended my business trip to Munich by a day, just so I would have the opportunity to walk around and enjoy the city without worrying about keeping up with a group.  Alone, I am the slowest walker I know, and the ever-efficient Germans pass me often, apologizing with an entschuldigung as they pass. I can make a kilometer last an hour, and I often do.

The first order of business was to go to Dachau concentration camp.  It was something that I wasn’t wanting to do, in some sense, but I felt an obligation to go, being so close, and never having seen a prison camp, it was my duty.

The S-bahn ride through the outskirts of Munich was uneventful.  We passed suburbs, looking like most suburbs, but cleaner and better planned. Gotta love the Germans.  Then it was announced…Dachau Station.  Please exit on the left.

I exited into a quaint little village.  There were the usual near-the-station tacky food stands (“Englisch Menu!”) but walking a few hundred meters in any direction revealed a lovely town, most likely a bedroom community of Munich, 40 minutes away by train.

I jumped on a bus to catch a ride to the actual site, a national historical site.  If the Germans are ashamed of their past, you wouldn’t know from this.  There is a sense that the Germans are trying to educate.  I was the only one there who wasn’t from a giggly middle school group, and I timed it so that I was always between groups.  My plan worked perfectly.

Dachau was the first concentration camp, and it has a terrifying back story.  Six weeks before Dachau opened, the Nazi leadership suspended parts of the German constitution, namely:

“Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution are invalid until further notice. Restrictions on the freedom of the individual, the right to free speech, including freedom of the press and the right of assembly and the right to form groups, infringements on the secrecy of post, telegraph and telephone communications, house searches, confiscation and limitation in property ownership over and above the previously legally specified limitations are now permissible.”

Sounds a lot like the Patriot Act, doesn’t it?

Dachau was obviously under construction, probably almost finished, so there was no doubt suspension of the constitution was already in the plan.  Dachau first contained about 2000 inmates, a prison for political enemies, Communists, and other miscreants.  It was insisted that this was “protective custody,” an Orwellian euphemism that makes your skin crawl.

"Work makes freedom"

After walking through the main entrance, with its ARBEIT MACHT FREI sign integrated into the gates, you turn right into the main buildings, now a museum.  There, in excruciating detail, the history behind the camp and its many inmates is laid out in great detail.  The idea was to show the people who were there…the individuals.

The scale of death and suffering was so great it makes your brain shut down and lump all those senseless deaths together in one, big tragedy.  But making it personal…showing a man eating a picnic with his wife and kids in one picture, and showing another of the same man, head shaved and half his weight from the first picture…brings it home in a way that is staggering.  That family having a picnic could be my own.  That’s the intent.

The bunker held about 140 prisoners, mostly people who were considered more dangerous or instigators or someone some guard didn’t like.  It was capricious and arbitrary.  Punishment was sadistic and brutal.  Many of the guards were casualties of the front lines and were retired to work at concentration camps.  My guess is quite a few of them were deranged.

I have several pictures of gas chambers and the cremation building (Barrack Ten).  I don’t want to put them up here.  I spent ten minutes sitting in a gas chamber, pondering what an individual thought as they entered that 20 x 20 room with the low ceiling and fake shower heads.  I spent about five minutes sitting in the corner of the crematorium, wondering what the people loading the bodies into the ovens thought about what they were doing…if it bothered them…if they went home to a wife and family…if they went to church Sunday morning and prayed for forgiveness.  I don’t know.  As I sat there in those rooms, the thought that came to me over and over again was “All is blackness and evil.”

In July 1961, Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, created an experiment to determine how so many people could become so callous, unfeeling and brutal. This was during Adolf Eichmann’s war crimes trial in Jerusalem, and Milgram, a Jew, was curious about the relationship between authority and compliance to obey, even when the task was odious and inhumane.  Milgram was searching for a mechanism to see what made the Germans so compliant to authority. But he had to test it here in the States.

What happened shocked Milgram.  He had no need to take his experiment on the road.  People from all walks of life, from graduate students to working class folks from New Haven, Connecticut had no problems administering what they thought were 450 volt electric shocks to a subject in the next room because a man in a white lab coat said “It is absolutely essential that you continue.”  In fact, 65% of participants had no problem administering the highest shock.  Zimbardo’s prison experiment at Stanford was no less frightening. Think Abu Ghraib with upper middle-class college students.  It really happened.

Before we get on our high horses and blame Germans for being so [insert negative adjective here], we’re not exactly lily-white ourselves. What I learned at Dachau is that it could happen anywhere. All you need is a group of people who are perceived as a threat (Jews, gypsies, Communists, people named Mohammed), another group of people who are threatened, and a leader who wants to exploit both groups.  There are days I wonder when we’re going to re-open Manzanar and fill it with Muslim-Americans (of course, for their own protection).

What I came away with is a sense of what can happen when people do nothing.  I understand why they didn’t do anything…even the ones who tried to help by throwing a loaf of bread over the fence  were unceremoniously tossed in the same camp: they were obviously subversive types.

On the train home, I made a promise to myself that I would do what I can to make sure it doesn’t happen here. But I don’t know what that means.  Let’s say I’m living a quiet life as a shopkeeper in Dachau in 1944.  I decide these poor prisoners could use some food, so I toss a load of bread over the fence.  The next day a couple of thugs come into my shop and say, “Hey, Commie-lover, do that again and your wife and kids are taking a one-way trip to Barrack Ten.”

So what would you do?

It was a long train ride home.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

I received a phone call a few weeks ago from Bill, the Executive Director of the Alliant Energy Center, the campus of buildings where we put on Canoecopia. He calls once a year or so, has tickets for some event, and asks if I’d like a chunk of them.

This year he had tickets to Tim McGraw and Lady Antebellum.  What he didn’t know is that I would rather pull my fingernails off with a Leatherman and dip the raw bleeding stubs in lemon juice, or a similar liquid with a lower pH.  I am not a fan of country music.

Actually, I think country music is an oxymoron.  It’s even more manufactured than pop music.  Give me Patsy Cline.  Give me George Jones. Give me Elvis before he became a puffy caricature of himself. But you can keep Carrie Underwood and her well-marketed and immaculately displayed Osmondesque teeth.

But I digress.  As usual.  But it’s my blog, and you don’t want to read it, it’s not like you paid for a subscription.  Control W will silence me.  Go ahead.  Do it.

ANYWAY…  I told Bill thank you very much, but I would be a day back from Munich and jet-lagged, and therefore unable to really enjoy the performance (true enough).  But I knew that Monsternationals were upon us, and I had never been to see a monster truck show.

Bill came through in spades.  Box seats.  Let me say that again…box seats.  At a monster truck show.  There were no bottles of buttery chardonnay or doilies in the suite, but still…box seats. At a monster truck event.

I did what came naturally after receiving 4 tickets to a monster truck show.  I called three over-educated, cerebral academic types who would otherwise never attend anything of the sort.  Wonderfully, the reception was a universal “Dude, I’m in.”  So much for stuffy academics.  I had my posse.

The suite was overbooked.  Some Bill’s friends brought along a few others and it got crowded.  So we jumped the wall into the next (empty) suite and hung out there.

I always wondered how a monster truck event could last three hours or so.  I mean, jump jump, crush crush, and we’re done, right?  No sir, we make this last.

First, the national anthem.  Fine.  I love the national anthem. The problem was that it has been pre-recorded.  Just before the land of the free high note, the recording skipped and started over.  They quickly cut it off, and the announcer deadpanned, “Well, we all know how it ends…”  I loved it.

Then came a very long introduction for every truck and driver, down to the displacement, horsepower and fuel mixture of each engine and the history of each driver from birth to present day.

Then out came Porkchop.

This was the most painful part of the whole evening.  Porkchop, the Motorsports Clown. Not only not funny, Porkchop is anti-funny. So not funny, I can’t remember a single chuckle-inducing statement.  Sorry, the kids love the t-shirt slingshot…but that’s it.

That was the first hour.  Or so.

Then the crushing started.  Six trucks, all putting out 1500 horsepower and several pounds of carbon monoxide a second, the trucks crushed four cars.  Over and over. The good news is that at least one of them was a Mercury Sable.

Cool.  Lame.  Cool.  My brain could not decide.  There is a certain purity in the destruction of cars that are already destroyed.  The lameness is linked to the X chromosome.  The coolness is linked to the Y chromosome. Hence the ambivalence.  It also explains why Wife 1.1 was not interested in attending, even if paid to do so.

The t-shirt cannons were cool.  Despite the fact that they were responsible for the death of Maude Flanders, they are still cool.  One shot a t-shirt at the booth next to us and it hit the top of the box, teetered, and fell into the seats below.  A mulleted rugrat was there within seconds to grab it and hold it up triumphantly. The kid in the box next to us was crushed.

On the next round, however, they shot two more shirts in the box next to them, locked up with no one in there.  So I monkeyed over two boxes again and grabbed them. The kid got one (I felt like Mean Joe Green) and kept one for Brent’s kid.

We did find a truck to back as a group.  Snakebite.  It was the glowing eyes and fangs that did it. When Snakebite came out to race, we all made the universal sign of Snakebite:

Remember: these are adults.  That is the power of Snakebite’s venom.  The next day at church we flashed the snakebite gang signal to each other during services.

So that was that.  Fun. Lame. Strange. Cool.  Still trying to figure it out.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

More from the archives.  This one is less useful in real life but it sure is fun…this is also the day the picture was taken wherein I first realized how bald I was becoming. I really had no idea. – Canoelover

Fire from a flint and steel is really cool and actually useful in real life situations.  Fire by friction is more temperamental, requires more technique and more patience.  It is a useful survival technique, but I don’t go out of my way to make fires this way on purpose.  On the other hand, I use my steel quite often.

If you want to understand how fire by friction works, consider the time you slid down the slide at the playground and realized you were going way too fast. You tried to slow yourself down by grabbing the sides of the slide, but your hands soon became too hot to hold on. If you never had this experience, think about how warm your hands get sliding down the rope in the gym. Hot stuff, right?

Imagine concentrating all that energy into a small space. Properly concentrated, a little bit of friction can create a fire very quickly. The trick is patience, patience, and then more patience. “You can’t hurry love,” said Diana Ross. You just have to wait. Love won’t come easy; it’s a game of give and take. So is fire by friction. You can’t hurry fire.

The Theory
To create a fire you need heat, fuel, and oxygen. The heat is supplied by friction between the spindle and the hearth board. The fuel is supplied by the hearth board eroding and creating punk: a fine, dark brown powdery stuff. The oxygen is provided by Mother Nature. Simple as that.

The Equipment
The hard part is choosing the right materials for a spindle, a hearth board, and a bow. Hearth boards are best made of a softer wood like cedar. I use old shakes; it works great. I have also used cottonwood and willow in a pinch, but nothing smells as good as cedar when you’re starting a fire. Some like catalpa wood.

Spindles should be long, straight pieces of wood. In the west, folks often use mule fat (the bush, not the equine lipid). Horsetail works well too. I find that a good cedar or fir spindle works great. It should be about 9 or 10 inches long and the same thickness, about ¾ to 1 inch, throughout the length of the spindle. If the thickness varies, the string will crawl toward the narrow part of the spindle.

The bow should be a flexible piece of wood with enough spring to maintain tension on a piece of rope. I use willow limbs, but you can use a number of things.

The socket (the top part of the whole equation) should be a harder wood like walnut or oak, and should be comfortable to hold. I have used elm or ash; my current socket is half a piece of ash. Osage orange is wonderful, and is good for a bow as well if you can get a nice piece bent in the right place.

The Technique
First, grease the top of your spindle. I rub it in (what’s left of) my hair, behind my ears, along my nose, anywhere there are skin oils. If you have some fat, soap or grease, a little dab will do. That means the spindle will NOT have friction on the top but will on the bottom, where it meets the hearth board.

There is a definite technique for holding the bow and drill successfully. For right-handed people, use the directions that follow. For left-handed people, reverse everything. Place your left foot on the left side of the hearth board and the indentations on the right. The cord should twist around the spindle once and position the bow and spindle so that the business end of the spindle is facing down, the arc of the bow to the right (away from your knee). Hold the socket in your left hand and steady your left wrist against your left lower leg. Move your right foot back from the hearth board a bit, and place the lower end of the spindle in the hearth board where you want an indentation.

Now you’re ready to make an indentation. Pick a spot where the diameter of the spindle lines up with the edge of the hearth board. Then, rotate the spindle slowly and wear away a little dimple, and you’ll see some smoke. When you wear away a large enough dent to hold the spindle easily in the depression, stop and use your knife to cut away a small notch, almost to the center of the spindle dent. This allows the punk dust to fall out of the hole, but it also provides an edge where heat can really build up and eventually cause the punk to ignite. Place a leaf or other small flat object under the notch to catch the fruits of your work.

The trick is slow, methodical, rhythmic movements. Don’t push down super hard, don’t go super fast, just nice and easy does it. You will see punk start to pour out of the notch and land on the leaf or piece of bark collecting the punk dust. Smoke will waft up and smell really good. When you see a good amount of smoke, stop and look at the punk. If it continues to smoke, congratulations! You have a coal in your punk! Now place the coal in your prepared tinder bundle, and blow gently until the coal catches the tinder and bursts into a happy flame.

The Hand Drill

The hand drill is nothing new, but it’s much harder. The thumb loops are a modification by wonderful artist/primitive skills advocate Dino Labiste. The concept is identical, except you need to use your thumbs to apply downward pressure. The spindle is not consumable, so small pieces of wood are carved into “bits” you place in the spindle. Same rules apply–slow, methodical and rhythmic movements, no speed demons or anything like that. Patience wins.

For more information about primitive fire by friction, check out www.primitiveways.com. If you’re interested, you can purchase fire-by-friction materials there. It’s a blast. I especially enjoy the contest to build the smallest fire-by-friction set.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

I wrote this years ago, but it has been lost in the archives.  I thought it would be good to put it out there again.  -CL

There is something magical about making fire from materials other than the standard Bic lighter or Ohio Blue-Tips. Moreover, it is often a better method than matches.

The Flint

Flint isn’t really a single rock, it’s more like a loose family of rocks at about eight or so on the Mohs scale of hardness. Cherts and flints are multi-colored, depending on their chemical content, and vary in hardness.

I use Niagara chert because it’s easy to find in my area – several unglaciated areas have chert deposits that are easy to harvest. The ideal flint for striking a spark has a sharp, acute edge that will take a bite out of the steel.  The flint sometimes needs to be “dressed,” or knapped with a hammer or other flint to get that proper edge. A round cobble of flint will not work until it is properly edged.

It is a common misconception that the flint particles make the spark. This is due to the average person seeing the little dark flint in a disposable lighter, and the steel wheel that does not wear, while the flint does. This is not true flint, but a compound of cerium and iron that burns when scratched.

The true flint itself does not spark. Rather, the high pressure exerted on the steel causes a small curl of steel to peel off and ignite. To understand why the steel ignites, bend a coat hanger over and over again in one spot. Soon it will be so hot you cannot touch it.  That energy warms the metal. Now imagine putting all the force of your downward stroke into a microscopic flake of metal. Of course it burns!

The Steel

A good steel is made of a high-carbon tool steel. My favorite is W1, a water-quenched tool steel that I quench in oil to get it to the proper hardness. When oil-quenched, it is hard enough to resist the pressure of the flint, except for the small piece that ignites. A properly treated steel should give off thousands of sparks, if not millions, before being lost. You will certainly not wear one out. If the steel becomes too hot, it must be re-tempered before it can be used again.

The shape of the steel is a personal preference. C-steels, which are roughly the shape of a letter “C,” are most common. U-steels are often used by folks with larger hands who can’t get them comfortably in a C-steel. They are both used in the same manner.

The Char Cloth
You can make sparks all day without causing so much as a wisp of smoke if you are not giving your sparks a happy and fruitful ground upon which to light. The best material for such fire-starting is char cloth, which is simply linen or cotton cloth that has been burned in a low-oxygen environment (like the small tin in the illustration). A small hole poked in the top allows smoke and pressure to escape without the oxygen burning the cloth completely.

To make char cloth, pack a small airtight tin with linen or cotton patches about 2 inches square. Place the tin on some hot coals in a fireplace or campfire and let it cook for at least 20 minutes, or until the smoke subsides from the hole you poked in the top. Let it cool completely, and don’t open it for several hours or even overnight – the cloth will catch flame and burn to a cinder.

Once you have char cloth, you need…

Tinder

Everyone knows what tinder is. It’s anything that burns if a spark lands on it – dryer lint, dry grass, whatever. Finding dry tinder is another article unto itself, and there are lots of places to do so, but success depends so much on what terrain you’re in that it’s not worth talking about here. What is worth talking about is a lightweight, portable substitute: oakum.

Oakum is made from jute fibers, the same stuff gunnysacks are made of. It is normally pounded into the seams of a wooden boat as a sort of a primitive caulking. A little bit of oakum is easily fluffed into a small nest, which can accept your char cloth once it carries a spark. It’s available on-line in many places, and a pound will cost you about $7.00 and will last years.

Technique
It’s pretty simple, actually. First, make sure your tinder is prepared and ready to accept your char cloth. Make a nest as shown, and put it where you can reach it easily. Of course, your fire is already prepared with kindling and fuel, and ready to accept your burning tinder.

Now place a small piece of char cloth on the top of the flint as shown. The goal is to shave off a very small strip of metal that will burn and land on the char cloth. Striking down at about a 30-degree angle should create a spark or two, which will cause the cloth to glow red where they land. This often happens on the edge of the cloth, and is hard to see in bright sunlight. If a spark lands on the char cloth, wait and blow gently on it until you see either a glowing crescent or nothing. If nothing, go back to striking.

If you do have a glowing piece of char cloth, great! Fold it onto itself and blow gently to encourage the spark to spread. Here’s the wonderful thing about starting a fire this way – the best time to do it is in the wind, where matches are blown out quickly. In fact, the stronger the wind, the faster your char will be consumed. Place the glowing char into the prepared tinder nest and carefully fold it in on itself. Remember, you still need oxygen in there.

Blowing gently will cause you to see wisps of smoke coming from the bundle. Perfect. Just keep blowing, and pretty soon – POOF! You’ll be ready to start a fire.

With practice, you will be able to start fires consistently and often faster than with conventional methods, especially in adverse conditions. If you have any questions, feel free to comment, and I’ll answer as best I can.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

I’m not crazy about the word camping.  It’s not a bad word, mind you, but it has some mental images that I’d rather not evoke.  One of them is campground.  Again, nothing wrong with campgrounds; we use them fairly frequently. Certainly, visits to a camp w0uld may be outdoor experiences, but they’re not wildernss experiences.  Milk before, then meat.

One of the things I love most about utdoor living is the simplicity of it all.  Food can be as complex as you want it; we’ve made eggplant parmeggiana and all sorts of gastronomical delights.  That said, my favorite outdoor is simplicity itself.

Okay, moving on…

Another bannock byproduct is the method of cooking it.  You cook it around a campfire, period.  You can’t do it on a camp stove, even if NOLS says you can*. This means you will automatically enjoy the conviviality that accompanies a campfire.  I’ve never been bored sitting around a campfire.  Neither has my son.

L. to R.: someone's feet, Canoelover Jr., Canoelover.

Canoelover’s Bannock Recipe

• 3 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 Tbsp. baking powder
• 3 Tbsp. powdered milk
• 2 Tbsp shortning
• 1 tsp. sugar

Instructions

Mix everything together except shortening (lard or Crisco).  Mix the shortening in by crumbling everything all up with your fingers, making little flour-covered bits of shortening, about the size of a grain of rice.  You can do this ahead of time and keep pre-measured baggies of it around for quick mixing.

Add water until the dough is very stiff.  There should be a little bit of mix left in the pan, that’s how dry you want it.  I sometimes make a hole in the middle of the dough and fold the leftover mix within the pocket, fold it over a few times to use it all up.

It bakes in a cast iron skillet.  Just keep it moving.  It’s not a passive, set-it-and-forget-it sort of cooking.  It’s a dance with cast iron, fire, and sometimes a slightly scorched finger.  It’s all part of the process, and part of the fun.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

*Not a fan of twig fires on top of your lid.  Gimmicks aren’t skills.  Your mileage may vary.

I don’t travel much these days, I suppose.  At least compared to the road warriors who know flight attendants by name and pretty much live in the Platinum Medallion Member’s Clubs.  I probably fly five or so times a year, less if I’m lucky.

Trade shows are an inevitable fact of life for anyone in any industry that sells anything.  The bad news: my industry sells stuff.  The good news: it’s not firearms, pharmaceuticals, or wedding gowns. It’s outdoor equipment, that is, toys for grown-ups.

One of my trade shows, Outdoor Retailer, takes me to Salt Lake City twice a year.  Not a bad place, Salt Lake City.  My dad was born there 72 years ago.  My grandparents lived there for years, and loved it.  I have cousins strewn across the Salt Lake valley.  Some of my fondest childhood memories were formed at the base of the Wasatch front.  My grandparents were not only my grandparents, they were my friends, and I miss ‘em.

What gets me is that Utah, in the past twenty years or so, has gone from one of the most beautiful places to live to one of the ugliest.  Blight of all kinds exist up and down the entire I-15 corridor.  There are billboards everywhere, most of them offering tantalizing multi-level get-rich-quick job offers (“Make $100,000 from home starting today!”).   Or cosmetic surgery…I counted 30 of them in a 40 mile stretch.  Or a strange combination of “Refinance your home now!” and “Buy foreclosures now!” sometimes on adjacent billboards.

Then there’s the state car:

So what do I do with this state that was, at one point, so beautiful?  There are still people there I love very much, but the actual landscape is suffering from benign neglect at best and hostility at worst.

What I do is not go there very much.

Sadly,

Canoelover

Fog has settled in on southern Wisconsin, and it’s causing some slower-than-usual driving conditions, but has given us good reason to slow down and smell the air where roses will be in six months.  Stopping on the side of the road is a little dicey in winter…you never know if you’re going to drop a wheel in a ditch hidden by a clever snowplow driver.

Yesterday I spoke in a small congregation an hour north of Madison, and I took the back roads home, all audio off, just the white noise of the heater fan and a little road buzz.  Wife 1.1 has a new GPS in Blue Car, the one I bought her for Christmas, and I gotta say it’s pretty sweet. It makes my old GPS look like a Commodore 64 stuck to my dashboard with bailing wire.

The back roads were lovely, especially where the wind hadn’t knocked the hoarfrost off the trees and grass and other skeletal vegetation.  I especially like Queen Anne’s Lace (D. carota), which is lovely in the summer, even though it’s a weed, but in the winter it catches ice crystals and blooms all over again.

The area south of Baraboo has a few old apple orchards, long since productive,  but I think the deer like the trees that survive.  These apples were ten feet off the ground and offered a welcome splash of color. Indeed, I spotted them while driving, the only objects containing any color in a gray scale landscape.  So I stopped.

Bear in mind I was in Wife 1.1’s Corolla, and I was wearing dress shoes (leather soled even) and a suit.  I was stranded in a citified car, the snowshoes resting quietly in the back of the Element. I had a down parka with me, so I pulled off my tie, pulled on my parka and gingerly picked my way up a snowbank.

Anything for the shot.

Wish I had my SLR.

My feet eventually warmed up.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover